User Experience Methods Catalogue

# User Boards

Purpose
Document interview findings
Time required
30 to 60 minutes per board
Participants
User Researcher, Note-Taker
Level of experience
Expert
Picture of Post-its

# Summary

A user board is a summary of all the findings gathered during an individual interview. It helps to transform the statements and observations from user interviews into structured and meaningful results.

It contains everything that is useful to understand the overall situation and the needs of the users - typical categories are e.g:

  • quotes
  • needs
  • pain points
  • pictures and screenshots

Each participant in an interview is given their own user board. They are created directly after the data collection to ensure that the information is still fresh and precise. To ensure anonymity, all personal information of the participants is deleted immediately afterwards.

# Result

A structured summary of the findings from a user interview. As the basis for an analysis (clustering, affinity mapping), the boards ensure the traceability of the findings and derived requirements. The boards are provided with a user code in order to anonymise the participants and guarantee the confidentiality of the statements.

# Approach

  1. Precondition: Each user board is created immediately after data collection, when memories are still fresh, to ensure that no important statements or observations are lost that may not have been recorded during the interview.

  2. Rough anonymisation: Define user codes for your user boards to ensure the anonymisation of participants. This may consist of letters, numbers and symbols. It makes sense to keep the coding simple in order to keep subsequent clustering comprehensible at first glance.

  3. Categorisation: Create suitable categories into which you would like to group your interview notes, e.g. positive, negative, surprising, other. Each category is given a different Post-it colour.

  4. Structuring the notes: Take your interview notes and structure them. Each unit of information is written on a single post-it, which allows for easy grouping in the subsequent phases. Try to stay as close as possible to the participants' original wording. This ensures that the information is not interpreted too early in a potentially wrong direction.

    • Each post-it note is coloured in a corresponding category.
    • Each Post-it note is labelled with a user code.
    • No Post-it note indicates the person who made the statement.

  5. Representative quote: Write a quote at the top of the user board that reflects the participant's general attitude towards the interview topic.

  6. Detailed anonymisation: Critical statements that, in combination with other statements on the user board, could potentially reveal the identity of the participant are collected separately. This collection summarises all critical statements from various user boards and, unlike the other boards, the post-it notes on this board are not provided with a user code.

  7. Deletion of personal data: All information directly related to the participants is deleted immediately after the user board is created. This includes in particular the names of the participants.

  8. Affinity mapping: The post-its from all user boards are duplicated and merged and clustered on a (digital) whiteboard. This shows how many participants had similar statements or problems.

# Time of use

User boards are particularly suitable after qualitative interviews in order to prepare the collected data in a structured way and make it usable for further analysis. The ideal time to use them is:

  • directly after data collection
  • before carrying out affinity mapping or a clustering analysis
  • in early project phases to identify user requirements and problem areas.

# Tools and Templates

  • Whiteboard or digital collaboration tool (e.g. concept board)
  • Post-its in different colours
  • Markers/pens

# Advantages

  • Structuring: User boards help to analyse interviews systematically and efficiently. Especially when many interviews are conducted and a large amount of data is collected, the boards maintain clarity.
  • Overview: The most important statements and findings are visible at a glance.
  • Traceability: The use of codes makes it possible to trace the source of a statement without violating anonymity.
  • Simple further processing: The post-its can be easily duplicated and used for affinity mapping or clustering.
  • Flexibility: The structure of the board can be customised depending on the research context and project requirements.

# Disadvantages

  • Time required: Creating the boards directly after the interviews does not require any more time and resources than any other type of follow-up. However, the preparation of the boards does: The user codes and the categories must be prepared.
  • Interviewer bias: If the interviewer misinterprets the statements, the results could be distorted.
  • Documentation: Documentation on a (digital) whiteboard instead of a PDF or Excel document is rather unusual. This type of documentation should be agreed with the client, otherwise there will be double documentation work.
  • Without subsequent clustering / affinity mapping, the creation of user boards makes little sense.

# Hints

The user board should be created directly after the interview while the information is still fresh. Anonymisation and pseudonymisation are important in order to comply with data protection guidelines. The codes must be used consistently so that the statements can be clearly traced back later. It is also helpful to categorise the post-its by colour or symbol to simplify subsequent analysis. A timer can also be useful to make the creation of user boards more efficient.

# Sources

  • Lazar, J., Feng, J. H., & Hochheiser, H. (2017). Research Methods in Human-Computer Interaction. Morgan Kaufmann. (Debriefing p. 216, What to Analyze p. 220-221, and How to Analyze p. 221-223).
  • Kvale, S. (2008). Doing Interviews [E-book]. SAGE Publications. (S. 56).
  • Courage, C., & Baxter, K. (2005). Understanding Your Users: A Practical Guide to User Requirements Methods, Tools, and Techniques. In Elsevier eBooks. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-1-55860-935-8.x5029-5 (opens new window).

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