Turn UX Notes into Design Gold: The NID Method

Ziwei Wang at UXDX Community: Cultivating High-Impact UX Research Methods. Video: https://youtu.be/c2DaPVZw6t8

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

The current UX landscape

[00:00:07] Hello everyone, thank you very much for joining me today. My name is Dr Ziwei Wang and I'm a senior user researcher at the University of Southampton. If you'd like to follow along my talk or access any resources of this talk, such as the presentation website or any of my links, please scan the QR code on the screen here. The slides I'm using are also a live website. I will skip a lot of details on how to do the analysis. You can read them on the website after this talk at your own convenience.

[00:00:45] I want to start by describing the current UX landscape with two words: challenging and realistic. First we have fast-paced development cycles. Many companies have adopted rapid design sprints and short project timelines, which leave limited time for research. Second, we face tight budgets and leaner teams. Economic shifts often mean cost constraints, so when money is tight, stakeholders watch return on investment more closely than ever. And third, there are business-first expectations. Stakeholders frequently ask, how does your user research help us acquire and retain customers, or increase revenue? This just highlights their emphasis on business value above all else.

[00:01:49] Before diving into specific methods, let's acknowledge a key truth. A business is an organization aiming to generate value, usually in revenue or growth. If we as researchers focus solely on making users happy without considering the company's success, we risk becoming irrelevant. That may sound harsh, but remember, we can create mutual value for both the business and its users. By helping the organization thrive we will enable it to continue serving users in the long term. So yes, we focus on the user needs, but we also need to align with the business impact.

[00:02:36] Here is our agenda for the next 15 minutes. I will talk about bringing strategic value as a researcher and aligning our work with business goals. We'll explore how researchers can show impact and influence key decisions. We'll discuss adopting a practical mindset by integrating continuous generative research into our day-to-day practices. And finally I will introduce a streamlined approach to usability testing analysis using a practical mindset, which I'll call the NID method. Now let's dive in.

Bringing strategic value as a researcher

[00:03:16] As user researchers we need to go beyond surface insights and truly shape decisions at a strategic level. That means, first, framing research questions in terms of business metrics such as user retention, new user acquisition or revenue. We need to clearly indicate how your research question matches a project aim that links to a specific business aim, and your whole team needs to align on this.

[00:03:51] Second is integrating generative research into your day-to-day projects, rather than only doing research to serve the project work. It is possible to implement the generative research as part of your project work, and you can totally do that without affecting your team plan or the project in general. And third, speaking the language of our stakeholders, by focusing on how research outcomes solve the pressing business problems. Don't leave any chance for people to guess what your research findings mean. Overall, if you can show exactly how a suggested design or feature will retain users or boost overall conversion rates, you'll have a much more powerful impact on leadership.

Practical tips for aligning research with business goals

[00:04:50] Now I'm going to share a few practical tips to help you align research with business goals. Treat stakeholders somewhat like research participants. Understand their needs and motivations so you can deliver insights in a way they'll find compelling. You can host alignment workshops to bring product managers, marketers and subject experts together, to clarify what matters the most, and the tip I'm giving here is using weighted scoring for decision making.

[00:05:29] You need to navigate conflicting needs from your stakeholders. Different teams have different priorities, so identify which areas of overlap will bring the greatest overall impact to your project. And you want to share findings continuously. Don't wait until the end of a long project. Providing smaller ongoing updates will keep everyone engaged in the research journey. This is simple, effective, but admittedly difficult to do.

Inserting generative questions, and telling the story

[00:06:11] Now, most of our work is evaluative research like usability testing, but I encourage you to insert generative questions whenever possible. If you have an hour-long usability session but you finished your core tasks in 40 minutes, use the remaining time to dig deeper and think wider. Ask your users, what other challenges do you face, or what other features would you like to see next? Even if you only have five minutes left, asking a quick question about unmet needs can uncover brand new opportunities for your product.

