 My name's Cindy and I'm going to be talking today about how anyone can get constructive user feedback. I'm the head of user experience at Democrat. I'm also a life coach that works with women who are struggling with self-doubt and anxiety in the workplace. So I would like to bring a bit of both of those things to talk today. I'd love to connect with you if you want to find me on LinkedIn or other sites. So like I mentioned, I work for Technocrat. I've worked on and off for about five plus years. And our philosophy at Technocrat is like your work, love your life. And that's definitely something that I can get involved with and I love about Technocrat. So let's get into it. So why is it important for us to be here? And why is it important to get constructive user feedback? And we all want to be doing good work and be putting good products and services into the industry for customers, clients and people to experience. And if we don't get feedback and input from the people that are going to be consuming those products and services at the end, how do we know that we're doing good? So today is about really getting all of you on board with being a bit more enthusiastic and finding it a bit more approachable to get constructive user feedback the people that are going to be using our services. And do not think that it's necessarily just the user researchers or the UX designers role to be doing that. There definitely is an opportunity for everyone to get on board and even if you're joining a session, if there's opportunities, definitely put your hand up because it's amazing what you can think about what people want and then when you actually hear them say it, it starts becoming quite a different viewpoint that you can get which can be very grounding and humbling. So probably one of the biggest things is to not be scared about it. I've worked on a project before where before we even got started it was my early days of UX design. I was super enthusiastic. I'm like, yeah, we're going to go and test this. We've got people in the lobby downstairs. We can just catch the lift down there and get feedback straight away. The client was so scared it was canned before we even got a chance. So some of that can be about bringing clients along on the journey that it's not actually scary and you're there to learn. So I'll dive into that a little bit more. So not like this little guy, you don't need to be scared about it. And the first thing is it's not actually about you or the product itself and all the effort and energy that you've put into it. If you're getting feedback on your product or service it's really about putting yourself in that person's shoes and being present and listening to them and their feedback. So you can really take the pressure off yourself. No feedback is worth. Sorry if you spend or even with clients if everyone's enthusiastically charging to the finish line wanting to get a product or service delivered and you haven't had feedback input from the people that are going to be consuming or using the product. What's the point in sprinting in that direction if you don't know how it's going to land or resonate with the people using the product? And very big one as well. You might think that you need to have the answers. So if you're getting some feedback from someone that's going to be using the product and they're asking you a whole bunch of questions what's going to happen with this? What's behind that button? What's your plans for this? And it might be really early days and you just don't know. It's not actually about you needing to know the answers. So we'll cover that a little bit later on. And you're here to learn. You're not there to get a pat on the back. So that might be one to bring clients along on the journey with as well because they might be thinking that a feedback session is really about seeing, oh, do they like it? It's not really about that. It's about helping to redirect that perspective that you're actually there to learn and you want to see all the problems and understand the issues with the product or service that you're creating to make sure that by the time it goes to market whether that's a product or a feature that you've actually called out a lot of those problems and issues. And the person giving feedback is most likely nervous too. So if it's your first time facilitating a session like that or just really informally getting feedback they're probably going to be nervous themselves. And I'll talk a little bit more about really being able to put yourself in their shoes and not feeling like you need to be nervous because they're going to be feeling those vibes too. So at the start of the session it's really important to outline what's going to happen. So make it super clear. Have some time beforehand if you're wanting to get feedback on your product to think about what you're doing why you're wanting to get feedback what type of feedback you're wanting to get why is that important and it's more clear that you can make it for anyone that you're wanting to get feedback from the less nervous they're going to be and you too. What I like to do with various research sessions is create an information sheet. So if you take some time beforehand to think of those things like who's involved, why are you doing this how long is it going to take what does a person need to do that's taking part and when is it and that makes it really easy to go and share that and for people to be clear on what's going to happen. If you're going to be recording make sure you get consent. Anyone taking part should be crystal clear on what it means to take part and what will happen with their data. And if you have that capability as well it's great to get that feedback from a consent form from your legal rep. And on a side note you can make it even easier for yourself if you use a research recruitment platform so one of the big challenges with getting feedback on a product or service is actually getting in touch with those people that would be fitting your persona group or who would be using the product or service. We use askable or fair bit prep. So observers. So I highly encourage clients to come along and join the session. It's