PITA 016
TOPIC 1: Tips for preparing notes / take aways from user interviews. Is it usual to spend a half day or more writing up the notes?
YES, timing is appropriate and worth it
NO, that’s too much time to spend per interview
2x length of interview seems appropriate
Pulling out quotes and doing affinity mapping is tedious
2 people minimum per interview, pull key quotes during the chat
Bullet points at the top of the doc to know what you’re looking for
Use templates for note-taking
Dovetail: The user research platform for teams / User research qualitative data analysis – Dovetail
Focus your notes on KEY things - patterns as we said, or surprises. But also take more notice of how people behave rather than just what they say.
Trello & JTBD framework is useful for organising notes
I really encourage you to get more people in the loop of these interviews. I do these together with UX/UI/Devs and we make notes in forms of post its (Miro) together. You can later easily cluster them into bigger topics. And another advantage: people are already in the loop, and the discussions around these interviews is super valid (lots of great ideas come from there)
The concept of learning velocity to measure research customer and the Delta-Next - a quick reflection exercise to help keep learning velocity visualised (introduced by Jeff Patton at #mtpcon Digital 2020 - his talk on Dual Track Development)
TOPIC 2: A PM portfolio - how have these worked for people?
Didn’t work for me, as the work was either confidential or semi-privileged; Testimonials and listing achievements is a good alternative
LinkedIn can work as your portfolio - adding projects and media, case studies
A personal site is also really useful
TOPIC 3: Any tips from practice on creating and growing the PM consulting / freelancing / coaching market in your countries?
Promote yourself - thought leadership, LinkedIn videos
Forever Employable (book), Jeff Gothelf
Look at the local employment legislation - are there any perks you want to highlight to potential clients?
Do some discovery with your target market - what do they think about hiring consultants/contractors?
Check some of the Meetups related to HR in Switzerland (in this case): Human Resources groups in Switzerland
See if other consultants have too much work and need associates/help
Lunchclub & Build healthy habits. Meet new remote workers for casual coffee calls every week | Cafecito
TOPIC 4: Any tools you just love and why?
Loom.com for short video presentations & demos
Logrocket.com for showing exactly what users have experienced when debugging a problem or just how they go about your product
Looker.com to handle data
Miro.com for workshops, with a couple of votes for Mural as well
Storiesonboard.com for user story mapping
Canva to create logos for free