Speeding up workshops by going fully remote
Normally, in-person workshops take up three full days – often with travel time for our team. In this case, remote workshops shortened this to just three 2-3 hour sessions. It left us plenty of time to speed up the legwork.
The challenges of user testing in niche industries
While there are pros and cons to remote workshops, the extra time was especially useful for recruiting participants for user tests. In niche industries like construction forecasting, finding the right people for a test can be long and/or expensive. We spent most of the saved time to fine-tune the panel for moderated tests of a prototype.
An interactive prototype in one day
This is a standard for us – the prototype usually takes us six hours, give or take. It involves at least two people working together on design, copy, and assets. What was different this time was the extra preparation that remote workshops allow.
Even though the core parts of the prototype come to life after the second workshop day, we were able to gather basic assets from day one. A core part of this was coming up with a fake brand for the test, which was very important here. In micro-niches, user testers are sometimes aware of the brand we’re testing so a fake brand avoids skewed results.
