8. Define and test your hypotheses
Spend time mapping out your existing assumptions and conducting user research about the difficulties that staff working in adult social care face when gathering information to support them in their roles and what a good solution might look like. Doing this will help when you design your discussion guide (see step 11).
Important notes
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Examples of assumptions in our project include:
9. Identify your user groups and sample sizes
For each of the assumptions you list, consider who you need to speak with to understand more about the issue, then group your assumptions into categories based on these users. Wherever possible, get information ‘from the source’ (i.e. the person who can share their own experience of the issue).
In our project, the focus was on the following user groups:
Next, set a target for how many people from each user group you think you will need to speak with in order to understand the issues fully.
This target does not have to be fixed – when you start to hear the same themes and are not uncovering any new insights, you can stop interviewing participants. You can also change who you speak with. For example, you might uncover a user group that you hadn’t previously considered or you might refine your user groups to incorporate both newly qualified and senior practitioners.
10. Decide on appropriate research methods
It is important to select the right research method based on the questions you’re planning to ask, what you know about the user groups you’ve identified, and the time or resource constraints you are working within.
Some of the most common methods for this kind of research are one-to-one interviews and focus groups. Or you can take a more informal approach and make use of existing meetings, such as Adult Social Care team meetings.
If you are under time pressure, focus groups are a good way of gathering insight from multiple individuals in one session, especially if they are senior individuals with greater demands on their time. For our project, we conducted a series of one-to-one interviews.
Positives and negatives of different research methods
| One-to-one interviews | Focus groups |
| Allows for deep understanding of one person’s experience, leading to more nuanced insights | Group conversation might spark comments that would not come out in a one-to-one session |
| Time-consuming | More efficient as perspectives from multiple people are collected in a single session |
| Can be easier to facilitate | Can be more difficult to keep the discussion on track and ensure everyone feels comfortable and has the chance to speak |
| May be more appropriate if discussing sensitive / personal topics |
11. Produce a discussion guide
Discussion guides define the topics that will be covered in user interviews and establish the key questions you need to ask. They also ensure consistent methodology, which will help you to analyse the findings later.
Your discussion guide should contain:
During an interview, it is natural for a conversation to not follow the structure set out in your discussion guide. Be prepared to be flexible while also ensuring that your key questions are being answered. You might like to practise with your colleagues to build confidence about getting conversations back on track if your interviewee takes you in an unexpected direction.
You can find the discussion guide we developed for our project in the User research guide section and can change and adapt it so it is specific to your local authority.
Important notes
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12. Schedule interviews and obtain consent
When recruiting people to participate in your research, you may find it helpful to draft an ‘expression of interest’ e-mail (in the body of an email or as an ‘information sheet’ attachment). This should include:
It is also a good idea to decide on remuneration at this stage and to attach an informed consent form to the email so that people have all the information they need to make a decision.
You can find a template for the participant information sheet we used in our project in the User research guide section.
The informed consent form serves as a way to confirm that your potential participant understands the purpose of the research, what they will be asked to do, and how data from the session will be managed. Remember to include whether you intend to audio/video record the session, plus how any data collected from the session will be stored and when it will be deleted.
The participant does not need to sign this form but they will need to at least give verbal consent at the very start of the session. You should refer to local policies and procedures as it might not be necessary to obtain consent and we recommend recording the session if you are speaking to staff in an informal setting, such as a team meeting.
| Top tip
Use a tracker to help you stay organised with recruiting participants and monitor the number of interviews scheduled for each user group. You can find a blank template for tracking recruitment activity in the User research guide section. |
13. Analyse and synthesise your findings
After the research sessions have been completed, you need to analyse the content to draw out and categorise the most pertinent information, then synthesise this information into insights that answer your questions and inform what kind of solution your users need.
It may be useful to produce an overarching list of data points, features or suggestions that practitioners identify as important and to look at the frequency of mentions to help you understand which areas should be prioritised.
| Top tip
Miro is a virtual whiteboarding tool that is often used for this kind of work. You can find a link to a Miro template to enable analysis research in the User research guide section. This enables you to transfer key ideas from your user research into virtual post-it notes that you can group together to identify common challenges experienced across different user groups. |
14. Test your findings
Before finalising your learnings, you should try to validate your findings with users.
Validation with a small sample of interviewees will ensure that your interpretation of their experiences is correct and enable you to make any changes. For our project, we arranged follow-up conversations with three of the most engaged interviewees from our initial round of research to confirm our findings before sharing with a wider group.
You can also test your findings with managers. We used the Project Governance Group to test and validate our findings with strategic managers from across the partnership.
15. Present your findings
We chose to present our findings in a wider Discovery and User Research report.
Depending on your local context this approach may be too formal – a presentation outlining your findings and how the Family Context tool could be adapted to meet the local context might be more suitable.
Publishing your findings in an accessible way can help your research participants see the contribution they made and can also help other Local Authorities and partners to understand more about how to deliver similar work.
