Webinar slides for Sarah Doody's MasterClass on creating a habit of research on your product team. Video presentation at: https://youtu.be/EKjWOvLb8G8 In this free masterclass you'll learn: - The 3 types of research you should be doing each quarter to gather critical insights to form your product decisions. - How to build what people want and avoid the expensive "re-work" that often happens after you launch. - How to tailor your research to your company's timelines and budgets. - How to empower other members of your team to do more research. - Free Trello Board: Copy Sarah's "Quarterly Research Toolkit" Trello Board to plan your team's research. Sarah Doody is a user experience designer, consultant, and writer. She is based in New York, NY and works with clients worldwide.

1. © 2016 Sarah Doody CREATING A HABIT OF UX RESEARCH
3 Steps to Create A Habit of
Research on Your Product Team
© 2018 Sarah Doody
Do not reproduce, redistribute, sell, or circulate the contents of this presentation without the written permission of Sarah Doody.
HOSTED BY
Ophir Prusak
VP Marketing at Validately
SPECIAL GUEST
Sarah Doody
Founder of The UX Notebook

2. Important things to know …
You will get a link
to the slides
Yes, this will
be recorded
Stick around
for Q&A

3. Ophir Prusak
VP Marketing
Validately is a complete user research
platform that includes everything needed to
recruit testers, analyze user experiences,
collaborate on feedback and share
insights, driving better products and
customer experiences.
Validately supports moderated and unmoderated
testing and interviews on desktop, mobile web
and native mobile apps.

4. World Class Companies Use Validately
...along with 450+ more companies

5. What we’ll cover today
3 research activities
to do each quarter
How to do research
more efficiently
Examples of
research in action

6. Hi, I’m Sarah Doody …
UX Designer & Entrepreneur
I’ve run my own UX consultancy for the last 5 years.
Founder of The UX Notebook
I run a weekly UX newsletter that aims to cut through the
clutter of content out there and help you take action.
UX Educator and Speaker
Created and taught General Assembly’s first 11-week UX
program. Founded the online courses, User Research
Mastery & The UX Portfolio Formula. Given talks and
workshops worldwide.

7. Some of the companies I've worked with

8. 8
FRUSTRATION

9. You know you should be doing more
user research.
But it’s hard to make it a constant in
your product development process.

10. Why research is NOT a constant:
“We don’t have
research budget.”
“Research will
slow us down.”
SPEED MONEY
“I don’t believe the
research findings.”
QUALITY

11. You’ve graduated from coffee shop
research and used tools to help you
get better recruits …
PROBLEM 1
QUALITY

12. “The recruits could have been people
bored at work trying to make extra
money.”

13. You tried to improve recruit quality
by finding your own research
participants, but that’s very SLOW.
PROBLEM 2
SPEED

14. Let’s test a prototype of a new checkout
process with 10 people …
RESEARCH
TEAM
• Find research recruits
• Schedule sessions
• Conduct the research
sessions
1 week 1 week 1 week
• Analyze and
communicate findings

15. RESEARCH
TEAM
• Find research recruits
• Schedule sessions
• Conduct the research
sessions
1 week 1 week 1 week
• Analyze and
communicate findings
And meanwhile as the research happens …
ENGINEERING
TEAM
End of a sprint
• Wrap up work on
current sprint …
2 week sprint
• Done … NOW WHAT?
• “Let's start next
feature anyway!”
• Continue to build the
un-tested feature.
• Assumptions vs. facts.

16. Then when everyone comes together …
1 week 1 week
RESEARCH TEAM ENGINEERING TEAM
“The research revealed that
70% of people can’t get
through the new checkout
process.”
“Done!! Here’s the new
checkout based on the
prototype … and it’s mobile
ready too.”

