Incorporating user research on live projects — Part 2

To be ready for the contextual inquiry and user interviews, the interviewer has to know which questions to ask and what topics to discuss.

It was necessary to delve into this sphere in order to become savvier, and first of all, I identified topics for further study:

What I liked a lot about Renaizant, was the constant exploring of the domain - sometimes it seemed infinite! I had joined the project when the team already had a strong knowledge base regarding delivered features (career path, grading, and banding, skill assessment, performance review), but we still had much to learn regarding upcoming features. The first big feature I was working on was the OKRs - Objectives and Key Results system of setting goals for different levels of the organization. We spent a lot of time exploring methodology (starting with John Doerr’s 'Measure What Matters'), but it is a story for another case study. The next one was the Engagement feature, which started with the idea to put the eNPS (Employee Net Promoter Score) survey in Renaizant and ended up with scaling the functionality: the ability to collect lots of other metrics (loyalty, happiness, etc.). Which also required exploring the sphere of employee engagement, surveys, and visualization of gathered metrics.

Actually, the ground we laid down while designing the Engagement feature helped a lot with the preparation stage of the Custom Dashboards/Advanced Analytics feature. We knew the direction where to search for information about data that may interest HRs and managers.

At first, I had learned about the people analytics field and became more sophisticated. Then I prepared a list of questions to discuss in the interview, but it was more like a cheat sheet because it was not a formal interview, more like a semi-formal one.

HR role

Manager role

I believe that this stage of exploring the domain is crucial for further processes. Without going deep into the theory you won’t ask the right questions - which directly affect the quality and profoundness of answers. In my case, I had to interview domain experts, which meant that we would not talk about everyday things, and my knowledge of the field needed to be profound enough to keep the conversation productive. I felt a bit nervous as it was my first study with industry experts. Previously I had conducted user interviews with an audience who was not an expert in a field we studied.

Also, I checked out our competitor’s research: explored existing solutions for dashboards and advanced analytics. We also found industry giants:

The experience of the giants could help us with learning the best practices and common patterns used for dashboards' creation. Understanding, inheriting, and adopting - we must learn from past experiences, but be open to something new.