PRO TIP: New researchers often author discussion guides with goals and objectives (great!) but the actual questions and tasks don’t align with the goals and objectives.

This morning I met with a 1:1 coaching client. She asked me to review her discussion guide. The goals were to

1. Establish how well the core sections of the platform meet the target’s expectations, or not.

2. Ascertain how well it meets their workflow needs, or not

3. Determine if the naming of the core sections is understood by the audience as intended.

4. Evaluate how easily, or not, participants can accomplish the following goals in the prototype: X, Y, and Z.

The guide itself consisted of tasks only, specifically in regard to X, Y, and Z.

There were no questions about expectations, workflow, or comprehension (objectives 1-3).

This is a problem because the guide did not include questions/activities to learn about the first three objectives. The results would have yielded a lot of feedback on the 4th objective only.

To ensure this doesn’t happen in the future I shared my Objective/Question grid approach with her. (This is actually built into our Discussion Guide template in the Ask Like A Pro user research workshop series).

The top row should include the study’s objectives. Below each objective, in a column, you write each separate question/task that relates to the objective at the top of the column.

This image shows what her grid would have looked like had she taken this approach and how helpful this approach is to evaluate if your questions/activities are in alignment, or not, with the study objectives.

It’s also very helpful to ascertain if the questions are proportional to each objective. Remember, each objective may not carry equal weight.