How to conduct budget guerilla remote UX research during COVID-19
Personal experience of how I conduct a guerilla UX research using free tools while social distancing.
In March 2020, as COVID-19 swept across the globe, social distancing measures were introduced in various countries. In Melbourne, Australia, where I’m currently based, in-person gatherings were limited. I took on a small-scale web design project in early March, right when the pandemic hits. As someone whose job relies on having a one-on-one conversation with users to understand them better, this poses a new challenge.
There are various guides out there on how to run remote user research. However, as a freelance UX design student, this also introduces an interesting problem of how to conduct guerilla remote user research at home for small projects while not overspending myself, especially in an inevitable recession economy.
Without having much research experience, everything I’ve done was mostly trials and errors. However, I believe that making mistakes is the best method to learn. After spending a few weeks conducting a budget guerilla remote user research, here are my experience so far
Disclaimer: While there’s a variety of research methods since this research is guerilla, it only covers two of the most common methods of the qualitative and quantitative UX research which are User Interview & Questionnaire (or Survey).
User interview - Hello from the other side (of the screen)
How to do it
While many sources out there talk about taking note during the interview, I find that method a bit distracting. The flow of the conversation wouldn’t be very natural especially if you’re doing a semi-structured or an unstructured interview (or in English: you don’t (only) ask the interviewees the preprepared list of questions) since you have to multitask between jotting down notes and lead the conversation.
As this is a guerilla interview, I’m assuming that you don’t have enough resource to hire another interviewer with you. My proposed solution to this problem is to record the meeting and take notes afterwards.
It’s important to let your interviewees know that you will record the conversation and explain clearly to them the purposes of the recording and how you’re going to use it. Consent from the interviewees is an ethical requirement for this part.
By recording the conversation, you’ll have more time and mental power to concentrate on the conversation and get the information you want. You should know what and how to ask money-making questions.
Selection of tools
- Zoom: The biggest player in the game right now. Recording a meeting on zoom is fast and effortless, there’s a Record button in the bottom of the bar that will work like magic. You can choose ‘Record on this computer’ option to save the recording as an mp4 file in your computer. (Note: the recording option is only available for the host or if you have permission from the host)
- Skype: However, if you’re wary of the recent privacy issues of Zoom, even after they’ve released security patch updates, the good old Skype would work just fine. Hidden in their More options — Three dots menu (or I’d like to call it “Sushi menu”) is the ‘Start recording’ option. Afterwards, a chat bubble with the recording would show up in your chat which you can choose ‘Download to your computer’. Keep in mind that they’re only available to download for 30 days
- Phone: If you’re not a hi-tech kind of person, I got you. A simple retro phone call would work just fine. You can record your calls with one click if you’re in iOS or if you’re on Android like me, various third-party phone call recording apps are available on Google Play Store. A simple hack if you don’t want to install another app is to use speakerphone and turn on your voice recording.
Start analysing the recordings as soon as you finish the call as the memory of the conversation is still fresh in your mind. Write down small notes that you noticed (their tone of voice, their facial expression, etc..) which you could forget once you let it sit there for too long.
As you’re doing a guerilla user research for a small project, a small number of interviewees should be fine as long as the chosen interviewees are random and come from various backgrounds. You can stop the user interview phase once you start to see a similar pattern of responses occurring in your interviewees.
Questionnaires -Can you do me a favour
How to do it
It’s best to triangulate your research findings with different research methods. A questionnaire with a bigger sample size (a larger number of responses) would come in handy to make sure that the hypothesis that you interpreted from the user interview responses are not biased and full of assumption. Kate Syuma has written an insightful article on how to do a good UX survey that you might want to check out.
Selection of tools
- Google Forms: The most common and easiest way to build a survey as almost everyone has a Google account. In a single form, you can put up to 500 questions in this bad boy and send out the link to anyone. However, the UI isn’t very eye-catching and the exhausting part comes when you have to analyse the results. The data can be exported into a spreadsheet and visualised as charts. However, it takes quite some efforts (& few Youtube videos) to do the job.
- SurveyMonkey: This is an alternative solution to Google form that I found very useful. The UI of the form is very good with smooth transition between questions that help to make your questionnaires look more professional. The data visualisation is auto-generated so that there isn’t any spreadsheet involved. (Hell yeah!) The downside is a limit of 10 questions per survey in the free plan. You have to pay 32 AUD (about 20 USD) per month to access unlimited question. However, keep in mind that longer questionnaires could deter respondents and lead them to give up halfway and also if you play your cards right, it should take you around 10 questions to validate and get the information that you want.
- Typeform: Like Surveymonkey, Type form has very smooth and eye-pleasing UI but a 10-question limit per survey also applies here. Another downside of Typeform is that it lacks the scale matrix so Likert scale enthusiasts like me are bound to be disappointed. The cheapest plan, which is at 51 AUD (or about 35 USD) per month, includes unlimited forms and questions.
After running the questionnaire, it should be enough to with either validate (parts of) your hypothesis or disprove it completely. Either way, the results from this quantitative research should give you a clear idea of what to do next: whether to do further research or go ahead with the defining design requirements of the project. It should also be noted that this result is not final and you can always go back to the research phase at any time.
Conclusion
The tool is just half of the problem
- My experience above is just one way of doing remote user research. You can have hundreds of different ways to do the same task & reach the same goal. It’s all about finding appropriate methods that meet the timeline and constraints of your project.
- There are always some tools out there that would do the job for you. Always on the lookout for the new player in the game. Do your research and decide for yourself which one fits you best.
- Stick to the universal UX guidelines. The tool is just half of the problem, to deliver high-quality user research, efficient research methods need to be employed.
I hope that my remote UX design research experience during the very first wave of COVID-19 would provide some insights to any fellow freelance designers out there.
Stay safe and stay creative everyone.
