This document provides guidance on conducting effective user research through facilitation techniques. It discusses 5 principles of human behavior that are important for user researchers to understand: 1) Users do not think like researchers, 2) Users lack insight into their own behaviors, 3) Past behavior predicts future behavior, 4) Behavior is context dependent, and 5) People are prone to biases. The document then offers tips for moderators to avoid biases, including observing nonverbal cues, using open-ended questions, and focusing on users' behaviors rather than feelings.

1. User research facilitation

2. Plan
• When do you use these techniques?
• What techniques am I talking about?
• Conducting effective research – what’s your
role?
• Practice and Bingo!

3. When do you use these techniques?
• When you want to find out something from
people about:
– What product or service would meet their needs?
– Whether an existing product or service meets
their needs?

4. Human-centred design process
Strategy Formulation Production Finalising Evaluate

5. What are the techniques?
A way of asking questions to make use of some fundamental principles
about human behaviour.
There are a small number of fundamental principles that (a) psychologists
know, (b) most people don't and (c) are relevant to user researchers.
Some of the most important are:
1. Your users do not think like you think.
2. Your users don't have good insight into the reasons for their behaviour.
3. The best predictor of your users' future behaviour is their past
behaviour.
4. Your users' behaviour depends on context.
5. People are prone to bias
(David Travis, Userfocus)

6. 1. YOUR USERS DO NOT THINK LIKE
YOU THINK

7. 1.People using our product don’t think
like us
• They don't value what we value – font size trumps ‘cleverness’.
• We do not see things like our users: they don’t realise how to
interact with design elements.
• We do not know what our users know: they use workflow
shortcuts, acronyms and jargon.

9. 1.People using our product don’t think
like us
• One area where this is most obvious is in users' technical skills.
– Design teams almost always overestimate the
technical competence of their users.

10. No Grandma, that’s not what I meant!

11. 2. YOUR USERS DON'T HAVE GOOD
INSIGHT INTO THE REASONS FOR THEIR
BEHAVIOUR

12. 2. Your users don't have good insight into
the reasons for their behaviour
We often don’t know why we do what we do!
We like to think that our decisions are rational and made after conscious
deliberation.
That's why it's tempting to believe participants when they tell us why they did
what they did. But people are poor at introspecting into the reasons for their
behaviour.
In reality, people want to tell a good story — a 'narrative' — of their life and
will change what they say to fit the view of who they are.
David Travis, Userfocus

13. Nisbett and Wilson's classic study
Timothy Wilson and Richard Nisbett conducted one of the best known social
psychology experiments of all time. They asked subjects to assess the quality
of hosiery.
The researchers set up a table outside a
bargain store with a sign that read,
"Consumer Evaluation Survey — Which is
the best quality?" On the table were four
pairs of ladies' stockings, labelled A, B, C
and D from left to right.
Most people (40%) preferred D, and fewest people (12%)
preferred A.

14. Nisbett and Wilson's classic study
All the pairs of stockings were identical.
The reason most people preferred D was
simply a position effect: the researchers
knew that people show a marked preference
for items on the right side of a display.
But when the researchers asked people why they preferred the stockings that
they chose, people identified an attribute of their preferred pair, such as its
superior knit, sheerness or elasticity.

15. 3. THE BEST PREDICTOR OF FUTURE
BEHAVIOUR IS PAST BEHAVIOUR

16. Humans are not good at introspection
So we need to design research that focuses on
what people do not on what they say”.
(David Travis, User Focus)

17. What this means for research
• Design tests to elicit
behaviour
– Observe current behaviour
– Ask for evidence of
behaviour
– Observe prototype use in
a realistic scenario

18. 4. YOUR USERS' BEHAVIOUR DEPENDS
ON CONTEXT

19. 4.Your users' behaviour depends on
context
Driving a train
Using an app on a device whilst
travelling by train
• Observe people in context
• Ask people to tell you what they did – like a story, so that they include the context

20. 5. PEOPLE ARE PRONE TO BIAS

21. 5. People are prone to bias -
Participant
• Acquiescence bias: Also known as “yea-saying” or the friendliness bias,
acquiescence bias occurs when a respondent demonstrates a tendency
to agree with and be positive about whatever the moderator presents.
• Social desirability bias: This bias involves respondents answering
questions in a way that they think will lead to being accepted and liked.
• Example – compliments on the colour scheme of a blue and white
wireframe
https://www.quirks.com/articles/9-types-of-research-bias-and-how-to-avoid-them

22. 5. People are prone to bias -
Participant
• Sponsor bias: When respondents know – or suspect – the sponsor of the
research, their feelings and opinions about that sponsor may bias their
answers.
• Example– doing work for the partner of a bank. The partner was one
which trained entrepreneurs. They were completely independent in their
operation. Because of the new GDPR laws we had to ask people to sign a
consent form which stated we were from a bank.
• Cue recordings of people telling us all their woes with their account, with
branch closures, with bank errors!
https://www.quirks.com/articles/9-types-of-research-bias-and-how-to-avoid-them

23. 5. People are prone to bias -
Moderator
• Confirmation bias: One of the longest-recognized and most pervasive forms of
bias in research, confirmation bias occurs when a researcher forms a
hypothesis or belief and uses respondents’ information to confirm that belief.
• Question-order bias: One question can influence answers to subsequent
questions
• Culture bias: Assumptions about motivations and influences that are based on
our cultural lens – broadly and for our immediate environment.
• Leading questions and wording bias: Elaborating on a respondent’s answer
puts words in their mouth and, while leading questions and wording aren’t
types of bias themselves, they lead to bias or are a result of bias.

