Lessons from a truck stop: how to conduct field research without a hitch

As a UX researcher for Google Ventures, I help startups understand customers and evaluate prototypes and products. I interview a wide variety of customers, from mainstream smartphone users to long-haul truckers. After conducting interviews in many different settings, I’ve learned a few tricks to help field research go smoothly.

When I interview customers that are fairly easy to find (such as coffee drinkers for Blue Bottle Coffee or exercisers for FitStar), I can quickly recruit and schedule them to attend usability interviews at my office. When customers are hard to find, or they are geographically distributed (like corn and soy farmers for The Climate Corporation), I often conduct interviews and test prototypes over telephone or web conference. Startups learn a ton very quickly from these kinds of research sprints. (I regularly conduct five 60-minute interviews in one day, and we don’t lose any time traveling.)

But sometimes projects require meeting customers in their natural habitats. With Foundation Medicine, we traveled to two cancer centers to interview oncologists, tour their clinics, and see the reports and charts piled on their desks. I could never have recruited oncologists to attend a usability session at my office. With BuysideFX, visiting the foreign-exchange desk at a large pension fund gave us the opportunity to watch traders at work. And most recently, Shoaib Makani and I spent a day evaluating an early version of the KeepTruckin app with long-haul truckers at a truck-stop restaurant.

These lessons from that truck stop visit will put you in the fast lane next time you have to hit the road to interview customers.

Scout the location

If you’re planning to visit a public location, try to check it out ahead of time.

• Is there a good spot to set up?
• Where are power outlets?
• Is there Wi-Fi? Cellular service?
• Will it be too loud to have a conversation or to record?
• How are people dressed?
• Are your target customers actually there?
• When are the busy times?
• If necessary, can you get permission to do research there? (At the truck stop, Shoaib greased the wheels by befriending (and heavily tipping) the waitresses at the restaurant where we met.)

Dress the part

I doubt that anyone mistook me for a trucker, but I tried to blend in as much as possible. (I wore jeans, a sweatshirt, sneakers, and a KeepTruckin trucker hat.) I would have looked and felt like an oddball at the truck stop if dressed in “business casual” or “SF hipster.” And it wouldn’t have helped me put our interviewees at ease.

Keep your kit simple

When interviewing customers, I try to record the conversation, the participant’s face, and the prototype they’re using. To avoid hassle and technical snafus, I’ve assembled a very simple setup that doesn’t require Wi-Fi or cellular signal. My portable lab includes:

• Laptop (I use a Macbook Pro.)
• iPod Touch for testing mobile app prototypes
• USB webcam for participant video and audio
• USB document camera for mobile-device screens
• IPEVO Viewer for displaying document camera feed on laptop screen
• QuickTime app for recording screen, video, and audio
• Small video camera for recording physical surroundings, an office tour, or participants’ devices (with permission of course)
• Notebook and pen for taking notes
• Copies of a short NDA that also secures permission to record (download a sample)
• Breath mints (After several cups of coffee and the onion rings, this was just common courtesy.)

Prepare for a day off the grid

Packing these accessories can make your day go smoother:

• Backup battery pack, especially if you’re testing on mobile devices
• Thumb drive for backing up and sharing video recordings (I forgot mine and had to wait several hours while the files uploaded to Google Drive.)
• Wireless card for laptop
• Snacks (Rumor has it that I can get just a teeny tiny bit cranky when I’m hungry.)

Before you head out of the building…

• Test your laptop, mobile devices, cameras, and recording software.
• Charge all of your devices.
• Make sure you packed all of your power cords.
• Buy appropriate incentives for interviewees — Amazon gift cards usually do the trick ($50 for 30-minute interviews, $100 for 60-minute).

These simple tips will avoid common time-wasting problems when you’re conducting field research. Free from technical and logistical problems, you can concentrate on conducting great customer interviews.

Do you have other tips or lessons to share? Tweet me @mmargolis or @GVdesignteam.