The Five Fundamentals of In-Depth Interviews: How the Best User Research Is User Therapy

Okay, we are at three o'clock, so we'll go ahead and start. Um, first of all, my name is Lexi Maynard. I'm the director of recruiting at Accelerant Research. Uh, if you're just joining us for the first time today, welcome. Um, this is the final presentation of the October conference. So, you know, thank you for joining us. If you stuck with us throughout the day yesterday and today, um, we really appreciate y'all's attendance. Um, and we'll just go ahead and start off with the ground rules. A lot of you probably have heard these so far, but I'll just run through them real quick. Um, just a reminder, we are at the mercy of the tech. Um, hopefully last presentation. Fingers crossed we can get through it without any technical issues, but if there are any, just bear with us and we'll figure something out. Um, also just be respectful to the other attendees and to the other presenters at the conference. um you know everybody's taking their time out of their day especially you know Cheryl and the other presenters to be here and share with everybody else so just be respectful and then um also just a reminder um feel free to network engage and interact we really are encouraging that on LinkedIn Twitter use QVIC2020 um and you can interact with both the presenters and uh other attendees as well all right and for our final presentation of the day we have Dr. Cheryl Abelinosa. I'm sorry if I didn't pronounce that correctly. I'm trying my best here. That was perfect. She will be presenting the five fundamentals of in-depth interviews. How to how the best user research is user therapy. Sorry, my screen's blocking. I want to make sure I have everything. So, I'm going to go ahead and pass it off to you. I will stop sharing my screen now, Cheryl. Um, thank you so much for joining us today and I'm really excited to hear your presentation. All right. Thank you so much. And uh you got you got my name uh exactly right. So, thank you. Yeah, that was that was great. That was awesome. So, so yeah. So, uh just want to commend everybody um do to to say this was a great opportunity to get to learn a little bit more about what everyone's working on. Um, and I also wanted to commend uh Pam Nelson and uh Bri just before this on some really great presentations. What they talked about as far as rapport um and research rock stars uh storytelling, the importance of the narrative um and the importance of really engaging with your customer user base really resonated with a lot of what I'm going to be talking about and and wrapping up with today of, you know, how the best user research really is user therapy. So, I thought I'd start off by giving you a little bit of a, you know, summary of what my story is. Um, I am a UX research manager on our experience team for Verizon Connect. Um, Verizon Connect is a part of Verizon that really focuses in on telematics solutions. Telmatics is really just about vehicle tracking. So you can see how this is really relevant for commercial audiences where a a small to medium business owner or even an enterprise level uh business uh can you leverage our technology to be able to see that everything is essentially where it needs to be. Um whether that's a delivery of a product or if that's the uh mobile team that's going out to a job site. Um, so it's really born out of that need to just make sure that everything is working as as according to plan. What I'm going to talk about though is our consumer product uh and and the research that we do on the consumer team here um for HUM, which is a product that helps consumers keep track of everything with their vehicles. uh everything from being able to check and make sure that their fuel level is what they anticipate it to be uh make sure they're not throwing any trouble codes with their vehicles. Um as well as you know make sure that their vehicle is parked in the location or at the location uh that they anticipate it to be. So, for the past three years, and this actually my three-year anniversary with the company today, um that's what the work that I've been doing in both the commercial and the consumer space, running um research with a team of really fantastic senior researchers uh on a global team. Um I manage the Atlanta team uh but we also have researchers and designers based out of Christ Church and Dublin. And so, it's been a really fantastic journey. So, I get asked a lot about how did I start this journey? How did I get here? Um, I actually started in the field of academia and I wanted to call out I I think I saw a comment uh by someone named Cindy on the YouTube um stream of the conference um of coming from cognitive neurosych. I'm right there with you. I came out of cognitive neuroscience and this is where I really cut my research teeth. So I learned a lot about research design. I learned a lot about cognitive biases really focusing on associative memory. And so when I was thinking about transitioning into the industry space, I had all of this research on cognitive neuroscience presented a lot of research like this. So I would go into a spiel about how um my research helped identify that the left dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex was implicated uh in conditions of distraction um when you're trying to figure out whether or not uh your source memory is accurate. And I would get met with a lot of blank faces, right? this is not something that is easily translatable into industry. And that's why I I bring up Pam Nelson's talk about um how do you do you leverage these skills to be able to be successful in user research? And so what I found over time when I was transitioning into industry that it was not so much my research experience in my uh academic sphere um in this cognitive neuroscience