The primary duty of a product designer is to craft experiences. To do that, I need to understand why users do what they do within our product, and this is where session replay comes in.
It’s not just about making a product look pretty, it’s about making it intuitive, delightful, and useful. And while I’ve always had a great toolkit for that: A/B testing, analytics dashboards, etc.— session replay has become one of my go-to tools for user research.
Where most tools reveal what users are doing, session replays reveal why they do it. It helps me pinpoint friction areas, understand user behavior, and identify usability issues that analytics alone may miss or that interviewees may forget during user interviews.
But, like any tool, it takes some getting used to. So, here’s how I use session replays efficiently, how it fits into my preferred design methodology, and the limitations you can expect when using it.
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Understanding the double diamond design process: Where session replay fits in
The Double Diamond is a classical design framework that guides my design process. It’s a flexible but very well-structured cycle for tackling design problems by breaking them down into 4 phases.
Here’s how I see each of these phases and where session replay shines:
- Discovery: This is always my first step in design thinking. You see, in order to solve a problem, you must first understand what it is. With session replays, I can observe real user behavior. As I watch each session, I look for what went wrong and where to understand the challenges behind user frustration.
- Definition: In this phase, I take all the information from the discovery phase and distill it into a clear and concise problem definition. I can then use replays to highlight poor user flows and illustrate key pain points.
- Development/Design: At this stage, I’m asking, “How can I solve this problem?” I’m creating prototypes, exploring different design concepts, and running usability tests to iterate our solution quickly before the final product release.
- Delivery: Finally, after the product is released, I use session replay to again validate design decisions within the wider user base, identify post-launch issues, and determine areas for improvement.
Practical uses of session replays
Now, let’s go over three of the most common use cases for session replays:
Scaling qualitative research with session replays
One of the ways I use session replays is to bulldoze my way through qualitative research. Although traditional qualitative research methods are effective, they’re also slow and expensive.
However, session replay offers a way to gather qualitative insights at scale. Rather than interviewing a handful of users, I can analyze hundreds or even thousands of sessions. This allows for a broader understanding of user behavior across different user segments.
But session replay doesn’t just supplement qualitative research methods; it also better complements quantitative research methods to produce more comprehensive insights.
For instance, auto-captured analytics data might show a high drop-off rate on a specific page. In-app surveys may reveal that users find the page confusing. However, session replays will show us exactly where users are getting confused and the usability issues causing that confusion.
Combining these data sources, therefore, makes it easier to understand the what, why, and how of user activity. While it doesn’t discount other forms of qualitative research, the beauty of session replay is that it allows you to do qualitative research on a large scale.
Using session replays in a daily workflow
Now, watching session replays is also built into my daily routine. I watch them to help refine my observational skills.
Fortunately, Userpilot’s session replay tool makes this task easier, allowing me to filter sessions by key events. This is crucial, as sessions can be quite lengthy. Therefore, when searching for a specific issue or event, filtering by events helps narrow my focus.
Speaking of observation, I routinely watch sessions from newly released features to observe how they’re used. For example, since we launched the add-ons page, I’ve viewed replays to understand how users navigate the page—specifically, which add-on cards they interact with and which buttons they click most often.
Facilitating cross-functional collaboration with session replays
One of the things that makes session replays truly innovative is how the same session can produce different insights. What one person observes in a session might not be what another sees.
As a result, every member of our design team watches these replays and notes their findings. Beyond that, though, we also share replays with product managers, UX researchers, and engineers for broader perspectives and to help create a more robust solution.
Of course, how this collaboration works in practice varies. Sometimes, it’s as simple as sharing a replay with our developers to illustrate usability issues. Other times, we may share it to trigger team-wide discussions about the best approach to resolving certain problems.
Thankfully, Userpilot’s session replay tool makes collaboration easy. For example, whenever I notice an issue, I can create a playlist of sessions where it appears. I can then leave notes to explain my reasoning or tag a specific timestamp where a bug appears.
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How can you complement session replays with other forms of research?
I’ve mentioned how much of a revolutionary tool session replays are. But, as I also noted, they’re even more powerful when used with other forms of research to create a holistic image.
For example, consider how it works with some common user research tools:
- Usability testing: Traditional usability testing involves observing users complete tasks, gathering verbal feedback, and measuring success. Today, though, I use session replay to see exactly where users hesitated or struggled in the real world. I even use it to review user actions during usability tests and to identify subtle non-verbal cues like rage clicks.
