A research framework that allows our teams to participate in discovery.
Problem Statement
After 20 years as a custom dev company, we transitioned to a SaaS platform. How do we build out a world-class research program to help us meet our customers needs?
My Role
Project Lead for the construction of research plans, methods, and best practices. Empowering researchers to help product, design, and develop conduct and document their findings.
Program Setup.
Starting from blank, I created best practices, common methods, and reporting structures to help anyone in Product, UX, or Development conduct research.
What Are You Doing?
Project Visualization.
I created this visualization to show where each project lives in the product phases and verticals.
Some details removed per NDA.
Research Setup
Recruiting Profiles & Screening.
We use recruiting profiles and a screening survey to help us reach the correct customers.
Example shown per NDA request.
Design Partner Program
I created a program with customers from different verticals allowing us to quick get to the right users.
Prototype Environment
We use prototypes for on-site, remote usability testing, and off-line tasking to gain insights from our customers. We primarily use code or Adobe XD.
Question Bank
To speed up our planning, I created a bank of questions. This also allowed us to be consistent in our findings.
Common Methods.
While I conduct deeper research, we wanted to empower teams to conduct their own research and document their finds. I built a framework to help them understand the methods.
Easier Method Selection
I wanted to make sure our teams understood the ways they can interact with our customers in more ways then just remote usability testing. Here is a visualization to show them some methods.
How Much Context?
As teams made decisions on research methods, I wanted to make sure they understood how much product usage context the customer had during the research exercise.
Going On-Site
Contextual Inquiry.
We often get in front our our customers to understand their goals, flows, and pain points to help keep our projects focused.
Research Activity
Card Sorting.
We used both open and closed card sorting exercises to identify how our customers think about their work and our system.
Internal Research
Service Design.
Due to the complexity and configurability of our product, our service teams become a key experience for our customers.
Some details removed per NDA.
Concept Validation
Remote Usability Testing.
We create AdobeXD prototypes to test our top concepts with our customers.
Some details removed per NDA.
Research Output.
Conducting research has to be more than numbers and quotes. We visualize our findings in a quick and consumable way for the company.
Who Uses Our Software
Persona Building.
We create baseline personas that change over time. For each persona we also have archetypes based on vertical.
Documenting Findings
Journey Maps.
We create these flows to help product, development, and sales see common flows for our customers experience.
Hand Outs
Visualizing Flows.
Part of the research output is to create visuals for anyone in the company to use and understand.
