The UX Observation

Observe but don’t disturb

Photo by Aramudi on Unsplash

This article is part of a series on UX research methods. If you’re not sure what UX research is, you can read this explainer: What is User Experience Research?

To be able to create a great experience, it’s important to understand in what environment your product or service is being used. Your beautifully sleek designed ride-sharing app might work great when you’re sitting in the office. But it might be a different story if used by someone who just got off an 8 hour flight and is now very tired at an extremely busy and loud airport terminal in an unknown country, with a spotty data connection.

What is it?

Observing a user in their natural environment while using your product or service.

When is it valuable?

• When you want to understand the environment and mindset that your products or services are being used in
• When you want to see someone’s real workflow, including the hiccups, shortcuts and frustrations that someone might leave out or forget when being interviewed

Do

• Take notes
• Take pictures (ask for permission first of course)
• Observe behavior
• Notice things in the environment. Is it loud or quiet? Do people seem stressful or relaxed? Do you notice specific objects? Is there anything special about the clothes people wear? What tools or devices are being used?

Don’t

• Don’t interfere during the observation
• Don’t talk to the user or explain anything

Example

The goal of your research might be to understand how users use your app in a real-life setting. You can do observations in the following way:

1. Find participants (if you have a sales department, then they’re your best friends)
2. Set up a visit. Make sure that they know how valuable their participation is. Also make sure that they know you will observe them but not talk with them during the observation.
3. During the observation, try to blend into the background and take notes.

• What does the environment look like?
• When do they use the app?
• Do they use any workarounds or use your app in an unexpected way? Finding a workaround is like striking gold.

4. If they run into a problem and ask for help, gently remind them that you’re here to observe and don’t want to interfere. Ask them how they would normally solve the problem if you were not present.

You can now empathize better with your user as you know how your app is being used in a real scenario.

To organize and analyze the results of your observations, you might benefit from building a UX research repository.