program uh that was as useful in communicating the information that I was learning while leveraging those skills. what was actually most impactful and still continues to be the most impactful uh part of my experience as a researcher and as a manager of a research team is my experience in clinical psychology. So, prior to that, I had gotten a masters in clinical counseling. And you know, you say counseling, people say, "Oh, yeah, Freud, I know that guy. Are you are you uh analyzing? Are you psychoanalyzing me right now?" Right? So, it's kind of interesting to see how this skill set is actually the fundamental skill set uh that I have found has been extremely helpful in telling the story of what our users are experiencing. You may have some questions about what skill set is that? Um, and the list goes on and on and on. Um, I I would say and and what we're going to be talking about for the bulk of today are the interviewing skills and the time that we spent in this program really learning about different kinds of frameworks that help you understand uh how to phrase questions and how to engage in discussion such that you can make sense of what users are experiencing. And while that's a therapeutic sense uh with clinical psychology, it's just as useful and just as impactful uh in user research uh for any kind of product. You can see a couple of other skill sets here that also play into, you know, what we do as user researchers in that you learn this in both individual and group dynamics. So you can run one-on- ones, um in-depth interviews at uh an individual level as well as run perhaps focus groups or or group sessions. um you learn different systematic frameworks and how to work within a systematic framework. So I'll talk a little bit about different kinds of therapy and theories that set up the way that you uh go about asking these questions. Uh you learn about dissecting and coding statements. Uh this is very useful when you're going through transcripts and recordings of different videos that you have with your users. Um short and long-term synthesis. So shortterm meaning in real time. As a therapist, I would have to really understand the information that was coming at me in real time in these conversations and develop that into a longer term synthesis as well, which translates into continuous research, uh, discovery type research, research that's really at the top of the funnel. So, it helps you start to build a a long-term understanding of what users are experiencing or in this case, what what clients were experiencing. And I'm sure that all of us who have been in the research space and have had to work with very frustrated clients or customers or users really appreciate someone who has a background in deescalation and conflict resolution techniques. oftentimes customers are coming to us with tons of frustration whether uh it's because our product isn't meeting their need the way that they expected to or if they're trying to leverage some additional value and quite can't figure out um you know how do I really see the full potential of of what I'm using because I love the product so much and so being able to have that empathic nature and really deescalate situations that could be very tense uh really comes in handy for just setting up a conversation in a safe space. So, it's a little bit about my story. Um, I want to talk a little bit about how that's translated into our research. And I want to call out my team as I do this because they're just such a fantastic team of researchers who have used a lot of these skills and these discussions in the way that they set up their interviews. So, I've summarized a couple of research uh interviews, some recent, some a little bit from uh a little while ago. um and just wanted to walk through how we code all of this and what elements are actually therapeutic elements that have helped us gather these insights that we've shared with our product teams. So I'll start with a a an interview that um Alexa Cario who is one of our senior researchers uh actually facilitated just last week. She was asking a customer, do you subscribe to music streaming platforms? Simple question uh on the surface, right? And we were trying to understand what are people doing when they're in their cars? Are they listening to music? Uh what kinds of platforms are they using? What else is he leveraging while he's in that driver's seat? And the customer said, "No, I'm frugal by nature. My wife hates when I say cheap, so frugal." Right? So he's even being very selective about his word choice in describing what he's experiencing. And so what stuck out to me as someone who had a background in clinical psychology was that you have a couple of things going on here. He didn't really answer the question and he said no he doesn't subscribe to those platforms but the conversation went in a different way. You start to see that there's an identity statement here. I am frugal by nature. So you're now learning something about this customer. Also you have some information about the importance of a relationship uh in his life. my wife hates. So his identity is so tied to this relationship that it comes up for him as the next thing that he's about to say. And then you also have something here that shows the connotation of the words that he's using. Frugal is a better word. Cheap is not something that I really associate with. And also my wife hates when I use that word. Uh so now you're getting a sense of what the vocabulary is when someone talks about their experience. And this is the kind of work that we would do in clinical psychology going through people's statements uh sometimes line by line and transcripts just to make sure that we're unpacking as much information about the client or in this case the customer uh that we can so that we can get to