Generative Research Strategy
Opening the Communication Line to TxGIO's User Base
Overview
As the solo UX/UI designer on the Design, Innovation, and Marketing Team at TxGIO, I led design and research initiatives to enhance data accessibility for the state of Texas and improve their digital presence in the GIS community. By taking a product strategy approach to a new application idea, I was able to establish clear user needs and divert time and resources to an existing product with up-and-coming features and massive potential.
Role
Timeline
2 months
Team
UX Researcher (me), Project Manager, Backend developer
Methods
Qualitative field studies, customer journey mapping, card sorting, affinity mapping
Discovery
Background
The Texas Geographic Information Office (TxGIO) stands at the forefront of geospatial technology and data accessibility, serving as the primary data warehouse for the state of Texas. Focused on innovation, the office not only curates essential geographic data but also actively develops applications, websites, and data collection efforts to enhance accessibility to the wealth of data Texas has.
Having never conducted generative user research for a TxGIO project, an idea for a new application evolved into an opportunity to create a research process that allowed us to gain a deeper understanding and empathize with our users for the first time. There was little clarity on what peoples’ day-to-day were like, how people are viewing and using spatial data, and any goals or pain points they actually had in their daily workflow.
Discovery Workshop
At the beginning of the project, we held a discovery workshop with the project team and upper management to hear everyone's assumptions of user interactions, needs, and pain points. Based on these assumptions, the project team worked together to come up with a broad list of potential users. The design team took that list and defined it into a prioritized audience list to use as a guide for user interviews.
A big assumption that came out of this workshop was that non-GIS people, anyone from a rancher to a marketing specialist, are in need of a spatial viewer application to help them view spatial data because of current tool and licensing limitations.
Audience List (High to Low Priority)
- Private sector business analyst (not a GIS power user or GIS professional)
- Pubic/Non-profit sector business analyst (not a GIS power user or GIS professional)
- Ranch Owner
- Decision maker/Decision maker staff support personnel
- Engineering firm personnel
- Real Estate personnel
- Educator
- Journalist, Marketing, or Communications personnel
- Groundwater Conservation District personnel
- Law firm personnel
- Law enforcement personnel
- GIS power user
- GIS professional
Interview Solicitation
I reached out to different resources throughout the agency to get recommendations for user interviews based on our audience list. TxGIO has multiple avenues of communication with their audience with customer database-type resources, but they've never been used to reach out to people for feedback.
This different form of communication, where we're not giving information but asking for it, was a new concept for our user base and a difficult endeavor in and of itself. The project timeline got pushed as I struggled to set up the minimum 5interviews based on our project’s audience list. In order to move forward, I resorted to allowing more "low-priority" users on our audience list to participate in the interviews.
💡 Insight
The first pivotal moment in this project was that the targeted audience was not our usual user base. Our stakeholders wanted to hear from non-GIS people who interact with spatial data, but the majority of our user base were the opposite. We had an opportunity to gain valuable feedback, but it wouldn’t be coming from the niche corner of our community as we intended.
Participant Pool
5 Participants from Texas
60% Female and 40% Male
Between 30-50 years old
60% GIS users and 40% non-GIS users
Research Plan
Before the interviews, I met with the project team multiple times to create a collaborative research plan. Including the team during the planning phase ensured everyone was on board and got their questions answered.
For some quantitative feedback, we came up with a card sorting activity to include at the end of interviews to gauge the relevance and knowledge of popular TxGIO datasets and maps. I collected reports of downloaded data from the TxGIO DataHub over a 24 month period and filtered it down to the average top 15 datasets and maps to come up with the cards.
Qualitative Field Studies
Each interview was 60 minutes long at the participant’s work office. I facilitated each of the sessions and had a combination of other designers and developers sitting in to help with note taking. We came up with a journey mapping activity in the research plan, but in the moment of the interviews I found the activity to be limiting the depth of the participants’ answers.
The intention of our generative research was to understand the day-to-day of our participants and how they interact with spatial data. I let the journey mapping fail a bit by taking a backseat and allowed the participants to go a little more into detail about their experiences. I allowed them to screen share (which was strangely decided against during the research planning to limit derailing the journey mapping exercise. oops, pulling the ux trump card!) and I created an environment for them open up about some frustrations as well as show off some new applications they’re excited about.
💡 Insight
I had a huge reality check after my first interview. Luckily I had another designer with me, and we both agreed that we got some valuable information from the interview. But I couldn’t help but feel like a lot of the data was very surface level. I think I was projecting the idea of the solution our stakeholders originally presented by inadvertently looking for data to support the idea. For the remainder of the interviews, I listened to hear, not to solve.
Defining the Problem
Synthesis Workshop
I held a synthesis workshop and used affinity mapping to organize quotes and large amounts of qualitative data into smaller groups, behaviors, sentiments, and themes.This led to foundational insights about user needs and unmet expectations when interacting with spatial data, and whether a customized spatial viewer will solve those needs.
💡 Insight
I intended to hold multiple workshops to get help from the team during synthesis, but conflicting schedules and end-of-the-year holidays left me solo during the synthesis process. This wasextremely difficult. I wouldn’t recommend large-scale affinity mapping to solo designers/researchers without some outside help. How I overcame this could be it’s own case study!
Insights Database & Research Summary
I created an Airtable database with a full list of participant quotes with tags from the affinity mapping synthesis for anyone to refer back to. Some valuable data came out of the interviews that should be utilized in future projects, so I added extra tags to highlight areas of opportunity for other TxGIO applications and teams.
Next Steps
The areas of opportunity that came up during research were vastly different than the teams’ assumptions. In order to move forward in an impactful way, we had to let goof our assumptions and focus on what our users were saying. Instead of creating a new product, we decided to focus on an existing product that came up a lot during interviews. Our next steps are to ideate on ways that product could be improved based on research data.
Lessons Learned
Timing. Having a project end during the holiday season was difficult, and I ended up doing some activities solo that were better suited for a team environment. This project was a good learning experience on handling large amounts of qualitative data as a solo researcher, and I have a better perspective of when and how to include different members of my project team during the process.
