If a tree falls in a rainforest and no one sees it, did it really happen? The same goes for research – if your insights live in a shiny report in your execs drawer gathering dust , what good did that research do to the humans that use your services every day? The act of sharing your research insights and getting it into the collective design brain of your team is as important as the research it self. Service Designer for One Tesco, Roman Schoeneboom, shares the techniques we have been using to bring our design team and stakeholders to the coal face of customer research. One Tesco is a service design led transformation programme at Tesco, which places customer need firmly at the heart of the design process.

1. Why is it important to engage
people in user research?
Roman Schoeneboom

2. “We are customer-centric.”
95%
Bain & Company survey © Roman Schoeneboom, London 2016.

3. “We provide great customer experience.”
80%
Bain & Company survey © Roman Schoeneboom, London 2016.

4. “I have experienced great customer experience.”
11%
Forrester 14 © Roman Schoeneboom, London 2016.

5. Why is it important to engage
people in user research?
Empathy should play a key role in the problem-
solving process.
It unlocks capacity for innovation by allowing
deep emotional understanding.
But it’s crucial how to present insight.
© Roman Schoeneboom, London 2016.

6. “
I was
inspired by a
100 page
report.
”
Said no one ever.
© Roman Schoeneboom, London 2016.

7. We can’t use
insight which only
lives inside the
researcher’s head.
Insight inside
does not help anyone
© Roman Schoeneboom, London 2016.

8. We are not just here to do
‘some research’.
We are here to design better services
for real people.
© Roman Schoeneboom, London 2016.

9. UI/UX leads
Communication
manager
UI/UX designers
Head of designStrategic principal Programme
manager
Content strategist Service design
manager
Analytics manager
Digital Design Language team
Developers Senior service
designer
Justin says:
“Tesco is good at urgent,
not so good at important.”
Service Design team
James says:
“It should always
feel that we are
fighting the system.
This shows that we
are doing things
differently.”
We are One Tesco
A service design-led transformation programme aimed at
placing the customer at the heart of the design process.
We’re like a well drilled kitchen.
© Roman Schoeneboom, London 2016.

10. One Tesco works on
Improving the shopping experience and retail environment for
our customers, by understanding their needs and designing
services around those needs.
Principles, guidelines and workflows for ourself and for other
teams.
A Digital Design Language providing a consistent visual system
and assets to share and reuse.
Working and publishing mobile app standards.
Conducting deep ethnography research among our elderly
shoppers to uncover unmet customer needs (Discovery phase).
© Roman Schoeneboom, London 2016.

11. It is critical that your entire team
engages with user research.
1. Tell stories, be visual, share
2. Research as a team sport
3. Collaborate for the best results
So how do you move research from something the researcher
does to being an activity the whole team owns?
© Roman Schoeneboom, London 2016.

12. 1. Tell stories, be visual, share
With ethnographic research you very quickly end up gathering
vast mountains of data.
At One Tesco the single most important job you have as
researcher is getting the research into the heads of your team.
If you are feeling swamped by assets, just remind yourself that
this is a worthwhile investment.
© Roman Schoeneboom, London 2016.

13. Research objectives
Research dashboard
Discovery
This week
Next week
Monday
Monday
Tuesday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Thursday
Friday
Friday
Customers
spoken with
Staff spoken
with
Days since
last visit
Number of team
members
People spider web
Name
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
-1
-2
-3
-4
-5
-6
-7
-8
-9
-10
What we’ve learned so far
Main insight
or theme
Supporting
customer quote
Supporting
observations
Shopper type
What to design
for them?
Main retailer
People we met
Name and age
Shopping
time
Shopping
time
Shopping
time
Tech
skill
Tech
skill
Tech
skill
Name and age Name and age
Research profile
(filled out)
Photos Photos Photos
Research profile
(filled out)
Research profile
(filled out)
Things we learned about each person
In-store
shops
Online
shops
Total
shops
Average shopping
time
Where we did our research
Inspired by the GDS and seen as vertical campfires – places
where teams can gather round, connect and share insight.
Our research wall templates enable us to update with A4 print
outs and post its – so we can use the same templates while
constantly cycling different assets
Research wall
© Roman Schoeneboom, London 2016.

14. Objectives
Statistics
Calendar
People we
met
People
spider
web
Themes
Quotes
Concepts
Research wall
© Roman Schoeneboom, London 2016.

15. Avoid the big reveal, update regularly
Do regular research playbacks with
the team – telling the stories of the
individuals we met.
Get a regular rhythm and invite people
from other bits of the business.
Make sure you have time to present
back. Allow time for ideas to percolate.
The problems
started after
the reveal
© Roman Schoeneboom, London 2016.

16. Visualizing things early helps
you to see patterns as they
emerge
With a spider web you can rank
your customers on important
factors such as health and
mobility and familiarity with
technology.
It helps to see who your extreme
customers are.
It helps to re-think recruitment
plan for the next phase of
research.
Derek
© Roman Schoeneboom, London 2016.

