Adapting for Remote UX Design Practices with Video Conferencing Tools and Online Digital Whiteboards : For User Interviews and Stakeholder Engagement Workshops

Abstract: Due to unprecedented circumstances brought about by a global health pandemic, User Experience (UX) design professionals have had to adapt their user research practices to keep on working. This has meant that methods such as user interviews and stakeholder engagement workshops are required to run entirely online. Previous literature has often favoured in-person settings for user interviews, claiming it produced the highest quality of the data collected and remote workshop facilitation has not been researched thoroughly. With a thematic analysis of transcripts from 4 in-depth user interviews and a naturalistic observation of a remote workshop facilitation, this study presents findings on the applied remote practices when it comes to both facilitation and preparation of remote user interviews and workshops. The results from the qualitative data analysis find that in contrast to previous literature, UX professionals do not experience lower data quality when opting for remote modes. The applied practices that contribute to that experience are acknowledging one anothers’ physical environment during initial bonding with interview subjects, spending more time for casual conversation before conducting the interview and sending out preparation documents to the interview participant to inform them about where to be located (private or work setting) and to use a desktop if they are expected to interact with online prototypes. I then unpack the applied practices of designing and facilitating remote workshops where I presents a workshop journey process constructed of different phases that UX professionals follow when designing workshop journeys. The practice of designing these workshop journeys and facilitating them online can serve as design documentation as UX professionals design for the desired experience throughout the workshop beforehand and can validate the experiences afterwards. New workshop facilitation practices have also emerged in the form of actively engaging with participants in order to gather signals that would otherwise naturally present themselves in in-person settings allowing facilitators to probe the workshop atmosphere.