Pat’s Point of View

I recently received an email from someone asking me for some advice on starting off in the field of user research field.

Hi Patrick,

I’m Hans, a technical writer from Zurich and wanted to say a quick hello.

I happened to visit your website and liked the article The 7 Stages of User Frustration :)

I have a interest towards user research and have been reading books.

I’m looking out for projects (websites or applications) where I could help with user research and data analysis. I was wondering how to get started in terms of skills required. I know it is not easy for people to entrust such an important activity to me. Could you help me with your suggestions?

Thanks,
Hans

I thought about how I would respond, but since this isn’t the first time I’ve been asked this question, I figured it might be helpful to respond in the form of a blog post for everyone to see.

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I subscribe to many RSS feeds, mostly as a means of aggregating blog posts so I can read them more easily. There are over 100 feeds in my Google Reader account. Nothing unusual about that.

But I’ll let you in on a little secret: I hardly read any of them on a regular basis, I just don’t have time. Again this is nothing unusual.

The ones I do find myself reading quite regularly are grouped fairly precariously under the the label “Strategy”. Here are my top 5 (in alphabetical order):

• acidlabs (Stephen Collins)

  Stephen (or @trib as you might know him) is passionate, if nothing else. He writes on the topics of social media, government 2.0 and collaboration. His posts are enthusiastic, intelligent and well written. I might not share his opinions on some issues, but I do look forward to what he has to say. Stephen also sets a great example for anyone wishing to build a reputation and establish themselves as a thought leader in a certain field.

• Anecdote (Shawn Callahan & Mark Schenk)

  Shawn and Mark don’t blog as often as others in this list, but when they do it’s always a well considered and informative piece. The topics are quite diverse but mostly centre around stories (ie story telling for business) and collaboration. I’ve learnt a lot from reading their posts, and attending their “story listening” workshop, that has helped me during user research and stakeholder consultation.

• Column Two (James Robertson)

  James is my former employer, and I learnt a lot from him during my time at Step Two, and have continued to do so since then. James has his finger on many pulses, and is able to sift out the most useful bits of the tide of information that comes his way. Topics include intranets, content management, knowledge management and a whole bunch of things around these.

• Seth’s Blog (Seth Godin)

  Seth has a real talent for boiling things down to their essence and then stating, simply, the core lessons you should take away. I’ve found his words on business, marketing and customer service incredibly useful and often amusing. His style is frank and to the point, which makes his writing honest and sometimes confronting. But you know it’s real, informed and motivated by his desire for things to make sense and for us all to do things in ways which make sense. Probably my favourite of all.

• Trends in the Living Networks (Ross Dawson)

  Does this guy get around or what? I find that almost everywhere I look (or read to be more precise) Ross pops up, and says something really smart. I honestly don’t know how he has his finger in so many pies, and still has time to write great blog posts, and be a father to his brood of kids! I’ll admit, sometimes it goes over my head, but the breadth and depth of his knowledge is impressive. Equally impressive is his willingness to pass on this knowledge, adopting the very “now” practice of releasing his work to the public domain (for example Implementing Enterprise 2.0)

So there’s nothing (necessarily) about UX, user research, web design or anything on that practical level. I find these blogs worth reading because they’re insightful, multifaceted and inspiring. They keep me thinking about the big picture, not staring down at my toes worrying about low level, day-to-day details.

There are many user research methods one can use, and there are even more variations and names for them. But regardless of what name they’re given, methods should be chosen that are suitable for the situation at hand.

In this article I give a quick overview of the methods I commonly use, broken down in to main categories:

• Direct user contact—where the researcher does very much interact with users, or members of the audience as I prefer to call them
• Indirect user contact—where the researcher does not actually interact with members of the audience

The list is by no means exhaustive but it gives a good indication of the breadth and depth of methods that can be employed in user research.

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