Category: Research

Can reciprocation be influenced?

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Much research has evidenced the law of reciprocation (if I do something for you, you’re more likely to do something for me in return) but how much can reciprocation be influenced? And does the amount of effort that is put into the initial activity have a subsequent effect on the likelihood and the amount of reciprocity that is given in return?

Experiment setup

An experimenter held a door open for a participant in either a low-effort or high-effort condition. Total participants 194.

  • Low effort condition: The experimenter walked in front of the participant and propped the door open with his shoulder, while looking down at his mobile phone.
  • High-effort condition: The experimenter held the door open with his free hand while the participant exited the building before them. They also looked and smiled at the participant whilst doing so.

The results

  • People were more likely to thank the experimenter in the high-effort condition. In the low-effort condition, 50% of participants thanked the experimenter versus 84.9% in the high-effort condition. 
  • Verbal thanks was not a predictor of subsequent helping behaviour.
  • The experimenter dropped pens onto the floor after holding open the door for the person. In total, 27% of participants helped the experimenter to pick up the pens. Of these, most (64%) had took part in the high-effort condition, with 19% being in the low-effort condition.
  • The likelihood of participants’ helping to pick up the pens varied with physical distance. The experimenter waited for the participant to walk a specific number of steps out of the building before dropping the pens. Participants were more likely to help, the less steps they had taken. Participants in the high-effort condition helped in greater proportion at all distances when compared to the low-effort condition.

In Summary

Participants verbally thanked and reciprocated more frequently in the high-effort condition.

How to use this

Rather than simply offering your customers a discount or freebie, think of what you could offer that would be perceived by them as having taken greater effort. 

Read more

Fox GR, Araujo HF, Metke MJ, Shafer C and Damasio A (2015) How Does the Effort Spent to Hold a Door Affect Verbal Thanks and Reciprocal Help?

Introducing MediaCityUX.com

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Hi everyone! How are you doing?

This is just a quick post to tell you about the launch of our new site MediaCityUX.com

As I’m sure you already know, I run three UX businesses:

Keep It Usable: Human-driven research and design. Award-winning user experiences, service design and innovation based on Psychology, Science and Behavioural insights. You’ll often see us speaking at events and educating about how Psychology can be used to change behaviour in digital experiences and persuade people to buy online!

Our work has been showcased at 10 Downing Street, won awards and featured on BBC’s Horizon. We’ve also appeared on BBC Breakfast, radio and at events, sharing our expertise.

Home UX Lab: Pioneering homely style research lab, combining the benefits (validity) of ethnographic research with the rigour of a lab. Home lab has been the inspiration for multiple home style labs since we invented it.

I Need Users: The only participant recruitment agency run by UX experts. Shorter lead times, last minute recruitment options, extra screening processes, better quality users and less dropouts. Worldwide user recruitment.

They’re all based at Media City here in the UK, although we work worldwide for global clients. So, we created MediaCityUX.com for you to easily find UX services when you need them. Whether that’s a full design project or research piece by Keep It Usable, needing to rent a lab in the UK (Manchester) or needing participants for your own research.

Bookmark it.

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Tips for conducting international user research

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This week I’ve once again been conducting and overseeing an international user research project, so I thought I’d share with you my top tips for finding trusted research partners, managing and conducting international research projects.

 

Finding a trusted partner

When it comes to conducting user research in another country, your biggest challenge will be finding an agency you can trust to:

  • Be there for you when you need them.
  • Communicate well enough in your language that nothing is lost in translation.
  • Have good project management in place.
  • Find good quality participants/users.
  • Provide a good quality technical setup.
  • Conduct user testing well (many aren’t used to this).
  • Not rip you off.

 

Beware of time zone differences

With any agency you use, it’s important they are there for you when you need them. If you send them a message about a project, you will need to take into consideration the differences in time zones as it can cause delay to your projects.

