Hello, wonderful person!
IterateUX’s UX Research Challenge has completed, and the teams working with me at Ugeddit have presented their results for us!
The Beginning
When first starting with the 3 teams, we had stakeholder interviews where we got to know each other, and asked questions to understand the research goals of Ugeddit and how they can help.
For team 20, one person from team 20 and I had a misunderstanding, where they thought I was a certain type of person, but everyone else took things well, and we all still made it through the Q&A and got a sense of the project
For team 19, I saw a room of happy, excited people getting into UX for the first time (if I remember all their backgrounds correctly), and we had a nice time getting to know each other and the project goals
For team 8, I was completely blown away by who was on the team: every single person was either a psychology or psychiatry PhD or about to graduate with a PhD, and one of them was even a clinical psychiatrist with (if I remember the number correctly) over 14 years of experience! Incredible
The Middle
Once all the teams understood Ugeddit’s goals better, they were off to the races, and I kept working on Ugeddit’s events and skill trees in parallel.
Throughout the challenge, I didn’t receive as many updates or questions as I expected, but since it was my first UX research experience, especially with a challenge event, I wasn’t sure how much it even made sense to expect. All I know is I got maybe 2-5 questions in total from all teams after the stakeholder interview was completed.
The Results
3 weeks later, two teams came out of nowhere (well, it was scheduled, but still) with data, results, and insights for Ugeddit based on research they had done the past 3 weeks.
Team 19, the UX newbies, unfortunately had several members change priorities and leave the project mid-way
- But, 2 people stayed, and one of them continued despite going through serious personal situations, despite being one of the only two left working on the project, and despite the deadline for the project being in the middle of that personal situation
Team 8, the psychology PhDs, came back with extremely well-done and well-refined results that didn’t quite align with Ugeddit’s goals, but that could’ve been my lack of clarity during the stakeholder interview
- Despite this, their research was extremely well-done and refined, and provided deeper insights into the psychological needs of certain groups of people, and what their perception is of various social platforms
Team 20, the 2nd group of UXers, won #1 first place for Ugeddit!
Their focus was highly-tailored to Ugeddit’s goals in terms of UX, and their insights were much more focused on how to implement their research into directly usable business and community strategies that Ugeddit can use immediately to improve the experience of members in our community
On top of this, they even found a social anxiety support forum that is FULL of people looking for ways to overcome their insecurities around talking to people, which could be a goldmine of potential members, ideas, and even a business partnership since we’re so aligned
The People
I’m glad I got to work with these teams, because many of them were very nice to get to know, and did earnest research that provided valuable insights I can implement into Ugeddit’s community and events moving forward.
Team 19 (UXers)
Low Zu Er (willing, even through personal situation)
Team 8 (PhDs)
Team 20 (UXers & winners)
I want to say to everyone above who dedicated and contributed the most to delivering results, I’m happy you took the time to participate in this challenge, and I’m excited by some of the insights you’ve helped Ugeddit gain and what we can do with them!
And it was Leticia, Padma, Ricky, and the IterateUX team that made this all happen.
To everyone else reading this, if you want to connect with these UX research participants, their LinkedIn profiles are clickable on their names.
If you want to see more, IterateUX uploaded several groups’ presentations on their YouTube channel, you can see examples of some teams’ shortened presentations: here’s a recording.