Got Game? - AnswerLab

Your Trusted User Experience Research Partner.
Got Game?
Creative UX Research Approaches for Winning Insights
Chris Holmes | January 14, 2014
Today’s AnswerLab Presenter
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10+ years of experience conducting UX research
and design projects in Australia, Europe, UK and
USA.
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Consults with Fortune 500 technology, financial
services, pharmaceutical, retail, insurance, travel,
publishing and telecommunications clients,
helping them help them build exceptional user
experiences.
•
Lead researcher for innovative research methods,
recently presented Agile Ethnography in New
York’s Hidden Private Spaces at UX Australia
2013 conference.
Chris Holmes
Sr. User Experience Researcher
Email: [email protected]
AnswerLab
15 W 26th Street
Suite 200
New York, NY 10010
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Who is Chris Holmes?

•Qualitative UX researcher
•Brooklyn, NY
•‘Quassi’

•Lead guitar, 80’s hair metal
•Los Angeles, CA
•Alcoholic douchebag
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AnswerLab UX Research Solutions
What is your business question?
What Is The Channel?
Web
Mobile Website
Tablet Website
Mobile App
Tablet App
SMS/Text
What Stage In The Product Development Process?
Strategy & Planning
Design & Specification
Launch & Production
Apply The Right Methodology
Mobile Testing
Eye-Tracking
Remote Usability
Lab-Based Usability
Ethnographic Research
Behavioral Tracking
Intercept Surveys
Beta Testing
Focus Groups
Heuristic Review
Innovation Games
Benchmarking
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Agenda
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What is UX Research?
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What is Exploratory UX Research?
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Innovation Games for Exploratory UX Research
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Interactive Innovation Game
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Innovation Game Case Studies:
– Conceptual product: Productopia
– Prototype product: PayPal
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What is UX Research?
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What is Research?
Data and numbers and focus group
facilities with bad food and dark rooms
for long hours and surveys and usability
testing and prototypes and boring
moderators and stupid users and longass videos that no one will ever watch.
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What is Research?
Data and numbers and focus group
facilities with bad food and dark rooms
for long hours and surveys and usability
testing and prototypes and boring
moderators and stupid users and longass videos that no one will ever watch.
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Why We Don’t Do Research
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“Users are idiots!”
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This f#@&ing guy…
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This f#@&ing guy…
“If I had asked my
customers what
they want, they
would have said a
faster horse.”
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…and this f#@&ing guy.
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…and this f#@&ing guy.
“It’s not the
customers’ job
to know what
they want.”
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Remember the ROKR?
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ROKR you like a hurricane.
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Remember the ROKR?
Image source: http://widefide.com/mobile/mobile-phone-industry-before-and-after-iphone-widefide
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Remember the ROKR?
Image source: http://widefide.com/mobile/mobile-phone-industry-before-and-after-iphone-widefide
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It’s the age of big data,
and we’re going to talk
to six users and call it
a day?”
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How many users is enough?
Source: http://www.nngroup.com/articles/why-you-only-need-to-test-with-5-users/
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Why We Should Do Research
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Image source: http://www.scs.ryerson.ca/~cps613/References/UsabilityEngineering/
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What is Exploratory UX Research?
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Why it Matters to Companies
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Evolution of UX Research.
Validate
Refine
Understand
Live Product
Prototypes
Pre-product
Right
Way?
2000
2005
Right
Product?
2011
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What the Company Wants…
What the Users Want…
Image source: http://ndipat.org/blog/the-easiest-way-to-simplify-a-tv-remote-control/
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It’s about context…
Opportunity Gaps
Environment
CONTEXT
Interaction Modes &
Use Cases
Understanding of
Audience
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Agenda
“We don’t know how to find out
about things we don’t know about.”
– Dana Chisnell, Convey UX 2013
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What
external factors
influence her?
What is she
trying to
accomplish?
Where is
the
customer?
Build the
Right Thing
Understand
How does
the customer
feel about the
brand?
Is our
product solving
the right
problems?
Where are
the gaps between
product capabilities
and customer
activities?
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What Pain Points Do They Experience?
Innovation Games for Exploratory UX Research
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Innovation Games
Innovation Games are an open-ended, primary research process for
unlocking people’s creative confidence through game play in order to
generate ideas about a product or concept.
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Pros & Cons of Innovation Games
 Delivers richer, more accurate information
o
usability results
than traditional focus groups or in-depth
interviews
Doesn’t provide hard-and-fast behavioral or
o
Researcher experience & expertise:
 Participant engagement - game play is fun!
o
Requires complex analysis
 Alleviates participant fatigue
o
Requires researcher to set realistic