those really helpful insights, actionable insights that we can translate into product decisions. What was great about this interview as well is that Alexa followed up with I'm curious to know what you're not frugal about so that we can get the full span and the full picture of of what we're talking about here. And this is actually a humanistic therapy approach. Rather than forming a question. Uh in a in the humanistic therapy approach, you make a lot of statements uh from your own experience as the interviewer and reflect on what you're feeling in the moment to open up conversation with your uh interviewe. And so here she's using this humanistic uh psychological approach in her question phrasing. And what that did in that interview was open up uh the customer's response. and he actually said, "Yeah, laughs and says,"Now you're Freuding me." Which is that comment that us psychologists always get. And as a result of that, he launched into this huge long uh discussion about the things that were meaningful to him about what he spends his money on. And so he really dictated everything from music streaming platforms to the brands that he goes for to the kinds of products that he does usually spend more money on like clothes uh or or something that he really is going to get something um long lasting out of. And we might not have had that conversation had the structure not been there to facilitate that. So, just wanted to call out a lot of that uh is foundationally uh psychologically uh centered um especially from a therapeutic lens. So, that's just one example of of how this goes. I've got two more for you. Um, another example uh from a recent uh interview that I was able to facilitate with a customer was really channeling in you know why Accelerant Research is putting these these series together of you know being in a time of COVID and having a lot of these things change for us um wanting to connect and so one thing that we wanted to learn was how has driving changed since COVID and here um we're using a CBT approach in our question phrasing um cognitive behavioral therapy or CB EBT really focuses in on uh people's thought patterns and looking at prior events as they relate to current events and impact future events. Uh these are often referred to as the ABCs um or the antecedants, the behaviors and the changes or consequences that result uh after these phenomena that our customers are talking about. So here really have a CBT underlying approach with driving and how it's changed since COVID. And the customer says the amount of Instacart orders this customer uh drives for Instacart as part of the gig economy um have increased because people are looking for grocery delivery more. They don't want to go out as much. So there's been some very vulnerable households or group homes, places have had to deliver out because they can't go out themselves. And so what you see here is uh a trend of someone picking up on the fact that the gig economy uh driving behaviors may be increasing as as a result of driving as a service. Not necessarily just because these individuals are looking for more ways to increase their income and their job prospects in a time of change and and uncertainty, but also because they're fueled by some more of these altruistic goals. um you see this word choice uh looking for people are looking for something they feel vulnerable um they can't go out themselves and so that really uh highlights for us what does driving actually mean to people especially in these kinds of situations uh where they may need to stay connected and organize uh the patterns of their driving um in a way that hum could support and then finally the customer follows up later on by saying I've been driving more obviously in the grocery store parking lots as a result of these Instacart orders. And this customer starts talking about how she now has to take some extra time to make sure that she's avoiding pedestrians, shopping carts in these parking lots. And she actually makes the statement, "It's made me more cautious." So now, not only do you see maybe a change in the reasons why people are driving or at the volume or the rate that people are driving because of COVID, but even in their driver identity. Um, it's made me a more cautious driver as a result. And I think that also speaks to what we're all kind of doing in this COVID world of just reflecting on ourselves and what those uh statements that we make about ourselves really mean to us. So there's another example of some therapeutic frameworks in the interviewing style uh and how you can use codified uh frameworks within those therapeutic styles to kind of uncover some of these meanings. One last example for you from our research. Uh we did a series of uh interviews a couple of years ago and continue to unpack this theme of safety while driving. Part of that uh especially when it comes to HUM is learning about how parents and teens talk about driving. You're setting up a mental model for your user when you are or for your teen as a parent when you are starting to teach them about what driving is. What are the rules? How do you drive safely? What do you need to abide by? and also the relationship between the parent and the teen of what driving means to them. Is driving going to be something that reduces stress or increases stress in some ways. Um how do you talk about staying in touch? And how do you talk about also advocating for the teen's privacy in many instances especially when these telematic solutions uh do start to kind of thread that line of you know the teen might be experience something that is very relevant to their individual life experience and might feel a little bit big brothery for a parent to be watching their every move. How does it really play out then? And how do we make sure that we're respectful