“Alarm Bells” in User Research

I have gone to many big SAP customers in India for User Research and there are a few things i have learnt to be wary of when going to big Organizations for User Research:

• Set the expectations right beforehand itself. You haven’t gone to talk about new features in the upcoming releases, you aren’t from Marketing, you aren’t there to provide Technical support. Too much time gets wasted till they actually understand the purpose of your visit.
  

• Guard against spending too much time in the Boardrooms. As I have come to realize, nothing worthwhile is ever achieved in Boardrooms. :) Go to where the user actually sits. His workplace can speak volumes.

• Be on your alert when the user starts using phrases like ‘usually…’, ‘in our company..’, ‘in general…’, ‘normally…’. Ask him specifically as to how HE does the task or better still, ask him to show it to you. There might be differences in the way he says he works and how he actually works.

• Be careful as to who is watching the user perform the task…his Manager, IT Staff… it changes the way he will interact with the system

Similarly, do not interview the User in front of his superior. It will tone down his responses regarding the difficulties he faces with your software or the workaround he uses to get his job done.

• Write down beforehand high-level ‘Bullet Points’ regarding questions you would really like answered. Otherwise, if you only ask him to run you through a task on a system, you might only end up doing Usability Bug-fixing.