In her “Rapid UX Research to Empower Your Teams” presentation for UX Research & Strategy this week, Amanda Gelb shared her journey as the first researcher at the New York City office for Lyft.
Gelb discussed how she collaborated with designers, product managers, engineers, and other managers to scale research for teams that don’t have a dedicated user experience researcher.
Amanda Gelb leads User Research for Lyft’s New York City office. She’s currently focused on Mapping and previously worked on Rideshare and Micro-mobility.
Here are my notes.
Rapid UX Research to Empower Your Teams
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When Gelb first joined, the team was small. To get the word out about research, Gelb ran lunch and learns, coffee chats with 60 folks in the office, spoke at all hands, went to engineering huddles.
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Requests came trickling in. Demand was high, but Gelb was the only researcher
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As researchers, we know a lot and have a lot to share. We need to enable our partners to step into research roles by equipping them with tools they need to be successful
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Gelb crafted a process to handle research requests, which included various task that clearly identified roles in the research process:
- Identify objectives, fill out request form: team
- Draft test plan: Gelb
- Draft discussion guide: Gelb
- Review test plan and discussion guide: Amanda and team
- Recruit participants: Gelb
- Prep prototype or artifacts: team
- Moderator training: Gelb and team
- Initial synthesis: team
- Meet to further analyze and synthesize data: Gelb and team
- Draft report: team
- Report: team
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Key to the process working: templates and documents for discussion plan, session notes, etc.
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Use criteria for project selection: is it a rough idea? Something that launched that didn’t get researched? Does the team already have a hypothesis?
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Moved from meeting in person to using an asynchronous intake form. Having people fill out a short form forces them to think about what they want to learn
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For recruiting, Gelb used online platforms. Recommendation: use general population to recruit participants
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Good candidates for rapid research: concept testing, exploratory testing, usability or task completion
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What doesn’t work for rapid research: surveys, anthropological studies, diary studies, foundational research
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Research session: each team has 20 minutes with each participant, with five-minute break in between. Each session takes about 3 hours and 15 minutes.
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Avoid participant fatigue with five minute breaks between sessions. Given much of the research was done remotely (due to COVID), there’s a lot of context switching. Five minute breaks gives time to break.
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Analysis is not something easily done by team, since they’re not researchers. Gelb created a synthesis training with affinity mapping, basics of rewatching videos, how to read through notes, code data, and group things thematically.
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Key to let team know: write down what participants did. Data is what’s most important, not your opinion.
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Tips for starting a rapid research program: Begin, it doesn’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to create 20 templates and training. Start small. Could be creating an intake form. Or training a few of your trusted teammates. Think of one thing to move it forward and learn from it.
