In this post, we are going through the process of forming insights from the themes identified from your usability study. You might want to check out the article on Identitying Patterns and Themes before this article. Before getting into the steps, it is a good idea to take a look at the qualities of strong insights.

Qaulities of strong insigths

There are five qualities of strong insights that detrive from the usuablity study.

First, strong insights are grounded in real data. It is grounded based on the observation during the study and not on how you felt. Insights are applied to multiple study participants instead of just one. For instance, four out of five participants find that navigating through menu and items need to click a few extra back buttons. Our insight might be, users want a less obvious way to view items in the menu without having to tap the back button.

Second, strong insights need to answer the research questions you listed in your research plan. You want to tie your insight to the research questions to help people understand why the insight matters. For example, the research questions might how long would users like to view items in the menu? Would they like it to automatically show it under their previous order? Would adjusting previous matter? Our insight should reflect the answer to these questions.

Third, strong insights are easy to understand. Keep in mind that your stakeholders might not have been involved in the planning of your study, but you still want them to understand your insights. Use simple language that doesn’t require detailed knowledge of the study. For example, on mobile device, older users prefer bigger fonts and pictures to texts to get information before ordering.

Fourth, strong insights increase empathy for the user experience. Empathy increases the team’s enagagement because they put themselves in the user’s shoes. That extra level of commitment can fuel their enthusiasm to improve the product. We can all imagine a time when we didn’t know that we are going to be charged for a purchase. In this case, one of my participant is the elderly who is not a tech savvy person. Her account has been hacked several times before. This experience holds her back from sign up for mobile order till now.

Finally, strong insights inspire direct action. An insight that states, “The donut order app is useful” doesn’t suggest an action. Rather “users want be able to nagivate through each item and menu easily with less click,” tells what nagivation means to user and how we can accomodate such action. The most valuable insights include suggestions for putting a solution into action.

Now that you know about the qualities of insights, it is time to look the step by step process.

Step 1: Getting your document ready to go

The similiar step from Identitying Patterns and Themes activity. You need a header lable for Insight Identification then follow by your case study, although this might be different from companies to companies and preferences. Then list out the number of insight and each with the following format.

Step 2: Consolidate the themes you discovered

Have you document on themes from the previous phase. Then transfer those themes over to the insight identification document to collect and organize insights.

Step 3: Derive actionable insights from your themes

Reviewing your themes, think about what the actionable insight is. Fill-in your insight identification document with the insights you’ve derived from the themes you’ve identified. For example, in my donut order app theme is that users find themselve need to tap the back buttons serveral time to go back to the main menu. Our insight is that user should be view item within the menu without having to navigate back and forth. We put in the document as below.

When creating insights don’t for get the five qualities insights, so that your insights are strong and convincing to the next phase or iteration.

Step 4: Reflect and repeat

Going back to your own insight with the five qualities insights in your mind can help you become better at it. Remember it takes practice to nail it and well you know can do it.

Good Luck!