[00:07:01] In our findings we often discover problems. Sometimes it is a lot of doom and gloom, but continuously sharing negatives can wear stakeholders down, so always pair a problem statement with a recommended solution. And also try storytelling. Dig beneath surface tasks. If users say they are searching for scholarship information, maybe they're really seeking financial security or a sense of accomplishment. That deeper motivation helps you design more effectively and helps stakeholders see why the solution matters.

Do the right research, and interpret it

[00:07:49] Now, do the right research. Some researchers believe their job ends with handing over raw findings, but data alone doesn't speak for itself at all. We need to interpret it and guide decisions. Without this guidance your teams might make the wrong call, overlook valuable insights, or overreact to unrepresentative outliers. For instance, if nobody grabs your free branded luggage tags at an event, maybe they just dislike the big shiny logo, not the concept of a luggage tag. Always, always dig deeper into the why.

The NID method

[00:08:36] Now, without further ado, let's dive into the NID method. This is a mindset and a framework I developed for usability testing analysis, and NID stands for notes to insight to design, no fluff in between. The core idea is to move directly from well organized notes to meaningful insights to actionable design recommendations, without the fluff of overly complicated or time consuming exercises like affinity mapping. It may sound obvious to you, like, don't we already do that? But in reality many teams waste hours on some so-called standard methods that yield generic findings like, we should improve categories. We want to really just skip the endless summaries and focus on specific issues, to save time and produce more targeted solutions. No summary, just look at the details.

Step one: notes

[00:09:47] Now let's dive into step one of the NID method, which is notes. Notes are the foundation for successful data analysis. My tips here are, first, set a standardized template so every note taker captures the data in the same way. You want to create sections for each feature or element you're testing. Next, incorporate basic quantitative measures like task success rates or user satisfaction scores, right there in your template.

[00:10:23] You can also generate visual heat maps with colorful dots marking where users clicked or struggled, to make patterns instantly visible. And finally, label different types of notes with different colors, such as red for errors, yellow for quotes, green for new ideas. All of these tips above will make analysis faster and help you see wins and losses more clearly. Like I mentioned earlier, I will not show you the specific details of the note taking, and you can read them in your own time later.

Step two: insights

[00:11:08] Step two is the insights. Before the insights generation you have taken structured notes, and now you and your team can review them by feature or element across all sessions. What you can do is read through them all by the feature or by element, along with scores or heat maps, and you will see patterns right away, because your notes are color coded and the quantitative data is right there. The information is easily digestible and you can just get it.

[00:11:48] Then you want to discuss these insights with your team and decide what's important on the spot. There aren't hundreds of random sticky notes, just a focused set of notes that tie into each feature, so everyone can literally look at the same data and it is very easy for all of you to stay aligned.

Step three: design

[00:12:14] Step three is design. Right after identifying insights you go straight into solution generation, and ideally in the same session. In the template you should have a space right under each insight where you can brainstorm how to fix that specific issue. And then, because your entire team just reviewed the notes, they understand the context and they're able to discuss the solutions. They can also help prioritize which fixes to do now, which to do next and which can wait.

[00:12:59] Your designers can leave that session knowing precisely how each solution idea came about, which user problem it addresses and why it matters. By this stage, in one session, your team has finished the analysis and made the decision on your design actions.

Presenting your findings

[00:13:25] Now I'll share with you some tips for presenting your findings in a powerful way. Show any numbers you gathered, especially if you tested competitor products as benchmarks. You want to display the heat maps to give stakeholders an instant grasp of user pain points or popular features, and the heat maps I'm talking about are the heat maps generated by your note takers in your usability testing sessions.

[00:13:57] You want to share evidence of your collaborative processes, like how the team voted on the insights and how your team decided on the solutions, and you can do that by showing your voting results. And lastly, always pair each insight with a corresponding design recommendation, so people see exactly why you are proposing a certain change.

Six takeaways

[00:14:24] I will wrap up my talk by emphasizing six key messages I would like you to take away. First is speaking the language of business. Connect your research to metrics like revenue, acquisition or retention, or simply connect your research with the shared concerns of your stakeholders. Second, small steps matter. A few generative questions, and fixes of very specific issues, these are small actions you can take that might bring big impact. And think beyond insights: user researchers can proactively suggest data informed design actions, and we should do that.

