As a UX architect (and manager), one of my favorite things I get to do is work with product owners and managers, to help inform their roadmap decisions. As a user advocate, I bring guidance and insights around proposed features. Which ones will improve people’s lives? What features may be “nice to have” function never adopted or used. The primary way I do that is through user research – be it interviews, workshops, or surveys.
Personally, I think the best way to inform these type of conversations and decisions is through longitudinal UX research. What’s that, you may ask? Well, here’s a very good description:
A longitudinal study is a type of correlational research study that involves looking at variables over an extended period of time. This research can take place over a period of weeks, months, or even years. Longitudinal testing can show you how users’ attitudes about your product evolve over time. After you collect the data, you can map users’ journeys, and tie attitude changes to circumstances both inside and outside of the software application.
Verywellmind.com
When I discuss longitudinal research with folks (especially those who hold the purse strings) they get concerned about the level of time and effort that goes into such work. I always emphasize that it does not need to be “continuous” research and need not take months, or even weeks. Doing regular “check-ins” with a small group of users will allow you to understand what is “top of mind” when it comes to pain points and opportunity areas that can be looked at. Such effort need not take more than a few days of engagement with your research subjects.
The core goals of longitudinal research is fairly straightforward:
- When and how often users use your product over time? Do they incorporate it into their daily or weekly habits?
- How often do users use infrequently-used features? When and how often? Are there usability problems exposed by infrequent use?
- Why do users stop using a particular feature? (e.g., Do they forget about it? Do they find the function useless or frustrating?)
The initial phase of any longitudinal research is around “baseline definition.” Who are the users? How do they work? What they need from the products they use? What needs may be unmet? There are varying methods available to do this research, from interviews and workshops, to focus groups to surveys. This phase is primarily about understanding user’s “mental model” and workflows.
The next phase I like to do is to explore product usage and is all about assessing the products the users engage with on a regular basis. If they use products my company has put out, then that is the core focus of our research. If we are developing a net new product, then we use this time to explore competing products as well as understand what features we need to emphasize in our product and design work.
(This phase is repeated on a consistent basis, preferably with the same research subjects you have engaged with previously).
Key things we look at in this effort are:
- What features or functions of the products they use are critical to their work?
- What needs are unmet?
- What products do they use all the time?
- What products are only used sporadically?
- What product features are essential, and what are unimportant?
- How does the products they use support their work?
After every one of these phases (we “redo” this every few weeks or months) we have a retrospective, very similar to the ceremony in the agile SDLC. This retrospective is not just about what went well and what could have gone better with the research, but focused on understanding how the research panel’s “baseline” has changed since the previous research cycle. How has users workflows changed? What technology impacts have occurred? Answering these quests allow us to have “up to date” understanding of what users need from our products.
So there you have it, a high-level look at the process and value of longitudinal UX research. I hope it encourages you to start such a program, in partnership with your peers in product management. Trust me, it’s worth it.