Working in a team is very important for product design and development. But there are times when we have to carry out the entire workflow alone. The lone-wolf mode doesn’t mean we can’t utilize the team resources and deliver high-quality products. We must think creatively and achieve the best outcome possible for our clients. Here are some tips that you can use when conducting user research alone. 

Outsource your usability test to a third party. Who needs an in-house usability team when you can hire people on the Internet to test the product for you? Websites like Maze or UsabilityHub allow you to quickly obtain a usability report for free or a low fee. 

Many providers can integrate with design tools like Figma so you can make changes to your design file quickly and easily. 
If you don’t have an existing user base, try services like “User Interviews” or “Respondents,” who can connect you with actual volunteers or paid testers. Contextual inquiry is also an ideal approach. 

Visit the actual environment where people will be using your product and ask for their feedback. Suppose you are designing an app for a bank, visit a branch yourself, observe how they work, and talk to them about your plans and ideas. 

Finally, if your product is online and live, try analytics tools like Hotjar or Full story to monitor and track user behaviors, so you can acquire insights from authentic usage.

I hope this was helpful.

Conduct User Research Alone

Jill has been listening to customers and clients for over 20 years. She has worked for organizations like Etsy and Blue Apron, and has since started Field Notes Consulting, a research and strategic planning practice serving both public and private sectors. She is method-agnostic, harnesses full-stack research, and interrogates all data to get to the real data or the root cause.

While hard data and numbers are important, data alone does not equal insight. Making sense of the data often requires listening to customers, human-scale frameworks of things like journeys and experience mapping, and, of course, minimizing researchers’ biases.  It’s often the outside-in perspective that brings it all together to give us insight that will highlight consequences and implications. 

Jill is a champion of what she calls “interventions” and doing interventions across silos. She shares an example from her time at Blue Apron that beautifully illustrates how one research silo can lose direction without insight from other silos. 

Some interventions Jill recommends include:
  • Remember that everyone in the organization is on the same team and after the same goal
  • Encourage observation
  • Bring cross-functional teams together 
  • Fit KPIs and OKRs in the story of the user

Jill will be leading a session, “Inconvenient Insights: The Researcher’s Role is to Stay Curious,” and a workshop, “Holistic Insights: Collapsing Functional Silos for Maximum Impact” at the Advancing Research Conference March 27-29, 2023.

What you’ll learn from this episode:
  • How Jill defines insight and why it won’t be uncovered from hard data alone
  • How “interventions” across silos can help everyone in the organization win
  • A taste of what Jill will cover in her talk and workshop at Advancing Research 2023 

Quick Reference Guide
[00:00] Introduction of Jill
[01:50] Jill’s role at Advancing Research Conference March 27-29th, 2023
[02:27] Jill’s love-hate relationship with data
[07:25] How we get insights from data
[09:36] Lessons from Blue Apron 
[14:13] How to perform or support interventions
[21:54] On interventions outside your area of expertise and considering the interconnectivity of the entire organization
[30:43] Looking back on information and library science school 
[34:52] Jill’s book recommendation
[36:49] Jill’s session and workshop at the upcoming Advancing Research Conference in March

Insights and Interventions with Jill Fruchter

Believe it or not, Steve Portigal’s UX research classic Interviewing Users came out ten years ago, back in 2013. A few things about user research have changed since then, to put it mildly, so we at Rosenfeld did two things: we convinced Steve to write a second edition (coming out October 17), and to join us on the Rosenfeld Review to discuss all the things that have changed.

In addition to being an author, Steve is a user researcher, consultant, and teacher. He helps companies grow their businesses, culture, and brands by interviewing users. He also helps companies build more mature in-house research practices.  

Having been on both sides of the interviewing process – as both interviewer and interviewee – Steve can empathize with both roles. Over the last decade, he has seen user research evolve from a focus on consumer products to company culture and supportive technologies in the B2B space. 

Effective research, in addition to data gathering, involves analysis and synthesis. Steve defines analysis as breaking bigger things into smaller things and synthesis as putting what was broken down back together into a new framework, or insight. This is where the magic of research happens. A chapter dedicated to the art of analysis and synthesis is one of the profound additions to this latest edition of his book.

