Rachel Price is a UX architect, user researcher, and jazz musician. With a background in information science and saxophone (eventually they do intersect), she focuses on crafting thoughtfully structured information environments informed by the human experience. She is currently a Senior Information Architect for Microsoft Docs, applying IA principles at scale to a substantial compendium of developer documentation.
Rachel is also an educator at the School of Visual Concepts in Seattle, Washington, a speaker, and a workshop facilitator. She holds a Master of Library & Information Sciences from the University of Washington.
You're on the Air, I'm Listening: Facilitating Remote Research
If you are running remote research methods for the first time, it can feel like a real constraint. What if you can't get a good rapport with your participant because you're not in the same room? How are you going to get them to open up if they can't sense your non-verbal cues? What if there's a time lag? Will this even work? Constraints breed creativity. Rather than mourning the loss of our in-person research days, this is an opportunity to quickly improve your facilitation techniques. Our job as facilitators is to create a safe and comfortable space for a stranger to share their thoughts and ideas with us, through the use of voice, questions, prompts, and activities. We're going to borrow some methods from jazz improvisers because they also have to quickly create safe spaces with total strangers. Like improvising, there is an art to good research facilitation, but its components are learnable and you can get better pretty quickly if you know what to practice. This talk will break down the qualities of great user research facilitation into bite-sized methods and techniques that you can actually practice and put to use immediately.
Q&A with Rachel Price
Andy will take your questions for Rachel
No Coffee Line
Avoid the queues and just bring your own refreshment of choice.