Conducting Debrief Sessions

A debrief is a short meeting with your team or clients where you discuss and reflect on research that just took place. Debriefs usually last from about 30 minutes to an hour. This can be as formal as a moderated activity or as informal as a conversation over a team dinner.

Debrief sessions are a great way to:

• Get the team to interact with each other and encourage collaboration
• Immediately reflect on what happened during the session
• Help team members process and understand key information to continue to work on a project
• Get the team a chance to offer their feedback on the study and suggest ideas for improvement
• Separate research insights into immediately actionable vs. bigger issues
• Simplify the research process by discussing important information throughout the project life cycle, making final synthesis sessions shorter and more effective^[1]

Generally, it is best to run debriefs as quickly as possible after an observed research session since insights start fading from participants' memories soon after the test is over.

When conducting user interviews, it's recommended to run a short debrief session after each interview. You can include the debrief in the calendar invite. For example, if an interview takes one hour, send the invite for 1.5 hours. When stakeholders accept the invite, it’ll leave their schedule clear for the debrief.

At the end of all research interviews, teams typically hold a synthesis session. It's a much longer meeting to discuss the data from all interviews and make key decisions about a project. Running debrief sessions before the final synthesis session makes it shorter, less overwhelming, and more effective.

To have efficient debrief sessions, you need to plan them in advance. Here's what you can do to prepare:

• Decide on what points you want to cover. For example, pain points, surprises, questions you still have, key quotes, and key takeaways.
• Make a schedule. Once you decide on each point to cover, place a time on each one to keep you on track.
• Create instructions for the observers. Not all stakeholders you want to invite will be familiar with the format. Create brief instructions to tell them what they need to pay attention to. E.g., "Note down the exact words the user said."
• Create a board. Before the debrief session, prepare a template you can fill out on a physical or digital whiteboard. This gives the session structure but also allows for creativity.
• Leave space for ideas that don't fit. Instead of shoving everything into predetermined topics, write down ideas that don’t fit into any category and address them later in the synthesis session.

Once you have your plan, send out the invitations. Ideally, you'd want all stakeholders that observed the session to attend, but this isn't always possible. You can improve the chances of their attendance by including the debrief session in the observation invitation.^[2]

As the debrief session organizer, your goal is to help your group explore what happened during the research session and what it might mean. This helps the team move past superficial insights (e.g., the participant didn't like the button) to actionable insights (e.g., people were worried about leaving the site).

How can you make your debrief session more efficient?

• Explain the format of the discussion and what kind of contributions you expect from the team. Will it be a conversation, a whiteboard session, or some other type of debrief? Will the participants work individually, in pairs or groups, or will it be an open discussion? Set ground rules.
• Explain what you are looking for in each section. For example, some stakeholders might not know what a "pain point" is. You can help them understand by saying that you are looking for persistent problems that frequently inconvenience customers.
• Give clear instructions and set time expectations. For example, you can give the team 5 mins to brainstorm in groups and have an open discussion for 5 more minutes. Be strict with the timer to maintain pace.

Debriefing is not the time to make decisions on a UX issue. It's your chance to discuss all possible interpretations of the research you just observed and explore the possibilities and ideas your team can come up with.

As the discussion moderator, your job is to keep the team on track. Gently nudge the group away from trying to definitively answer questions or debate around the best way to “solve” a problem. Listen to ideas, but keep them moving on.

It's vital to take notes during a debrief session. First, you can use them to refer back to ideas or possible issues. Second, you can share this information with other team members or stakeholders who can't attend.

There are several ways to take notes. One option is to designate one person on the team to do so. Another option is to give each team member a list of questions and ask them to fill out their answers during the session.

At the end of the meeting, collect the notes and prepare a report to share with the rest of the team or project stakeholders. This can help keep them updated on the research process and the team's next steps. If you're using a whiteboard with post-it notes, take a picture or save it for later reference.

A whiteboard and post-it notes can make your debrief sessions much more efficient. These tools will prevent people from dominating the conversation, help articulate the problem, and see the whole picture.

Here's an example of how you can introduce post-its and a whiteboard into your debrief session:

• Draw the board into squares that correspond to your session points — for instance, Key takeaways, Needs, Goals, Surprises, etc.
• Give each participant a stack of post-its and a thick felt-tip pen.
• Go through each point individually. Allow people to brainstorm ideas and write one idea per note.
• After they are done, let everyone stick their notes on the board without talking.
• Once everyone has contributed, open up the floor for discussion and group similar ideas.

Follow these steps and you'll have a board with all the highlights and key insights. You can also reshuffle these reflections by issue severity or ease of addressing.^[3]

When planning what points you want to discuss, don't forget to create an "idea parking lot" — a space for ideas that don't fit your discussion points. This allows you to save valuable ideas while keeping the debrief session on topic.

What kinds of ideas go into the parking lot?

• Questions about the debrief method. It is super distracting for others to brainstorm and listen to questions at the same time.
• Possible solutions. A debrief session is the time to explore insights but keep proposed ideas in the parking lot for later follow-up.
• Disagreements.
• Any ideas that don't fit into the predetermined topics.

You can address the parking lot later, for example, during the synthesis session.

For some remote teams, it might be impossible to get everyone to attend the debrief session at the same time. In this case, you can opt for asynchronous debriefing.

Choose whatever sharing and discussion platform works best for your team.

Create a post with your initial analysis, share it with the team, and ask questions to inspire discussion. You can add relevant photos and images as they help people empathize remotely. Plan time between research participants to post updates or allocate a once-a-day cadence for field research.

Here are some ideas for asynchronous debriefing:

• Post participant highlights. Instead of relating what happens verbatim, share the biggest surprises or contradictions. This will keep your team focused on the most critical insights from each session.
• Include direct questions and tag people if possible. This will help draw people into the discussion.
• Schedule a meeting as soon as possible. Asynchronous sharing helps you start the discussion but doesn't replace a good face-to-face conversation or whiteboarding activity.

Normally, debriefs in UX research include sessions with team members and key stakeholders. There are benefits to adding debriefs with test participants, as they often do after psychological tests. The aim is to inform participants of what was being tested and why.

In UX research, debriefing participants helps them understand your products and builds empathy. More importantly, after activities like a usability test, debriefing can serve as a mini user interview.

During user tests, we usually try to avoid influencing users. Debriefing after the test is an opportunity to provide context to your observations. For example, if you noticed that the participant didn't interact with a button, you can ask them why during the debrief.

How can you get started with debriefing participants? After the test, ask the participant if they have any questions you can answer, then briefly describe what you are working on and why. This can prompt participants to share new insights with you.^[4]