24. HOW TO AVOID THESE PITFALLS

25. Roles of the moderator
It can help to think about the different ‘hats’ or
roles that you adopt as the moderator:
• Scientist
• Flight attendant
• Journalist
• Counsellor

26. Scientist
Responsibility: to avoid test bias and
record the data
• Before the session
– Recruiting the right people
– Designing appropriate questions –
based on asking about behaviour
– Questions are written in an unbiased
way
– Questions are presented in the right
order
• During the session
– Neutral questioning to avoid leading
the participant
– Observe non-verbal behaviour of self
and participant
– Recording the session

27. Flight attendant role
Responsibility: Safeguard the physical, psychological
and emotional wellbeing of the participant
People are the most important part of this way of
working.
• Before you start the session
– Take coat, show to facilities, offer a drink. Provide
reassurance and support. Obtain informed
consent.
• During the session
– Monitor for signs of stress – including non-verbal
cues
– Create ease and rapport
Set people at ease and the rest will be easier
Business or 1st class flight
attendant, not a bargain
basement budget line
where you are left to fend
for yourself.

28. Journalist role
Responsibility: find the story
During the session:
• Ask the standard journalist
questions:
– Who, what, were, when and
how
– Get the facts
• Ask open-ended questions

29. Counsellor role
Responsibility: Get under the
surface
During a session
• Your job in a session is to dig.
• Answer a question with a
question
– Why is that important to you?
– What brought that to mind?
– What do you think?
– What makes you say that?

30. Non-verbal behaviour - participant
Noticing non-verbal cues can help you decide
when to ask a follow-on question or not.
• Is the participant frowning?
– Are they confused?
• Looking up, down or to the side?
– Are they thinking?
• Are they leaning back, forward, neither?
– did they change position after you asked a
question?

31. Non-verbal behaviour - moderator
Be careful not to lead people or introduce bias
with non-verbal behaviour
- e.g. nodding for encouragement can lead
people into saying what they think you want to
hear
Your body language can set people at ease and
encourage them to speak or put them off and
shut them up

32. Example of non-verbal cues
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8LA10Tg1Os

33. EXAMPLES AND ADVICE FROM THE
INDUSTRY
Word of advice from Whitney Hess

34. Advice from Witney Hess
Ask about behaviours not feelings
– “What did you expect would happen when you…?”
and
– “What actually happened when you…?”
and then most importantly
– “What did you do next?”
That tells the whole story of what the person
actually experienced on both the inside and out.

35. Play dumb
• On a recent call, a participant said, “I upload all my photos
to Shutterfly, and then I email them to family members.”
• The easy assumption would be to imagine that she copies
the album URL in Shutterfly and pastes it into an email. But
I don’t make assumptions, so I asked, “How do you email
photos?” A seemingly dumb question coming from a techie
like me.
• Her response: “Oh, I just attach the photos I like to the
email.”
• She’s uploading the photos to a photo-sharing site, but
then she’s sending the photos as attachments via email.
Isn’t that curious? Might there be something worth
exploring there? YES!

36. Let the participant be a teacher
• “Help me understand…” and “I’ve never
done…” puts the participant into the teacher
role and you into the learner role.
• And everyone loves to teach what they know
to people who seem to know less.
• That gives you a unique opportunity to
discover their mental model, and an
opportunity to help design a product that
better adheres to it.

37. Advice from Witney Hess
• Stop yourself from offering up answers for
them to choose from, like “Where do you do
most of your shopping? Sam’s Club, Walmart,
Target?”
• They’ll grasp on to one of the options you’ve
provided and never mention the Farmer’s
Market down the road with the freshest herbs
in town.

38. Advice from Witney Hess
• Ask your question, and then shhh. Let them
answer, even if it takes a moment….

39. An interview is not a conversation
• Good ratio to aim for is 10-20% you talking
and 80-90% the participant
• 50-50 split – that’s a conversation not an
interview
Which raises an important point
- and a challenge!

40. How do we create space?
…ask a question and then

44. SRSLY...

45. Practice

46. Practice
• Examples of bad questions in an interview and
‘Bad question Bingo’ to train your ear
– Interview with Meg Ryan
– www.youtube.com/watch?v=blpq-Iwu25s&t=1s

48. What if it’s not working?
• Interview with Richard Ayoade
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjC3ycS_2js
&t=12s

49. If it’s no longer useful – stop
“Thank you, you’ve given me a great deal to
think about, in fact I don’t have any further
questions so let’s finish here.”

50. Useful phrases for probing on
behaviour
• Tell me about your experience with…
• What was that like?
• Can you explain how you…
• Can you describe what you usually do
• What worked well
• What would make that work better?

51. Useful phrases for getting back on
topic
• I appreciate you telling me that. I want to
make the most of the time we’re here so I’d
like to move on to talk about something else.
• Thank you for sharing that with me. I’d like to
refocus our conversation – can we take a look
at this…?
• That’s great. Could we move on to the next
question?

52. Summary sheet #1
1. Your users do not think like you think
– Don’t assume you know what they mean
2. Your users don't have good insight into the
reasons for their behaviour.
– Be careful how you ask ‘why’
3. The best predictor of your users' future
behaviour is their past behaviour.
– Ask what they did, when they last did etc
4. Your users' behaviour depends on context.
Ask people to describe what they were doing

53. Summary sheet #2
1. Play a flight attendant role to set people at
ease
2. Play a scientist role to avoid influencing
people
3. Play a journalist role to find the story
4. Play a counsellor role to dig beneath the
surface

54. Summary sheet #3
• Be aware of potential for bias:
– Pay attention to non-verbal cues from the participant
– Watch your own non-verbal signals
– Look out for:
• Participant just wants to agree
• Participant trying to tell you what they think you want to
hear
• Participant is giving the same answers repeatedly
• Picking out information which confirms your point of view
• Regarding everything the participant is saying as positive
after one positive comment
• Leave space – don’t fill the silence