Out of My Brain on the 5:15: Practical User Research for the Enterprise UXer

In some ways, this talk is a simple one, designed to provide a single solution to a core problem facing all us UXers: Too many project managers, product managers, project sponsors, and so on balk at the idea of performing ANY user research.

Two key objections arise when user research is proposed:

• “Our users don’t have time to go to a focus group or a conference room and spend hours listening to someone or doing inane exercises.”
• “We can’t spend tons of project time for six months just fiddling around with talking to users…who need to be doing their jobs, by the way.”
• To cut through this barrier, I came up with the method I call “”5:15.”” Put simply, it involves asking a person to commit to answering five questions in only 15 minutes.

Almost no one can spend two hours out of their workday talking to a user experience researcher; almost everyone has 15 minutes. Even asking someone for an hour of their time seems excessive, especially in enterprise settings. However, that request for 15 minutes seems innocuous.

We’ll look at how these questions work well, how you can gain insights easily, and why you should never take NO to research plans as an answer.