[00:15:18] The fourth takeaway is, avoid blindly following standard processes. Adapt your approach to suit your team's context and constraints. The fifth takeaway is use mixed types of data as evidence. Quick numbers can boost the credibility alongside your user stories. And the last message is act quickly. Insights lose their power if you wait too long to share or implement them.

[00:15:52] That's all my six takeaways, and thank you all for listening. I hope these ideas will inspire you to deliver practical UX research that can genuinely drive business value. If you'd like to learn more about the NID method, the step-by-step instructions to replicate the NID in your project, or if you just want to see the template, you can again scan the QR code, and you're very welcome to reach me via LinkedIn. I am very happy to take your questions now, and if we run out of time feel free to reach me after the talk as well. Thank you.

Q&A

[00:16:33] Host: Excellent, thank you very much, Ziwei. It was really interesting, a very structured, I guess, approach to going about research that gets into actions, which is always the biggest risk in research, that it sits on a shelf gathering dust instead of actually becoming implemented. As Ziwei said, if you have any questions please write them in on whatever platform you're watching this on and we'll put those questions through to Ziwei.

[00:17:06] Host: But I'm going to jump in with the first one. I'm going to start right back at the start of your presentation, because you were talking about alignment. One of the challenges that often comes up when I talk to researchers is they're often overlooked in the first place. People are like, oh no, we already know what customers want, we don't need research. And then if they aren't overlooked, it's very much just go off and do a bit of research. So when they're trying to get that alignment and trying to get that time with stakeholders to uncover the real underlying motivations, they get blocked. Has that ever happened to you, and how have you dealt with that?

[00:17:49] Ziwei: I think all of us have encountered situations like that, where you don't get to talk to the people you want at this point. Well, there are a few things that you can do. For example, if you can't talk to the stakeholders, someone in your team will be able to, and what you will need to do now is just to talk to that team member. Well, before that, you need to build a good relationship with them, prep them on why you should talk to the stakeholders, what kind of value you can have by understanding the stakeholders. Then even if they don't let you talk to the stakeholders directly, you can certainly ask your team members to ask the questions that you want to ask, and ask them to talk to the stakeholders on your behalf.

[00:18:49] Ziwei: And another thing is that sometimes you don't get to talk to exactly your first choice of stakeholders, but there's always other people you can talk to. For example, the easiest people you can reach out to is probably the designers, and those are the people you can start with. Start by just dropping a chat, can we just have a chat about 10 minutes and I'll share with you how you can turn research into actions. And gradually you build on that one by one, to gather people under your influence and use them to help you get the alignment from stakeholders.

[00:19:38] Host: Brilliant, yeah, it's a great example of just going whatever route you can. There's a question came in from Akan Kodani[?], I hope I pronounced your name right. Thank you. My current organization cut the budget for UX research and design. Do you have any recommendations for keeping the research on a small team?

[00:20:00] Ziwei: Well, one recommendation I would have is expand your reach as a researcher, like I mentioned in the talk. I've heard people telling me that it's difficult to justify the value of UX people, because it's just, what's the point of having your discovery research, why can't we just implement the decision that the CEO wants to do, for example. And my take on that would be, if people can't see your value, then it is kind of on our shoulders to show what value the researchers can do. And that's one thing that the NID method is about. You want to engage people in the next steps of the research, which is turning the insights into something tangible that you can do.

[00:20:56] Ziwei: Sometimes you can't do it on your own, sometimes you can, but maybe people are not listening to you. So you can start just by hosting small workshops or small meetings with a few people, one person, to show them how, using this method, you can see how this research, this insight, turns into this specific action we can take, that we can implement in the next week, and we will see value from that. So you're kind of expanding the role of the researcher upstream, to reaching the stakeholders, to work on the scope of the project, and downstream to work with the designers, and work as a designer or help the designers to turn your insights into the things they can do. In that way you can showcase your value more, because you're bringing more to the table rather than just gathering data.