of everyone's spaces to exist? So again asking the question, what do you think about driving? Pulling from a CBT approach here of trying to understand someone's mental model. And then the teen in this conversation said, I'm excited. It's going to be nice to get to be able to go places and not have to rely on other people to get you there like my other friends. So again, using this codified uh framework, um you see that driving is independence for this teen and it's also group assimilation. I will fit in as a result of getting to drive. So, one piece there of identity. And then the parent weighs in. Well, am I excited? Yes and no. And what came out in this conversation was, I mean, well, my daughter, she's in college. She just got into a car accident on Sunday. And unexpectedly, as a researcher, I had to make some space for this parent to emotionally process what was happening for her. It was extremely painful at that time. Sunday had been just a couple days ago. Thankfully, her daughter was just fine. But the idea of your loved one being in a very scary situation is undoubted undoubtedly really painful and hard to process, especially when you're meaning to talk about something that's related, but not quite exactly that. And so that triggered something for her. Um, and it what came up there was driving as a threat. Um, now I'm thinking about my teen driver and I worry about him uh on the road, especially when I've just been primed by the situation where my other child has been uh potentially hurt or or or scared. And so kind of identifying that these moments happen in our research as well. Um we we get a lot of insights and we get a lot of uh um you know information to help guide our teams but we also have to do a lot of management in the uh in the actual session of where people are at. And so what happened here was taking a step back from the actual interview um and and just letting that conversation play out however she needed to um so that she felt comfortable either you know making the decision to stop or resume the the interview with us. So just a sneak peek in the day of a life of a researcher. Not only are your research teams, you know, gathering these insights, but they're also really making these connections with people and finding them in their everyday lives and seeing them for who they truly are. You know, it shouldn't have surprised me that my clinical psychology background was going to be the most relevant thing for our breadandbut in-depth interviews for our discovery research because as we all know, the goal of user research is yes to inform our products. Yes, to make sure that we're making better products for our users, but the first goal really is establishing that empathy for our users, getting to know them so that we can be their advocates for our teams who may not be as engaged with them just because that's the nature of their work. And so, just really bringing it back to that empathy piece um especially in times like COVID um where so much of our identities are changing. So wanted to highlight that not only does this play out in our interviewing styles but it also helps broaden our understanding of our users worlds. Um I mentioned that we did a lot of research with uh those who had been uh in crashes and understanding the crash experience given that our telematic solution come uh allows us to provide things like roadside assistance uh and also um automatic crash notifications. So from that research we were able to loop in health psychology themes. Um one graph there on the top left is the uh hanelier general adaptation syndrome and we were able to kind of map out using that framework an understanding of what the crash actually is. Never forgetting that our customers exist in systems. So their bodies in the actual moment of the crash go through an alarm phase where you're just reacting to the trauma of of being hit. You're then moving into the resistance phase where all of your resources go into trying to get you back up to a high level of arousal to ward off any other threats that could be happening in this very vulnerable time. And also making sure to maintain homeostasis for your own health. And then finally, the exhaustion phase. When your body's on alert like that and when your body is really trying to fight and resist uh any additional changes that might make you more vulnerable, your body then starts to tire out. And that's where you start to see people get very very fatigued. Um, that was really helpful for us understanding the crash in the moment and understanding where people's brains are at when they're processing all of this information. All of your cognitive resources are part of this syndrome that happens when you're triggered in this way. And so decision-making after a crash is really difficult. Um, you're still processing processes processing the things that have happened to you, but you then have to make a lot of decisions about what happens next. for that you rely on a ton of different systems. And so an understanding of systems theory within psychology and therapy is also helpful. It's not just about the individual. It's also about the people who arrive on the scene to help make sure that they're okay. It's also about those individuals families that might also arrive on the scene and help to support these crash victims. And it's also about the other organizations that might be helping them, their insurance companies, the hospitals that they go to uh to to get checked out. Um the dealerships or uh the body shops that are going to be doing the repairs on their vehicles or even you know the towing agency and and the lot that their car gets taken to if the car is totaled. You have to organize all of this information within a system. And so I bring up these different uh foundational points of health, psychology, and