Interesting stories and anecdotes from user research

I recently heard a lecture on research. These include some interesting stories and anecdotes. Share it with everyone here.

Focus group live show field

A well-known radio focus group http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/8860.html "> Understand the user needs. The host saw one of the beauty is very cautious, in order to ease the atmosphere and asked her a simple question: "May I ask what programs you regularly listen to on our radio stations." I saw the beauty as a lady-like, pondered a moment: "Blues and prose" At this time, the researchers sitting in the observation room asked the radio station manager in the next question some doubts: Have we broadcast blues and essays? "The director replied solemnly:" I guarantee personality, nearly a year did not. At the same time, I saw another handsome guy at the venue, leaned forward, eyes staring at the host, showing the answer.Most everybody to ask a question, this handsome guy immediately the first answer, and then Taking advantage of other people to answer the time, showing relief, take a break, ready for the next "rush answer."

The focus group has a tip when grouping participating users. If you are a user who is under the age of 30, men and women should be divided into different groups. Because people belong to the courtship age of 30 years of age, in the presence of the opposite sex, the behavior will be deviated, the abnormal behavior shown above is not surprising.

How many effective online questionnaires are available?

A well-known web site held friends favorite XXXX (similar to the draft activities). By collecting online users vote, the final decision. Like the diagram below, of the 400,000 votes collected, only three thousand valid samples were carefully screened. Some of the stakeholders were found hiring hackers to make "robots", filling out a questionnaire every 5 seconds and then IP-re-filling, thus repeatedly creating a large number of cheating votes.

Difficult to control sample quality is one of the drawbacks of the online questionnaire. In particular, when doing research that may yield great benefits, there are often people who think of ways to make a fake impression. The enthusiasm and activity of cheaters to participate in the survey is much higher than the average surveyed users. Therefore, when doing such research, it is safer to buy user resources in the Access Panel. The so-called Access Panel, is generally a third-party research company to maintain a "high-quality" user base. It includes people from all walks of life who, when registering, will fill out very detailed information and will be verified by the relevant staff. The Access Panel periodically sends some questionnaires to each registrant based on the information of each registrant. The system will pay the user a certain amount of money (money or gift) upon completion. Therefore, research samples from Access Panel, maintained by professionals over the long term, are more accurate than those from questionnaires that are "streaked" online.

"Mystery Customer" killer

Mystery Customer is a commonly used method of researching products and services in the hospitality, retail, and hospitality industries. Popular point that is, let researchers play as ordinary users or consumers, experience and record the entire service process, in order to assess the quality of service and identify problems. Moreover, the evaluation of "mysterious customers" usually affects the performance evaluation and promotion of the related service personnel and managers. As a result, Mystery Shopper is just as unsettled as the slack service worker's blade.

A researcher has been a "mystery shopper" at a well-known fast food restaurant. One day, he came to this fast food restaurant (non-working reasons). After he ordered Pizza, the waiter gave him a very standard promise: "Pizza is like fifteen minutes." The result was that he waited for a while and thought Pizza was on, but every time he activated the food, the waiter He said: "fast, fast." He had resorted to killer, so calmly pointing to the watch, said: "waiter, my Pizza has waited for 14 minutes and 30 seconds, and a minute later , 15 minutes and 30 seconds. "Under normal circumstances, ordinary customers urging vegetables, will only complain that they have waited for a long time, how not to serve the kind of words. But as accurate as the second, and know Pizza from the next order to serve the time can not exceed 15 minutes and 30 seconds (Code of Practice), the customer is certainly not ordinary people. So, to hear such a professional pickle, I saw the waiter just slowly that waiter suddenly hit like a chicken blood, flew into the kitchen, ran to the Pizza side to the researchers on the table, at the same time, the manager ran Come let him more than ever.

Although we often encounter perfunctory problems when doing what we call ordinary users and consumers, the "methods" mentioned above are still cautious. : P

Source: http://www.2beusable.com/interesting-case-study-of-user-research.html