Transcript

0:02 A few years ago, I was working at a technology agency. And we were kind of having some disagreements with the client, because the problem that really needed to be solved - so we found doing our discovery - wasn't what they came to us for initially, it was something slightly different. We argued over this for some time and then eventually, we decided to just let the client come and see for themselves. So I set up a user interview session in a testing lab, and the clients could watch through a one way mirror.

0:41 What was amazing was that we had sheduled a morning of interviews, but it really didn't take the whole morning for the client to come around. Within the first session they started getting out Post-its and exchanging ideas on how to address this new problem that we found. What made the difference was that they could see for themselves just how frustrated and agitated their users got when using their product and immediately, they wanted to solve it.

1:25 User feedback is crucial to help your team to develop your product in the right direction. But it also serves another purpose: To convince others of what you already know. Hello, and welcome to Product Nuggets. I'm Thomas Essl and today on the show: How user feedback can help you align stakeholders

1:58 When you're working on something you take in information every day, your opinions change you exchange views with your team. It's a very vibrant and ever changing atmosphere. Every so often though, you'll encounter moments when you have to involve others outside of your team and you share where your thinking is at, how your product is doing, and what needs to be done next. The thing is no amount of communication will fill them in as good as somebody who has been working with you on the same project day in and day out. And when you present to them, it can be dangerous because if you don't take them on a journey with you, that naturally leads to the same conclusions as yours., you end up in disagreement. There are many ways to preempt or deal with such disagreements and one I found very powerful is to get your stakeholders close to your users in some way.

3:02 Before we even make any points, you need to understand your stakeholders really demonstrate empathy, and try to find out what makes them tick. What they want to get from this project and what they are worried about. It's your answer to this last point in particular, that you need to demonstrate with empirical evidence. Once you have gathered this understanding, you can use it to inform your research. Showing user insight about the questions others are concerned about demonstrates that you listened and also helps you find the right answers. With this, you can go either one of two ways you can have your stakeholders come with you to your research sessions, observe and maybe even take part and that can generate a really collaborative atmosphere. Or if that's not possible, because it's quite a time commitment on the stakeholders part, you can record the sessions then include snippets of your recordings in your report.

4:06 One word of warning here is whichever way you go, you want to make sure that you maintain a degree of control over the conversation and follow your research plan, regardless of whoever is present, or who is going to see the results in the end. One particular time, I sat in a project room, and there was some kind of disagreement between the team, opinions weren't necessarily aligned with each other. And then somebody just got up and said, oh, well, you know, what we should do? We should get this user in here right now and ask them, and, of course, you can imagine that that wasn't necessarily a conversation that was as structured as a proper interview session, and the user was kind of flustered and also, you know, very influenced and biased by all the people in the room, and also it was just one person. So in the end, you know, they said something everybody in the room agreed that if a user says this, then this is what needs to be done. But of course, that's not really what you want to do, because it's neither a conversation you're having in a control testing environment, nor is it scientific or quantitative to any degree. So try to avoid those sorts of ad-hoc scenarios to resolve disagreements.

5:27 If you go with the version of having stakeholders attend sessions directly, that's really great because, as I said, it brings them closer to users. It contextualizes all the quantitative findings that you're going to present them with, and it also creates this really collaborative atmosphere between yourselves and the product team and everybody else who might have a voice in this project. However, you still need to make sure that whoever the expert on the teammates to get the right insight - usually your researcher - is in in control of the conversation and if you have stakeholders attend in person, maybe even in the same room in a setting where they are sitting opposite of whoever you're interviewing, then make it clear upfront that you are leading the conversation or your researcher is leading the conversation. If they have any burning questions that they must ask then ask them to bring those questions in at the very end, or even better, maybe take a note and hand them to you or your researcher such that those questions are phrased in a way that is again free of bias and that is getting to the right answers.

6:59 If what you're doing is create a report of your findings and give some kind of presentation to a group of stakeholders at some later point, then I think any information that is used to drive decisions should have at its core quantitative insights observed across a population. So you want to use your snippets of videos or whatever it is, to underline your quantitative insights. You don't want a conversation to be swayed by one particular comment that a user uttered in a conversation, but you want to use that comment to exemplify a larger trend that you've observed.

7:39 So when you're presenting a report that can really be enhanced by showing snippets of your testing. If you don't want to go through the effort of recording video, you can provide example quotes. And if you are using video, you can use individual snippets to underline particular points or you can show a highlights reel at the beginning or the end of your of your report. Really whatever works best for your particular scenario and for the story that you're trying to tell. Just think about how you can make the stats that you're showing as real as possible. Get others as good of an understanding as possible of the types of reactions their product or service is causing in their users.

8:24 Sometimes it might happen that a finding isn't very clear cut. In fact, that happens quite a lot. And then you can use those pieces of feedback to show the degree of agreement or disagreement that there is. So if you imagine some kind of product review page on the internet, often you see an example of a five star review and an example of you know, a three or a one star review. And by offering those polarizing views, you can really emphasize where more work needs to be done to come to the core of the right insight. If that happens you can show those different disagreements. And you should also have a plan in place for how to go about finding the further needed insights.

9:14 Obviously, all of this is nice to have, but you'll have to trade off with how much effort is warranted. Generally, the more important the decisions and the stakeholders are, the more effort I'll put into making user feedback as immersive for them as possible. If you're presenting to a CEO that can work on the shiny report with well edited and good quality videos. If you're sharing information just amongst peers or within your department, maybe just add a few quotes in your presentation. Also be respectful of people's time. If you're doing this quite a lot, then not everybody is going to take the time to watch the videos that you're outputting time and time again. So try to keep a good balance here.

9:58 Also, of course, you don't need to have Have a user testing lab like you might in a digital agency and you don't need a budget. If you take clips with your phone and edit them in QuickTime or iMovie, that can be really powerful. It's really just about capturing the reaction of users and using that to underline the story that you're trying to tell. As always, I would try to think about what is the leanest, most efficient way in which you can achieve that and the simple methods can go a really long way.

10:38 And that's it for today. If you liked this episode, please subscribe and rate it in iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts is the fuel for more episodes, and it helps others find it too.

10:50 I'd also love to hear from you. If you have any thoughts on this show. You can get in touch with me via Twitter @Thomas_Essl or email me to hello@thomasessl.com. Product Nuggets is produced by me Thomas Essl. The theme song is Aeronaut by Blue Dot Sessions.

11:07 Any opinions expressed in this episode are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of any current or previous employers.

11:13 Thank you for listening till next time!

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