Are you creating usability reports no one’s reading? Consider rainbow spreadsheets instead
By: Kai Wong
Tags: UX Research, Usability, Design, UX, User Research

Are you creating usability reports no one’s reading? Consider rainbow spreadsheets instead

Photo by KAL VISUALS on Unsplash

Few things are more depressing as a designer than creating something that people will not read or use. This is why, after a long day of user testing and debriefing, it can be a little disheartening to jump into compiling your usability findings.

Part of the reason for this is that you’re often asked to create a formal usability report. The formal report compiles all your usability findings in a document or presentation, and it often becomes a doorstop. Nobody wants to read it, but they want to have it evidence user testing with a project.

But what if I told you there was a better way to compile your user research findings to your stakeholders a high-level overview of your findings?

That’s where the rainbow spreadsheet, developed by Google UX Researcher Tomer Sharon, can come into play. This tool outputs your user findings in an easier to read format. Also, it can address many issues around notetaking and debriefing that might occur during user research. And it does this by standardizing responses with colors.

How the rainbow spreadsheet works

A rainbow spreadsheet is a tool for user testing that makes collaboration easier through shared notetaking. It does this by planning and standardizing many observations ahead of time. Doing this can address many common issues that slow down research, including:

Inconsistent quality of notes from different notetakers

Debriefs that don’t seem to reach the key findings

Keeping track of a high-level overview across all participants

Understanding how many participants had similar issues

Here’s how it works.

The Rainbow spreadsheet starts by assigning colors to individual participants. For example, P1 might be Red, P2, Yellow, etc. These not only help things organized, but they also help in the final view.

Demographic information for participants, categorized by color

We can also define some UX metrics to pay attention to, such as Satisfaction or Time on Task. That way, if we care about a specific UX metric, we can assign a particular notetaker to pay attention to that.

A page of metrics broken down by task and participant

Then, the last step before conducting the study is to write a list of predetermined observations.

The observations list where notetakers will record

Creating observations when you haven’t user-tested may seem strange, but it should be easy to develop general observations for your tasks.

For example, if your research plan goals are to examine how users checkout, some example observations may include:

Users clicking the add to cart button

A user clicking on an image instead of text to access the product page

User clicks the shopping cart icon

Don’t worry if you don’t catch all the observations before the study. The purpose is to give a basic template and framework for the notetakers during the user interview session.

How the notes might look after recording a single participant

During the user interview, notetakers then mark down if a particular observation occurred. If a particular observation happens many times, you can mark down the frequency in the notes section. If the notetakers observe something that doesn’t fit within the list, they can add the observation.

This approach can work especially well with many notetakers. Maintaining a single notes sheet across many notetakers can result in them reaching a consensus. Doing this also shifts the purpose of the debrief. Instead of spending time leafing through notes, we can instead look at this list of observations and refine it.

Perhaps a new observation fits better with an existing one, or maybe you need to change the wording of observations. In either case, having a preset list of observations provides an agenda for debriefs. It also helps guide notetakers who may not be too familiar with notetaking. As a result, by the time you’ve done your last user interview, you have more than a gut feeling on the most important user findings.

You have a visualization that can quickly make sense of the data and show which observations apply to participants. This allows you to have a summary meeting where you can talk about several key things:

The most common observations across your participants

Suggested answers or action items to your research questions

Key findings backed up by a visualization of users affected

The summary page for hte spreadsheet

Doing things instead of a long-form summary document can be more beneficial for your team and reduce unnecessary reports.

An alternative to reports

To tell the truth, I didn’t stumble upon this framework accidentally: I found it when I was searching for a way to avoid creating reports. Formal reports are often overused, and it’s not always to the team's benefit to create them. But breaking those habits requires replacing them with something better. Reports are a useful piece of evidence to show that UX was part of the process.

If you want to make sure that your team understands your findings, though, you have to take an extra step in making them accessible. The rainbow spreadsheet won’t work for every team, but it’s one of the ways of planning your user research to make your findings easier to digest.

So if you’ve ever dreaded creating a usability findings report, consider using a rainbow spreadsheet to make it easier to digest.

Kai Wong is a UX Specialist, Author, and Data Visualization advocate. His latest book, Data Persuasion, talks about learning Data Visualization from a Designer’s perspective and how UX can benefit Data Visualization.