great to have your clients on your team come and observe what feedback they're getting on the product or service. We've had a project recently where some of the client team were involved and included and they became real advocates for getting feedback from the people using their website and we're then able to champion that further up the chain from just our involvement. But we can get a little bit enthusiastic so if you haven't facilitated a research session before even just generally got feedback on your product or service less is probably more because the more people you add into the room you probably make yourself a bit more nervous as well. There's more eyes on you. So I keep it to three observers. The person taking part, the participant will feel as well a lot of eyes on them so the more informal you can make it the more relaxed the setting, the less people probably the more insight you'll get as well. So it really is a balancing act between wanting to make sure that your client and developers and designers can all get a sense of that feedback first hand but yeah, balancing it up with not adding too much pressure itself or the person giving feedback. Bringing your client team along like I mentioned are the members of the team so if you ever get the opportunity to definitely come along it's great to have that perspective and if you are doing it remotely make sure you get everyone to test the link out beforehand guys smiling at me because you'll find that often everyone tries out the link five minutes before the session and you're just about to get started and they're like, it's not working so you don't want that to be happening right when you're ready to go with your first session. And particularly if you're getting clients involved in the session as well and I've been to a talk where this was the whole talk on getting clients involved in research sessions just let them know what's expected of them beforehand so definitely want to encourage them to join the session but let them know when is it okay for a client to ask questions in the session how are they meant to introduce themselves if they're going to be taking notes just making sure that they're the anonymised so on that note note taking and recording so there's a lot of different tools these days that can do auto transcribing so it's great to make the most of those tools just being mindful of where the data's being stored write some dot points directly after the session so if you've gone along enthusiastically getting all this great feedback your mind's so full of all these exciting things to do if you then park it and get straight back to some other work guaranteed you'll have lost a little bit of that so while it's fresh in your mind definitely jot some dot points down there's use an auto transcribe tool if it's available so just before you start the session prepare yourself and your observers so like I mentioned before prepping your clients or anyone else that's going to be joining the session just let them know how it's going to run if it's your first time you might want it to just be you and see how it goes and learn from that experience I would block about 30 minutes beforehand this could be an in-person session or a virtual session you might find that other meetings run over and you really don't want to be running late if you're getting feedback from someone that made the time to give their feedback so allow 30 minutes beforehand just in case you have other meetings that run over have your recording ready to go any notes and questions you want to come across as prepared as possible and if you're trying to find your questions trying to open up your notes that might make you more nervous as well and then the participant will feel that too show your notifications or silence there's nothing quite like a dinging every few minutes to really irritate someone arrive five minutes beforehand so you can be all prepared and ready to go then getting the session started make sure you have a clear introduction so I would generally introduce myself first talk about why we're here and then I invite everyone who's observing the session to put their cameras on put their mic on say a quick hi, introduce themselves and then turn the camera off and that's in a physical session if someone's coming into the room maybe they introduce themselves at the start and then they can be somewhat off to the side there are back in the days of early user research where you'd have a one-way mirror you have a lot of people hiding behind there people can tell so I've found even the difference between a physical session where people come into an office environment compared to a remote session where they're dialing in from their home I've found the remote ones people are a lot more comfortable they're in their own space they haven't had to hike somewhere and come into this space that they're not familiar with all of those things just make people a little bit more closed off so you just have then a little bit more work to do to make someone relax talk about your project what you're doing what the intention is what you're trying to achieve out of the session the purpose of why they're there the length and format so you're basically just rehashing the things that you've thought about early on on your information sheet just making sure that's super clear and not everyone reads it so it's good to just reiterate that and make sure that they're really clear that you're just getting feedback and you're not testing them and their abilities a lot of people can think particularly if it's called a user testing session don't know where that came from initially it's like industry terminology but for someone taking part in that when they see the word test like we all feel it like a little bit of a contraction like I'm being examined and my abilities are being tested so I prefer to call them feedback sessions and make sure it's really clear and I reiterate it quite a few times that we're not testing them and their abilities we're keen for super critical feedback and that's on my last point making it really apparent that you're there for open and honest feedback so back to my earlier slide where I was