The hidden blessings of researching users in a pandemic

Today is my last workday of 2020. Thank goodness.

I’m writing this at my kitchen counter, still in my pajamas, with my eight-month-old daughter, Bailey, in my lap. Please excuse any typos that might result from her banging on the keyboard.

I’m fortunate that this hasn’t been my WFH set up all year, but currently, her regular daycare is closed due to a COVID exposure.

My wife, who also works from home full time, is up in our guest bedroom-turned-makeshift office on a conference call. So I’m here with a fussy child, attempting to make sense of a nonsensical year as it finally, at long last, comes to a close.

But 2020 hasn’t been all bad. There have been many opportunities to count our blessings, the birth of my daughter chief among them for me. Anyone fortunate enough to have held a steady job this past year is certainly more grateful than usual. But those of us working in the user experience research field have been uniquely positioned to reap some hidden benefits of this past year.

Here are a few:

1. Everyone knows what Zoom is now

For years, Zoom has been one of my go-to tools for interviewing users, seeing their faces, and allowing them to share their screen during usability test sessions. Previously, the following exchange is one that I’m sure is very familiar to many in my field:

Me: So I’d love to get you scheduled for a one-hour interview session. We’ll be using Zoom. Are you familiar with Zoom?

Prospective Participant: No, never heard of it.

Me: It’s a very popular online meeting application. It’ll allow you to share your video and your phone screen with me so I can watch what you’re doing on your phone.

Prospective Participant: So you’ll be able to access my phone?

Me: No, no. I’ll just see what you’re doing. And you’ll have the ability to stop it at any time. It’s very secure.

Prospective Participant: I dunno, this sounds scary, I don’t think I’m interested anymore.

Now, the conversation sounds like this:

Me: Are you familiar with Zoom?

Prospective Participant: Of course! That’s how I get to see my great grandchildren!

Not only does this ease my job in recruiting, but it also makes for better sessions. A comfortable participant will be more open and forthcoming with their feedback, which will yield more reliable qualitative data.

2. Digital experiences are even more important now

Positive digital experiences have been critical to people’s lives for years now, but perhaps never more so than right now. As more and more aspects of our lives have transitioned to online rough equivalencies, each negative experience takes on more weight.

I have personally had to coach numerous family members through horrible online registration flows in order to access COVID tests. An unsuccessful video call may mean a missed rare opportunity to connect with family or friends. A critical flaw in an ecommerce flow is not only a potential missed sale but also a negative experience with an individual’s attempt to safely recreating a holiday shopping experience. Or the successful implementation of an online ordering system could make the difference between survival and go out of business for countless small businesses living on the brink right now, not to mention the income stream for all of their employees.

Our physical health, mental health, our emotional wellbeing, and our very financial survival now hang in the balance of how well designers adhere to the principles of user-centered design. And we UXers are the guardians of those principles. No pressure.

3. Empathy is easier to access

It has been said that the most critical skill for user researchers is empathy. Depending on the product or audience in question, this empathy can be easier or more difficult to tap into. Sometimes I happen to be working on a product that I myself am a user of, or could at least imagine myself being a user of. But perhaps the projects that I find most engaging are the ones where I need to really strain my empathy muscle to get in the mind of the user.

These product-specific differences are still at play. But underlying those differences this year is a commonly shared experience and struggle. We are all enduring 2020, and while the individual personal contexts that underlie our experiences differ, the themes of grief and loss, longing and isolation persist.

Yes, this emotional weight does color our interactions with experiences, but that is not the primary reason I bring up this topic. Over the past year, this collective trauma has allowed me to connect more deeply, more genuinely, and yes, more efficiently with research participants. Previously, “rapport-building” at the beginning of a session could be brushed off with a simple, “So how’s your day going so far?” These days, my more common opening is a much more earnest, “So, tell me, how are you?” The conversation that follows tends to build an immediate bond of understanding that persists throughout the session.

4. People are excited to talk

It’s a fairly common experience in our field to encounter the research participant who is eager to get through a list of tasks or questions as quickly as possible to reach the incentive payment at the other end. And why shouldn’t they? They’re providing a service in exchange for payment. It is the job of the skilled researcher to force these participants to pause, slow down, and truly reflect, so that they may more easily access and convey their genuine responses.

This year, however, I have encountered very few such participants, and upon reflection, it stands to reason. Many of the people I’ve spoken to live alone, and even those that are blessed to reside with friends or family members still cannot escape the inevitable feeling of isolation. Multiple times this year have I been greeted not with the obligatory, “Let’s get through this,” but with a much more excited, “Hello! You’re the first person I’ve talked to all day!” As always, happier, more talkative participants yield consistently better data.

5. I’m excited to talk to people, too

This past week, the year-end rush of work caught up with me, and I found myself needing to conduct 24 one-hour sessions in a single workweek. This was by far the most sessions I have ever facilitated in such a short amount of time, and as the week approached, I was filled with dread. I took a screenshot of my completely booked schedule and texted it to friends, bathing in the shock and sympathy that I received in return.

But as the week began, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the days were not draining at all. Far from it. They were invigorating. I signed off of work with far more energy than I would have ordinarily. I relished the opportunity to spend the day meeting and engaging with a variety of people from all over the country, and soaked up the social interactions that my life had otherwise been missing.

Certainly, this year has been hard, and that hardship was true in both my personal and professional life. But as this horrendous year draws to a close and we hope and pray that something better is on the horizon, I cannot help but reflect on these hidden blessings that our shared field has afforded me. I’m looking forward to more advances in UX in 2021, but most importantly, I hope you all have a warm, safe holiday season this year, however that looks for you, and that we all continue to support each other next year as we strive for a brighter future.