What I especially like about UX research? The Aha! moments. Sometimes it happens while uncovering something profound and decisive. At other times, it comes out mid-sentence during validation.
That was exactly what happened when a Québec public body was considering restructuring how information was organized on its website. The team had already deduced what the right move probably was. They intentionally kept it from me not to influence my process. That is a client doing research the right way.
Round one was card sorting. Participants knew the existing structure well, but they still struggled with it. And they diagnosed the problem in the only vocabulary available to them: the categories, the labels and the way items were grouped.
Round two was validation with an intentionally rudimentary prototype: a clickable Figma build with only titles and lorem ipsum, laid out under the same placement rules as the eventual Québec.ca-compliant site. Same participant, in the first minutes of navigation:
“So, like I told you last time, the problem is… Oh… Oh! Now I get what you did. That makes sense.” (translated from French)
The issue was never depth of content. It was sequenced. Steps that fit together. A whole matrix of how information was organized needed to be flipped. The card sorting really helped get that insight out of the participants, even though they might have known exactly where to go on the old site.
To be honest, I didn’t come up with a novel answer. The client had already figured it out on their own. My job was to test their instinct blind, against real people. It held up.
Two things I want to highlight from this project. Validation done right may seem uneventful if the primary idea was already correct, but it really mitigates the risks. And a prototype with almost no real content in it can settle the main questions that polished mockups only decorate.
What’s the best “Aha!” moment you’ve seen in a session?
About the author
Louis-Philippe Bellerose
Founder and Principal Consultant