Changes in UX research for a post covid world
I recently attended an event looking at what UX would look like within a post pandemic world, through the eyes of experienced researchers, operations, and service designers.
Although I have limited knowledge of what UX was like before the pandemic (as I transitioned this field within the 2020 pandemic), I could still empathise with the changes the field has gone through.
From hearing from other professionals regarding their work pre-pandemic, I could see that it took more effort and planning to arrange research, as well as paying initiatives for time and travel. In addition, the difficulty of recruiting the right type of users came with geographic and difficult, meaning design sprints took longer in order to retrieve the information needed from research.
As a UX Designer, I have had to quickly adapt my techniques from a purely remote (only interviewing or researching via video call technologies) to a more hybrid approach. Even though this was a small change compared to other professionals, there was still a change in mindset in how I approached research, such as reading body language and more time to set up research venues.
From my time in this field so far, one of the greatest benefits I can see of remote research is the ability to recruit participants from a wider range of locations and, thus, to incorporate greater diversity than is often possible with in-person research. As well, with increase in remote testing (through sites like User brains and User testing) research can get easily get research done within a matter of days, rather than weeks, helping with reducing designing and engineering time.
Below are some of the changes observed within the event about changes in a post covid word:
Researching within the digital divide
As previous explained, online UX research has made strides in reaching broader populations, meaning research can be done quicker and more effective. It has created fewer barriers for user research, whilst helping reduce timings and costings for performing such tasks. However, there is still one constraint that bares a burden; there is still digital divide, meaning the most vulnerable of society are being missed in research studies. We may be missing customers who are not so well versed in technology, and therefore need to make sure we integrate these processes to allow for some in-person research when required.
Designing for online and physical presence
The pandemic made people realise the importance of physically interacting with friends as well as colleagues. So, there is expected to be an uptrend in solutions that ease human interaction even at a distance and need for going back to physical based interactions. User behaviours have changed since the pandemic, as well as people suffering from online fatigue causing them to want to use technology in the real world. Therefore, there needs to be an omni presence between online and digital environments, whereby researchers need to see a combination of users more naturally, whilst being able to perform specific tasks in a more humanised task with technology.
Retraining research methods
Focusing on digital methods, such as utilising analytics and the research tools as above, there is now a consideration of how to interview in person. Even though there are similar techniques, there more skills to train up on, such as note taking and reading body language, that are limited with online research alone. This may mean additional costs and training resources required to meet with the demands of the industry.
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