What you’ll learn from this episode:
 - About Interviewing Users and what’s new in the second edition
 - About Steve’s work as a researcher, author, and consultant and how his work has shifted over the last decade
 - Changes in the research field and why most of us are researchers to one degree or another, even if it’s not in your title or job description
 - How analysis and synthesis are different and why both are needed for insights
 - About the “We already knew that” response many researchers get and what it really means 

Quick Reference Guide
[0:00:19] Introduction of Steve Portigal
[0:04:30] Experience on both sides of the interview process
[0:08:06] Shifts in language and jargon Steve has noted over the last decade 
[0:12:13] The evolution of user research – less with consumers and more within businesses or B2B
[0:15:10] Speculation on where the leading edge of user research will be – or perhaps more importantly, who will be doing it – in another 10  years
[0:19:02] Rosenfeld Media Communities
[0:21:17] What’s new in the 2nd Edition version of Interviewing Users – analysis, synthesis, and insights
[0:28:38] “We already knew that” phenomenon that researchers often encounter
[0:32:20] Steve’s gift for listeners

Resources and links from today’s episode:
Interviewing Users (2nd edition) by Steve Portigal https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/interviewing-users-second-edition/ 
Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries: User Research War Stories by Steve Portigal https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/user-research-war-stories/ 
“How-to with John Wilson” on HBO https://www.hbo.com/how-to-with-john-wilson

Creating Insights through Analysis and Synthesis with Steve Portigal

On veut faire se voyage avec vous et partager notre histoire, vous inspirer et nous raconter.

Ce podcast n’a pas pour but que d’apporter de la connaissance ou de l’expertise sur un métier de designer en particulier mais c’est surtout partager des expériences humaines sur notre vie au travaille à travers notre prisme de designer.

Introduction - Histoire d'expérience Podcast

In dieser Episode analysieren Matthias und Frede die aktuellen strukturellen Veränderungen der UX-Branche anhand führender Artikel und Reports. 

Sie besprechen Dan Maccarones Analyse zur Abkehr der UX von strategischer Einflussnahme, Greg Nudelmans Warnung vor der irrelevanten Fokussierung auf Figma und UI in Zeiten von KI und Geoffrey Huntleys Beobachtungen über die Auswirkungen von KI auf Arbeitsmärkte. Dann wird noch in den "Design in Tech Report" von John Maeda reingeschaut, inklusive des neuen Paradigmas "Agent Experience (AX)". 

Außerdem diskutieren die Hosts die Rückkehr der UX-Generalist*innen laut Nielsen Norman Group, die Priorisierung neuer Kompetenzen im "Future of Jobs Report 2025" sowie Dominique Winters Modell zur Gestaltung langfristiger Mensch-Produkt-Beziehungen. 

Zum Abschluss liefern Jeff Sauro und Jim Lewis ein neues Framework für die Auswahl der passenden UX-Metriken.   ⠀⠀|  
  ⠀⠀|
KAPITEL ⠀⠀|  
[00:00:00] Einstieg: Wie viel Veränderung steht der UX bevor?  ⠀⠀|  
[00:01:49] Dan Maccarone: UX zwischen Strategie und Dekoration  ⠀⠀|  
[00:12:09] Greg Nudelman: KI verändert UX-Design radikal  ⠀⠀|  
[00:19:38] Geoffrey Huntley: Neue Marktmechanismen im KI-Zeitalter  ⠀⠀|    
[00:27:12] John Maeda: AX - Agent Experience als neue Disziplin  ⠀⠀|  
[00:34:27] Nielsen Norman Group: Das Comeback der UX-Generalist*innen  ⠀⠀|  
[00:37:56] Future of Jobs Report 2025: Zukunftskompetenzen für UX  ⠀⠀|  
[00:43:14] Dominique Winter: Produktbeziehungen bewusst gestalten  ⠀⠀|  
[00:49:30] Jeff Sauro & Jim Lewis: Framework für die Auswahl von UX-Metriken  ⠀⠀|   
  ⠀⠀|
LINKS UND RESSOURCEN:  ⠀⠀|  
https://germanupa.de/mediathek/ux-diesem-monat-april-25   ⠀⠀|  

⠀⠀|  
Erzähle uns: Welche neuen Kompetenzen baust du gerade auf? 
Dein Feedback erreicht uns per E-Mail podcast@germanupa.de oder direkt in den Kommentaren.  ⠀⠀|  

UX in diesem Monat | April 2025

Lou Rosenfeld talks with a LOT of brilliant, interesting changemakers in the UX world and beyond. Subscribe to the Rosenfeld Media podcast for a bird's eye view into what shifts UX faces, and how individuals and teams can respond in ways that drive success.

Dieser Podcast wird produziert von der German UPA. Sie ist die größte Vertretung für Fachkräfte aus dem Bereich User Experience (UX) und Usability im deutschsprachigen Raum. www.germanupa.de

New tracks tagged #Userresearch