To recreate a powerful, all-inclusive B2B/B2C motion capture software, we set out to understand diverse users across life sciences communities through investigative research
Discovery in Agile:
Nexus
To recreate a powerful, all-inclusive B2B/B2C motion capture software, we set out to understand diverse users across life sciences communities through investigative research
Discovery in Agile:
Nexus
To recreate a powerful, all-inclusive B2B/B2C motion capture software, we set out to understand diverse users across life sciences communities through investigative research
Research Scope
Timeframe: 10 weeks
My Role: Lead UX Researcher
Team: Cathy (me), Adam (UXD)
Methods: Assumption mapping, contextual inquiries, stakeholder workshops
Tools: Figma, Adobe CS, Zoom
Research Scope
Timeframe: 10 weeks
My Role: Lead UX Researcher
Team: Cathy (me), Adam (UXD)
Methods: Assumption mapping, contextual inquiries, stakeholder workshops
Tools: Figma, Adobe CS, Zoom
Research Scope
Timeframe: 10 weeks
My Role: Lead UX Researcher
Team: Cathy (me), Adam (UXD)
Methods: Assumption mapping, contextual inquiries, stakeholder workshops
Tools: Figma, Adobe CS, Zoom
Project Overview
'What can we offer to make it indispensable… make it sell?'
Product
Nexus, an industry-leading modelling and processing motion capture software specifically created for the life sciences community for clinical and performance movement analysis
Premises
We had 9 months to develop a brand new software based on Nexus to be showcased in prominent international conferences among our strongest competitors. The development team was in urgent need of directions for development and design.
objectives
1. Validate internal assumptions
2. Align teams' understanding of users, needs, goals and challenges
3. Create artefacts to guide software design in a user-centred process
notes
When I joined, design sprints had started with a pretence of research under an inexperienced manager. The challenge was to push for proper discovery activities and data integrity, and to adapt methods to generate insights in the short time available.
Project Overview
'What can we offer to make it indispensable… make it sell?'
Product
Nexus, an industry-leading modelling and processing motion capture software specifically created for the life sciences community for clinical and performance movement analysis
Premises
We had 9 months to develop a brand new software based on Nexus to be showcased in prominent international conferences among our strongest competitors. The development team was in urgent need of directions for development and design.
objectives
1. Validate internal assumptions
2. Align teams' understanding of users, needs, goals and challenges
3. Create artefacts to guide software design in a user-centred process
notes
When I joined, design sprints had started with a pretence of research under an inexperienced manager. The challenge was to push for proper discovery activities and data integrity, and to adapt methods to generate insights in the short time available.
Project Overview
'What can we offer to make it indispensable… make it sell?'
Product
Nexus, an industry-leading modelling and processing motion capture software specifically created for the life sciences community for clinical and performance movement analysis
Premises
We had 9 months to develop a brand new software based on Nexus to be showcased in prominent international conferences among our strongest competitors. The development team was in urgent need of directions for development and design.
objectives
1. Validate internal assumptions
2. Align teams' understanding of users, needs, goals and challenges
3. Create artefacts to guide software design in a user-centred process
notes
When I joined, design sprints had started with a pretence of research under an inexperienced manager. The challenge was to push for proper discovery activities and data integrity, and to adapt methods to generate insights in the short time available.
Methodology
Assumption mapping
Field observations + informal inquiry
Stakeholder workshops
Participatory design
Methodology
Assumption mapping
Field observations + informal inquiry
Stakeholder workshops
Participatory design
Methodology
Assumption mapping
Field observations + informal inquiry
Stakeholder workshops
Participatory design
Assumption mapping
To 'damage control' by appropriate methods, I first needed to investigate different stakeholders' assumptions of Nexus users to identify potential problem areas. I documented how 11 internal Development, Product and Customer Support team members understood user goals, needs, behaviour and challenges in primary use cases.
Aggregation resulted in 4 prominent areas of assumptions to test in next-step research. To validate/correct them, I decided to conduct field studies, as authentic data would help us reduce uncertainty and risks whilst software design continued:
Users' expertise levels
Data capture and processing workflows
Calibration challenges
Considerations for updates
Assumption mapping
To 'damage control' by appropriate methods, I first needed to investigate different stakeholders' assumptions of Nexus users to identify potential problem areas. I documented how 11 internal Development, Product and Customer Support team members understood user goals, needs, behaviour and challenges in primary use cases.