I’ve recently been working with an agency in New York and on another project with Mexico, so have had to be flexible with my hours, working into the late evenings for calls and emails.  I also have to bear in mind that when I want something the next morning, I’ll have to wait until 2pm at the earliest to receive a reply.

 

Good communication is crucial

You’ll need to check both their written and verbal ability to speak your language. It’s no point them conducting great research, if they can’t communicate the results well in the report or presentation. For example, I find that people in some Asian countries write English very well but it’s more difficult to understand their spoken English especially as we’re often communicating over the phone/internet so the line isn’t always very clear.

 

Project management needs to be awesome

Leading on from communication, their project management needs to be really tight. How are they getting on with their recruitment? When are they seeing their first user? How did the first interview go? Do they have any concerns? You shouldn’t need to chase them too much, a good partner will be pro-active in letting you know where they’re up to and any potential issues in the project.

 

Finding good quality participants

It can be difficult enough finding a good user recruitment agency in your own country, nevermind one in a different country where you don’t speak the same native language or know the culture. You’ll need to feel certain the agency can recruit your user types and do it in the time they state. Trust your gut feeling and beware of costs that appear too low as they may be using methods that are easier for them but attract lower quality participants.

 

Technical setup

Always ask for a sample of a previous research video, to check the moderator or agency’s previous recording quality. Check the video and audio quality, especially where devices and screens are involved. You’ll also need to check that they have the equipment and software to test mobile devices.

 

Can the agency conduct user testing?

This is something you’ll need to check. If they say they do user testing, you’ll also need to check to confirm they’re telling the truth – many market research agencies have added this on to their list of services without any experience. It doesn’t necessarily stop me from using them  – it depends on the project and I may decide to spend a little time training them over Skype if, for example, the website testing is a smaller part of the research hour.

 

Are they ripping you off?

I’ve certainly experienced receiving a quote from a research agency or a recruitment agency in another country that I knew was far too high. Watch out for agencies who see you’re from (the UK in my case) and hike their prices up. If I feel they’re way too high and they’re taking the mick, I’ll simply go to another agency. If I feel they’re slightly too high I’ll address it directly with them to see if they’ll come down. Remember, for some countries, negotiating and haggling prices is expected.

 

Add additional translation time

Translation is one of those activities that takes far longer than you expect. If you’re getting a translator in your own country to translate research conducted in another language, make sure you give yourself plenty of time, then add some more as a buffer!

 

Need help?

Need help with international research? keepitusable.com

Need help with recruiting users in other countries? iNeedUsers.com

 

ineedusers-ux-user-research-participant-recruitment-specialists

Smyths: Increasing conversion through user research

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(Scroll down to watch the video)

I’ve had a fantastic time this week working with Smyths Toys to improve their future e-commerce website.

As part of improving your customer experience and online conversion, it’s crucial to involve user research / user testing. If you’re job title includes the two letters ‘U’ and ‘X’ but you’re not including real life users in the design process, then you’re kidding yourself, you are not a UX designer, you’re just a designer. But don’t worry, you don’t need to do the research yourself, it might be another member of your team or even an external agency, but it’s so crucial to your understanding of your customers, how they think and how they behave that without research, it’s unlikely the experiences you design will be as successful because the more you get to know your users, the better fit your designs have to their needs and the more you’ll be able to influence their behaviour.

Smyths Toys have been working to improve their e-commerce website, particularly their mobile experience. They recognise the importance of listening to their customers, watching how they interact with their website and making design changes to be more in line with customer needs in the online environment. Of course, they’re aware that the more they do this, the more customers will enjoy using their site, they’ll be more likely to transact with them as opposed to a competitor, they’re likely to increase their basket size, return to buy again in the future, recommend the website to friends and family and shop in-store.

 

Here’s what the team had to say:

It’s important for us to get feedback from test candidates to see if we’re on the right track and we certainly spotted some things that we need to work on in the future and the team here helped us to identify those little issues and gave good recommendations on how to improve those for the future. And that’s what we’re going to do now… go back home, work on it and come back to do another session to evaluate that we’ve done the right changes.

