Research
Running studies on BSV products: the constraints money adds, who to recruit, interview guides and test plans to copy, vocabulary methods, five personas, and how to write up what you find.
The methods are the ordinary ones: talk to people, watch them use things, test before you build. The subject is what changes the work. Real money makes some tests unethical and others meaningless, a payment cannot be undone, and the people easiest to recruit are the least like your users.
This section is for whoever runs the research: a researcher, a designer doing their own, or a founder who needs to know whether anybody wants the product.
The pages
Planning a study? Read them in this order: Conducting research, Recruiting participants, then the interview guide or test plan you need, then Writing up findings.
Conducting research: the three constraints money adds, the questions worth asking, what to test and how, and how to keep participants' financial details private.
Recruiting participants: who to recruit, why enthusiasts alone mislead, a screener to copy, and how to pay incentives fairly.
Interview guides: two discussion guides to copy, on a first wallet and on paying inside an app, and how to ask about money without asking for amounts.
Usability test plans: three plans that use only test money: connecting a wallet, paying per use within an allowance, and a recovery drill.
What people call things: card sorts, tree tests, first-click tests and comprehension checks, with the guide's own vocabulary set out as hypotheses.
User personas: five people to design against, from a shopkeeper to an app developer, each with a journey map showing where they stop.
Writing up findings: a findings template, anonymising, and how to cite the rule a finding tests and contribute it to the guide.
Published research: published studies of how people use wallets, with a note on which findings transfer to BSV.
Using the guide's rules as hypotheses
Every do and don't in this guide is a claim about people, and most were reasoned rather than measured. That makes them ready-made hypotheses. Pick the rules your product depends on, especially the ones marked Costs money in each page's checklist, and test whether they hold for your users.
A rule that fails a test is worth reporting. Writing up findings shows how to cite it by its permanent link, and Contribute shows how to propose the change.
What is not here yet
This section has no findings from BSV products yet. Every page here is a method; none reports what people did. As studies are written up, they will be added here with their method and sample, not summarised into rules without them. The case study brief says what a write-up needs.
Related
- Getting to know your users: the two kinds of barrier, and the people behind them
- Usage life cycle: where people stop, stage by stage
- Case studies
- Pay-per-use reader: a worked design to use as test material
- Product and business: the decisions research should inform
Written from: the pages listed here.