UCD from across the pond - A case study in remote UX
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How do you design the UX for a complex website when you're based in the UK and the users, business stakeholders and the rest of the design team are in America? In this insightful case study you’ll find out what lessons I learnt from tackling this challenge in a recent role. You’ll learn how to foster a collaborative remote team; how to use technology to carry out remote UX research, design and usability testing; and which UX tools and techniques are best suited to remote UX.
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UCD from across the pond - A case study in remote UX
- 1. UCD from across the Pond A case study in Remote UX Neil Turner
- 3. What would your ideal project look like?
- 5. Awesome project war room
- 6. Easy access to users
- 8. Who works in a co-located team? Who has an awesome project war room? Who has easy access to users? Who has easy access to stakeholders?
- 9. Ideal world vs Real world
- 10. Welcome to the messy real world of Remote UX
- 11. Thanks to globalisation, remote UX is on the rise…
- 12. And of course more of us are frequently working remotely
- 13. Redesigning a global research platform
- 14. Not UCD across this pond (at my office)
- 15. But this pond…
- 16. Not much chance of co-location…
- 17. Or going on a ‘Swift’ world tour…
- 18. How to carry out user-centred design remotely? How to carry out UX team work remotely?
- 19. How we carried out UCD remotely
- 20. Using the Internet of course
- 21. ForSee and Survey Monkey for capturing user insights & participants
- 22. WebEx for user interviews and usability testing
- 23. User Testing for rapid mobile usability testing
- 24. PLAY VIDEO
- 25. Chalkmark for click testing prototypes
- 26. With some good ol’ fashioned face-to-face user research when possible
- 27. How we carried out UCD remotely • Online surveys to capture user insights & recruit participants • Moderated remote user interviews & testing • Unmoderated user testing & click testing • Face-to-face user research when possible
- 28. How we carried out UX team work remotely
- 29. It wasn’t as easy as being co-located… “Long distance relationships are SOOO easy!” …said NO ONE! Ever!
- 30. How can you replicate this remotely?
- 31. PLAY VIDEO
- 32. With difficulty, which is why we got the team together for a week
- 33. Local teams working remotely
- 34. Team members in the office when possible
- 35. How can you replicate this remotely?
- 36. Daily stand-ups (local and remote)
- 37. Weekly design reviews (online)
- 38. PLAY VIDEO
- 39. Talking to someone, not emailing
- 40. How can you replicate this remotely?
- 41. PLAY VIDEO
- 42. Good meeting discipline • Have a clear agenda • Share content beforehand • Turn up on time • Use headset audio (or video) • Be polite • Get to know online meeting tool
- 43. With headsets and a decent Broadband connection
- 44. How can you replicate this remotely?
- 45. Used online UX & collaboration tools
- 46. With an online style guide
- 47. And Jira as the single source of truth
- 48. How can you best work across time zones?
- 49. How can you best work across time zones? • Tried to be considerate to working times • Utilised cross-over times (afternoons in UK) • Scheduled meetings at least painful time • Kept meetings short & sweet
- 50. How did we carry out UX team work remotely? • Local teams working remotely • Got whole team together for 1 week • Used range of online design & collaboration tools • Scheduled regular, disciplined catch-ups • Encouraged phone & IM over email • Had single of point of truth
- 51. We got there…
- 52. How can we work better remotely? • What should we start doing? • What should we stop doing? • What should we continue doing?
- 53. How to be a remote UX…
- 54. Do stuff face to face if you can (UX research & design)
- 55. Come up with a good remote game plan
- 56. Invest in good remote tools and tech
- 57. Use online UX & collaboration tools & learn how to best use them
- 58. Be prepared and always run a pilot
- 59. Meet-up online as regularly as possible
- 60. Use video, phone and IM over emails
- 61. Make the best use of team time together
- 62. Be considerate Oh, you want me to work late? Well, I want you to go f**k yourself. We can’t always get what we want.
- 63. Get used to working remotely
Editor's Notes
- I think it’s always useful to know a little bit about your presenter I’m a seasoned UX professional currently working in Cambridge for AstraZeneca Have previously worked for and with these wonderful companies
- Hands up who works in a co-located team Keep hands up if you also have an awesome war room…
- Of course the real world is often very different from the ideal world Very rarely will have all of these for a project What then?