systems theory uh to showcase that the crash is more than just the crash. And this is a statement that we've said over and over again for our teams to help remind them um that there's a bigger system at play here. And we've identified in our interviews using some of those therapeutic interviewing skills uh to talk about all of these aspects that the crash yes all of these things are happening to your brain and your body. Um health is something that you worry about immediately. But then there's also this postc crash life of trying to organize everything. Um, one thing that came out of that research is that obviously your car is out of commission. How do I figure out how to get to work when I'm well enough to get back to work? And then also what came out of those conversations were some points of trauma for some of these customers. These customers had felt and some general population interviewees as well had felt, you know, after that crash, I never really got back on the highway. I didn't really feel like I I wanted to be in that space again. um maybe I figured out a new way to work even if it's through side streets just because being around that environment really triggered a lot of different memories about what happened uh for me at that time. And so knowing that you're going to be talking about a sensitive situation like this, clinical and and psychology therapeutic skills are really helpful in making sure that that conversation feels safe enough and and stays within the kind of uh comfortable level for uh those customers to kind of share their experiences such that we can help uh give this context to our teams. Um I want to call out uh Paul Boscher's on our team. He um we were actually having a conversation this morning and I just had to throw this statement in here. Um one of our researchers highlighted that Paul had said that researchers are the sense organ of the business. And so that's why we're talking a lot about these thinking feeling kinds of experiences. And it's not just our team that feels this, right? Um I've kind of linked a couple of different articles that have been out there. Um you see things like design like a therapist by Jerry Haymon and being a UXer. It's a lot like being a therapist by Lindsay Arnold. Um, and in the first article you see that listening skills are absolutely necessary. That user feelings lead to user needs, which is extremely important to understand for our teams. And just like Pam mentioned earlier, storytelling is the bridge. And researchers really need to be great storytellers to be able to communicate that information in a way that lands. Therapeutic skills also help with that because every case conceptualization that you're doing with someone that you meet with is that person's story. Then with Lindsay's article here, um, that being a UXer is a lot like being a therapist, you can actually pair onetoone, uh, a UX research activity like a focus group to a therapy modality kind of how we were doing in the interview uh, breakdown earlier. So that could be like a family therapy or group therapy session where you're having to facilitate conversations, understand those personal motivations and understand interpersonal dynamics and how they affect the conversation that arises as a result. Um, I'll skip down to design sessions. Uh, that of uh often relates to things that we do in uh creative outlets. Um, oftentimes when we're working with children, um, they don't have the vocabulary to be able to express what's going on um, with their thinking or what they're what they're feeling. And so with design sessions, you know, participatory design sessions or prototype testing and concept sessions, um it is a very creative outlet that helps map what's going on in your brain onto the page or or onto the screen. So, a lot of crossover here and a growing kind of uh trend uh in people calling out this connection between UX and particularly UX research as well as uh uh psychologically um significant uh theories. So, I've talked a little bit about the importance and the relevance of my clinical experience and you know generally clinical experiences for the way that we conduct our research. Um, I've also titled this talk of having five fundamentals of these in-depth interviews. Um, so we'll go through these five fundamentals and it really focuses in on just the basics of setting up a great research session and and running a great interview. When we go through these, I just want to highlight some psychology terms that come up uh and and describe why these things are so successful in in forming a connection with someone uh especially quickly um as you're doing with these kinds of interviews. So Bri mentioned rapport um in in her presentation and you know just kind of highlighting that that's also a very important thing for therapeutic uh connections and and interviewing connections as well. This shared general understanding um that comes from a French term raort to bring back or to return. Um so having an establishing a great rapport with someone that you're interviewing is absolutely necessary um for them to feel comfortable enough to share sometimes difficult topics. There's also this concept of unconditional positive regard and this comes from Carl Rogers and humanistic theor uh theory and therapy oftentimes called Rogerian therapy. This is unconditional acceptance and support of a person regardless of what they say or do. And this relates to UX in the sense that whatever the user is experiencing is valid even if that's not how the product actually works or if something someone's using or or thinking of a feature in the quote unquote wrong way. maybe getting some details about that. It really kind of doesn't matter uh what objectively is is going on in the solution or in the product. It's really about what that