Virtual Ride-Alongs w/HPE

Project Background

Team Members:
Benjamin Frailey & Colin Mulron (Co-Leads)
Tori Martin, Ethan Melton, Veronica Tsang, Skyler Beld, Brein Gross.
Time Frame: Fall Semester 2020

Task: Develop a Guide of methods & tools based off ethnographic research that HPE could use to transfer their Ride-Along Testing into a Virtual Setting.

Methods: Focus Group, Interviews, Journey Mapping, Secondary Research

Stakeholders: Insiders, HPE Engineers, Our HPE Sponsors

Definitions:

  • Insider: The employees of HPE’s client companies that HPE recruits into their ride-along program.
  • Ride-Along: A method of beta testing HPE uses to test new products they are rolling out. Involves sending HPE engineers to their client’s offices and observer the Insiders using the new products.

Deliverable: Virtual Ride-Along Guide

Because of insights from research into many different challenges of virtual testing, we decided to focus the guide on two main areas of focus:

Virtual Presentation

Balance testing methods and outcomes with virtual conferencing formalities

Insider Interactions

Improve virtual testing engagement and maintain positive client relationships

Solutions:

Virtual Presentation:

  • Have some HPE employees act as the “face”
    • Others would actually facilitate / record data
  • Adapt to insider’s preferences
    • Formalities, security, etc.

Insider Interactions:

  • Utilize effective Breaks 
    • Many different kinds and methods
    • Could coffee breaks and games
  • Building familiarity between parties
  • Meeting outside of ride-along

Leadership

The team.

This was my first semester acting as a Co-Lead, but I was able to use my previous leadership and knowledge of UX research to lead the team in 3 main ways:

Guiding research
Communicating with our sponsors
Leading team meetings

I really liked the team I had, and I was determined to help the underclassmen both do go work in this project and do good work moving forward in UX, as well as work well with my Co-Lead. I think I did a good job, and I think I even made the underclassmen enjoy research!

Research

Our researched was ethnographic and focused on finding what HPE Engineers felt was important about their in-person ride-alongs and how that might be challenged in a virtual setting. Some of our biggest insights came from our Interviews and Focus Group.

Interviews

“It’s like only seeing 40% of the picture”

-HPE Engineer referring to virtual ride-along testing

Preforming a series of interviews with 4 different HPE engineers gave use these major insights:

The main structure & purpose of the ride-alongs.
The HPE engineers were looking to find how the insiders were using their programs, if this are in-line with the product’s purpose, and why the products are being used that way.

Human and Client connection was very important.
One big part of the virtual testing was that it would be more difficult to make these human connections between the insiders & and HPE Engineers.

Focus Group

We conducted this focus group after getting a good base knowledge of the problem space from our interviews.
It was comprised of a few different activities, but the most fruitful was the Journey Mapping.

Journey Map of In person Ride-Along
VS
Journey Map of Virtual Ride-Along

Research Obstacles

Our Sponsors held most of the Baseline info we needed.
Even though our sponsors were very responsive and provided us great resources, we still had to rely on them for these resources and could not find them in quick convenience.

We could not get testing info from other parties.
Companies do not want their testing methods and tools to be public knowledge so other companies can not steal their methods, which made secondary research not very useful for us.

The Covid 19 Pandemic.
The pandemic did not allow us to meet in-person, which was something we had to get used to and overcome. However, we did a good job and it even allowed us to bodystorm in the background of performing other research.