 Relieves pressure of coming up with “good”
expectations and solicit participants'
ideas or "right" answer
 Focuses on “real” situations
desires and concerns
o
 Generates a wealth of visual artifacts
Recruiting must account for some level of
creative thinking, willingness to cooperate
o
Prep time and materials
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Innovation Game Idea Examples
Identify Current Pain Points and
Wants / Needs
Product / Feature / Experience
Generation
Product / Feature Prioritization
Speed Boat
Gives participants a way to voice their frustrations about a
product/service (without being influenced by a group mentality or a single
dominant person) and identify the best opportunities to improve the
product/service.
Remember the Future
This innovation game gets participants thinking beyond the
present-day product and technology landscape and inventing truly
novel product/service solutions
Buy a Feature
Participants buy and negotiate features given limited resources of
play money to reveal their true valuation of product features.
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Innovation Game: Speed Boat
Business Objective:
Identify Current Pain Points and
Wants/Needs
Props:
• Whiteboard / flipchart
• Post-its
• Pens
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Innovation Game: Remember the Future
Business Objective:
Product / Feature / Experience
Generation
Props:
• Whiteboard / flipchart
• Pens
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Innovation Game: Buy a Feature
Business Objective:
Product / Feature Prioritization
Props:
• Play money
• Feature price list
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Interactive Innovation Game
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Innovation Game Instructions
Living in a city is hectic. We commute to and from work, attend social engagements, take
care of our families, and participate in recreational activities. Somewhere in our busy
schedules, we have to squeeze in all the things we need to do to keep our lives humming
along. But the places and services we need aren’t always scheduled around our calendars.
What if you had unlimited access to a personal assistant?
Urban Innovation Game Challenge:
• What would your personal assistant do to make your life easier?
• When and how would this person assist you?
• What would his/her personality be like?
In small groups of 3-4, draw pictures, write sentences/lists – whatever is easiest for
your group to communicate your thoughts and ideas. Be as creative and imaginative
as you’d like!
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Product & Service Innovations
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Innovation Games Case Studies
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Innovation Game Case Studies – Conceptual product
Productopia
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Case Study: Conceptual Product
Productopia came to AnswerLab with
the following objectives:
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•
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Validate hypotheses and identify
additional pain points
Prioritize pain points and identify
which features or functionality would
offer most value
Uncover any additional insights to
inform design strategy
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How We Did It
Round 1: AnswerLab designed a pretask homework exercise to understand
pain points associated with a recent bigticket purchase.
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How We Did It
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How We Did It
Round 2: AnswerLab conducted two
focus groups to explore the pain points
identified in the homework exercise by
playing innovation games.
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How We Did It
AnswerLab led a series of innovation games groups involving creating the ideal
human shopping assistant
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How We Did It
Round 3: AnswerLab conducted six
one-on-one in-depth interviews to
validate the pain points identified in the
focus groups by playing innovation
games.
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Innovation Game Case Studies – Prototype product
Paypal
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Product Innovation: Case Study
PayPal came to AnswerLab with the
following objectives:
• Test the new Digital Wallet concept
• Gather user feedback to identify
future mobile app features
• Inform short- and long-term multichannel experience strategy
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How We Did It
Round 1: AnswerLab transformed PayPal’s usability lab into a mock retail store
environment to conduct mobile “shop-alongs”
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How We Did It
Round 2: AnswerLab designed a pre-task creative exercise to understand
pain points associated with the current end-to-end shopping experience
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How We Did It
Round 3: AnswerLab led a series of innovation games groups involving
creating the ideal human shopping assistant
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The AnswerLab Impact
PayPal InStore Mobile App in the UK
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Consumers receptive to location
alerts for deals
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Mobile app most desired at point-ofsale
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Consumers comfortable with
barcode scanners
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Social pressures matter; – concerns
about perceptions of line cutting and
tipping for mobile pre-payment
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 Conduct research
early
 Leverage exploratory
methods
 Be a keen observer
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More Resources
Download these exploratory research
resources and ensure your next digital product
is groundbreaking:
o Playing to Win – An innovation games case
study, Quirk’s Marketing Research
o Got Game? Creative UX Research
Approaches For Winning Insights –
AnswerLab presentation deck
Answerlab.com/game
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Thank You.
For follow-up questions, contact:
[email protected]
Your Trusted User Experience Research Partner
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