user's experiencing. And so practicing unconditional positive regard is absolutely vital uh to getting information that is uh going to help you understand a user's mental model. Finally, there's this concept of the therapeutic alliance, which is a cooperative working relationship. This can be between a therapist and client. That's clear. Uh but it's also between the researcher and the customer. You're working together to be able to uncover these insights as well as the researcher and the cross functional team. We call them CFTs uh that they're working with. This could include devs, product uh product managers and product owners, um senior leadership who are all coming together uh to to really unpack these problems. As long as you, you know, foster a cooperative working relationship, uh, then you're able to have some of the hard discussions, uh, that might help uncover additional insights as well as just foster team unity. Now, I bring this up in this context because these three things come up time and time again in psychology as being the determining factors of whether or not therapy is successful. And I think that there's a parallel between those three things. Being successful in therapy, um, regardless of the modality or regardless of the patient population, and being successful in uncovering user insights, making it feel as if your user, uh, is well understood. Um, making it feel like, uh, the user feels like you know them. Uh, making it feel like your team knows who exactly who they're designing for. And so you'll see little hashtags in the next couple of slides of how I call out these terms coming to light in the five fundamentals of setting up a great in-depth interview. So let's go through them step by step. A lot of this might seem uh pretty basic and fundamental. You may already know this, but just wanting to bring it back to to those basics to to do a little bit of investigation here. So the first fundamental is creating the discuss discussion guide with your team. Oftentimes we see research functions all over our entire field where you might get a research request be expected to kind of go away work on the questions and then come back uh with the research uh after it's completed. But we have found as a team and I'm sure many of you have found uh that the collaborative approach really works best. Uh not only does this help make sure that everybody is on the same page, but it brings to light things that your stakeholders, your fellow cross functional teammates uh might not know about the research process as well as what they might not know about what research you're leveraging to navigate this process from other teams. So it helps educate the rest of the team on what information is at your disposal. It helps bring to light the process that is needed for research. All of the planning, all of the resources, the kind of bandwidth that you need to be able to see research through as well as get stakeholder buy in on whether this is the right direction or not uh for the research. This also helps you templatize your approach. So if you create this discussion guide with your team and use generally the same templates uh throughout your process uh this helps you make sure that you're adhering to best research practices checking those biases in your quest in your questions uh checking to make sure that uh you aren't asking leading questions um as well as set some standardization which helps level set those expectations for you and your team. Um oftentimes we talk about this phenomenon of what is the question behind the question. we as researchers have to translate our tech speak or our work speak into user speak. Uh so this is really helping us to set expectations for what you're going to get out of the research and how we're going to translate and back translate that information if the team feels like they're not getting it directly from the user. And finally the discussion guide is just that a guide. Um so really communicating to your team that these are the points that I'm going to try to hit. These are the questions that we've written. But if I'm in the session and something else comes up that is highly relevant, um don't be afraid if I stray from that just for a moment. Uh because I might be able to gain additional insights from following where the conversation naturally goes. So all of these really fall under that therapeutic alliance. It's really getting unity on what is the goal for the research. Let's start from the very beginning with understanding this research brief and discussion guide. And that helps you bring everybody along and hopefully also get them involved in more and more research functions. Moving on to the second step. This is establishing rapport with your user. So you guys are all familiar with this. Spending a few minutes at the beginning of your session introducing yourself and getting acquainted. Uh, and you know, not so much worrying about any kind of icebreaker activity or any specific question that gets you there, but just really focusing on having a good conversation, making your user feel at ease. You then have to establish trust by explaining your role and walking through every single step that your user is going to experience in that time frame. Um, it's surprising. You might not think to leave uh things that are seemingly trivial in that discussion, but oftentimes that's what users have questions about. Um I'm thinking about uh the incentive process that we uh use when we're working with customers. Um walking through, okay, well, here's how that incentive gets processed so that you are um you know, clearly and and and rightly so um uh uh uh rewarded for the time that you've spent with us today. So no matter how trivial that process might be, really just walking the walking the customer and walking the user through