Need to sort user research fast? Here are 5 helpful steps to meet your next tight deadline. The lazy person’s guide to making UXR data sorting easy.
You’re stressed and probably freaking out.
If so. Two words: frequency table.
What is a frequency table? I'm glad you asked. It's ideal when you have a small group of people, limited time, and need to derive themes, numbers, and emotional insights quickly. By the end of this tutorial, you will have created a simple frequency table that can rescue you from the despair of last-minute Slack requests.
Tutorial: Learn how to customize a frequency table to sort your User Experience Research in 5 easy steps
1. Set up your interview pages
No transcripts? You're going to need them. Your brain will thank you for avoiding the task of listening to hours of audio. Machine learning transcription services offer an affordable option for transcribing audio—don't pay more than $5 USD for a one-hour interview.
Once you have your transcripts, open a document and start building your page. For reference, I use Dropbox Paper to create my charts. Each interview page should follow this structured format:
Participant video
Participant transcript
Findings
By the time you’re finished, you should have one page per interview. Highlight the pain points using your favorite color. Finally, paste the identified pain points as findings (aim for 3 findings per page). Repeat this process until each participant's page contains 3 findings.
2. Make your table and add your first pain point
Create a 2 x 3 table. Name column 1, pain point, and column 2, frequency.
Your table should look like this:
In the example below, I’ve added my very first pain point,“phone blew up.”
3. Paste a list of all your participants and get ready to tally up your participants
Code your participants. In this example, I’m using this format: P1 (Participant 1) : (Name) — (1 or 0 to count the frequency) I’ve coded all four participants below: P1: Katie — P2: Melanie — P3: Jacob — P4: Jennie — Paste your participant list into the frequency column. Mark all the people who share a common pain point with a 1. If a participant doesn’t experience the pain point, mark 0 as a placeholder.
For example, P1: Katie—0.
If you want to prevent the tragedy of “did I already see this participant?”, don’t delete the participants with a 0 until the very final step. How to approach work on your participant list
I organize my interview scripts in one window and align my participants in the same order—so I can work down my chart like a checklist. I only close a participant doc and move to the next once I’ve extracted all the data (tally, pain points, and quotes). I don’t open participant 2 until I’m completely finished with participant 1. I rarely lose my place this way. 3. Support each participant’s experiences with a convincing quote Add supporting quotes from the linked transcript papers to the frequency column. Your page should look something like this:
P1: Katie — 1 “My phone screen loaded, and then it went bam.” P2: Melanie — 1 “So, it burned a hole in the carpet. I hate that app.” P3:Jacob — 1 “Yeah, phone is in pieces, now. “ P4:Jennie — 1 “If I’d known my app did that. I would have sued y'all.”
4. Add up the numbers to get a percentage
Count the frequency participants and write the number as a fraction (4/4) or percentage (100%) in the frequency chart. Then state your observation.
Here is my observation: 4/4 participants state that their phone blew up.
5. Observe how your participants solved the problem (workarounds)
Almost finished! Next, we’ll add a personal touch by searching for workarounds. Workarounds help designers identify exactly what users are doing in order to steer us in the direction of an intuitive concept design. To find workarounds, go through your transcript list from top to bottom. List the workaround in the same box as your pain point frequency. Here, I wrote the workaround as “how participants approach the problem.”
The following information should exist in one frequency cell. I’ve added:
Workarounds: “how participants approach the problem.”
2/4 Participants changed the CPU to work around their exploding phone. P3: Jacob— “The first time it worked, it was because I under-clocked it. I forgot this time. " P4: Jennie—Workaround: “Only 1/2 of my phone blew up because I downloaded a CPU tuner app.”
5. Add the next pain point and complete your table
Great, now you’ve got the hang of it! Repeat until you have identified every common pain point. Make sure to check your quotes for accuracy. You now have a table with both quantitative and qualitative data for your slide deck. Add your content to your slides, and you’re ready to go.
Wait — how do I present my UXR? 📚
Short on time? Arrange your presentation so that the product pain points follow your customer journey. If your UXR presentation documents the customer journey of purchasing a toy, don’t place the pain points related to the receipt on the first slide — unless you have a clear strategy for it. Stories have beginnings and ends for a reason.
It’s so much easier for you and stakeholders to follow this logic:
“This is John’s journey. I’ll explain the pain points in the order that our participants experience Shop4Toyz. First, John searches for a toy and finds the search bar doesn’t work. 4 users also face this problem. Let’s hear their experiences. Second, John adds the toy into the cart, the phone overheats from this activity and explodes. 4 users reported this same event. Here is what they have to say.”
Rather than this logic:
“John experiences explosions, check out, carts and searching pain points. Let’s examine each pain point and hear what users have to say. Check out the explosions, 4 users experience this painpoint. Here is their feedback. That’s the end of the tutorial. Save this article the next time you have to sort data in two days or share it with a friend. Good luck! ⭐️
Timelle “Elle” Thomas is a linguist, UX writer, and product designer living in Los Angeles. She enjoys learning about the art of coffee and writing.
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