Sprint Research Process

Objective is to identify a repeatable research process that the Open Forest team can implement while working in an agile product design framework. Below outlines the practices the Open Forest team will be using to ensure a human centered design approach is embedded in their product delivery.

Sprint

• Two weeks of product development work that have been identified and prioritized by the PO for the development and research team to focus on completing.

Sprint research

• Discovery research or usability testing should be identified and planned for the appropriate sprint or backlog ideally during story refinement.
• UX Designers will be driving the identification of the majority of this body of work, although other team members can create new issues/stories or spike.
• UX Designers will need to brief the product team on the proposed work, so the team is in alignment on the proposed work.

Tracking research

• A new issue/story or spike will be created on Zenhub depending on the complexity of the work, urgency to complete, and the amount of time required to complete the work.
• The PO will prioritize the issue/story once briefed by the UX team/team member of the need for the work.
• The type of spike or new issue/story will be identified on a case by case issue.

Cadence of research

• Discovery research is ongoing and can be performed during a sprint as the information will be utilized to inform a design issue/story.
• Usability testing will be a sprint or two behind after a design issue has been completed (available on Staging) in order for the design team to have a collection of high risk stories to validate with participants.

Test participants

• Comprised of internal forest service staff and external general public site visitors and known outfitters and guides.
• Sourcing for participants will be done in coordination with the PO and UX Designer (or pull from a pool list of participants)
• Participants are scheduled 1 week in advance of the testing session date and reminded one day prior to the upcoming session by UX Designer
• Ideally you would like to have 5 participants for a research or usability study to help identify patterns of pain points, needs, and usability issues.
• In the event 5 participants can’t be recruited in a timely manner for a study, UX Designers and PO will need to determine how to proceed with the limited feedback to continue the product work.
• • Consider revisiting the research timeline
• • Using proxies if participants can’t be recruited
• • Recruiting USDA colleagues
• An alternate monitoring mechanism should be identified for the story/issue once in production, ie. metrics from Google Analytics, complaints, feedback tool.
• A lead from particular Open Forest teams can voluntarily participate in a testing session

Research protocol

• Research plan should identify the general research goals, research methodology, and types of participants that will be recruited.
• Test plan includes the general research study script (purpose of the session), scenario specific test questions that participants will be asked, getting consent from participants and the wrap-up questions.
• Hypothesis-driven design work sessions should be ideally conducted on the onset of introductory issues/stories/epics with the team leads, PO, and UX Designer.

Synthesis of research

• Research plans and usability or discovery findings should all be documented on the wiki for future team access and then linked to the respective story/issue at the ending of the sprint (posted the User Research section).
• New issues should only be created on the product board from patterns and themes identified, and not just observed one offs, unless there is a known requirement gap, or the PO prioritizes it.
• Research stories in Zenhub, should include a link to the original issue/story and to provide a reader context.
• Designers may create a separate repository to store and track research ideas and learnings for their tracking.

Previous Sprint Research Processes

2019 Open Forest Special Uses Sprint Research Process