 

Companies used in this research:

UX agency for UK research: Keep It Usable

User recruitment: INeedUsers.com

UX Lab: HomeUXLab.com

 

 

 

My nightmare user recruitment experience…

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As someone who has worked both client and agency side, I can tell you that I’ve found it very difficult finding good participant / user recruitment agencies. The country where I’ve had the most issues has been the UK and I believe this may be because of the recent explosion and in cases exploitation of ‘UX’. Companies who traditionally recruit participants for market research, have added UX, usability testing, user research recruitment to their list of services without making any changes to how they approach the recruitment.

 

My nightmare experience…

One experience that I remember very well (because the recruitment was an absolute nightmare!) was a project that my agency Keep It Usable was conducting for a global retailer. This was several years ago, when we used specialist recruitment agencies to find our participants for us. We had done everything for them to prep, including writing the screener, so all they had to do was promote it and screen people to find our users. It was a very niche user group (roughly about 3% of the population) so we made sure to give them plenty of time to recruit (about 5 weeks) and they were certain there would be no issues.

You can probably guess what happened next… with one week to go they told me they had found it impossible to recruit even one person for me! One week! With such a niche user group and only a week to go, no other agency would take the recruitment so we had no other option but to bite the bullet and pull out all the stops to try and recruit users ourselves. We did it! It wasn’t easy but we managed to do in one week what an experienced recruitment agency couldn’t do at all.

I guess this was the starting point for me in not trusting participant recruitment agencies. I’m very conscientious about the work we do (in fact in my school reports the word conscientious cropped up all the time), and the reputation of our work was potentially at risk if this happened again.

 

4 weeks notice…. really???

Another problem I had with agencies was that they needed at least 4 weeks notice which is just ridiculous in the world of UX. 4 weeks notice is a real luxury that us UXers just don’t have.

We’re iterative! We’re lean! We do things fast!

 

The solution…

Not being afraid to innovate and pioneer, we decided that if no one did UX recruitment up to our standards and the needs of us as UXers, then we’d just go ahead and create an agency that did! We’ve been testing and refining our recruitment methods over the past 2 years and after many happy clients, we’re now opening up the best user recruitment experience to you too.

 

Welcome to I Need Users

I hope you like the name 🙂 I Need Users is a specialist user recruitment agency for UX research. Founded by and run by UX experts, who totally understand your needs and the research you do.

ineedusers-ux-user-research-participant-recruitment-specialists

 

Bonus….there’s a loyalty scheme too!

Why shouldn’t you be rewarded for your investment into improving user experiences? My original motivation for getting into UX was to make the world an easier, less frustrating place to live in through our everyday interactions. So, to encourage you to invest in your UX and improve your experiences (as well as of course your conversion), every time you buy user recruitment through I Need Users, you’ll receive loyalty points that can be swapped for fantastic rewards!

You can also earn points for any spend with our full service UX agency Keep It Usable and our pioneering UK based UX Lab HomeUXLab.com

 

I’d love to hear about your experiences – have you had any nightmare user recruitment experiences?

 

You might also be interested to read:

Top 10 major risks of poor user recruitment

Addicted to user research

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I was recently invited to a business meal and as I found my place and settled down, I waited with happy anticipation for the others to arrive on my table. A quick look at the name cards told me that my direct table mates to my right and left were both males and judging from a quick look round the room they were going to be middle aged or older.

The gentleman to my right was the first to arrive, let’s imagine he was called John. John funnily enough did turn out to be middle aged but he was very clued up on technology, having run a social media agency in his past. He was a very interesting character, having previously worked in PR for celebrities and lived a rather extravagant life.

David

To my left was an older gentleman, let’s call him David. The curious researcher inside me lit up when I clocked David. Most of our clients want research with millennials, so although we do research with older people, it’s not that often. Yet I find talking to older people quite fascinating. They’re generally quite good at reflecting on their behaviour, on why they do what they do and it’s so enjoyable to listen to.

