By Michele McDanel (opens in new tab)
Image credit: iStock
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected people around the world for nearly two years and can be seen in all aspects of daily life, from the move to remote work and learning, to lockdowns, mask mandates, and limitations to travel and social gatherings. These changes have also had a dramatic effect on the discipline of user research and the approaches to customer conversations.
In-person meetings and travel on hold
Researchers have been unable to travel due to their country and/or company’s rules and restrictions, or the target area’s COVID-19 rates of illness may make travel inadvisable. Lockdowns prevent recruiting entirely and can slow the progress of a study by weeks or months.
As we get to a point where domestic travel is again becoming common, different areas (or different states, as in the case of the U.S.) are handling the pandemic very differently, and vaccination rates vary widely. Some researchers might not want to take the risk of conducting a study in a hotspot.
There is always the option of moving to remote meetings, which my team has done very effectively (opens in new tab). When doing studies in other geographies or cultures, it’s a good idea to harness local expertise. If you’re unable to travel, you can rely on in-country researchers to gather the in-person data. However, a researcher conducting an ethnographic study would want to observe customs and behaviors in person, interact with individuals, and ask off-the-cuff questions to get to the heart of their research questions. They may find remote options not as effective and opt to delay their study until conditions allow.
Funding restrictions
The need to prioritize resources for disease testing, prevention, and treatment caused some governments to shift grants and funding for research studies to COVID-19 resources. Plans for long-term field studies, some with decades of historical research, have been thrown into question and are facing breaks in data gathering due to the lack of resources.
Customers may have lost their jobs or seen budget cuts, and given the human toll of the pandemic, it’s important for researchers to be mindful of the stressors their subjects may be facing; people may need to ease into conversations more gradually than they would have previously.
For researchers in the corporate space, the impact of the pandemic may have manifested in the form of pay cuts, layoffs, furloughs, hiring freezes, and the like. Budget cuts among product teams have delayed the timing of some studies. Savings on travel could potentially be reallocated towards increasing remote research studies.
Remote study pros and cons
Although many people were familiar with online meeting tools prior to the pandemic, others were forced to learn quickly. Researchers working with remote meeting novices have reported spending a significant portion of their meetings just teaching people how to use the tools, impacting their ability to gather information. If this trend results in researchers defaulting to people who are more familiar with the technology, they risk not getting a true representation of their user base in research efforts.
Going remote can make recruitment and scheduling easier in some instances. The need to travel to and from an in-person study represents a larger time commitment than simply scheduling a one-hour phone call. Some researchers are reporting that their studies are getting completed more quickly because of the lowered time commitment involved.
The move to remote meetings also opens the field of potential participants to a broader base, making it easier and quicker to fill the ranks of users and to recruit a diverse segment of the population.
Showcasing the value of user research
Direct customer interaction is key to understanding users’ changing needs. Over the past 18 months, researchers have adapted the methods they use to meet with customers in real time as there are many asynchronous methods that researchers use to practice their craft. As our world continues to shift in unexpected ways, gaining that deep understanding of customers continues to be critical; so it’s important for researchers and their leadership to demonstrate value within their organization. Here are a few ways how:
- Showcase research capabilities and responsiveness: The speed at which the world works is increasing exponentially, and organizations need to get insights back quickly more so now than ever. This is where research has an important role. If your team can pull together a remote moderated session with users in less than a week, or you can put prototypes in front of a few users and get feedback quickly, make sure that your stakeholders know.
- Emphasize impact: We’re seeing unique shifts in how people live and work; ensuring that companies have the information they need to pivot quickly could mean the difference between success and failure. Research can provide insights to address new markets and develop new products in the face of these rapid shifts; it can also prevent the huge costs of not getting a product right the first time.
- Get a seat at the table with stakeholders: Don’t wait for stakeholders to include research in their plans; meet with them, demonstrate your team’s capabilities, and ask what questions they would like to have answered. Gather cross-functional teams including design, engineering, UX, and marketing to workshop what you know, what you are assuming you know, and what you need to know, then develop a research plan.
All this puts user feedback top of mind and reminds everyone of the role research can have in informing direction. If some stakeholders are feeling more tactical and reactive amidst all this pressure, that’s OK. That still leaves room for research to step in and answer those pressing questions, such as content and feature labels or colors for iconography. But don’t miss the opportunity to ask questions about more long-term direction and position how research can help there, too.
Research is what takes an organization from a place of speculation, venturing into the unknown, to a place of strength. Planning based on truths and insight positions a company to emerge stronger and more competitive.
What do you think? How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected your research work, both positively and negatively? Tweet us your thoughts at @MicrosoftRI or follow us on Facebook (opens in new tab) and join the conversation.
Michele McDanel is a builder, an organizer, and a storyteller with a bachelor’s degree in Communications and an MBA. She is energized by solving problems and meeting business needs through communications and customer experience solutions that raise the bar. Michele enjoys building relationships and managing teams; and overall, just figuring out what the “special sauce” is that will be the competitive differentiator for a business and its solutions. She joined the team in 2019 to amplify the great UX research and data science work they do, and to showcase the thought leadership of the team across internal and external communications, events, and social media.