I had 2 jobs right out of college. I’d wake up at 5:30am, ride my bike to sling espresso at a cafe through 2pm, take a lunch break, and then ride over to a focus group call center and interrupt dinners until 10pm. I’d get up the next morning and do it all again, 5 days a week.

What this taught me, besides the sweet release of a midday nap, was that no one loves being questioned. Even if they chose to be questioned, it makes people uncomfortable to remember how they like their coffee before they’ve had it, or whether they’re between the ages of 35 and 48 and also love cheese. What made things a lot easier on all of us was me - the foolhardy human doing the questioning - learning to anticipate what might happen next. This was way easier in the coffee shop. The customer who always ordered a large green tea at 9:15am really loved having that tea ready to go right when they walked in the door. “3 Ice Cubes Lady” would never be happy with 4 ice cubes. But this was a little more difficult with the call center. And it was a lot more difficult with this capstone project. The issue in both spaces was that I had no product to supply, like coffee. I was asking people for very, very delayed, potential gratification.

I already believed everyone was overworked, but this wasn’t necessarily true. If I offered a solution to a problem no one had, I’d have the equivalent of my first interaction with “3 Ice Cubes Lady” on my hands. “Why would you give me so many ice cubes? I didn’t ask for this.”

So, I did a screener survey. It wasn’t perfect, of course, but luckily my mentor pointed out its flaws before I sent it around. At the beginning, I focused on people’s hobbies, believing that’s where this project would go.

“How much time do you dedicate to hobbies and recreational activities each week?”
“Do you feel you dedicate enough time to your hobbies?”
“Do you have any goals related to your hobbies?”

In my baby UX-er brain, the existence of activities outside work was important to overall time management and stress relief. I received 21 survey responses (yay), and 9 direct contacts for individual interviews (double yay); the base number for interviewing was 5. I had almost double that, so I assumed (there’s that word again) that I was all set. I thought, “Man, I am crushing this UX thing.” Of course, creating a user-focused product relies on users, and users are people, and people are…well, finicky. Ice cubes, and all that.

Of the 9 contacts, 5 actually made an appointment to talk (bless them). 2 no-call-no-showed. 2 of the remaining 3 rescheduled after a prodding email. I did one interview with a friend without the appointment (thanks, Manny!), and one more person was gracious enough to do an interview and last-minute survey to help me out (thanks, Loisel!). I was then at exactly 5 interviews; it was a humbling result. I was not, in fact, crushing it.

I thought back to an old call center coworker who, when a potential focus group member slammed the phone on him after forgetting they’d signed up to be called, would simply switch voices and call someone else. His “gruff Jamaican” voice may not have made the callee comfortable, but his “old Midwestern grandma” voice just might. “Ya gotta pivot, hun!”

Anticipate and pivot. Names of the game.