David was an intelligent gentleman. He’d had an incredibly successful career and worked in top positions in very high profile high street brands.  As I asked him about the technology he used and how he shops, I found myself entering research mode, engaging in a very interesting conversation about his shopping preferences and how they change depending on the type of product.

David and technology

I was curious as to the devices David owned. I was fairly surprised to hear that he owned a Macbook. Apple is a brand we generally associate with the younger audience, however, David was incredibly enthusiastic about his experience so far. When I questioned his choice, he immediately stated ‘ease of use’ as the key reason and that ‘it just works’. He told me all about the problems he used to have with Windows computers and how in comparison, his Mac was just so simple to use.

Do you think David had a tablet? Well, yes he did have a tablet. Knowing that many of the older generation are given hand me downs from sons/daughters, especially to communicate, when he told me that he used his tablet to communicate with his son and grandchildren in another country, I was quick to enquire how he had become the owner of an iPad – was it his love of Apple having an influence or was it indeed a hand me down? It turned out to be a hand me down from his son so they could keep in touch.

When it came to his mobile device, David was, I’d say, very typical of his generation. At this point he pulled out a mobile from his pocket that most young people would probably not even recognise and think belonged in a museum. It was an old, very worn, Nokia phone, with just a 0-9 keypad and a non-touch screen. Having a long mobile history myself (I used to work at Sony Ericsson on smartphones and turned down a job at Nokia) I just had to take a photo! I was quite overjoyed to see this relic still in use. He clearly still cared for it too, as he’d kept the plastic cover on the screen (see pic below).

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David explained that he had absolutely no need for one of these new types of phones. Everything he felt he needed a phone for he could do using his old Nokia. It was interesting but not surprising that although David had the latest computer and tablet tech, he had no interest in updating his phone. Ease of use was very important to him. For David, his Macbook made his life easier. His tablet made communication with his family easier. They had clear benefits. However, he saw his old Nokia, with it’s limited features as the simplest mobile for him. A smartphone with it’s array of features was perceived as a hindrance.

How does David shop?

When it came to shopping, David was more than happy to shop online using his Macbook. He was very satisfied with the convenience of shopping from the comfort of his home. However, I suspected there would be exceptions to this generalisation and when I explored more deeply, it was clear that David had different rules for different types of products and services that he purchased. There were some physical products that David insisted you needed to shop in person for. There was a clear theme throughout the examples he gave and that was products that have strong sensory qualities, particularly tactile qualities. One example David talked about was shoes because ‘you need to try them on to see what they’ll feel like’.

I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed speaking with David about his use of technology and how he shops. The older generation are often under-represented within businesses yet they’re an important consumer base to consider. It’s important to remember that as time progresses they are changing as consumers. They’re becoming more comfortable with technology, they’re owning the latest devices thanks to influence and hand me downs from their children, they’re seeing the benefits that technology can give them and with their children all grown up, they have plenty of disposable cash. But they’re clever shoppers. They want to know what they’re buying is the best for them and that it’s easy for them to use.

Improving your research validity

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Research validity is incredibly important, without it you risk biasing and even invalidating your research efforts.

Good validity = good research

What is research validity?

Validity refers to the quality of research. In short, the rigor or trustworthiness. Joppe (2000) provides the following explanation of validity:

“Validity determines whether the research truly measures that which it was intended to measure or how truthful the research results are.”

How can it go wrong?

The main cause of poor research validity is caused by the interviewer and can be due to inexperience, poor interview skills or subjective bias that they’re unaware of. Asking leading questions ‘Would you say design A is the best then?’ is especially common as it can take years to perfect this art but leading questions give misleading and false answers, therefore biasing and even invalidating your data.

Can you imagine if you recommend going with design A when actually if the research had been conducted differently the answer might have been to go with design B.

