Corona virus disease or we called it COVID-19 has already spread in Indonesia. The first appearance of this virus has been discovered in March 02 2020, and has infected 2,273 today.
The company already been issued a policy to work from home since March. The aim was to prevent transmission of virus to fellow co-workers. Whole building was closed, and i just know that public transportation such as commuter line (KRL), MRT, and LRT have imposed service hours restriction from 04.00 am until 20.00 pm. This disease hit us hard, besides the casualties, many informal sectors were affected from it, as we can see many companies laid-off their workers because of their incomes decreased.
As UX Designer, my job was affected too, although it didn’t reach situation that i mentioned before. Our team habit was changed, such as work hour, how we conduct meeting and did our daily job. I usually wake up on 8 am and commute to office on 9, but now i wake up on 10 and doing daily standup with team 30 minutes later (i guess i must read again “Benefit to become morning person” article). Now we conduct meeting via Hangout, there are pros and cons doing remote meeting like this. The advantage is i can attend meeting only with ugly t-shirt that i used when sleeping. The con is sometimes connection was bad, and i can’t hear what is being said by my team.
My habit to doing daily task must adapt with this situation, especially when conduct a research. Can we conduct research in time like this?
The answer is:
Although it’s better to meet face to face with our participant, but you can get useful insights with remote research. According to recent research, i use two methods to overcome the situation.
User Interview (by phone)
Even though it’s a simple method, but it can be impactful to your work. User Interview is a method to obtain data by interviewing the participants. Use this method when you need data before do design. This data can help you to define suitable design according user needs.
Remote Usability Testing
I used this method after design activity. It just like regular usability testing, but you do it remotely. It useful to see user behaviour when use our application and to gather qualitative insight to our design.
I knew you have conducted these methods. Even though it’s simple and easy to use, you must prepare it well.