Everybody is user researching
Understanding people needs make the difference for a quality service
Hi!
This was yet another week began with 0 ideas, and is quite strange considered I had the chance to make another business trip for a workshop. Some of you should know at this point how much I like to talk about workshops and facilitation. But not this time. I want to keep focusing on the topic of questioning, but this time from a completely different perspective.
I want to try to keep it brief today, so let’s get started!
Takeaways (TL:DR)
As UX designers, we structured user research in our processes so deeply that sometimes we feel like it’s some sort of exclusive thing. Of course we know we are stealing so many tools from our friends psychologists and sociologists and anthropologists and any other ’ologists that are probably more prepared than us at inquiring people’s thoughts and needs. But something very much less obvious, and worth noticing is that so many others professions, when practiced by passionate people with years of experience and a serving mindset instinctively apply human and people centred approaches in their daily jobs.
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Weekly retrospective
As anticipated in the intro, I’ve been on a business trip in Madrid last week. It’s been an very intense couple of days with dense schedules. But I’m happy to have seen a new city, I came home with some beautiful photographs (got a new toy, maybe I’ll talk about it soon), and yet another experience for my growth.
Despite all of this, there’s a huge little detail that caught my attention during my retrospective thinking to collect ideas on topics for this post.
So, these business trips I have done are organised in order to make co-creation workshops with installers of home automations (gates, shutters, smart home appliances and others). They are all technicians, working with mechanical, electrical and sometimes electronic issues to solve. And during the workshops we are analysing their working journey from the first call from the customer up to regular or extraordinary maintenance in their installations.
Something really interesting I noticed when talking about the first contact with the customer or the first visit to the site of the installation. I expected their focus being on understanding the what and the how of the installation, what’s the customer request, the dimensions and characteristics of the house, the technical issues to complete the work, things like this. Instead they were sharing some of the things they ask to customers and I was completely blown away, because I recognised the approach, their focus was not on the solution and the process, which they can easily handle with their experience, but rather to understand the why, the needs and context.
Installers are user researchers in disguise
I was astonished by hearing examples of the questions this professionals made to their customers. One of them even gave me the purest example of narrative interviewing.
Tell me something about your house…
This was the most powerful moment for me that break the glass and gave me this epiphany.
Apart from this, most of them where really more concerned on the why’s and needs of the customer requests. Why they decided to automate their home in the first place, how they got interested in their products and services. Some of them inquired the context to understand how to guarantee a pleasant experience and avoid discomforts. In the end, to complete their job, they need to invade people’s house and daily routines, that are very private spaces, and collecting information about the person can make a huge difference in taking care of the situation. I really was surprised by discovering this approach, in this people, that naturally developed it by experience. There’s no evidence of it being intentional or structured in any way. It was clear it developed by a genuine interest, by the requirements laid by the circumstances and their natural humane sensibility. True service in action. It was inspiring.
Other examples
This realisation, attracted from my memory other examples. I think of the person that taught me the most about user research, that got hooked with this profession by inquiring farming communities in Africa as an agronomist (Raffa, if you are reading this, thanks for all the stories you told me and all the experience you shared*). I think of my friend, working as a doctor, who once described me how meticulously he has to interview patients in the E.R in order to go beyond their biases and remove the layers of subjectivity, of fear, of google searched diagnoses, that those delicate situations bring.
Conclusions
Noticing and reflecting this behaviours everywhere around me is a source of great inspiration for my daily job. In my previous post I expressed the will to force myself to ask more questions, with this awareness in mind, I keep learning by examples I really find everywhere around me. I let my perception of user people research go beyond the structures of UX research and I learn skills that are humane before professional.
*shoutout to Raffaella Roviglioni, one of the greatest Italian professionals in user research from which I had the privilege to learn. If you are lucky enough to be an italian reader, and you are interested in user research be sure not to miss her book Chi vuole cavalli più veloci.
Do you have any similar story to share? Let me know in the comments!
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Thanks for reading to the finish and see you next week!
Tobia