LEAN UX RESEARCH
01/
SUMMARY
CLIENT
UK heritage charity
MY ROLE
Lead researcher
OBJECTIVE
Conduct usability testing of a prototype digital visitors guide during four key alpha and beta phase development sprints
APPROACH
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Contextual observations, interviews and surveys
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Usability testing
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Project manage research team and logistics
OUTCOMES
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Prioritised usability issues
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Design recommendations
02/
OBJECTIVE
My client, a heritage charity managing a number of historic palaces, was going through a process of improving the customer experience for a palace near London.
As part of this process they wanted an independent usability evaluation of the digital visitors guide that was being designed and built for them by a design consultancy.
This new guide was an app that would enable visitors to access audio tours and accompanying visual content, view scheduled events, plan an itinerary and help them navigate around the palace.
To meet the desired timescale, the client wanted an approach that would deliver insights without slowing down the pace of development.
My role as the lead researcher involved planning and conducting the various research activities, managing my colleagues and stakeholder management.
03/
APPROACH
Conducting research at the palace was considered essential due to the way in which visitors would use the guide, e.g. listening to an audio tour while moving through the palace and looking at artefacts referenced in the audio commentary.
To deliver timely insights it was decided that a Lean approach to the research should be taken. This involved me running four research sprints, supported by a colleague, at key development milestones. Each three-day research sprint consisted of:
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Day 1 - Receiving a briefing about the functions and features to be evaluated, creating the test protocol and running a pilot test
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Day 2 - Evaluating the usability of the digital visitors guide by observing pre-recruited participants and intercepted customers using the guide, conducting pre- and post-test interviews and surveys
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Day 3 - Analysis of the data, prioritising issues and creating recommendations to address them, presenting findings and recommendations to the client and design consultancy stakeholders
04/
CHALLENGES
Although we knew the functions and features that were due to be tested in a given sprint, this was not confirmed until our Day 1 briefing meeting. This meant that I had to work at pace to create the test protocol and decide which tasks my colleague could support with ahead of the pilot test.
We faced several challenges with conducting the research. For example:
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Ensuring we were close enough to the participants to see how they interacted with the guide without getting in their way
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Working in a sometimes busy and noisy environment filled with other visitors
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Intercepting visitors that represented the key customer personas
The limited time we had to conduct the analysis meant I had to make sure my colleague and I focussed on the key insights. To facilitate this I devised a top-down approach to the analysis, i.e. deciding which major themes insights were to be grouped into, so we could process our data in a more efficient manner.
05/
OUTCOMES
The insights that we delivered using the Lean approach meant that the pace of development could continue. As we prioritised issues and created recommendations to address them, we also helped inform the product roadmap and the functions and features that we tested in the subsequent sprints.
The digital visitors guide was released on time and its success led to more work with the client at another of their palaces.
