Member-only story
How stakeholders should fit into user testing sessions
Having them just watch can be more effective than notetaking
One of the worst user research interviews I ever participated in was when we attempted to get our stakeholders involved with user research.
The stakeholder accidentally joined the wrong link to take notes, and they just so happened to be the boss of this otherwise anonymous participant.
Because his name was visible on the call, our poor participant started to advertise how good the current product was.
The stakeholder, the team, and the user probably knew that the product was badly designed, but the sudden appearance of his boss meant that the participant didn’t dare cut any corners.
In fact, he grew increasingly nervous as he made mistakes with the official workflow that he hardly ever used.
In the end, we had to throw out that interview. But that interview got me thinking about how it might have been enough to just watch the users.
Understanding user research from the outside
When I was first learning UX research, I was shown an old video of people trying to figure out a copier and struggling.