talking about we're there to learn not get a pat on the back that has to come across really intentionally that you are genuinely open to getting feedback and you're ready to hear critique and criticism of whatever you might have been involved with and check if they have any questions a lot of the time or most of the time people don't have questions as long as it's been all outlined clearly for them beforehand so then building rapport so really timely this talk even Julia's talk earlier we're talking about active listening and also about breaking the ice so building rapport it's good to start with easy conversational questions so rather than just jumping in like jumping in with a meeting and getting straight into the details you can start with some easy conversational questions and that can be relevant to whatever the area is that you're getting feedback on so if it was an educational product perhaps asking them about their role as a teacher and how's it all going for them help them to relax keep it informal and conversational but not down the super end of informal like you don't really care it's a balance you want to have a nice conversation be present so that's a big one people can tell if your mind has wandered to what's for lunch in 45 minutes the more present you can be that someone really can see that you're listening the more that they'll share and the more that they'll open up if you're thinking about what you've got planned for the weekend and your mind's gone there just rain that back in and come back to the present of the session and make them feel like they're the expert and they genuinely are they're the expert in their own lives they're the expert in their own opinion and you want them to feel like that because they'll feel more encouraged about sharing honestly and not feel like they're being tested which will make them contract and not share as much so what can we ask and what should we avoid if we're getting feedback on our product or service so again focus on the person first and then the product second get them to share what goal are they wanting to achieve why is this important to them so you might let's just say educational product might be keen to know if this new feature that you've designed is out like what could be improved with that particular feature that teacher might not care about that feature at all but they care about being able to help their students learn and grow so they're the sorts of things that focusing on the person first when you get an understanding of their underlying motivations that that will help you to get deeper insights when it does come down to putting that product in front of them feedback you can ask why as well people make a lot of sweeping statements and you might find that you do this yourself I don't like the colour red you could just accept that that person doesn't like the colour red but that doesn't really help you do much with that information you can ask them oh so why don't you like the colour red oh I find it it triggers me in this way and that and you can keep asking why and why and why and get a lot of really deep insights that then are a lot more easy to work with and understand you can see as well if that's a trend as well asking open questions so starting with a what, where and how is really helpful to really invite someone to share as much as possible you can ask them to elaborate or tell me a bit more about that and what do we avoid like I mentioned at the start we're not there to get a pat on the back if they do happen to really be encouraging and saying they love the product or service the feature whatever it is that's been designed I would definitely welcome that in but be humble about it because it's not really what you're there for but it's always nice to hear a course try and avoid leading questions when we plant in words like like or love we are actually leading someone in their answer so you might find that they slip in anyway if it does happen to slip in just roll with it and the more that you practice facilitating a session like this or even just asking your mates what do you feel about this product the better you'll get at noticing when you are dropping in a leading question I generally go with feel how do you feel about this a bit more on the neutral ground and avoiding closed questions do you think this is the right approach so when we have closed questions we're just going to get a yes or no answer and it really depends you might find you have some people who are super chatty and we'll just run with that and they'll say yes or no and keep talking and then you'll have other people that might be a little bit more hard work and then you have to work even harder to get something beyond the yes or no with a closed question so how do we respond not like this not like gaping mouth opened whatever someone might be sharing and it's amazing what you can cover you might be thinking you're getting in there just to get some feedback on a feature but somehow that triggers some sort of conversation and you might find that someone ends up sharing quite a lot so again be neutral not here to debate so similar to the ice breakers earlier we're not here to get into a big controversial conversation you might find that someone starts talking about something political you're just there to thank them accept them for their opinion and keep directing them on show your empathy as well if someone might be sharing about something a bit deeper providing a story it's great to get insight into those stories that they might be sharing do active listening as well like Julia was talking about sorry that's basically just reflecting back what someone shared to show you that you've heard it sorry if someone has said that they found a button distracting ah really don't like that button it's distracting me and I think I think it's really out of place an active listening example would be ah okay so you've said that button's distracting can you share a little bit more about that or is that correct you can validate get them to validate and you'll find that because you've reflected something back it shows you're listening and then they'll share even more and curious listening sorry