Tips for conducting research in emotional verticals

👋 Hello from VelAve. This week we are conducting two concept studies - one in health care and a second in accessibility.

Research in these verticals can be super emotional. One of our favorite tactics is to use six-frame storyboards. The power in a narrative is that:

1️⃣ Stories are a format we humans love. Told well, you can evaluate three altitudes critical to building products: the severity and importance of a problem, the current experience of existing tools or workarounds, and the potential value of specific features or product directions.

2️⃣ When you tell a story about a character, it creates a healthy amount of distance between the participant and the topic (the more serious the research the more helpful this is).

3️⃣ Distance is magical in that it empowers participants to both be reflective: to relate and also be critical.

Concepts don’t need to be perfect. The less refined, the better. Low-fidelity stimuli lower the barrier to thoughtful feedback. They test assumptions, deepen understanding and are a key to saving development resources.

❓ What are some learnings and best practices you’ve gathered when using storyboards for research?

🕊 Now please excuse us, we need to get back to our research cave!