UXR & Measurement

I am always surprised by how much design is competed without ongoing user research. In agencies, quantitative data and market research dominates the discussion. On the client side, small R&I teams are overwhelmed with requests and gatekeep access to customers. In my experience, it is the hardest aspect of user centricity to sell, especially when timelines and resources are tight.

Despite the obstacles, UXR remains one of the most helpful tools in de-risking product decisions, building empathy with users, and measuring the value of user centered design.

In my last role, I established and refined a user research process and positioned it as a growth opportunity for the agency. I also coached the contributors on my team to a higher standard in their research based projects.

Challenges

I encountered the following challenges when establishing our UXR approach:

• Lack of experience on the UX team

• Confusion about UXR’s purpose and function

• Non-actionable and non-specific findings from siloed research teams

Tenets

1: Stay lean and use templates - We used a thorough, standardized test plan format that could flex for different objectives — that way even inexperienced UXAs could create rough drafts. Our process often relied on templated Miro boards to collectively hash out objectives and specific prototype flows. This promoted consistency and quality control.

2: Use remote research tools and partner with specialists - We subscribed to an enterprise Userlytics account to leverage their screening and recruiting, and moderation services. This provided agility to validate ideas fast and get quick answers on basic questions. For more complex and high stakes research, we partnered with external research agencies and assisted in 3 areas (1) communicating details about the product/ experience to research team (2) translating brand/business questions into research objectives and (3) interpreting results into a plan for enhancements.

3: Give tactical recommendations based on results - All of our synthesized presentations included tactical improvements and opportunities. If we were unsure about the technical feasibility of a suggestion, we workshopped using MoSCoW and dot voting. We constantly reiterated the importance of UXR and tied specific recommendations back to business value.

Case Studies

Note: Due to confidentiality agreements, I cannot share further details of this work. I am happy to present each of them in person or over video call.