Field Studies

Uncover what features really matter to your users.

A redesign with personas can provide a return of investment up to four times more than without. (Forrester Research)

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Unlike market research, traditional requirements gathering or surveys, Experience Dynamics ethnographic field studies focus on observing, capturing and analyzing user behavior (not opinions). The focus is on how users solve their problems (tasks). User interviews capture artifacts, goals, motivations and attributes of your company’s target customers.

Definition:

A fundamental design tool for planning your UX Design. Consists of day-in-the-life user interviews and behavioral observations. Provides empathy and understanding of users, tasks, goals, culture and context of use. Field studies help identifying your most valuable personas; help you map pain points along the user journey and gain valuable insight into what features users really need.

Benefits:

  • Refine or define your design strategy.
  • Understand what your users desire most.
  • Provides guidance to design phase.
  • Figure out what your users really need.
  • Uncover the right features and functionality.
  • Discover hidden opportunities in what competitors offer or how users solve problems in a way you never anticipated.

Methods we use:

Personas, Field Studies, Ethnography, Diary Studies, Journey Maps.

Deliverables:

Field Study findings report. Personas defined. Journey Maps created. Includes design recommendations. 

Desirability beats usability any day.

Find out what lights your users candles and you can build the right thing. Field Studies help avoid poor decisions, focus your feature set and help you elevate the most valuable functionality. Personas capturing user roles and intentions help transmit empathy as a UX design aid.

Our model shows that while there are benefits to a redesign without personas, a redesign with personas can provide a return of up to four times more. Firms interested in seeing this kind of return on their redesign should make sure that their personas are well crafted and are used to make design decisions by making qualitative research a priority, reviewing their personas periodically and making updates accordingly, as well as identifying specific decisions and tools that should be based on persona insights. – The ROI of personas: Forrester Research
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When to do:

  • Before business decisions have been solidified (if innovating)
  • Early on in the product life cycle (if innovating)
  • Before wireframing or before coding (if building something new)
  • Anytime (as a behavioral trend scanning technique).

How to use with Lean UX:

  • Use to identify missed opportunities.
  • Better define user stories, based on real life wants and needs.
  • Gain valuable prioritization for Agile sprint planning.
  • Validate requirements and guide Wireframes/ UX Design.
“I think Experience Dynamics user research was a big step in the right direction. I have seen how defining a customer experience by segments (e.g. demographic, psychographic, behavioral etc.) allows a much richer discussion of the "user profile"/ target market at the executive level. While we might fight over the relative value of features all day long, we all can easily agree that "Trusting Trina" doesn't want tech specs" -Peter Batten, Chief Strategy Officer, Chrome Systems