Gathering feedback from your users is a crucial part of any design process. The way in which you can gather this feedback varies depending on what kind of questions you are trying to answer, the resources you have available for user research and what phase of product development you are currently in.
Qualitative usability testing is widely considered to be one of the most effective user research methods for gathering feedback, due to the great amount of insight you can gather from such a small group of users.Here's an example scenario that will give you some context for the steps ahead:
- Create categories to group insights under.Before you start listening to the recordings, you need to prepare your workspace. Think of distinct stages the user went through when using your prototype and divide your whiteboard (or wall) space accordingly. This will make insights easier to group later on and give you a snapshot of which areas received the most feedback.
- Listen to your recordings and write down insights.Get your post-it notes at the ready;Start playing back the recordings, one user at a time; Begin noting down insights .
- Stick insights under their correct heading.Stick each post-it in its corresponding space on the whiteboard.
- Group similar insights.Grouping similar insights will help you visualise how often they occur and give them the correct level of priority when it comes to addressing them. If you’re able to show that all five users grew frustrated at the length of the login process, then it shouldn’t take much convincing to make addressing this a high priority.
- Adjust for perceived impact if solved.You should now have a whiteboard covered in post-its that are categorised into practical headings and prioritised based on number of occurrences. The last step is to adjust the priority of the insights based on the potential impact if solved.