Got Game? - AnswerLab

Your Trusted User Experience Research Partner.
Got Game?
Creative UX Research Approaches for Winning Insights
Chris Holmes | February 26, 2014
Companies we work with
Recognition
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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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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.
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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
E: cholmes@answerlab.com
T: @Chris_Holmes_UX
AnswerLab
15 W 26th Street
Suite 200
New York, NY 10010
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Who is Chris Holmes?

•Qualitative UX researcher
•Brooklyn, NY
•Half Aust., half NZ = ‘Quassi’

•Lead guitar, 80’s hair metal
•Los Angeles, CA
•Alcoholic Madman
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What is UX Research?
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What is UX 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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Reasons Why We Don’t Do Research
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“Users are idiots!”
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This guy…
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This guy…
“If I had asked my
customers what
they want, they
would have said a
faster horse.”
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…and this guy.
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…and this guy.
“It’s not the
customers’ job
to know what
they want.”
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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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It’s about context…
Opportunity Gaps
Environment
CONTEXT
Interaction Modes &
Use Cases
Understanding of
Audience
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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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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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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
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 Generates a wealth of visual artifacts
Recruiting must account for some level of
creative thinking, willingness to cooperate
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Prep time and materials
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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:
•
•
•
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
innovation game groups to explore the
pain points identified in the homework
exercise.
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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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The AnswerLab Impact
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•
•
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Returns process, e.g. when a
recently purchased item went
on sale.
Users wanted to manage most
of the post-purchase process
themselves.
Service component and
educational component.
One bad customer experience
is all it takes.
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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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You Will Receive These Resources
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
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Thank You.
For follow-up questions about AnswerLab user experience
research services, contact:
info@answerlab.com
Your Trusted User Experience Research Partner