curious about what you shared can you tell me a bit more and get comfy with silence don't feel like you have to jump in and say lots of things um someone might just be thinking about what their answer is or if you just sit with the silence that can allow them give them space to share a bit more and back to the very beginning when I was talking about not having to have the answers to all the questions with if someone's asking you a question of what's behind that button what's going to be in that menu option you don't need to know you can redirect the question back to them what do you think should be behind that button what would you like to see there what is important for you in that that page or that menu option so I do this quite a lot in sessions and you'll find that majority of the time that they've already got an idea of what they want in their heads they were just asking you to see if it lined up with what they were thinking in a proper session make sure you give them a genuine thank you for their time let them know how helpful they've been people can have nerves because they think they might have given you a lot of critique and you definitely need to let them know that that's been well received and they've been really helpful in being really upfront and honest with their critique let them know what's going to happen next and give them a space for any last questions or comments sometimes when a session start into one down and someone is super relaxed they can feel like the biggest part is done they might share some really good insights and nuggets right at the end so don't switch off just because the formalities are ending once you've got all the insights that can equal a lot of words on pages and I won't dive into this too deeply but I thought it's a really important part what I do is set up a spreadsheet in the early days of UX design I was writing all of this on post-it notes putting it up on the wall I'd have a really sore hand from doing all of that and then I'd still have to put it in my computer anyway these days I just set up a spreadsheet basically have the person's role, a quote so don't go through it in any great detail I just put chunks of quote with various different things in it give it a theme try and use the same keywords so you can filter against it and write any comments that you have so that's a really great way of then being able to apply those filters see if there's themes amongst the different people that are giving their feedback and then it's really easy to then translate that into presentation or sharing that feedback with the wider team and definitely keep it simple when you're sharing your findings not everyone gets as excited about spreadsheets great filtering options so keep it simple when you're sharing your findings with your clients and your teams but use as many quotes as you can because that first hand sharing is where all the gold is so this is what we've explored today so don't be scared get out there, get feedback the more the better outline what's going to happen be really upfront be mindful of who you want to invite and how to prep them be prepared with your note taking and recording show you've got a clear introduction keep it relaxed and conversational build rapport and be present be mindful of what questions you want to ask and avoid, but don't get too bowed down if you find you asked the wrong type of question just guide it gently back and you'll learn the next time be aware of how you can respond and don't feel like you have to have the answers you're there to find out what they think the answers are wrap up the session and make sure that the person knows that their feedback has been really helpful to you and the product and service and synthesize your findings and the more that you can do this as you're going along the less of a big scary job it will be at the end and the more that you can do with it and share with the team thanks everyone yep the question was about a client that might have been burnt before in getting feedback how do you bring them on board with the process I'd spend a little bit of time with them to unpack what their concerns are why is that, what happened so that you can have the learnings from that and then use that to make into whatever you want to put forward for them keep it small and simple sometimes coming along making it more approachable so maybe they're not up for doing first hand research interviews or feedback sessions but maybe they'll be up for a survey or maybe there's a hot job poll that they could do on their website keeping it small so that they can see that small investment that was then a positive experience and then you can keep building the relationship building their trust and further each it can be a mixed bag you can definitely tell with some people you never quite know who you're going to get until you're actually in the session so all you can do is make the person feel as comfortable as possible and that their critical feedback is genuinely welcome how they respond to that is really up to them not a great deal that you can do beyond what I've just shared and make them feel like their feelings aren't going they're not going to hurt your feelings in doing it and by them understanding that now's the time for giving that critical feedback because down the track is when it's going to be a whole lot more work so this is the space and time that is welcome and they'll feel that too based on how you're responding to what critique they're sharing if they share something like I really hate that or that thing's really ugly and you encourage that then they'll start to realise that it is actually okay to do that also to probe a little bit more like if I find that if someone thinks that feedback you can probe a little bit more ask them why they like something and go a little bit deeper with the questions because you might find that they'll have a blanket feedback statement I really like this and if you ask them why do you like that why is that standing out for you then you might find as you go a little bit deeper that they become a little bit more open yes please go next with me I'd love to chat afterwards message on thanks thank you