How Prototype Testing Helps Your Product Meet User Needs

Imagine parents of young kids who have loved ones residing in different countries. How might they build connections with their extended family members across the continents?

Our client, Nine Tales, started with the question- how might we help them get connected with each other, especially for kids to interact with aunts, uncles, and grandparents?

rom this initial question, the team needed to understand: What were the actual circumstances of parents and kids and how do they interact with distant family members and friends? 

To answer those questions, we planned user interview sessions with parents and kids, to hear their storytelling experiences and what their needs are. This is all part of validating the design concept and gaining confidence to make sure the idea tackles the needs of our users, parents, and their children.

Preparation and Methods

Whenever we think about good user research, a quote I like to refer to is the following, coined by an industrial designer, Dieter Rams.

“You cannot understand good design if you do not understand people; design is made for people.”
— Dieter Rams

To properly understand parents’ thoughts and needs and to reduce gaps in the design concept, the 55 Minutes team planned the user interview sessions below:

Nine Tales Sample Visual/ Recording feature

Our team worked together with the Nine Tales team to design initial user flows and how the app would look visually, which represents the initial hypothesis of the app function — recording stories for kids with family members.

Why bring up the prototype in the early stage?

• To use it as a prop: Imagine describing your idea verbally, such as “we’d like to develop a storytelling digital product where parents can record a story and their children can listen to it.” There are many possible interpretations of how the idea would look like. However, if we show the visual of the idea, it reduces the gap in understanding how it works.

• To prioritise empathising with target users: Like the quote from Dieter Rams, the most important thing is to understand target users’ needs. At this stage, we use visual designs as a prop and a tool to communicate!

  
  

Accordingly, we designed the interview conversation structure in a way that would help us gain an understanding of their context first before listening to parents’ honest feedback on the design concept.

The interview flow:

Section A — Understand users’ context

We recruited six parents whose children were 3 to 11 years old, and who were residing in the US, Malaysia, and Singapore. At the beginning of the interview stage, we focused on understanding their background and their context with behavioural characteristics.

Some interview question samples we used:

• How do you usually spend time with your child in your free time?

• What do you do to stay connected with your children?

• Do you have family members living overseas, but stay connected? Who are they?

• How do your children interact with other family members, especially those living overseas? How about during the pandemic?

• How often do your children interact with them?

  
  

The above questions are light-hearted and easy starter questions to warm up the discussion to understand users’ context and behaviours around the topic areas.

Section B — Present low-fi prototype

The main intention is not to evaluate the prototype, rather, it is to hear their thoughts and sense if the overall design would tackle their needs and pain points around the act of storytelling with their kids and connecting kids to family members. Considering this intention and purpose, we didn’t need to limit ourselves to only talking about the prototype.

Nine Tales Visual Sample: Genre Navigation — we used the prototype to understand parents’ needs

For example, when we present the story genres list, we can ask:

• How easy or difficult is it to grasp the meaning of a genre name in the prototype? Are there any genres you feel unfamiliar with?

  
  

But when we need to understand their context we ask questions such as:

• How have the genres that your child likes to read or listen to changed over time?

• What do you hope your child learns from reading or listening to stories (at their current age?

  
  

Section C — Understand users’ needs and wants

We asked some follow-up questions based on their answers to go deeper and understand the reasons why they like or dislike the concept, and if they see themselves using the concept.

The interview question samples:

• How likely do you see yourself using this app to read/record stories to your child? Why? Any concerns?

• How likely do you see your child using this and reading a story? Why? Any concerns?

• What are other features you’d like to see or take away from the list? Why or why not?

  
  

We also use the low-fi prototype to generate other innovative ideas and discuss other possibilities in case parents would like to suggest different concepts that would also be able to address their needs.

User Research Key Findings

The main research findings from our user research with our six parents are summarised in the graphic below.

Main takeaway

It all comes down to better understanding users’ context and their needs whether you’re in the early or later stage of your design. Check if your interview questions, in the beginning, are designed in a way to neutralise your views and perspectives, and make sure to listen to where your users are coming from and how they behave.

In our case, we asked some contextual questions at the start to understand how they currently get connected with extended family members. At the same time, we designed the session in a way that we get to hear about the usability of the prototype, learn how parents and children behave in storytelling, and what expectations parents have. The prototype is used as a tool to facilitate our understanding of parents’ wants and needs.

If you’re interested in learning more about our work, you can reach out at hello@55mins.com.

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Hye Yoon is a UX researcher at 55 Minutes. She has a Bachelor’s in furniture and spatial design from Seoul, South Korea, and has a Master’s in Helsinki, Finland. Currently, she lives in Singapore, observing her surroundings from the lens of a tourist from time to time. She loves nature and goes cycling every weekend in the Northeast region of Singapore.