Preparation when facing an Interview with Cruise Ship Users / heliput.com
What do you mean by User? Users are:
Parties from companies that will employ prospective employees in accordance with the field or position being applied so that it has the task to select the suitability of the applicant to be an employee of the company.
Interview with the User is the moment awaited by most applicants who are looking for work. This interview is the last process of a series of…
After having a basic understanding of the user’s needs and workflow the next step was to validate the learnings and assumptions with quantitative and qualitative research, to be done with current and/or potential users.
An unmonitored survey containing seven questions was sent out to potential users. Nielson (2012) argues that for quantitative research, such as survey, that aims at statistics, not insights, is needed “at least 20 users to get statistically significant numbers”. 37 responses were received and out of the total number of responses, 70% reported to travel at least 3 times per year.
54% of the total amount of participants have travelled to more than 20 different places. From the 37 responses 51.4% of the participants said they have compared with friends the lists of places they have travelled to.
When asked if they have ever tried to list all the places they have been to 52.8% responded YES, meaning that somehow they have tried to list the places travelled to. Furthermore, when asked if they would wish to have a way to list all the places they have travelled to 75.7% of the participants responded YES.
About the way participants would prefer to list the places - a list of cities or list of countries, 43.3% would prefer to list the cities, 27% the countries and 29.7% wouldn’t mind, could be either/or.
The last question findings were that 51.4% of the users like playing quizzes, 10.8% don’t like quizzes and 37.8% like playing sometimes only.
It is safe to conclude that the survey participants have been to more than 20 places, would like to have a way to list all the cities they have visited, and might share and compare travelling destinations with friends.
USER INTERVIEWS
The survey was helpful to validate some aspects of the persona, however Rita’s workflow still needs to be validated with potential users input. To validate the persona’s workflow and understand her pain points and needs before, during and after a trip.
Interviews with 3 users were performed and the main findings were: Users 1 and 2 travel around 5 times per year and have been to more than 20 countries and user 3 travels about twice a year and has been to at least 10 countries.
All the three users decide where to travel to based on the time they have available and users 1 and 2 consider the costs of the trip as well.
When questioned about how they learn about the destination, User 1 said a lot of reading is done, especially on websites like Lonely Planet and Pinterest, and users 1 and 2 don’t do much research, they only search for top things to do.
To create their itinerary, user 1 creates a to-do list on a piece of paper and user 2 “use google maps to search and favourite things.” Users 1 and 3 talk to friends about places they have been, to get recommendations and user 2 relies on websites and blogs.
During the trip all 3 users keep track on what they are doing by taking pictures. User 1 tries to write everything on a journal but ends up giving up and User 2 take notes of cities names and dates only. None of the users are social media power users, they don’t share too much online.
When the trip is finished the users state that they start forgetting details about the trip, to try to recall the trip User 1 looks at their itinerary and user 3 looks at the pictures taken.
I took the chance to question some of the children I volunteer with for my periodic table project. Given the environment and nature of my role, there wasn’t an opportunity for long or structured interviews but a few quick and informal questions did raise some interesting points.
Context:
Two 8 year olds, two 7 year olds, and one 6 year old (a bit younger than the target users but 8 is still in an acceptable range for my project and the oldest where I volunteer).
Incredibly informal (mostly done in free minutes between running around).
What Stood Out to Me:
Favourite subjects included science, maths, and art, with maths actually coming out on top (which surprised me but it is hard to say with such a small sample pool).
All specifically mentioned learning and/or working things out as one of their favourite aspects of their chosen subject.
Favourite part of science class? The experiments!
The last two in particular reinforce the decision to emphasize compounds and combining elements more. The idea of experiments also has me considering some different options for ‘recipes’. Originally I experimented with providing recipes that incorporated the featured food of each element but this could also be a recipe for some simple experiments. However, I would need to do some more research first.
It would be interesting to compare this with answers from older children (12-14) and see if there are major differences.
Research week has carried on with more interviews. Elvis and I went over to one of the largest construction sites in central London (just next to Tower Bridge) and interviewed more Tradesmen and employers in the canteen. It was such a huge site that we couldn’t resist taking a selfie! We then cycled over to Vauxhall to interview young students who were studying mechanics and decorating - this was perhaps the most insightful part of the research phase as we found that the app would appeal mostly to this generation. It’s definitely going to lead our project into a different direction....
1. Avoid leading questions. Seek out user’s behavior, not opinion.
2. To be a good user researcher, sometimes you have to unlearn everything that makes a good conversationalist.
3. Powerful tool to synthesize findings from the interviews - Affinity Mapping. It helps you see the patterns. Grouping the post-its is a way to connect your data point. What’s the common theme that occurs again and again? What kind of pattern do you find among different users? Be creative and play around it. It’s like playing a puzzle game - where does each puzzle piece fit in the big picture? Data visualization is powerful.