- Who works in a distributed organisation, or on global projects? From off shoring, to satellite offices and global customers, increasingly have to work remotely
- And of course we’re not all slaves to the office these days
- I’m going to talk about my experiences working in a global organisation, on a global project I’ll talk through how the UX team tackled working remotely and carrying out remote user-centred design Finally will introduce some guidelines for remote UX work Last year I was working as a UX designer at ProQuest – in their words a “global information-content and technology company” Project was to redesign on of their leading research platforms – used by students, academics and researchers to access everything from journals to historical magazines and newspapers
- This is a pond where I work at the moment, at Granta Park near Duxford Working across this pond is pretty easy, you can walk around in a few minutes
- But it’s not so easy when the pond in question is the Atlantic ocean
- Myself along with the dev team and some other UX designers were based in Cambridge The rest of the UX team and a lot of the key stakeholders were based in Ann Arbour, near Detroit Not much chance then of co-location
- The platform has a global audience Sadly there wasn’t budget for a worldwide UX tour to meet users
- So the challenge was two fold: How to carry out UCD remotely given the global audience How to carry out UX team work remotely given the team was split across the Atlantic ocean
- Using the Internet of course Internet not just redefining how we live our lives, but also how we do our jobs
- We used the Internet to recruit users for research using a Foresee survey on the website And used SurveyMonkey to capture in-depth user insights Fortunately the number of users is such that we got enough numbers from both
- We used WebEx for in-depth user interviews and usability testing I’d certainly use WebEx over Skype Easy to record and run meetings with WebEx and seems to be easier to use than Skype By and large users were able to install and run WebEx OK One thing to bare in mind is to provide really good instructions Also try and get users to connect with a headset or webcam so that audio is better Some users happy to use webcam, most just audio
- Supplemented moderated interviews and usability testing with remote testing on mobile devices using UserTesting.com Hands – who has used UsetTesting.com before, or similar remote testing tool, such as UserZoom or WhatUsersDo UserTesting.com allows you to set-up and run self-service usability tests Were able to recruit using their panel (lots of students on their books) Allows capture of session, with running commentary (video next slide)
- Great way to quickly test out ideas and designs Great way to test on mobile Typically tests of up to 20 mins, and given unmoderated can be a little limited Great way to supplement more in-depth usability testing
- Also used click testing Present a design with a scenario and see where users click Great way to quickly A/B test designs, and to test things like terminology Used Chalkmark, which is part of the Optimal Workshop suite
- Majority of UX research was online Team in Ann Arbour did get to carry out some face-to-face user research with students and academics If you get the chance to carry out UX research face-to-face, do so
- Even more so than remote UCD, remote UX team work is hard Certainly harder than being co-located We have evolved to live in groups, and it’s just not natural to not have that regular face-to-face contact with your team members Remote UX team work throws up lots of challenges
- Firstly how to replicate this sort of collaborative work remotely
- Well I guess you could do something like this…
- But we’re still a long way from virtual presence Which is why we got the team together for a week, because it’s very hard to carry out real time collaboration remotely
- Instead what we did was have local teams collaborate, and then share and discuss their work remotely In my experience very difficult to run co-design workshops remotely Even for remote meetings encourage local teams to use a meeting room rather than have everyone dial in
- Which meant having team members in the office when possible Certainly on days when there were important meetings
- Secondly how to replicate this sort of natural communication remotely?
- We tried to engineer this with daily stand ups We actually had a local stand up in the morning, and then remote stand up in the afternoon
- And regular structured remote meetings, such as a weekly design review
- There is often a tendency to be overly reliant on email for remote teams Which I think is a mistake, because as you can see email is not generally a great way to communicate
- Which is why we tried to encourage talking over email Either instant messaging, or ideally calling some up one on WebEx
- As I’ve already mentioned running meetings remotely is not an easy thing to do A conference call is certainly very different from a face-to-face meeting
- Which is why good meeting discipline is so important
- And good technology The audio and visual quality makes such a different to a remote meeting
- Of course there isn’t a physical space to share stuff when working remotely
- In the absence of this we heavily used online UX and collaboration tools InVision in particular is great, as is mural for building virtual whiteboards
- An online style guide was created so that we all had a share point of reference
- Along with Jira (Agile requirements tracking tool) as a single source of truth Agile project so user stories logged in Jira, with links to the various online resources (e.g. InVision, Axure)
- The final challenge we had was working across multiple time zones Usually a 5 hour difference between East coast US and the UK Also had colleagues on the West coast, with a 9 hour difference!
- As I mentioned working remotely is not as easy as working face-to-face By change how we work, and by using remote UX tools were able to carry out the UCD and UX design work remotely The project was ultimately a good success, with the redesign being very well received by users, and business stakeholders
- Key to the success was also regular retrospectives Even more important when working remotely as the chances of things not working is that bit higher Had fortnightly retrospectives covering the 3 main areas
- So that was how we carried out UCD and UX work remotely I’d now like to go through some of the lessons and I and the team learnt whilst working remotely I should say that Badass in this context is a good thing!
- First rule – if you can do something face-to-face, do it UX research and design much easier to conduct face-to-face Only work remotely if you have to!
- Come up with a good remote game plan and regularly review it Agree when you will meeting, meeting discipline and channels of communication A team has to be a bit more disciplined when working remotely
- Invest in good remote tools and technology Good headsets, laptops and web cams If people are going to work from home they should have a good Internet connection
- Coupled with this use online UX & collaboration tools Something like Slack or Basecamp particularly useful Just as importantly learn how to use them, and try to enforce good practice in the team Easy for InVision, or Confluence to become a bit of a mess if it’s not used well
- Meetings, interviews and usability testing sessions require a lot more planning when carried out remotely More things that can go wrong, and probably will go wrong Have back-up plans e.g. if user can’t install WebEx Also good idea to pilot things first e.g. interviews, testing
- Meet up online as regularly as possible Had often more than daily stand-ups Because communication doesn’t happen naturally have to schedule it in Even with online collaboration tools, not substitute for chatting as a team
- Try to use real-time communication tools, such as video, phone and IM over email Video calls a really great way to communicate in the team – more natural than just voice
- When you do have meetings and time together, make the best use of that time As America is at least 5 hours behind, would usually work locally in the morning, and then share and discuss in the afternoon
- But important to be considerate of when people work Not sustainable to expect teams to work unsociable hours, or to continually work late to accommodate other teams Recommend you be a bit more tactful if someone asks you to work late
- Finally get used to working remotely If you don’t already, chances are that you will in the future Remote working is becoming more and more common place, and that’s just as true for UX Like a cybernetic Bork army, remote UX is coming, and resistance is pretty futile
- Thank you once again for coming along I’ll upload the slides over the next few days to both my website and to slideshare Any questions?