It’s important to remember that users won’t just sit there and tell you their honest opinions, they want to be helpful, they want to please you, so they are highly influenced by the interviewer. It’s the interviewer’s job to be as objective and open minded as possible, not transferring any bias through poorly worded leading questions, tone of voice, facial expressions or body language to the user.

How to improve your validity

Unbias your discussion guide

5W-s

I’ve heard stories from clients of receiving discussion guides full of leading questions. Fail at this stage and your bound to fail at the interview stage. The first step is to ensure all the questions in the discussion guide are fully thought through, flow well and all leading questions re-worded – Try using open questions that begin with the 5 Ws: What, Why, Who, When, Where and How.

Practice like an actor

practice

The more familiar you are with what you’re testing and the questions in the discussion guide, the greater ability you’ll have to stray away from the discussion guide when you need to. This preparation will also free your mind to give you greater ability to construct questions on the spot that aren’t leading. The more your cognitive resources are taken up the less likely you’ll be able to construct a good question, so by reading through the discussion guide multiple times in the days leading up to the research you’ll hopefully be so familiar and comfortable that you’ll be able to conduct some great research!

Watch your performance critically

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When you re-watch the research interviews, watch out for moments where you may have influenced the participant. Think about how you could ask the same question but in a different way to get a better response. Depending on the amount of influence you may have had, you may need to remove that user’s response from your data analysis. However, being critical of your own performance and learning from your mistakes is the best thing you can do to improve for next time.

Don’t worry about the odd slip

oops

It’s bound to happen. More at the start and less the more experienced you get. But even with experience, the odd slip will happen. Don’t worry about it too much. With experience you’ll recognise your mistake the moment the words leave your mouth. Don’t let the frustration of your error show to the user, let them answer, then later on re-word the question in a different way to double check their response. If it differs from their previous response then you know you biased their previous response, just take their new answer as their true opinion.

A note from me:

Lisa Duddington CircleThis is a post I recently published on Linkedin Pulse. If you like it, make sure you follow my future posts or connect with me Linkedin

Don’t use one way mirrors for ux research

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Do you use one way mirror labs? Do you value research that gets you the best results? Then you might want to re-consider using one way mirrors. Here’s why…

Talking to users is fascinating! It’s something I still love doing despite having conducted thousands of them over the last 10 years. When it comes to location, you can test almost anywhere but there’s one place that I now advise against, and that’s one way mirror labs.

What is a one way mirror lab?

A one way mirror lab (also known as two way) consists of two adjoining rooms with a mirror between them. One room is used to interview people and the mirror functions as a normal mirror from this side. On the other side of the mirror is the observation room where people watch the research taking place, from this side the mirror behaves as a window, enabling the observers to secretly observe what’s happening in the research room.

The negative consequences for research

I’ve used this setup many times and I’ve sat on both sides of the mirror. These are the problems:

Nervous users

As a researcher you should always tell the participant that there are observers behind the mirror. However, if I say to you now, don’t think of a pink elephant, the first thing you think about is a pink elephant. In psychology we call this the Ironic Process Theory or the White Bear Principle and it refers to the human tendency to continue to think about something after being told not to think about it.

So we’re ethically bound to tell people there are people behind the mirror but by doing that their attention is being drawn to it. Many users are fine with this and they’ll forget about the mirror. There are other users who will interview ok but afterwards they will mention how they felt like they were being watched and finally, some people simply do not interview well. They may appear nervous, glance at the mirror throughout, whisper some answers to you because they don’t want the people behind the mirror to hear any negative feedback, etc. And the mirror is a difficult thing for people to get over once they have a problem with it, because it’s such a huge object in the room and therefore a constant reminder.

Ask yourself, wouldn’t you feel uncomfortable knowing there were people watching you behind a mirror in the room?

Positively biased responses

If you knew there were a group of people watching you behind a mirror wouldn’t you be more inclined to give positive responses and to withhold negative opinions? But it’s really important that we understand negative feedback in order to make things better.

