![\"A](\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/ux\/files\/2019\/12\/URcoozy-600x600.jpeg\")
photo: Holly Collier; A coozy gift from Gemma Petrie. Credit for the phrase goes to Leslie Reichelt at GDS<\/a>.<\/p><\/div> Let\u2019s start with Holly\u2019s perspective.<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019m an interaction designer\u200a\u2014\u200aI\u2019ve been designing apps and websites (with and without the help of user research) for over a decade now, first in agencies and then in-house at an e-commerce giant. Part of what drew me to Mozilla and the Firefox UX team a year ago was the value that Mozillians place on user research. When I learned that we had an official Usability Mentorship program on the Firefox UX team, I was really excited\u200a\u2014\u200aI had gotten a taste of helping to plan and run user research during my last gig, but I wanted to expand my skill set and to feel more confident conducting studies independently.<\/p>\n I think it\u2019s really important to make user research an ongoing part of the product design process, and I\u2019m always amazed by the insights it produces. By building up my own user research skill set, it means that I\u2019m in a better position to identify user problems for us to solve and to improve the quality of the products I work on.<\/p>\n And now onto Jennifer. She\u2019ll talk about how this all worked.<\/em><\/p>\n A little bit about me before we dive in. I\u2019m a user researcher\u200a\u2014\u200aI\u2019ve been in the industry for 6 years now, and at Mozilla on the Firefox User Research team for 3 years. I\u2019ve worked at a couple big tech companies (HP & Intel) before coming to Mozilla. Prior to that, I worked hard at internships and got a PhD in Computer Science, focused on Human Computer Interaction. I love working at Mozilla, especially with designers like Holly, who are passionate about user research informing product design!<\/p>\n At Mozilla, our research team conducts three types of research (as written by <\/em>Gemma Petrie<\/em><\/a>):<\/p>\n Like most organizations, we routinely have more designs that need usability testing than we have researchers. Gemma Petrie<\/a>, our most senior User Researcher (a Principal User Researcher), started the mentorship program as a way to address this problem in her previous role as interim Director of User Research. By spreading usability testing abilities more broadly across the Firefox UX team, we could ensure that more designs got tested and ensure that our dedicated researchers could continue to do exploratory and generative research.<\/p>\n Because all of our designers and content strategists had different levels of familiarity with usability testing, Gemma brought in an external consultant to kick-off this effort and run a usability testing workshop with the entire UX team. This workshop was recorded so it can be cross-referenced later, and so that new team members can watch it as part of their onboarding.<\/p>\n At Mozilla, a mentorship project starts somewhat informally. Designers and content strategists \u201craise their hand\u201d to show interest, and each researcher on the User Research team is a mentor. A designer gets paired with a mentor to figure out a (hopefully) low stress, low-stakes project to work on together. The designer takes the reins, and the researcher helps out along the way.<\/p>\n While we don\u2019t have a strict curriculum, after a designer shows interest, each mentorship roughly follows these steps:<\/p>\n Let\u2019s have Holly tell us about what she learned from her experience testing one of Firefox\u2019s apps.<\/em><\/p>\n We identified a product that needed usability testing: Firefox Lockwise for Android<\/a> (then called \u201cFirefox Lockbox\u201d), a new password manager app that works in conjunction with logins that are saved in the Firefox browser. It\u2019s in my team\u2019s practice area, so I thought it would be a good chance to get to know a new product, but it was also a good fit in terms of my experience with the Android platform (all of my previous involvement in user research was on mobile apps).<\/p>\n There were a lot of materials available to help me get started\u200a\u2014\u200asample protocols, decks, analysis spreadsheets. The Firefox User Research team is great about documenting and saving research artifacts<\/a>. The Lockwise team also had conducted in-person usability testing on their iPhone app the previous summer, so I had some usability questions to start with.<\/p>\n Firefox Lockbox prototype in the usertesting.com screen recorder.<\/p><\/div><\/figure>\n The process of gathering requirements, designing, piloting and revising before releasing a usability test to participants felt similar to the process of problem definition, design, prototyping and iteration we use for product design:<\/p>\n Requirements Gathering (Problem Definition): <\/em><\/strong>This particular test had many constraints and requirements. Because this was a remote, unmoderated test, and because users had to have a Firefox account with Sync enabled in order to test the Lockbox app, the protocol for the test<\/a> was pretty extensive.<\/p>\n Protocol Design (Product Design):<\/em> <\/strong>Getting high-quality test results required thinking through the test experience from the test taker\u2019s point of view while also achieving our research goals:<\/p>\n Piloting (Prototyping & Iteration):<\/em> <\/strong>Before launching the real test, we launched a prototype of the test called a \u201cpilot\u201d and watched videos of a few participants to make sure the test instructions were understood and that the test was functioning as designed. Getting out of this pilot stage was challenging because of problems we discovered and had to troubleshoot along the way:<\/p>\n The prototype wouldn’t allow the screen recorder to capture participants’ screens.<\/p><\/div>\n Once we addressed the issues with the protocol and the prototype that we uncovered during our pilot, we launched the test, and I moved on to watching participant videos and taking lots of notes (direct quotes!) that I\u2019d mine for insights later.