Observing your end-users through user research is the best way to understand them. Blink takes understanding end-users’ needs and objectives seriously.
Understanding your users, how they use products and services and the business opportunities they present is key to a product’s success. Blink will work with you to help you answer questions such as:
Blink uses user research methods such as field studies and site visits, user surveys, contextual interviews, task and workflow analysis, ethnographic techniques, and others.
User surveys are useful for capturing opinion and preference data from a large sample, making robust statistical analysis possible. User surveys can be administered via website, e-mail, telephone, or postal mail.
Site visits to homes, offices, and other places provide insights into users’ true actions and behaviors when and where they use products. Contextual interviews involve partnering with users, who instruct the observers about how they work and use products as well as answer interview questions. These methods can help identify existing and latent product needs.
Task analysis is often an output of site visits and entails deconstructing tasks of interest into simpler, discrete components. Tasks are defined and lists are made of the steps involved to achieve task goals. Task analysis helps identify critical elements of a task, potential usability issues, and aspects of a user interface that may have been overlooked.
In a user diary or self-reporting study, users are asked to maintain a diary or journal of their interactions with a product or system. They record any significant events, observations, or problems they experience while using the system, including external factors that impact their product use. Diaries can be text- or video-based.
In retail experience studies, researchers seek to understand how consumers make decisions about their technology product purchases. Experts can be sent out to “shadow” shoppers, observe shopping behaviors, and conduct pre- or post- purchase interviews.
Conducting user research or usability testing in international markets of interest uncovers important cultural and societal variables that impact the usability and acceptance of products by their intended users.
Blink User Researchers are utilizing new digital and social media tools to gather data and feedback from individuals and research panels. New methods of collecting research artifacts such as digital photos, tweets, and mobile posts from target users of interest are adding value to our research projects, and we have developed our own innovative processes such as streaming field sessions live from remote research locations.
We had customers saying they didn’t need the help materials at all -that they could easily get their work done now without it. That was a big change from our previous design. We couldn’t be happier with the outcome of the project.