that. I would say for researchers, don't be afraid to be authentic in the room. Uh there's a bunch of different styles out there, but I think that being authentic, especially in the, you know, if we're if we're bringing this back to psychology roots and and therapeutic roots, uh it establishes that that trust as well. Um you know, the person in front of you is human, uh when you have those authentic reactions. So, I think it's helpful to actually reflect on some surprising emotions or thoughts and even check in with the user for understanding. In the case that you do ask a leading question either by accident or because you're in real time trying to figure out a way to phrase something, um you can always check in with the user to say, "Have I got that right? Am I am I getting it wrong?" Um and so being authentic in that way is really helpful in establishing that connection. And then finally, saving time at the end to summarize the session. This gives you the ability to make sure that you've covered all your bases. You've done everything that you've needed to do. Uh but also gives the user an opportunity to bring in more points of clarification. Um gives them some control in in the session as well to say well and then here's how I would like to wrap up as well. Most importantly, that summary helps you transition out of the interview space. It really helps you treat that as uh that time boxed session and you know help you maneuver out of what ra like what uh parameters you've set up when you've introduced everything that you're going to be doing and bring them back into their everyday lives. So that's establishing rapport with your user. The third would be be present for your user. So, this is just, you know, advocating for avoiding sticking to a script. Uh, that can often feel cold or trying to answer every single one of your team's questions in that session. That's just always going to be impossible. You can kind of follow and and find what those major themes are, and you'll get the answers that you're looking for as a result of great conversation. And that's why that second bullet says, treat that session like a simple conversation and work more like an investigator rather than a researcher. So, I want to call out Babs Juwel here who is a researcher on our global team and and has worked very closely with our teams. Um, she's so fantastic at being present and having that great conversation. Um, you know, it's kind of maybe controversial to say that it's a little bit product agnostic whenever you go into an interview like that because you're trying to understand your user, but Babs' background and being able to gather context quickly and really showcase that even through her photojournalism skills. Um, to be able to kind of highlight this is the context that the user is in. Let's take a step back for a second and just respect that and and highlight that. So being present in the moment and kind of having this meta awareness of what you're trying to do in that session also helps. It also comes from a therapeutic background. Next one is the fourth one. Delegate tasks to your team. You've just seen a ton of different things that the researcher is thinking about all at once. And so we need teams to help support us for a lot of these research ops kinds of functions. So trying to remember every single thing especially when you have all of these different steps uh can can really weigh on your cognitive load. Um we've encouraged researchers to uh delegate things like greeting the customer if you're doing an in-person interview or setting up the session in the system uh if you're doing a remote interview regardless of what platform that you're using. Having that be something delegated out to someone else to worry about and make sure that everything's taken care of. Obviously, we always want people to be in on sessions taking notes so that we get as many different viewpoints as possible. We delegate someone to make sure that something's recording to make sure that we have that for later on. Uh the incentive provider and preparer, that person is always uh uh someone that can help make sure that you're closing all your all your loops there. And then the debrief facilitator. This one's an interesting one because oftentimes we have the researcher lead that debrief. Uh, but I think it is also helpful to have someone else lead that so that the researcher can weigh in and start to process what they caught in real time too. And this is again part of that therapeutic alliance piece of making sure that the team really knows how to run the room together. Finally, debrief with your team. So this should happen immediately after the interview while everything's still fresh. And it doesn't have to take long. It can be a five minute chat that you set up at the end or it can be a half hour, an hourong discussion, whatever works best for you and your team. And the goal here is to see what resonated with the team. What was most impactful in the moment that you just shared, what was interesting, what was exactly what you thought it was going to be, what was surprising. Um, and this not only helps you check in with your team and work toward that therapeutic alliance, but it also helps the researchers start to put together that topline level analysis, uh, gathering all of their re real-time analysis and documenting that so that they can begin the process of going through the data at a deeper level. Um, while also providing that first interpretation so that the team is caught up and up to date on all of that research that just happened. So really make sure that that is part of the process as well. Um, and I say that too because, and I'm I'm guilty of this, oftentimes we have research sessions back to back to back and we never get a chance to actually have a conversation about