Benefits and Goals
Contextual Inquiry or UX Shadowing is a great user research method that helps to understand the as-is or status quo state of the processes that your software is trying to improve. This UX research method will question the current understanding of the stakeholders and domain experts. I find that oftentimes such stakeholders have overlap with reality, but are generally working off of assumptions that might be outdated, missing the perspectives of certain user segments, or are just outright incorrect in certain key aspects.
This research technique also works best for creating empathy and an understanding of specific industries that might be completely foreign territory to a software designer, product manager, or other technology professional. It’s also a great technique to employ for identifying business requirements, problems, and opportunities within process-driven environments, specifically for B2B or enterprise workflows.
Who to Involve in UX Shadow Sessions
The goal of this type of ethnographic UX research is to create a deep understanding and empathy with your end-users, and specifically to understand the "why" behind their existing workflows. Familiarization with their existing workflows can then lead to identifying problems, gaps, and opportunities that can be tackled through design solutions, such as new features, new copy, or a completely new product hypothesis.
How to do Contextual Inquiry Remotely
I find that UX shadow sessions are best executed after User Discovery Interviews. The user discovery interviews will identify the key types of end-users to do the shadowing sessions with and the key tasks to watch them execute. Once the key tasks are identified, a test subject can be given instructions beforehand to prepare a specific task to walk through, while sharing their entire screen on Zoom. The reason is that often there are several applications and programs that they use simultaneously, the goal is to discover their workflow, rather than just how they interact with one program. The goal is to understand how they switch from one application to another, and how they set up their desktop and work environment.
The core instruction is to tell them to prepare the materials beforehand and have them up on their screen, and that it’s a way to understand their world rather than judge their work. This might involve watching them toggle between 4 different applications on their desktop, while they Google things in the middle.
As they narrate what they're doing out loud, it's the UX Designer's job to probe with questions as points of friction come up, or to discover the whys behind the actions.
Deliverables & Outcomes of UX Shadow Sessions
The key outcome should be a document capturing their existing workflow, whether it’s on a competing software, or a combination of various tools which might also include a physical process such as sticky notes, or “hacks” such as scheduling emails to themselves. This might be accompanied by video clips of the key highlights in the screen share stitched together for better delivering the key points to stakeholders, or screenshots. The secondary output should be points of frustration within that flow. And the third output should be any opportunities as they relate to the frustration points, and how it fits into the software that the research is done for.
If you want to find out if Remote Contextual Inquiry or UX Shadow Sessions are appropriate for your organization or startup, feel free to reach out to us! Subscribe to our newsletter to keep up with our series on UX Research Roadmaps.