Sound leakage

Your observers need to be relatively quiet. I’ve seen labs provide headphones so that observers can turn audio volume up without sound leaking into the testing suite.

When two rooms are next to each other, it’s impossible to soundproof them completely. If the observers next door get quite loud, the sound can leak into the adjoining room. This can be fatal if they laugh and the user hears this. In some labs, the doors don’t close quietly either – this is then another reminder to the participant that there are people watching them.

Noisy cameras

One way mirror labs almost always have cameras that can be controlled in the observation room. These aren’t always silent though. You might be in the middle of a really interesting insight when suddenly you hear the buzz of the camera. Off-putting to say the least and yet another reminder to the user that they are being watched.

Dark, uninspiring observation room where no one speaks

Observation rooms in labs are awful places really. There are no windows and therefore no natural light, the lights have to be turned off (otherwise you can see straight through the mirror) so it’s a dark, dull, uninspiring room to be sat in all day. In one way mirror labs sometimes the observers can be much quieter than in labs without a mirror, because you can see how close the participant is to you.

The problem is these are great setups for observing research, especially focus groups, not UX research. If you have a team of designers observing research, the one thing they’re guaranteed to want to do is sketch, but how do they do that well when they’re sat in a dark room? It’s not an environment that encourages team collaboration, makes a team feel energised, inspired and creative. Conversation and teamworking should be encouraged – now’s the perfect time for the team to collaborate and get to work on designs.

Ironically, no one really observes what’s happening through the mirror!

We spend most of our time watching the TV screens, which give us consistent detail, clarity and control. The glass, for all its glamour, doesn’t always fulfil its worth.

In UX research, the most important interaction to focus on is that between the user and what’s being tested, and in this regard you can’t see anything through the mirror, the detail is through the cameras pointing at what the user is doing. Therefore, the majority of the time, observers are focussed on the tv screen – where the action is. Compare it to UX design…if you want the users attention to focus on something you might give it a more central position, make it bigger, put everything else around it. So when the UI is the most important thing for people to observe, why do labs show this on a small tv screen and give the highest visual prominence in the room to the mirror? It’s crazy!

The solution

The alternative, better solution is to use two rooms that have all the same technology to record and observe the user and their interaction but in the observation room, there are TV screens and no mirror. GDS (Government Digital Services) also use this setup which you can see here. Without a mirror, you’ll get better insights from your more relaxed users and the observation room can now be a creative haven. You can turn up the lights, have natural daylight (windows), have dynamic team discussions and work together on sketches and ideas.

It suddenly becomes an exciting and inspiring workshop to turn user feedback into better designs! And this, is the whole purpose of user research.

A note from me:

This is a post I recently published on Linkedin Pulse. If you like it, you can follow my future posts or connect with me Linkedin

Never use the word ‘Test’

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When I first started life as a user researcher, it was commonplace (and it it still is) to refer to research as user testing or usability testing. I soon observed that when you use the word ‘test’ it:

a) Implies that you’re testing the end user (which is wrong, you’re testing the interface, you’re understanding of the customer, your user journeys, etc).

b) As soon as you mention the word ‘test’ to a participant they instantly tense up and worry. I used to say something along the lines of ‘please don’t be concerned, we’re not testing you, we’re testing the software’ and even this was too much. It’s a bit like if I say to you, don’t think of a pink elephant, the first thing you think of is a pink elephant – you just can’t help it, it’s how the human brain works.

I also noticed that when I used the word ‘test’ sometimes participants would ask me during the research session how they were doing or ask whether they’d got something right. In effect, they were treating it like a test. I haven’t experienced this since I stopped all use of the word ‘test’.

Now, when speaking with participants I always use the word ‘research’ which has a much more positive connotation. Of course, clients still use terms like user testing, and that’s absolutely fine, let’s not undo all the hard work ux professionals have done over the years to gain awareness of what we do, but let’s keep in mind that we’re always researching and aiming to understand things from the perspective of your target audience.

Have fun researching! 🙂