Everyday, we seamlessly interact with apps on our smartphones to find directions, call a friend or check our email; each one of these apps is made up of many small user interface (UI) elements that we ‘subconsciously’ navigate through to complete the task at hand. But how often do we stop and think about what these design elements mean to us? What value do they hold? What impact would it have if they changed? Our goal was to research this by prompting open conversations without over-focusing or creating bias.
Researching implicit values
This design research project was a six-week sprint composed of 20 online interviews across two countries. The aim of the project was to understand how people use specific UI elements to navigate the apps they use everyday and gather qualitative insight about what value these elements bring to people.
The UI elements we were researching were, for most people, things they use without thinking. Because of this, they tend to hold more ‘implicit’ values for people. This was an interesting challenge for us, as we wanted to balance allowing the participants to show us how they use their apps in real life while also prompting more reflective conversations about the values these general design elements hold for them. This type of open reflection about the design of the apps they use everyday was new for many of the participants, which led to fresh thoughts and interesting insights.
The value of a blind study
In addition to keeping the interviews authentic and explorative, we also conducted this project as a blind study, meaning that we did not disclose the client of the project until the end of the interview (we, of course, then asked for their final consent afterwards). This allowed the participants to speak freely about their experiences without feeling influenced by the brand.
As researchers, we also appreciate working in this way because it allows us to connect with the participants as people first, without having the client name bias the conversation. Because of this, we are able to more deeply understand the participants, their values, their habits and what these things mean for their digital identities and experiences.
blind studies allow us to connect with reserach participants as people first
Bringing in fresh insights
Through our conversations with participants, we were able to identify new user segments and themes in the data by observing people’s behaviour with the interface. Additionally, the stories of the participants validated many existing assumptions that the design team had about how people interacted with the UI through user testing they had previously done. In a way, it brought the existing findings to life by answering “why” and “how” about people’s behaviour and preferences. These fresh ideas opened up many new opportunities for the design team to explore.