In May was the annual conference for NACVSO, the National Association of County Veterans Service Officers. I’m currently working on a team that’s designing tools for VA-accredited representatives, which includes VSOs, attorneys, and claims agents. This was a great opportunity to speak directly with the hundreds of CVSOs at the conference, a big segment of our audience.
Similar to my days at the University of Arizona’s Tiny CafĂ©, I worked with our team to put together some rapid, less structured, in-person research that could happen quickly by intercepting passersby.
Over the course of a few days we staffed a booth in the exhibit hall and indeed, we learned a lot from this experience. Our methods included:
- Unstructured interviews. We’d identified some gaps in our knowledge and topics we wanted to explore. Officers stopped by and we engaged them in conversation about their work, our work, and ideas for building solutions together. This helped us more deeply understand their goals, behaviors, and challenges with current systems and processes.
- Preference testing. We had printed prototypes and asked them which of the options they preferred and why. This helped us narrow down our options and in some cases, combine features from multiple options.
- Concept testing. We had some ideas, printed on paper, and asked for their impressions and feedback. This helped us learn if we were headed in the right direction.
- Talk-back boards. We wrote prompts on a large poster board and invited responses and feedback to the responses.
We gathered over 90 data points, producing insights and recommendations that will guide our work going forward. We also grew our participant panel for future research opportunities. Remote teams don’t often get the chance to immerse themselves in the community in which they serve. It was a worthwhile and unique experience!