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CS Capstone Handbook

User Activities

User activities helps incorporate user feedback and needs into your project, enhancing the user experience and overall product design. They are also key to finding users and growing your product.

“You are not your user.” — Many People

Ideate About User Activities

Team Activity

Generate a list of 5-10 ideas of user activities that you might do at some future point. For each kind of activity, generate at least one (but preferably two or three) different ways in which you might apply that activity in your project. For example, there are multiple ways one might use A/B testing.

To get started, you can read NN/g’s When to Use Which User-Experience Research Methods and UX Research Cheat Sheet.

Here are some more in-depth guides:

Consider splitting the readings between team members.

Do a User Activity

Individual Activity Team Activity

There are dozens of activities that you can do with real users (see previous section). Select one that is relevant for your project at this point in time and do it.

Write a report with:

  • the type of activity,
  • the goal of the activity or hypothesis being tested,
  • details on how the activity was conducted (e.g., questions asked, test groups),
  • key findings, data, or patterns observed,
  • an analysis of what the results mean for the project, and
  • actionable changes or decisions based on the findings.

Define your Personas

Team Activity

Read/browse Personas: Study Guide then create 2-3 personas relevant for your project and explain how they are being used to ideate or prioritize features. Consider splitting the content of the article between team members.

Some ideas to define personas:

  • What is your ideal user’s current behavior?
  • What do they want to achieve?
  • Define the demographic profiles, goals, and a scenario use case.

Find Users

Individual Activity

Once you have created your user profile, you can now find places they are present. The internet has communities for every niche, try searching for communities relevant to your product on Reddit, Twitter/X, Hacker News and other forums. Post on these platforms and engage with potential users. There are also many modern platforms that product and technology enthusiasts browse to discover new solutions to their problems, such as Product Hunt, Beta List, and Indie Hackers. Finally, you can reach out to your local community (fellow students, friends, clubs, etc.) as well.

Consider reading You Are Not the User: The False-COnsensus Effect.

Write a summary of the outreach you’ve done and the mediums you’ve used, and the returns, e.g., people that have agreed to do user activities with you. Consider the following marketing activities:

  • Post A Demo on Reddit, Twitter/X, Hacker News (or similar)
  • Launch on ProductHunt or Beta List
  • Distribute Cookies for Trying your Software (or similar)
  • Present at a Conference or Workshop

Engage Users

Individual Activity

Once you’ve find a good pool of users, engage them to gather feedback on your product. This can be done through social media posts, emails, surveys, demos, a public Discord/Slack channel, etc.

Write a report of the outreach you’ve done, the mediums you’ve used, and the feedback you’ve received from users.

UX Design Maturity

Individual Activity

Read The 5 Levels of UX Maturity and complete the UX Maturity Quiz.

Write what needs to happen for you to move to the next stage. If your project involves user experience, and no other significant technical elements, then your team is expected to rise to at least UX Maturity Level 5.

Complete an IRB Application

Team Activity

If you are doing a research project with faculty, and you plan to do user testing, you will need to get IRB approval.