<\/figure>\n Analyzing the test data and delivering the findings (and recommendations!) was the most intimidating part of the process for me. As a designer, I\u2019ve always looked to the research findings deck as a \u2018beacon of truth\u2019 in the design process. Now that I was running the research, I felt a lot of responsibility to deliver that same truth and guidance.<\/p>\n I worked through those feelings of intimidation by triple-checking my sources, mapping my data (including quotes) to the research questions and getting the following awesome perspective from Jennifer:<\/p>\n The distributed Firefox Lockwise team during the findings presentation.<\/p><\/div><\/figure>\n As it turned out, giving the findings presentation to the Lockwise team actually ended up being one of my favorite parts of the whole process. Telling the story was fun and inspired great conversation, and the Lockwise team really appreciated the \u201cHow might we?<\/em>\u201d format I used for the design recommendations.<\/p>\n Jennifer, take it away!<\/em><\/p>\n Helping Holly out with this project helped make tacit knowledge explicit<\/strong>. I\u2019ve done many, many usability tests. I am almost on auto-pilot when I conduct them. So it was a great exercise to actually explain the process with a co-worker and perform a needed amount of reflection on my process. Especially with Holly, who was willing to learn and asks great questions.<\/p>\n Here are some of those great questions that made me reflect on my process:<\/p>\n How do I know when the pilot phase is\u00a0over?\u00a0<\/strong>The pilot is over when the protocol \u201cworks\u201d as intended. That means there are no show-stopping bugs in the platform that prevent someone from doing the task\u200a\u2014\u200aand if there are showstoppers, adjusting the protocol. It also means that your questions have been phrased in a way that people understand. You can only determine this through observing a couple pilot participants.<\/p>\n Can I use my pilot data in the\u00a0report?\u00a0<\/strong>The academic in me says that if the protocol changes at all from the pilot to running the rest of the tests, no, you can\u2019t use the pilot data in the report. The industry researcher in me says that sure, you can include the results as long as you mark it clearly as pilot data.<\/p>\n How do I present \u2018bad news\u2019 to a team? <\/strong>Most usability tests have at least some good news. Start with that! Be clear about when you\u2019re going to deliver the bad news and come prepared with \u201cHow might we?<\/em>\u201d questions or recommendations on how to improve the experience.<\/p>\n How do I make sure I take my personal bias of how I understand this app out of the process? <\/strong>Acknowledge your bias. Know what it is going in and voice it to your mentor. Do exactly what Holly mentioned earlier and double and triple-check your results against the videos, direct quotes, and research questions. Do you still feel like you might be stretching the interpretation of a result? Check with your mentor, or anyone who\u2019s done a usability test before. Have a co-worker who isn\u2019t very close to the project review your results and recommendations before you present them to the wider team.<\/p>\n Holly, the designer & mentee says: Jennifer, the user researcher & mentor says: Thank you to Gemma Petrie, Anthony Lam, and Elisabeth Klann for reviewing this blog post. And a special thanks to Gemma Petrie for setting up the Usability Mentorship Program at Mozilla.<\/em><\/p>\n Also published on medium.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On the Firefox UX team, a human-centered design process and a \u201croll up your sleeves\u201d attitude define our collaborative approach to shipping products and features that help further our mission. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1635,"featured_media":4298,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[246,9578,9594],"tags":[440691,394789,440699,24666,625],"coauthors":[52915,52913],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/ux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4296"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/ux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/ux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/ux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1635"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/ux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/ux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/ux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/ux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/ux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/ux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4296"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/ux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Why should I, a designer, learn user research\u00a0skills?<\/h2>\n
How does the mentorship program\u00a0work?<\/h2>\n
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But how does the mentorship program really<\/em>\u00a0work?<\/h2>\n
Stand on the shoulders of\u00a0giants<\/h3>\n
![\"Firefox](\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/ux\/files\/2019\/12\/lockbox-loader.png\")
<\/h4>\n
Designing and piloting an effective test protocol feels a lot like\u2026 product design and prototyping!<\/h3>\n
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![\"Black](\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/ux\/files\/2019\/12\/black-screen-recorder.png\")
Analysis and report writing don\u2019t have to be\u00a0scary
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How did the usability testing mentorship go for\u00a0mentor?<\/h2>\n
And now, in\u00a0parting.<\/h2>\n
\nDesigners, you can do user research!<\/strong> Since completing the mentorship, I have conducted several other studies, including a usability\/concept test and an information architecture research study. It\u2019s become a regular part of my design practice, and I think the products I work on are better for it.<\/p>\n
\nUser researchers out there: you can run your own usability testing mentorship program!<\/strong>
\nIn the spirit of open source, here are some examples:<\/p>\n\n