Killing two birds with one stone

Here is how I would plan user research for a product, a fictitious local weather forecast. This was part of the course I’m taking part in the Interaction Design Foundation here. My plan lets us „kill two birds with one stone“: We collect data among potential users. At the same time, we recruit participants for a later usability test.

Purpose

In this survey, we want to test how easy it is to find our local weather forecast. First, we want to understand better the needs of our target group and, second, how they approach our website. Assuming that they already know our service 🙂

Method

We will first do interviews with people from our target group. Here we want to collect data about why and when they are interested in weather; and which device they prefer. And (2nd) we want to observe how they approach our service in a real-life situation. This would be filmed by a camera.

Participants

Participants will be people aged 18-70 who care about the weather. We will recruit people from our local area thus we’ve got a local service here.

Location

For funding the needs of the users we will do as many as possible short interviews with consumers at the entrance of the local supermarket. About 10 People from this group who agree will be observed in their home how they would use our service.

Equipment

For the interview, we would use dictaphones. The script would be simple: Do you care about the weather forecast? Why is it important to you? When do you need the forecast? And which service do you prefer?

The observation at the users home requires a camera. Following script: Asking the user to fulfill the task. „Please, visit our website with the device of your choice. You have to know, we don’t test you, but you test the system. Describe what you are doing. What do you like? What is unfamiliar or makes you at a loss? What do you feel at this moment?“

Data

The qualitative data will provide us a lot of reasons for and insights about our key users. Maybe we can even categorize them by quantity.
The following observations at home will provide us steps on how real users approach our service so we can verify our sketched user flow. And we can win information where we can pick them up.

Time Plan

We will need four weeks. The interviews will be led on two Saturdays. The appointments will take place the following week. We plan with the additional two weeks as a safety buffer. On XX.XX.XXXX we will present the insights and findings to the stakeholders.