Awkward Silences

JH and Erin talk to Laura Powell about making user testing easy and fun for users and for companies. She’s just wrapped up her 9th User Test Fest, this time in Austin, TX, and was excited to chat with us about all things user testing.

Highlights

• [3:18] Drunk User Testing becomes User Test Fest
• [8:20] Do people get meaningful insights out of this kind of testing? 
• [9:53] Plan and rehearse for your testing
• [18:25] You can always do more research 
• [22:50] Testing is a great way to get your team excited about the product again

About our guest
Laura is a self-proclaimed Specialized Generalist who helps companies get it together. She's worked on everything from user research to marketing strategy to organizational process and all of the fun in between. Clients include Appcues, MIT Media Lab, VETTA, Bow Market Somerville, Metaplane.

Algorithms don’t always handle “edge cases” well, and the people who design them can have too broad a definition of edge case—stillbirths, miscarriages, and other life tragedies are actually relatively common.

So how do the people who are responsible for building things, often many many people for any given human experience, design for the possibility of unexpected outcomes?  That is to say, for real life? 

This week on the podcast, Erin and JH talked to Laura Klein about building products that consider user's real life situations more thoughtfully. Sometimes, big tech does things that actually end up emotionally harming users. How do we do better?

Highlights

[3:50] We ask the big question. Why do bad things happen?

[6:56] The hippocratic oath for researchers.

[11:15] The consequences of short-term thinking.

[12:41] Everyone makes mistakes, and we can learn from everyone else’s mistakes too. 

[18:56] Is the designer morally responsible for the actions of the product?

[24:43] How do you make a difference as an individual?

[33:25] The difficulty of separating yourself from some of the big companies

[36:32] We’re all gonna die, how does tech deal with that? (hint, not well) 

[40:21] We wrap up. Laura’s not mad, she’s just disappointed.

About Our Guest

Laura Klein is the Principal at Users Know and the author of UX for Lean Startups and Build Better Products. She hosted her own popular UX podcast with Kate Rutter, What is Wrong with UX?, which goes best with cocktails.

If there’s anyone who can link stakeholders to the awesome power of user research, it’s Holly Hester-Reilly. 

Holly is a champion of research that is connected to every member of organizations; research that reaches across teams and unites companies towards a common product goal. 

Highlights

[3:55] How research falls away from growing companies

[7:12] Creating change even if you’re not at the top of the pyramid

[9:15] Giving stakeholders options to help them make decisions

[11:33] Creating snapshots of your sessions

[13:30] Avoiding bias in your research presentations

[17:23] Who to invite to your kickoff workshop

[19:07] Are there certain roles or org structures that inspire better research environments? 

[24:25] Why stakeholders may not be using your research the way you expect them to

About Our Guest

Holly Hester-Reilly is a die-hard New Yorker and user advocate. She worked in the NYC startup scene for ten years before starting H2R Product Science, which helps companies of all shapes and sizes embrace user insights.

This week on the pod, Erin and JH talk to Maggie Crowley, Director of Product Management at Drift, about research as a product manager at a rapidly growing startup. They talk about how to do great research in a conversational way, how Drift's research practice is growing, and how Maggie thinks about research as a PM. 

Highlights

[4:50] How do you establish the outcomes you’re looking for? 

[8:08] Since you use your own product, do you still need to test with outside users?

[9:40] Using shared Slack channels with your biggest customers

[12:10] How do you balance getting feedback with moving fast?

[18:31] The risks of pushing through your pet features without talking to users.

[22:07] Learning how to speak your customers language

[26:28] How do you balance qual and quant data?

About Our Guest

Maggie Crowley is VP of Product at Toast (formerly Director of Product Management at Drift). She has her own podcast, Build, about all things product. She competed in the 2006 Winter Olympics as a speed skater and can confirm wearing spandex in front of the whole world is just as uncomfortable as it sounds.

Some people think you have to choose between qual and quant research when you start your study. Not Cat Anderson. At AP Intego, she works with a fairly small and scrappy team (just like us!), but that doesn’t mean she’s not doing big things with her research. She lets qualitative and quantitative research flow into and inform each other, creating overall better research results. ‍

Episode Highlights

• [1:23] Cat walks us through how she found her way to a UX Writer position
• [6:01] The importance of stakeholder buy-in for user research
• [8:38] Cat talks about designing her cybersecurity research from the bottom up
• [9:42] The Experian effect
• [11:26] Going from quantitative to qualitative
• [13:23] Planning for free-flowing research
• [16:32] Deciding what kind of research to do when
• [22:34] Cat’s final thoughts on doing great research

About our Guest

Cat Anderson is the UX Content Strategist at Ladder (formerly UX Writer at AP Intego). She has a background in anthropology, research, and UX design. She’s relentlessly curious, occasionally funny, and perpetually snuggling as many dogs as she can.

What do you do when your user research session doesn’t go according to plan? It happens all the time, in a lot of ways, for a lot of reasons. Fortunately we have Jaclyn Perrone, Design Director at thoughtbot, on the pod today to talk us through it all. She shares stories of times things didn’t go quite right, what to do when participants get stuck on the wrong things, and how to avoid (avoidable) mishaps. 

Episode Highlights

[4:05] Things go wrong when you do things with other humans (like user research)

[7:06] Jaclyn answers the question, “Is it more important to be prepared or ready to improvise?

[10:24] Test the test

[12:07] Jaclyn warns against the dangers of fake data

[14:53] What to do when you’re the note-taker and the facilitator strays from the script

[20:58] Jaclyn’s top tips for avoiding research mistakes

[22:29] How to be more comfortable asking stupid questions

About our Guest

Jaclyn Perrone is a Senior Product Designer at Groups Recover Together, an opioid addiction treatment solution. Formerly, she was Design Director at thoughtbot, where she hosted a podcast at centered around digital product design.

Listen as JH and Erin wrestle with the biggest question there is: why are we here anyway? We'll dive into what we think the podcast should (and should not) be and pave the way for our first guest. 

What's this Awkward Silences podcast all about anyway? As a place to start, it's about embracing the awkward beauty of talking to people to learn and build better stuff. Get a sneak peek and meet our hosts, JH Forster and Erin May of User Interviews.