How to Collaborate with Stakeholders in UX Research

by Susan Farrell

Introduction

This article focuses on the need for involving users in user research projects and the importance of collaborating with the stakeholders.

UX-U = X, highlights the importance of users in the user experience field, without the users it becomes “X” which means “do not do it”.Invalid source specified. The author also emphasizes the importance of stakeholder collaboration from the start of the research until the end, which allows the team members, users and the stakeholders to be on the same page. Additionally, having more audience for the research aids in addressing more issues for the UX practitioners and also makes the stakeholders understand the efforts that go into creating the user-experience.

Collaboration- Value addition

The author talks about the importance of user research with real users from the early stages of design to avoid integration and maintenance problems. Organizational support for the UX activities can be built by elucidating its values to more people in the organization. It makes sense to me because it’s easier to attract people and gain their support if you involve them in your activities and when everyone is involved, the explanation of the process becomes a lot easier.

The author believes that the stakeholders’ involvement in the design and research will help line up with the needs of the users and customers, which will result in creating empathy for users and help in solving the problems faster. I completely agree with this because, if the stakeholders are aware of the user’s problems, it motivates them to handle and solve it as soon as possible. “Seeing nice people suffer under your design is a powerful motivator to make it right”.Invalid source specified.

The author transitions into testing, where she claims that “You don’t need to argue when you can test”. She also explains the full cost justification with an example. Spending on testing saves time and money and also helps in getting the insights of the product from the user.

Motivation to Collaboration

The author suggests nine ways to improve stakeholder’s participation in the user research.

Evangelize UX research

The author advises to convince the stakeholders by highlighting the importance of user research and also by dismissing the general thought that UX is just a time consuming quality assurance. It’s easier said than done, because it’s very difficult to change the perception of the stakeholders.

Make time and space for collaboration

The author talks about the importance of communication among the team members through chat channels and regular meetings. It’s important to have everyone in the loop so that they stay up to date with the progress of the research.

Educate everyone about the benefits of participation in UX research

"A Participative Approach to Systems Design," in the Information Systems Environment, H. Lucas, F. Land, T. Lincoln and K. Supper (eds.), North- Holland, Amsterdam, Holland, 1980, pp. 155-170. (Land, Lincon, & Supper, 1980)

The author addresses the need to convince the upper management about the advantages of stakeholder participation in the research. Generally, people get motivated by listening to others success stories. So it’s important to have a motivational story teller which will encourage others.

Align your research goals with your stakeholders’ goalsIt’s crucial to align research goals with the stakeholders’ goals. The author says it’s the best way to measure success. Stakeholders help the project in many ways and should be appreciated for their time and support.

Demonstrate utility with small pilot projects.

It’s always a good idea to start with small cases to share users’ thoughts and ideas, the author advise the same.

Make participation easy

The author suggests to schedule all the key UX activities with the stakeholders. It’s important to involve stakeholders at every stage and explain the significance of their presence.

Create accessible user-testing deliverables that reflect your audience’s interests and technical understanding

The author states the importance of sharing insights with the team members and suggests some ways to do it. It’s essential to interact with the audiences and present them with the visual data and stories. Sharing processes, prototypes and researching widely helps in better understanding of the problems.

Make UX deliverables useful for other processes within the organization

The author advises to create patterns and guides for recurring issues and also build some usability test cases for main design principles. It’s always easier to understand the context when the user stories and scenarios are well documented.

Increase the visibility for UX-research and design artifacts

It’s a great idea to display all the UX artifacts such as personas, journey maps, hi fi prototypes and user task flows in a shared environment as mentioned by the author.

Sharing the UX design artifacts develops a credibility among the audience because it allows them to understand the processes and the problems.

This article clearly explains about the different ways to motivate the stakeholders to participate in the research and also emphasizes the involvement of everyone (users, practitioners and stakeholders) in the entire UX journey, right from the beginning of writing scenarios, creating participants until the last stage.

The author also talks about engaging the stakeholders during the user interviews by explaining to them the research plans, methods and note taking processes.

Summary and Conclusion

This article is very comprehensive and the author has covered all the important points to make the stakeholders collaborate with the UX team so as to deliver a better outcome.

This article is highly informative, because it talks about the whole research process, different ways to involve people and to solve problems at the early stages. The nine points discussed above cover all the areas of UX and the ways to collaborate with the stakeholders. This would definitely be of great use to people who are interested in UX research.

Few Important Takeaways

Importance of users in the UX research.
Involvement of stakeholders helps improve the whole research experience.
Collaboration results in generating new ideas, reducing the workloads and validating the findings.
Cost justification of user testing.
Steps to make the stakeholders participate in the user research.
Sharing data and artifacts in the visible locations.
UX group activities can lead to successful concepts and designs.
Compare competitor’s products that has a good market value.

References

Land, L. F., Lincon, T., & Supper, K. (1980). A participative approach to system design. In L. F. Land, T. Lincon, & K. Supper.

Sharon, T. (2012). The UX Research Plan That Stakeholders Love. Smashing Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/01/ux-research-plan-stakeholders-love/