Keita Wangari, senior UX researcher for google discusses foundational research methods to inform strategy in enterprise software design.
In this talk, Keita expresses the value of journey mapping. Shes uses interviews to uncover what a user current process is, what their triggers are and what is their perceived ease of interaction. She also uses observation. She says when clients have sticky notes on their computer to help them remember something. thats a key sign that there is a problem with their software. It is not doing what they need it to do. Often, users do not even realize that its a problem because they have been doing it one way for so long they are blind to it.
Kieta discusses CRJ's or critical user jounreys. These are phrased like "I want to [Goal], so I [Task]. CRJ's can include an importance rating which helps to determine things most valuable to users. Keita however, discusses issues of scale bias in user surveys. She suggests a maxdiff method of conducting surveys.
Using the maxdiff method gives more data on the importance of elements, and more data on elements that fall in the middle.
All in all, Keita's talk was a wonderfully insightful look into UX research for enterprise software.