User Research Leader, Keynote Speaker, Educator, Founder, UX Coach + Mentor
I had 19 students in my #userresearch class today. Eleven of them did not pilot their studies before they went full-speed ahead. WHOA?! That made me realize plenty of others might miss the necessity of doing this. You should road test your discussion guide, tasks, technology, stimuli, and everything else you can simulate ahead of time. Get feedback on whether or not the questions are provoking the right kind of responses, fit within the timeframe allotted, are understandable, in the right sequence, are not redundant, and more. Pilot to get more comfortable with the content too. If it’s an interview, literally interview someone. Think of it as a beta test. If it’s a survey, share it with a few folks first. Solicit feedback. Pilot your study with people who closely resemble your actual recruit. If that’s not possible, get as close as possible. After you pilot, iterate on what could be improved before spending time and money rolling it out. I was shocked people weren't doing this. I pilot 85% of my studies even though I'm a senior at this point and confident in my skills and judgment. BTW, I don't just pilot live interviews. I pilot unmoderated sessions, surveys, card sorts, and almost everything else. And now you know. #userexperience #ux #curiositytank #uxr #design
Always worth celebrating good advice!
We were just talking about this very thing Alice Murray, Jeff Lyon, and Sunil Gollamudi
Thanks for the reminder Michele!
Super interesting! Do you think piloting with the wrong people might actually give wrong feedback? I’m asking this because when you are in the B2B space, access to managers and directors is lacking, and you might be going to friends who have an entirely different preference on how things should go for a survey or interview for example. Any advice on how to pilot on B2B? :)
Piloting is where it’s at! 🙌🏽
Great points Michelle
I was literally saying the same thing to my class in the USC MS in Applied Psychology program last night Michele Ronsen. I saw a huge uptick in quality once I started requiring them to do pilots a few cohorts back. Now I have them all do one with a classmate and one with a recruited participant before launching full scale data collection.
Piloting more that you think you need saves time later : )
Test the test! So important.
CX Architect & Product/Service Strategy
4yAlways test your test!