17. Then when everyone comes together …
1 week 1 week
RESEARCH TEAM ENGINEERING TEAM
“The research revealed that
70% of people can’t get
through the new checkout
process.”
“Done!! Here’s the new
checkout based on the
prototype … and it’s mobile
ready too.”
😡

18. You don’t have budget to hire
another researcher.
You can’t figure out how to scale
your research team.
PROBLEM 3
MONEY

19. PROBLEM 3
MONEY
We have so many things we should
research, but we can only do so much …
1 week 1 week
RESEARCH TEAM ENGINEERING TEAM

20. Does your team struggle with …
“We don’t have
research budget.”
“Research will
slow us down.”
SPEED MONEY
“I don’t believe the
research findings.”
QUALITY

21. If you only remember one thing
today, remember THIS …

22. To create better products you
need to spend more time doing
research and less time planning
to do research.

23. RECRUIT SCHEDULE CONDUCT ANALYZE SHARE
Where the researcher
provides most value.
Where researchers spend
too much time
Goal: Maximize researcher’s time.

24. RECRUIT SCHEDULE
CONDUCT ANALYZE SHARE
Let’s not overlook
the complexity of
the researcher’s
tool stack.

25. For your team to do more research
you need to:
Establish a
consistent tool
stack that’s all in
one place.
Make it easier to
report your
insights to your
team.
Spend less time on
the logistics of
recruiting and
scheduling.
Integrate it into your
team’s specific
design / dev
process.

26. Before we go any further …

27. A goal without a plan is just
a wish.
If you want to do more
research, you NEED A PLAN.

28. LEARN LEARN LEARN
LAUNCH LAUNCH LAUNCH LAUNCH

29. The best products succeed in a
cycle of launch and learn.
Frequent learning ensures you’re
guided by the most recent insights.

30. • Save time
• Save money
• Make something people want
• Team operates less on assumptions
• Reduce risk
• Measured impact = happier team
Why you must launch and learn:

31. “Every time we do research, it
creates a bottleneck in our
team’s workflow.”

32. Research does NOT have to be
a bottleneck.
It can effectively happen in
parallel.

33. The product and engineering teams are
used to 2 weeks sprints, and can easily
predict their work capacity.
WEEK 1 WEEK 2
ENGINEERING & PRODUCT
LAUNCH

34. Trying to integrate research results in the
engineering and product team having less
capacity for work.
WEEK 1 WEEK 2
ENGINEERING &
PRODUCT
LAUNCH
1 week
RESEARCH
TEAM

35. Consider adding a week to your sprint
cycles to lessen the bottleneck factor and
give research the time it needs.
WEEK 2 WEEK 3
ENGINEERING &
PRODUCT
LAUNCH
1 week
RESEARCH
TEAM
WEEK 1

36. How to create a cadence of
research on your team.

37. The 3 activities to do each quarter to
create a culture of research on your team.
Explore the big
picture with
evaluative research
Evangelize the
research and
educate your team.
Evaluate success of
existing features
and product use.
EVANGELIZE EXPLOREEVALUATE

38. Evaluate how the product
is working and the success
of existing features and
product use.
Moderated remote or in person
usability testing.
Unmoderated remote or in person
usability testing.
Review analytics to identify areas of
product where you might want to do
more qualitative research.
Test out new analytics tools on your
product.
Review feedback from customer
service and other feedback services.

39. Evangelize research
findings with your team
and create thoughtful
discussion about existing
and upcoming research.
Present findings from research,
including highlighting key insights or
showing clips from interviews.
Have conversations about upcoming
features and map those features back
to user NEEDS discovered in research.
Review any updates or learnings about
your key users (persons, avatars,
whatever your team calls them).
Uncover assumptions team may have
that may be better dealt with using
research.

40. Explore the big picture
with generative research,
by doing more qualitative
research to understand a
problem, industry, etc.
Surveys
Phone calls
One-on-one in person or remote
interviews
Diary studies
Field studies / visits
Market research
Competitive research
Social media

41. A proposed quarterly schedule for your
team’s user research activities.
Every 2 weeks Every 4 weeks Every 12 weeks
EVANGELIZE EXPLOREEVALUATE

42. Let’s imagine we work on the user research
team at an airline.
This is now the quarterly research activities
could break down …
✈

