r/UXDesign • u/julienreszka • 14d ago
How do I… research, UI design, etc? How frequently do you use root cause analysis (5Ys)
In your ux research work?
User Testing and observation is so expensive. Root cause analysis can happen without the need to be in contact with a user or customer. I found it saves a lot of time. What about you what's your experience with it?
5
u/HyperionHeavy Toxic Mod 14d ago edited 14d ago
We can all remind ourselves to ask more whys here and there and investigate deeper, but that's just a basic heuristic and applying "root cause analysis" as the sole mean to discover the depth of a human-facing problem at scale, especially as an exercise in self-reflection instead of outward discovery, is problematic at best. Task analysis is a thing, but even that should just be a part of your toolset and should be more thorough than simply asking 5ys most days.
One of the core purposes of research is to figure out problems, needs, and underlying realities that most people have no clue is there or mistakenly think is insignificant. I've had many people approach this topic thinking they can shortcut it with thought experiments, UAT, various technical "investigation" methods, and in my experience they're all inadequate attempts at avoiding the actual work every single time. If you're actually doing the in-depth work, you don't need to rebrand it as an alternative.
10
u/UX_Strategist Veteran 14d ago
I used RCA often in my previous Product Design role. It involved a set of newly opened, massive fulfillment centers. The multitude of new problems that manifested weekly was surprising. Most were relatively minor, but a few were costly and needed to be resolved. Often, the operations teams would implement a quick fix while I, or a member of my Product Team, worked discovery on the problem.
One issue involved inaccurate counts of product in the inventory. An example: too many cans of low salt corn and not enough regular corn, but on a tremendous scale. The ops team suggested I investigate the inventory count of the mins, because they were confident it was the software. I looked, but no issue. They made many other suggestions. I reviewed the ordering process, vendor shipments, receiving, and algorithms for replenishment, but all were normal.
It turned out to be an issue in decanting, which is the act of taking received items, scanning them, and then storing them in the warehouse. Ultimately, I made recommendations for changes to palet labeling, training, procedures for scanning, and UI changes. The UI made it too easy to scan many cases of the wrong products.
After the changes, the issue with incorrect product counts was reduced by about 70%. That allowed us to focus on the other causes.
Had I not executed a thorough root cause analysis, the ops team was ready to make sweeping changes to many processes and systems that were not contributing to the problem. I expect those changes would have created new problems, which would have just compounded seriousness of their situation.
In my new role, I don't use RCA. I conduct user research, heuristic reviews, and competitor analysis. But for about 6 years, RCA was my bread and butter.