[00:22:04] Host: Yeah, it's a great example. It's a difficult one, everybody is facing that problem, particularly now when budgets are a big cause of concern. But yeah, if you can demonstrate your value, or if you can do what you can with the limited resources you can, because in an ideal world you always have more than you ever do. We have a question from Jack. He's asked, very curious about understanding how to get a process like this standardized across the folks you have using this process. I know sometimes that can be a challenge. So the change management of getting something new adopted.

[00:22:42] Ziwei: Yeah, I've heard people telling me many times, my team don't know how to take notes, they just took notes in their own way and just send me a copy of it. And then what the researcher ends up doing is having to deal with a pile of note taking on different platforms in all kinds of formats. That would set your research back so much, because you can't get insights if your note takers are not aligned on exactly what they're trying to find from the session. So this is when you have to assert your power as a researcher, because I'm the one doing the research. Just say, do you want to get the most out of the usability testing? And if you do, I recommend you use this note taking method.

[00:23:40] Ziwei: Another thing you can do is, it is really difficult to just understand a new thing on the spot. When you prepare your note takers, both to ensure that it works well and just out of courtesy and as respect for the dedication that your teammates have to take to help you with the note taking in the way you want, you should host a one-to-one meeting with your team member, show them exactly how to do it, let them practice it, give them time in the private environment to ask you questions, challenge you. And you can then adapt your method to their needs. The template I'm showing you is just one example. You can always twist things in between to adjust and make them feel like they're heard and they're respected, and they're willing to help you to make your job easier.

[00:24:41] Ziwei: For example, the first time I delivered it, people were just so tired after the session, because I delivered a three hour session and didn't give people a break. And later on, very simple change, you can have a break every hour, and that really boosted the efficiency of the work.

[00:25:05] Host: Great. And are you advocating for just researchers learning this, or do you want everybody who's involved, so your designers, your developers, all of those people coming to these sessions and taking notes as well?

[00:25:18] Ziwei: I would recommend everyone to get involved. One thing I didn't get to touch, one tip, would be actually just everyone is a note taker. Now you have a standard template and you don't need to worry that they're not taking notes the way you want, because they followed your template, they're only writing notes on your template. The method is simple enough and everyone can do it, and they can get engaged. Especially, it is very important later on, if you want to generate action decisions that your team is all aligned with, it is better for them to be engaged from the beginning. If they had heard the users say that they want the button to be black in the sessions, then they won't object to you, they don't need you to tell them this recommendation. They will tell you in the session, so eager to say, I heard from the session that the user wants the button to be black.

[00:26:23] Host: Great. And what do you recommend then in terms of — so there's a move away, I guess, from just big upfront research to more smaller continuous research as teams continue building their products. Do you think that this approach can work in that continuous environment, and how do you maintain insights from previous ones and how do you grow that over time?

[00:26:49] Ziwei: Well, that's a really, really good question. I guess there's a balance that you need to do. A lot of the time we want to think of our research as just a big flow from the beginning to the end, in the past 20 years everything connects. But in reality that kind of big project, you will need a resourceful team for that. That's why I'm recommending this kind of approach, where instead of focusing on the big general pictures, you're making compromises by focusing on small things that you can take actions on right away.

[00:27:35] Ziwei: And with time, like I said, in the meantime, even though in your usability testing you're only focusing on specific things like changing this button, changing the layout, you inserted the generative question in the test, so that would allow you to gather, throughout time, through maybe a long time, months, a year, to gather enough data on the higher level that can inform the trend of your product. That's how you get the balance of pieces of user research insights and overall themes that would direct your product development.

[00:28:23] Host: Brilliant. That actually brings us to time, but thank you very much for sharing all about the NID method, and I hope people out there have picked up something interesting, and you have an amazing set of resources there that they can look into. So thank you very much.

[00:28:39] Ziwei: Thank you, thank you for having me.