The Discussion Guide tab is where you can add in the research questions, tasks or discussion points you’d like to cover off with your participants during their sessions.
What is a task or discussion point?
Tasks or discussion points can be used as session guides - they provide structure and reference for your interview or usability study. Once you set them up for a study, you can assign them to relevant observations as you take notes, making it easier for you to slice and dice your data during analysis.
Discussion points for exploratory research, such as user interviews
When using discussion points for exploratory research, it's okay to keep the questions simple and open-ended. The description could be used as a place to define the intent of the question, what you want to learn from it, or as notes for variations or follow up questions.
Tasks for evaluative research, such as usability tests
For evaluative research, a task can be the predefined activity that your participants perform during a usability test. Tasks should represent similar goals to what people try to carry out on your app or website (e.g. adding something to their cart for checkout). Set these up in the planning phase of your usability test.
Evaluative tasks work best with an accompanying scenario for additional context, and should be relatable without being too leading or directive.
A few things to keep in mind:
Try to avoid using words that are already in your interface as it can lead your participants
Give your participants one task at a time so you don’t overwhelm them (or your note takers!)
Setting up your tasks or discussion points
When you know what tasks or discussion points you want to include, you can add them while you’re setting up your study in the Discussion Guide tab. Once you set them up, the observations you capture will be ‘tagged’ with each task or point as you progress through them in your session.
Give each task or discussion point a short, this will serve as a reminder of what the task or point is while you’re capturing observations. Then add more details in the description, for example, the interview question you'd like to ask your participant, or the task or scenario you’d like them to undertake.
Once you’ve added all your tasks, you can adjust the order by dragging them up or down the list.
When you capture sessions later on, you’ll see your tasks in a column on the right hand side of your screen so you can easily reference them as you go and assign any notes and observations to the right task.