what just happened. Things get muddled, things get lost. So, really respecting the time that it takes to just kind of close out uh for that session. This isn't one of the listed uh fundamentals, but it's I think it goes without saying, don't forget to celebrate along the way, too. And I want to call out Michael Snell on our team. He has such an attitude of gratitude. He is so uh thankful and always embeds that into his research as well with his customers and with his teams. Um really respecting that your users and your teams could have done literally anything else with their time, but they chose to spend an hour of their time or whatever that time frame is with you. And so making sure to thank your user, invite them to join you for more sessions, especially if they were really um you know found it rewarding to provide that kind of feedback. And I say that too, not just because, you know, it fosters great connections, but it also helps you foster long-term connections with your customers. Um, if you're like us and you do a lot of top of the funnel discovery kind of research, exploratory kinds of research, um, you're going to need a panel to come back to, a trusted customer panel to come back to to see things as you iterate along the way and how they grow. um are these things still resonating true for those customers and what changes are they experiencing on their end that help you understand how things pan out long term. This was vital for the the crash response research um and vital for a lot of our personas and segmentation work and that's gratitude for the customer largely but also gratitude for the teams. Celebrating teams uh wins along the way especially when projects span bigger lengths of time is really motivating for our teams. Um, it's particularly motivating for our research teams, especially if you're at that top of the funnel research, because a lot of our insights are uncovered maybe a year or two years or in my case in three years um, ahead of time uh, before they actually see their way into the product again because we are in that exploratory space. So, if you're ever doing that kind of work, remembering to celebrate your wins along the way and just be grateful and thankful for the kinds of conversations you've been able to have. So, that's pretty much it. talking about how, you know, being able to leverage therapeutic techniques to frame the way that you ask questions all the way to how you run your team. Uh it has been very powerful and uplifting for me and uh really grateful that I get to work with a team that is so open and so willing to engage in these kinds of conversations. Truly finds um this process really enjoyable. We're a curious bunch. We're just a bunch of nerds that like to ask a bunch of questions and get to learn uh about people as we go in our everyday lives. Um, and I really respect the value that uh Pam brought up in her hiring talk of really seeing that this skill set can be leveraged all the way up to senior leadership all the way up to when you talk about vision statements, mission statements, and value propositions because this is the meaty uh part of your information that you're gathering. This is where that value comes from. from one interview where one person is talking about what they will or will not spend money on all the way to whether or not they're going to continue to engage with you and your product. Um, so invest in your research teams. Give them the space and breathe to be able to work through the process that needs to happen. Trust that their expertise gives them the framework to be able to do that and sit back and enjoy these stories that we're bringing to you. Um, we enjoy bringing them to you as well. So that's pretty much it. Uh if you want more information about me and my team, you can go to my website. There's also a Medium article that summarizes these five fundamentals. Um and I can share this deck out. Um and kind of transitioning to if there are any questions. Well, thank you so much, Cheryl. That was a great way to wrap up the day. Um I know I learned a lot of information during that session. So, I just wanted to say thanks for that. just to take a note from your presentation and celebrate you and for taking a time out of your day to be here with us and to provide us with, you know, some some good information. Um, I don't have any questions that I can see. Oh, spoke too soon. Okay. U Maggie said she would love to get the deck. So, um, Maggie, if you could reach out to Cheryl after, I'm sure she'd be happy to provide that for you. Um, Cheryl, do you have your email address um somewhere that we could maybe share it with everybody? Maybe LinkedIn. Do you have a preference? Absolutely. Yeah, LinkedIn works. I'll also put it on my site if anyone wants to download it. Okay. So, Maggie, hopefully you you heard that answer and can connect after. Um, but if anyone else has any questions, uh, either send them in right this second or follow up with Cheryl um, after this presentation. Oh, and okay, Anita Hunter also would like your deck. Okay, so like I said, just just follow up with Cheryl on um LinkedIn or on her site and uh she will send that over to you. All right, well um that wraps up the October 2020 uh virtual insights uh conference. So, thank you so much for joining us, Cheryl, and everyone who attended uh any of the sessions. So, uh, just be on the lookout for the uploads after. Um, I think that Bill will be sharing them, um, maybe via LinkedIn or email. So, just we'll we'll, uh, have all of the sessions uploaded so people can go back and watch if you have not, um, seen all of them and you're interested in any of them. So, yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much. Uh, happy Friday. So, hopefully everybody has a great weekend. Thank you so much. Bye. Have a good one.