Equipping Product Teams with User Research for Continuous Discovery
As a UX Practitioner, you know user-centered product approaches contribute to successful organizations and satisfied users. You are sold on the value of quality user research.
Without a fully-staffed UX Research team, how do organizations conduct quality user research? How might Product teams conduct their own user research to better understand customer needs?
Problem
Product Teams may be strongly experiment-focused, using development tools and analytics to validate performance of implementations. They need methods to better understand customer needs, gaining empathy to create experiences resulting in value for both customer and business.
Solution
A three-step research framework equips Product teams and others to conduct user-centered continuous discovery research effectively.
This method is repeatable in any organization and inspired by Continuous Discovery Habits by Teresa Torres.
Step 1: Research questions and outcomes
The researcher meets with the team, opens a collaborative document and asks “What do you need to learn?” After everyone has contributed questions and unknowns, the group determines top priority ‘need to learn’ items.
Ask the team “Who is the perfect research participant to learn from?” and document the attributes of appropriate research participants.
Facilitate team consensus on most important research questions and actionable research outcomes.
Collaboratively craft a conversational or task-based research interview plan. It’s important for the team to do this with a researcher, so they understand how to craft quality interview plans in the future.
Step 2: Enlist participants
The first set of participants may be provided by the researcher. The list might require a partnership with the database team for execution of a database query. When part of a query, ask a team member to request and provide the query results, since they may need to do this in the future.
Enlist participants via email, text, social, or other means. Write and share an enlistment screener in a survey tool or set up an automated calendar scheduling link.
Set up ONE interview. That’s right. Just one.
Step 3: Conduct the interview
Schedule the interview for a time when team members are available to observe and take notes. Conduct the interview, using the collaboratively crafted interview protocol with the agreed-upon participant.
Directly after the interview, facilitate a team discussion. Use a shared documentation space to record insights, issues, and wins during a debrief session, taking steps toward user empathy.
Encourage the team to schedule a participant for the next week. A team member should conduct the interview. Recommend the teams conduct one interview weekly.
Results
In a four month period at one company, almost 50 % of participating Product teams continued user research activities, informing specific projects for continuous and deep learning, rather than relying on user research for a one-time research study.
One Project Manager said their team received “Tons of value.” They were able to identify user challenges and ways to solve them, validate current features, and discover needs for new features. He said his team gained “A deeper understanding of why people use [our product].”
Another Project Manager said “…I’ve gained a greater understanding of why people [engage in the product] and the mental and emotional process they go through in order to do that. I’ve also gained a greater understanding of the impact people want to see from [engaging with the product].”
Lessons Learned: Continuous Discovery
With this simple, repeatable 3-step framework, Product teams and others can conduct user research on a regular basis. UX Researchers provide support to the teams, helping them craft initial interview protocols, enlist participants, analyze results, share findings with stakeholders, and make recommendations for next steps. Product teams continue the activities, equipped with quality user research practices.