Aggregation resulted in 4 prominent areas of assumptions to test in next-step research. To validate/correct them, I decided to conduct field studies, as authentic data would help us reduce uncertainty and risks whilst software design continued:
Users' expertise levels
Data capture and processing workflows
Calibration challenges
Considerations for updates
Assumption mapping
To 'damage control' by appropriate methods, I first needed to investigate different stakeholders' assumptions of Nexus users to identify potential problem areas. I documented how 11 internal Development, Product and Customer Support team members understood user goals, needs, behaviour and challenges in primary use cases.
Aggregation resulted in 4 prominent areas of assumptions to test in next-step research. To validate/correct them, I decided to conduct field studies, as authentic data would help us reduce uncertainty and risks whilst software design continued:
Users' expertise levels
Data capture and processing workflows
Calibration challenges
Considerations for updates
Field studies
In 6 visits to university sports science and rehab departments, a clinical lab, an orthopaedic centre, and training sites, I observed a range of users, documenting their workflows and the contextual nuances that impacted their interaction with Nexus.
I then followed up with questions to capture thoughts, expose unarticulated factors, and for an in-depth understanding of experiences in the critical areas of assumptions.
Field observation
Sports science & rehabilitation lab, University of Birmingham
Field studies
In 6 visits to university sports science and rehab departments, a clinical lab, an orthopaedic centre, and training sites, I observed a range of users, documenting their workflows and the contextual nuances that impacted their interaction with Nexus.
I then followed up with questions to capture thoughts, expose unarticulated factors, and for an in-depth understanding of experiences in the critical areas of assumptions.
Field observation
Sports science & rehabilitation lab, University of Birmingham
Field studies
In 6 visits to university sports science and rehab departments, a clinical lab, an orthopaedic centre, and training sites, I observed a range of users, documenting their workflows and the contextual nuances that impacted their interaction with Nexus.
I then followed up with questions to capture thoughts, expose unarticulated factors, and for an in-depth understanding of experiences in the critical areas of assumptions.
Field observation
Sports science & rehabilitation lab, University of Birmingham
Stakeholder workshops
I create 5 evolvable Nexus personas and user flows that represented most needs, goals, and outstanding challenges. Next, I facilitated a workshop with key developers, product specialists and UI designers to collectively run through my organised findings.
Soon after, I collated a report of 40 pain points to present in a meeting, where I prompted internal stakeholders to try out some tasks to understand how users might feel, and then assign severity ratings to the issues. A final report was created to inform our ideation foci for upcoming participatory design sessions.
Colleagues carrying out user tasks to assign severity ratings during workshop
Stakeholder workshops
I create 5 evolvable Nexus personas and user flows that represented most needs, goals, and outstanding challenges. Next, I facilitated a workshop with key developers, product specialists and UI designers to collectively run through my organised findings.
Soon after, I collated a report of 40 pain points to present in a meeting, where I prompted internal stakeholders to try out some tasks to understand how users might feel, and then assign severity ratings to the issues. A final report was created to inform our ideation foci for upcoming participatory design sessions.
Colleagues carrying out user tasks to assign severity ratings during workshop
Stakeholder workshops
I create 5 evolvable Nexus personas and user flows that represented most needs, goals, and outstanding challenges. Next, I facilitated a workshop with key developers, product specialists and UI designers to collectively run through my organised findings.
Soon after, I collated a report of 40 pain points to present in a meeting, where I prompted internal stakeholders to try out some tasks to understand how users might feel, and then assign severity ratings to the issues. A final report was created to inform our ideation foci for upcoming participatory design sessions.
Colleagues carrying out user tasks to assign severity ratings during workshop
Impacts
Facts over assumptions
Insights from my research refuted, as well as validated, many critical biases about our wide range of clinical, commercial and academic users of Nexus.
This built a solid foundation of facts about use case scenarios for larger teams to suggest features and improvements that were genuinely essential for the software's success, rather than mere impressions, stereotypes and guesses.
Aligned understanding
Given that Nexus catered to a massively diverse client base, our larger teams had varying ideas about who the users were, what their goals were, and what they needed.
My research fostered a clear, collective understanding of our target users that aligned different teams' efforts to guide the design process, ensuring stakeholders were on the same page regarding people, contexts, and system requirements.
