3 lessons learned from working with a small business

By: Nikhil Shah and Fiona Doomasia

The human-centered design team at Jumping Elephants has been applying user experience research methods to many different projects over the years. For a recent UX research project with Ontario law firm and Ottawa small business, Elia Associates, we utilized two of our insight-rich approaches to inform our research: a heuristics analysis and usability testing. If you want to learn how to apply these tools effectively yourself, visit our Do-it-Yourself Tools. 

Here are 3 lessons learned from working with a small business that can help you too:

1. Good research takes time.

When first ideating ways to provide help to local businesses during COVID-19, our plan was to complete the following deliverables:

ALL WITHIN 2 BUSINESS DAYS. While it would be amazing to help one local business after the other, we quickly realized that this was overambitious. 

Each step required dedicated time, focus and energy from our client and our team. In effect, our process extended over 3 weeks, allowing for time to correspond between our client and our busy team. And, it was important to us that the client receives a polished and easy-to-read report, rather than a set of points that only we can understand. While time is of the essence, ensuring that there is enough time and focus for each component of a project (while keeping the client updated) is what creates quality deliverables for the client.

2. Keep it simple.
There were times when we noticed a gap in the understanding of UX terminology and deliverables between us and the client. Conveying information in plain language was essential to allow all stakeholders to understand the work being done and its impact on the business.

When we presented the findings and recommendations at a 1-hour virtual meeting with the client, we realized the report had a lot of detailed information and the client often felt that having other stakeholders present would have been useful. Therefore, we decided to schedule a 30-minute follow-up phone call with additional stakeholders to convey the information in a simpler way to the right people.

As we encounter more projects, we will be considering the logistics of the report and its audience in order to make sure that the report is created and presented in a personalized and concise way.

3. Don’t forget the importance of engagement with the right stakeholders and users.
The final lesson we learned was to encourage more engagement with stakeholders and the correct users. 

While all our correspondence with the client was excellent and team members on both sides were enthusiastic about the project, it may have been beneficial to include more members of the client’s team. Other stakeholders could have provided us with additional important user tasks and could have observed the usability sessions to gain empathy for their website users. 

When it comes to usability testing, finding representative users is not always easy. Working with Elia Associates meant that part of the clientele belonged to a very niche group of people: Condominium Corporations. While we did try to seek users of this group, it was difficult to find such participants in only a few weeks, echoing the notion that good research takes time. 

In the end, we were able to successfully run tests with people who represent the general population, but it would have been great for the website to gain perspective from other law-specific groups to assist with the website optimization.

Don’t stop learning!

Even though Jumping Elephants has been working with clients to improve user experience for over 10 years, the learning never ends. As a team that is constantly striving to be better, it is essential to stay open to feedback and acknowledge that there is always room for improvement!