- Surveys: Traditionally, we use surveys to get quantitative and qualitative data. However, session replays provide concrete examples to help explain survey findings. For example, I can use it to identify the cause of a reported frustration or confirm that a feature is truly as easy to use as claimed.
- A/B testing: Traditional A/B testing involves comparing two designs to see which one performs better on key metrics like conversion or click-through rates. Session replays tell me why. I use it to identify usability issues in the lower-performing variant, track user interactions in the winning variant, and see why a surprising result happened.
Ultimately, the same can be said for any traditional research method. Nothing bridges the gap between quantitative data and qualitative research better than session replay.
What are the challenges and limitations of session replays?
Although it has proven to be an incredibly valuable addition to my toolbox as a product designer, session replay isn’t without its challenges and limitations.
- Skill development: Observing sessions is a skill I’m still developing. It takes skill to discern genuine usability issues from normal behavior, identify subtle cues of user frustration, and draw accurate conclusions.
- Data overload: Session replays generate a massive amount of data, making it challenging to analyze effectively. Lengthy sessions require effective filtering and focused viewing to make sense of them.
- Contextual challenges: Session replays provide visual data without user commentary. As a result, it can be difficult to understand user motivations and thought processes, leaving a lot open to wild interpretations.
- Lack of segmentation information: Lack of segmentation can lead to misinterpretation of user actions. For example, while a power user might easily navigate a complex workflow, a new user might struggle. Without segmentation, you can assume the power user’s activity as the standard and miss the new user’s pain points.
Real-world examples of how I use session replay at Userpilot
Alright, let’s get into some real-world examples of how I, as a Userpilot product designer, use session replay in my daily workflow:
Example 1: Refining the segments feature
The Issue: Sometime last year, we refreshed the Segments feature and included some new segmentation tools. Subsequently, we wanted to see how users used these tools when defining segmentation conditions or saving segments.
The Insight: While watching user sessions, we noticed something interesting—users preferred an older interaction pattern despite the newly introduced design. Their learned behavior trumped what was designed as a more intuitive solution.
For example, one of the new additions to segmentation conditions was the ‘or’ button. This allows you to segment users who meet at least one criteria (e.g., Country equals ‘Ireland’ or ‘UK’). However, despite being a more intuitive solution, users preferred the older ‘is one of’ selection criteria.
The Outcome: We had to re-evaluate our design priorities and improve feature simplification. We learned that we didn’t need to introduce two ways of achieving the same result.
Example 2: Investigating the low adoption of our mobile beta feature
The Issue: After the beta release of the mobile feature, we noticed that very few mobile screens had been created.
The Insight: We reviewed session replays to identify the source of the problem. Were users confused by the experience? Were they encountering technical issues while creating mobile screens? We then compiled playlists of users attempting this process and shared them with the engineering team.
The Outcome: Our collaboration with engineers uncovered technical obstacles and design misalignment in the UX. The technical team was then able to address the underlying issues to enhance the user experience.
Example 3: Discovering alternative user flows
The Observation: While watching session replays without a specific issue in mind, we noticed that users navigated some features differently than intended, revealing new user patterns.
The Outcome: We adjusted those feature designs to better align with user expectations and natural workflows. This change improved the user experience for those who followed a different approach to the intended navigation format.
The evolution of session replay: How AI can complement the research process
As effective as session replay has been, I believe it has yet to reach its full potential. Specifically, I think we can leverage artificial intelligence even more to enhance our insights from session data.
For instance, we can utilize AI algorithms to automatically detect recurring patterns in user behavior, such as rage clicks, hesitation, form abandonment, and unusual navigation paths.
AI can also analyze each session, highlight key moments, and generate automated reports. These reports could reveal user sentiments or even prioritize sessions where users exhibit high levels of frustration. Perhaps it could even include specific clips as examples?
I’m uncertain to what extent AI could assist us, but I believe AI needs to help us make sense of this wealth of session data. I look forward to seeing what our developer colleagues come up with as they continue advancing this AI revolution.
Conclusion
Session replay solves real problems, and it’s been an excellent addition to my design toolkit. With every session I watch, I either validate or nullify a design hypothesis, helping us refine our product to match user behaviors and expectations better.
Userpilot’s session replay tool also allows you to filter, analyze, and share insights at key points in a recording. It also complements our suite of research tools, from analytics to A/B tests, surveys, and more. If you want to see how it works firsthand, book a free Userpilot demo today.
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