#33 - Using Session Replay Tools to Supercharge Your User Research with Elyse Bogacz

01/31/20 • 33 min

This week on the pod, we chatted with Elyse Bogacz, who has worked on product on Drift, Runkeeper, and now NDVR. She walked us through how she uses session replay tools like FullStory to supercharge her user research. She talked about how she shares replays with developers and stakeholders, how she deals with privacy issues, and how other teams can use session replay tools to add to their user research programs.

Highlights

[1:11] Tools like FullStory hand Hotjar have helped Elyse learn important things about users at early stage startups
[4:43] You only get a limited number of time to speak with each user, use it wisely
[6:20] How Elyse uses session reply to decide who to reach out to for user research
[9:35] Actually seeing users struggle in session replay helps stakeholders build empathy
[16:40] There's no replacement for a one on one chat with a user, but replays can be a good icebreaker
[19:46] How privacy and GDPR plays into all this
[25:21] Session replay is not screen recording
[28:59] How Elyse keeps track of all the insights that surfaces
[31:33] How to cope with backlog

Highlights

[1:11] Tools like FullStory hand Hotjar have helped Elyse learn important things about users at early stage startups
[4:43] You only get a limited number of time to speak with each user, use it wisely
[6:20] How Elyse uses session reply to decide who to reach out to for user research
[9:35] Actually seeing users struggle in session replay helps stakeholders build empathy
[16:40] There's no replacement for a one on one chat with a user, but replays can be a good icebreaker
[19:46] How privacy and GDPR plays into all this
[25:21] Session replay is not screen recording
[28:59] How Elyse keeps track of all the insights that surfaces
[31:33] How to cope with backlog

Previous Episode

#32 - 7 Reasons Not To Do User Research with Michele Ronsen

Erin and JH chat with Michele Ronsen, founder of Curiosity Tank and General Assembly instructor. Michele talks to a lot of different people about user research, and she's found there are some situations where user research is (😱) not the best move forward. In fact, there are 7. Michele walked us through each one, and what teams should do instead.

About our guest

Michele Ronsen is a UX and design researcher, founder of Curiosity Tank (formerly Ronsen Consulting) and an instructor at General Assembly. She loves digging deep into research, being people’s research buddy, and introducing teams to the power of research.

Next Episode

#34 - Self Care As A UX Researcher with Vivianne Castillo

Vivianne Castillo’s career has always been human-centered. She started off as a counselor, helping people navigate through complex issues, but eventually found her way to UX research, helping companies better understand their users.

Though she loves user research, she’s found it frustrating that it doesn’t adopt the same standards of care for its practitioners that counseling and other human service work does. Since researchers deal with the messy task of human emotion, all those sessions can take a toll on them. Things like compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma occur often, but without a name for what they’re feeling or the tools to do something about it, researchers are left feeling burned out and unsuccessful. Erin and JH chatted with Vivianne about how researchers can take better care of themselves and how they can empower their teams support each other psychologically.

Resources

Vivanne Castillo’s “Self-Care for UX”

About our guest

Vivianne Castillo (she/her) is the Founder and CEO of HmntyCntrd, an award-winning professional growth community supporting UX and Tech professionals in transforming the status quo of what it means to be human-centered in their professional and personal lives through courses, community, and consulting.