43. MONTH 1 MONTH 2 MONTH 3
Week 1: Evaluative research
Usability testing with 6 participants for a
new mobile boarding pass.
Week 1: Evaluative research
Card sorting with 12 participants for new
navigation within gate agent software.
Week 1: Evaluative research
Trying out new continuous site visitor
recording software (eg. Fullstory).
Week 1: Evaluative research
Usability testing for new seat upgrade
user flow in mobile app.
Week 1: Evaluative research
Usability testing for customer service
live-chat software.
Week 1: Evaluative research
Card sorting with 12 participants for new
navigation within the traveler mobile app.
Quarterly explorative / generative research project
Conducting 16 in-person one-on-one user research
interviews to explore opportunities to streamline the gate
agent software.
Week 4: Evangelize the research Week 4: Evangelize the research Week 4: Evangelize the research

44. Let’s take a look at some of these evaluative
research activities and see how we could
increase efficiency of our team’s research …

45. Example: Evaluative Research
We just launched a new version of the
mobile boarding pass.
It’s been redesigned to help decrease time
at the TSA security check point by
educating users about TSA requirements
within the app so that we can reduce time
in line at security and help our flights be
on time!
RESEARCH GOALS / PLAN
• 8 remote usability testing sessions (30
min each)
• Do users notice the new TSA instruction
section?
• Do users understand the security
checklist?
KEY PARTICIPANT CRITERIA
• Must have flown at least 3 times in last 2
months
• 50% of people must be a frequently flyer
program member

46. Example: Evaluative Research
Using their existing tool stack, the research team jumps
between a lot of software and is doing everything on their own.
RECRUIT & SCHEDULE PLAN & CONDUCT ANALYZE & SHARE
• Screen & find the 10 research
recruits.
• Schedule all sessions & backups.
• Set up the research software.
• Plan note-taking system.
• Conduct the sessions.
• Logistics of compensation etc.
• Review all the sessions.
• Organize and uncover insights.
• Identify key evidence clips / points.
• Make findings presentable.

47. Example: Evaluative Research
RECRUIT & SCHEDULE PLAN & CONDUCT ANALYZE & SHARE
There are a lot of tasks within this workflow that the researchers
shouldn’t have to do & cut into time they could be doing research.
• Screen & find the 10 research
recruits.
• Schedule all sessions & backups.
• Set up the research software.
• Plan note-taking system.
• Conduct the sessions.
• Logistics of compensation etc.
• Review all the sessions.
• Organize and uncover insights.
• Identify key evidence clips / points.
• Make findings presentable.

48. Example: Evaluative Research
Constantly switching between and logging into different software
and finding things across many places is not efficient and creates
a huge barrier to entry for others to get involved in research.

49. Example: Evaluative Research
To give researchers more time to actually do and analyze
research, they need to leverage tools that can help reduce friction
in the research workflow.
YouTesters
Stakeholders
RECRUIT & SCHEDULE PLAN & CONDUCT ANALYZE & SHARE

50. Key takeaways for you & your team
• The more research you do, the easier it gets because you’ll start to
create a library of screeners, discussion guides, etc that you can re-use.
• To get into a habit of research, you have to adjust your whole product
development process so that you don’t create unnecessary pressure.
• The more tools you use, the greater the barrier of entry for your team.
And it reduces friction for you.
• Make research a conversation and a part of your team’s language.
• Get it on your calendar, if you don’t then it will not happen.

51. Tips for creating a culture of research
• Research insights must be backed up by EVIDENCE. Failure to
include evidence opens the door to arguments and opinion.
• Don’t expect people to read your findings document. Make time to
present your findings and tell a story.
• Make your research findings actionable & use as opportunity for
collaboration with the designers.
• Don’t give up after one quarter. Building momentum and changing
your team’s culture takes time.
• Invite other team members into the process to observe your research.

52. 52
Make a plan.
Write it down.
Share it.
Hey @validately @sarahdoody, our
team doesn’t do enough research
because ….
Identify WHY your team doesn’t do
more research .
Make an inventory of all the tools your
user researcher(s) use right now to do
their jobs.
Consider how your team could
streamline the research tools you’re
using. Try out some of the tools
mentioned in this class.
Create a research calendar for the year
using the Quarterly Research Toolkit
you’ll get in the follow-up email.#habitofresearch

53. Coming to your inbox …
Link to the
slides
Recording of
this class
Quarterly
Research Toolkit

54. Quarterly Research Toolkit

55. Time for your questions!
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