Accessible Web Development Services

16 User Interviews & Contextual Enquiry

The outputs from user interviews and contextual enquiry studies are specifically designed to form the foundation of your entire website strategy. Planning your website strategy around your users' goals and needs, as identified in the user interviews, has the following benefits:

• Your website will achieve your business goals both in the short- and long-term
• Users will easily be able to (and want to) achieve your goals for them
• Key stakeholders will better understand your users so will make better decisions

Deliverables from user interviews & contextual enquiry

After the user interviews and contextual enquiry study we'll have a full understanding of your users' precise needs and goals. We can then help you develop a comprehensive strategy for your website based around the following key deliverables:

• Personas (usually 2-6 in total)

Each persona is a fictional character representing one particular group of users. They're created after rigorously analysing and categorising the data from the user interviews.

• Features matrix

A features matrix presents a list of proposed new content and functionality for the site. All ideas for content and functionality are based solely around fulfilling users’ needs and achieving your business goals.

• Report & presentation

We'll produce a summary report, highlighting the process that we went through and the main findings from the user research. We'll also present these findings to you, as well as introducing the personas and explaining the features matrix.

Methodology for user interviews & contextual enquiry

• Stakeholder interviews

The research process usually begins with us running interviews with key internal stakeholders, in order to:

• Gain an initial understanding of your users and their needs
• Find out about any existing customer research
• Understand your business objectives (both for the organisation and for the website itself)
• Learn about the proposed strategy and plans for the new website

We may also run a survey on your website to uncover exactly who's using the site and what their goals are.

• User interviews

We'll conduct in-depth interviews with up to 20 typical website users, based on the user groups initially identified by the stakeholder interviews. User interviews usually include ad hoc usability testing to see first-hand how users go about completing tasks on yours and competitor’s sites.

The aim of this user research phase is to fully identify key user groups and discover:

• What the website needs to do so they achieve your business goals
• Their goals, needs, behaviour, attitudes and motivations
• What kind of functionality they would realistically use
• Exactly how they go about completing key tasks on the website

The user interviews will allow you to develop a website strategy whereby all user groups can most effectively achieve your goals for them.

• Contextual enquiry

Interviews may be carried out in situ at user’s home or work, in a contextual enquiry format. This can be a very powerful user research technique as we can observe users carrying out tasks in their natural environment. We may also have users keep a diary of their activities for a period before the interview.