Using Airtable to store research nuggets

I started at Solium in January. They did a full day of usability testing for World Usability Day in the previous November but hadn’t yet got through analyzing all of the videos. It’s a small team and other priorities got in the way.

Around that time, I listened to a Tomer Sharon interview on Mixed Methods, a UX Research podcast that I highly recommend.

In that interview, Sharon discussed how UX Research usually ends up in reports that are read once then forgotten, and how non-researchers make observations about users every day that aren’t documented.

The answer?

Track every observation, or nugget in the same place. The nugget is the atomic unit of research, not the report.

This prevents research from being forgotten, it gives transparency to how research is interpreted, and it “democratizes UX” by potentially allowing non-researchers to contribute and search research findings.

Here’s what I did

So I copied Tomer Sharon’s “Polaris UX Nuggets” base.

Tomer Sharon’s Polaris UX Nuggets database- available for you to copy!

I knew that this wouldn’t be adopted by my team if it was too much work, so I simplified. And simplified some more. Including:

• Removing provocations, journeys, acts, scenes, props, and sets
• Combining “Experience Vector” and “Magnitude” because they’re two measures of the same thing and because “High Neutral” doesn’t mean anything. Thanks Cong for suggesting this!

Then tried it out.

Then documented.

Then tested it with a teammate.

Then moved our videos from Dropbox to a private YouTube channel and added a function to timestamp the nugget url. Thanks Jason for suggesting this!

Then tested it with another teammate.

Then simplified by creating a simple form with only 3 mandatory fields. Far more efficient and less overwhelming than dealing with a giant database.

Then tested it with my manager. Thanks Stuart!

Then simplified.

Then assigned all remaining videos to be nuggetized by the team.

Meanwhile we’re doing more usability tests and nuggetizing those as we go.

The Results

This has already come in handy twice.

First when my coworker Jason was considering adding a hyperlink in a certain place, I expressed my doubts. Luckily, Jason remembered some recent observations and within a couple minutes he had pulled up Airtable and showed me two clips of real customers trying to click the text that he wanted to hyperlink. Damn you Airtable! I gave you life and you’re already proving me wrong!? Seriously though, these observations would not have been found so easy if they were just buried in a usability report somewhere

Second, when we were having a mini design sprint on one problem area in our dashboard, I was able to quickly pull up several short video clips of real customers running into usability issues in that area. It’s great that this database can essentially provide a highlight reel for anything you need!

Next Steps

Going forward, the UX team at Solium is continuing to evaluate Airtable this will continue to evolve, but so far I’m very grateful that Tomer Sharon was sharin’ his database! #punIntended #dadJoke #badJoke

Appendix: How to generate timestamped Youtube URLs

For all the formulas I used, make a copy of Youtube url generation on airtable. Using that, you should be able to get from a youtube share link to a timestamped start/end youtube url.

Example youtube share link: https://youtu.be/1SXhEw1ijs4

Nugget timestamp: 24:00-24:13

Timestamped youtube url: https://youtube.com/embed/1SXhEw1ijs4?autoplay=1&rel=0&start=1440&end=1453