Forget personas and boring storytelling interviews
It’s time for enhanced context maps
If done the right way, personas can be really valuable. Unfortunately, they can take a while to do properly and require stakeholder buy-in from the offset, which isn’t always straightforward. Recently I’ve noticed clients caring less about personas and focussing more on a ‘lean’ approach; build the right thing quickly, test it, fail fast and iterate accordingly…which I’m all for! As UX Consultants at Deloitte Digital we find ourselves on an array of projects over the space of a few months. Some are only a couple of weeks long. Others span over a few months. What if you don’t have much time to spend on research, but you want to follow best practice AND blow your client’s mind with something different? I’ve developed a way to do this.
How I used to conduct storytelling interviews:
I used to carry out interviews with a respondent and myself in one room, while my colleague is in a room next door. Both myself and my colleague would take notes, usually in the form of a live Google Sheet, and the interview would be recorded. Soon enough I started noticing that no matter how much one tried to make the respondent feel relaxed, there was always an initial sense of trepidation. It’s important to try and mirror someone’s energy to make them feel more relaxed, but it’s not always possible. People are emotive and the energy in a room is determined by so much more than just the conversation.
No matter how much you try to reassure them that it ‘isn’t a test’, it will always feel like one when someone is annotating answers. I’ve tried interviewing without taking notes and it still feels weird, because we have to tell people they’re being recorded and the camera subconsciously becomes a focal point. The natural flow of things can get interrupted with the inevitable silence of frantic typing to try to catch up with what’s been said. On the flip side, silence can make people feel obligated to elaborate more, but that depends on their personality. As you try to read between the lines of what someone is saying, you’re always going to be one step behind…focussing on interpreting their spoken word. These things were really bugging me. There had to be a better way to carry out these interviews.
My first attempts at context maps:
The first I’d heard of context maps was during the research stage of a Design Sprint for a client, one of South Africa’s major banks. Context maps are a way of plotting information (like problems, insights and patterns) in one visually coherent flow and space. They’re usually captured on large sheets of paper and can be sketched out or populated with stickies. At the time I checked out some online examples of context maps as reference and found a few articles like this one:
This wasn’t quite doing it for me though. I wanted to take the concept of a context map further. I kept asking myself, “How can I interview someone in an hour and plot ample insight to not have to design a persona and journey map from scratch after our conversation?”. I decided to design my own template and set about using my next few interviews to perfect this.
I’m lucky enough to be blessed as an artist so it was natural for me to look at a context map as a blank canvas waiting to be filled with illustrations. I’d seat myself next to (not opposite) the respondent and draw out their thought process while chatting to them. I’ve gotten to the stage now where I don’t refer to any questions or script. I prefer to let the conversation flow naturally, while memorising key questions and topics to cover.
A breakdown of the template and how to populate it:
What initially started as sketching out loose findings has evolved in to a structured template. I draw a lot of influence from (excuse the pun) empathy maps and the most important aspects I need to consider when creating a persona and journey map.
1) Profile: This is where you start. It’s basically a high level description of the person you’re interviewing. I first draw them (to break the ice) and include their name, age, occupation, etc. I prefer adding simple phrases or quotes to describe them, rather than a long bio. Bite-size info trumps comprehensive detail. Consider Millers Law here — “The average person can only keep 7 (plus or minus 2) items in their working memory.” You’re not going to remember Thabo’s intricate career path but you’ll definitely remember his colleagues referring to him as ‘a rags to riches’ tale.
2) Thinking, feeling, asking, problems, challenges and dimensions: What are the questions this person is constantly asking themselves? What are the biggest and most immediate problems they face? How well do they use and understand technology? Remember to ask yourself “why” with each of these points and connect the dots later.
3) Responsibilities/Goals/Needs: What are some of his/her goals? What are the responsibilities of their role? What are they trying to achieve? What are their latent needs that we’re trying to uncover and address?
4) Frustrations, pain points and likes: Try to keep these as high level as possible. For example, in a set of interviews I did on home loans, I asked people what they liked and what frustrated them (in general) about their relationship with banks, bond originators, estate agents and the notion of buying/selling a home.
5) The user journey and thought process: This is where it gets tricky. You need to be aware of how much space you have left to work with. As the respondent describes their experiences, map them out in a chronological flow. Jot down and highlight things which irritate them as well as obstacles, channels/touch points used and points of interest. Don’t forget to highlight where they find value in experiences!
Tips:
It’s not always what someone says, but how they say it: I’m sure we’ve all heard our significant other say that at the dinner table, while giving you a death stare and stabbing a pea with their fork. The most valuable insights I’ve mapped have not been word-for-word what a respondent says. I’ve asked people to repeat what they’ve said but in layman’s terms. Then I’ve asked them again what that really means. This cuts out the jargon and gets a more emotive response. There’s nothing wrong in acting dumb, as a facilitator, to get people to open up and not hide behind big words.
Six a day keeps the wrist pain way: For big projects, we prefer qualitative over quantitive research, where we do no more than twelve interviews over two days. Once you go past twelve, you start noticing patterns and repetition amongst different people’s thought processes. Each interview session usually lasts an hour and I try to fit 30 minute breaks between each. In a Design Sprint, I’d stick to three or four maps as time is of the essence.
You don’t have to draw well: With this template, you can choose to populate it either by drawing or writing on stickies. Stickies allow you to move insights around later.
The advantages of enhanced context maps:
It’s engaging: Something truly special happens when someone sees you draw their emotions and experiences on paper. They see how you’re empathising with them. It creates a connection…a strong foundation for them to open up even more.
It’s the perfect ice breaker: Drawing somebody while you sit next to them can also be lots of fun! Lines form a face. Words become tangible. A smile creeps up on them. They giggle. They’re immediately relaxed and the tone is set.
It keeps the conversation going: Illustrating and jotting things down as someone speaks can be tricky but it does keep the energy, and concentration, levels up. It takes a while to master how to do this effectively without tiring yourself out too much or getting sloppy. There’s nothing wrong with slowing the pace with which you’re drawing or writing. I usually do this by sketching a little caricature or icon to gather my thoughts and energy, etc.
You have the basis of a persona and journey map after an hour! These maps have been invaluable when we’ve had to do user journey maps. They serve as a quick visual reference to pre-populate “activities”, “pain points”, “channels”, etc.
It “unlocks” memories: Ever conducted an interview and asked someone, “tell me about the last time you did ___?” and they struggled to recall the details? Maybe they only gave a quick, high level overview regardless of how many times you asked them how they felt about it, hoping to probe a bit deeper.
Once you’ve visually plotted a few key points or incidents down on a shared space, people tend to remember more about these memories. They may even look to visually show the relation between different points. Watch out for when they use their finger to point out the relation between things you’ve drawn. This is a big indication that they are fully engaged! When this happens, I know the conversation is at the right level and I have their attention. You may end up jumping between different points and sections of the map but that’s fine. It’s natural. The beauty is in the detail. This is something that doesn’t happen when simply annotating an interview — detail gets lost.
At the end of the interview, I get the respondent to spend a couple of minutes with me as we go through the map again. I then ask them to let me know which points they feel are most important and, between the two of us, we highlight these.
Most importantly, it’s a fantastic way to engage stakeholders as it’s a different way of conveying findings to them and forms a great basis for affinity sorting.
It also works very well as a catalyst for buy-in to a Design Thinking approach. Every time we’ve stuck our context maps next to each other on a wall and shown it to stakeholders, something special happens. Their faces light up — much akin to that of a respondent who feels a part of the process.
If you’d like any more information, advice or a high resolution version of the template, feel free to reach out. :)