Reference for development
Generating not only written insights, I visualised the results of my qualitative and quantitative analysis to share across product development stakeholders.
I made my thorough research documentation (e.g., pain point report) and evolvable design artefacts (e.g., personas) easy to access, enabling constant reference back to real users for a truly user-centric design process of the new software.
Impacts
Facts over assumptions
Insights from my research refuted, as well as validated, many critical biases about our wide range of clinical, commercial and academic users of Nexus.
This built a solid foundation of facts about use case scenarios for larger teams to suggest features and improvements that were genuinely essential for the software's success, rather than mere impressions, stereotypes and guesses.
Aligned understanding
Given that Nexus catered to a massively diverse client base, our larger teams had varying ideas about who the users were, what their goals were, and what they needed.
My research fostered a clear, collective understanding of our target users that aligned different teams' efforts to guide the design process, ensuring stakeholders were on the same page regarding people, contexts, and system requirements.
Reference for development
Generating not only written insights, I visualised the results of my qualitative and quantitative analysis to share across product development stakeholders.
I made my thorough research documentation (e.g., pain point report) and evolvable design artefacts (e.g., personas) easy to access, enabling constant reference back to real users for a truly user-centric design process of the new software.
Impacts
Facts over assumptions
Insights from my research refuted, as well as validated, many critical biases about our wide range of clinical, commercial and academic users of Nexus.
This built a solid foundation of facts about use case scenarios for larger teams to suggest features and improvements that were genuinely essential for the software's success, rather than mere impressions, stereotypes and guesses.
Aligned understanding
Given that Nexus catered to a massively diverse client base, our larger teams had varying ideas about who the users were, what their goals were, and what they needed.
My research fostered a clear, collective understanding of our target users that aligned different teams' efforts to guide the design process, ensuring stakeholders were on the same page regarding people, contexts, and system requirements.
Reference for development
Generating not only written insights, I visualised the results of my qualitative and quantitative analysis to share across product development stakeholders.
I made my thorough research documentation (e.g., pain point report) and evolvable design artefacts (e.g., personas) easy to access, enabling constant reference back to real users for a truly user-centric design process of the new software.
I cannot show the majority of the research documents or artefacts for NDA reasons—they contain confidential information.
However, as part of my application to Vicon's UX Researcher position, I was tasked to design a research plan that simulated one for Nexus but referred to a fictional client. You can find and download the proposed plan by the link below.
I cannot show the majority of the research documents or artefacts for NDA reasons—they contain confidential information.
However, as part of my application to Vicon's UX Researcher position, I was tasked to design a research plan that simulated one for Nexus but referred to a fictional client. You can find and download the proposed plan by the link below.
I cannot show the majority of the research documents or artefacts for NDA reasons—they contain confidential information.
However, as part of my application to Vicon's UX Researcher position, I was tasked to design a research plan that simulated one for Nexus but referred to a fictional client. You can find and download the proposed plan by the link below.
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Explore other projects:
User Testing: Visualising Calibration
Conducting contextual inquiries and usability testing at customer sites to identify UX issues, understand users in Entertainment/VFX motion capture environments, and opportunities to improve new features in upcoming software release.
Read about Shōgun testing
Product Development: Streaming
Developing a user-centric mobile app of knowledge entertainment production, with evidence-based features and content styles that would 'hit the spot'; improving features by strategic testing and iterative design.
Read about Know+ development
HCI: From Theory to Application
Applying human-computer interaction theories in projects to showcase the breadth and depth of my knowledge and skills in user research, system evaluation and audit, inclusive design, interaction design, IA, and web app development.
Read about academic projects
Explore other projects:
User Testing: Visualising Calibration
Conducting contextual inquiries and usability testing at customer sites to identify UX issues, understand users in Entertainment/VFX motion capture environments, and opportunities to improve new features in upcoming software release.
Read about Shōgun testing
Product Development: Streaming
Developing a user-centric mobile app of knowledge entertainment production, with evidence-based features and content styles that would 'hit the spot'; improving features by strategic testing and iterative design.
Read about Know+ development
HCI: From Theory to Application
Applying human-computer interaction theories in projects to showcase the breadth and depth of my knowledge and skills in user research, system evaluation and audit, inclusive design, interaction design, IA, and web app development.
Read about academic projects