17. What worked for us
Have a great system in place for uploading assets after each
interview.
Make sure everyone on your research team knows and follow
this, be prepared to adjust as you go, iterate.
Creating presentations should be quick and easy – everything is
labeled in the right way and easily retrievable when you need it.
Factor in sufficient time for the uploading of assets.
Be prepared to adjust the plan when you are struggling.
Remember that sharing insights and making them easy for your
team to absorb is the single most important thing for you to do.
© Roman Schoeneboom, London 2016.

18. 2. Research as a team sport
But more importantly than just presenting back the ideas is
actually taking your team to the coal face.
To discover real but unexpressed and unmet customer needs,
you need to go where the people are.
To embrace their world you have to be in their world
This is essential part of building empathy and there is no
substitute for it.
There is plenty of evidence that increasing “exposure hours” of
your team results in the design of better products, but you need
to invest in your team.
© Roman Schoeneboom, London 2016.

19. What worked for us
We ran training sessions with our
team before we took them out
into the field.
Field guides covering
practicalities like where to meet
up, what to do with assets .
Stickers to reward team members
who had been out on sessions.
Using research wall as a vehicle
to show the rest of the business
best practice.
The little
research guide
© Roman Schoeneboom, London 2016.

20. The challenges
Motivating your team – everyone has a day job – it helps to
have a metric and for this to be enforced by the senior members
of your team.
For example – it should never have been longer than two weeks
since a member of the team has been in front of a customer.
Don’t assume that a stakeholder knows how to behave on
research.
© Roman Schoeneboom, London 2016.

21. What worked
It was helpful to us to explain that interviews unfold like the
chapters of a book and interrupting an interview can disrupt the
interviewer’s flow.
We gave plenty of space to ask questions, and carefully
signalled these.
Swapped numbers before each session and arranged a place to
meet up before the session for a pre-brief.
Used the pre-brief to go over the participant profile, paperwork,
re-affirm the rules of the interview.
© Roman Schoeneboom, London 2016.

22. How many times have you had to deal with a senior stakeholder
saying “but you’ve only spoken to seven users, how can you
make assumptions about the needs of all our customers?”
And sure, you can have that debate about the merits of small
data versus big data, how it helps us explain the why behind the
what.
But what about also facing into it?
In our experience the best results come when you collaborate
more widely within the research community.
3. Collaborate for the best results
© Roman Schoeneboom, London 2016.

23. The right research makes the difference
Market research Insight research
Market research answers
questions of what.
Insight research answers
WHY, HOW and WHAT IF,
and is actionable for design.
asks 100 people
creates 10 truths
asks 10 people
creates 100 truths
© Roman Schoeneboom, London 2016.

24. Work with the big data
We have a dedicated data analyst to help us.
As we see themes emerging, he is then able to see how
representative our findings are.
He is also able to see what the cost implications are and what
the size of the opportunity are if we fix it.
This is invaluable when having conversations with senior
stakeholders who are – let’s face it – interested in the bottom
line and trying to figure out where best to spend money in
order to get the biggest results.
© Roman Schoeneboom, London 2016.

25. Team up with academic researchers and charities
Academic research has a very different approach, which can
bring a lot to your project. That’s why we are collaborating:
Doing all this means we have really explored the full landscape and
it adds gravitas and weight to our own research study, meaning
senior stakeholders are more likely to engage with the results.
Longitudinal data that looks
at societal trends across the
whole of the UK and over
longer time period.
Offers great subject matter
expertise and a huge
network, which helps for
recruitment.
If a retailer can design
well for people living with
dementia, it will be well
designed for everyone else.
© Roman Schoeneboom, London 2016.

26. If the plan adds up, we are moving from
monolithic system
large, inflexible, slow to change
user-focused system
agile, modular, reliable, responsible
© Roman Schoeneboom, London 2016.

27. Take aways
01 Empathy is key: it unlocks capacity for innovation.
02 It is vital how you present the insight.
03 Insights in the researcher’s head are not valuable for the business.
04 Your single most important job is to get the research in your team’s heads.
05 It is critical that the entire team engages with user research.
06 Tell stories, be visual, share.
07 Avoid the big reveal, share reguarly.
. Do regular feeback sessions.
. Get regular rhythm and invite people from other areas of the business.
. Give time for ideas to percolate.
08 Visualise early to see emerging patterns.
09 Have a great system in place, factor in sufficient time for the vast amount of data.
10 Research as a team sport.
. More team ‘exposure hours’ will result in designing better products
. Run training sessions, provide field guides, create stickers as reward
. Use tools to train and share best practice with business
. Involve senior members in research
11 Collaborate with research community.
12 Do the right type of research. Do insight research.
13 Work wih big data to see cost implications and what opportunities there are.
14 Team up with academic researchers and charities to get a different POV.
© Roman Schoeneboom, London 2016.

28. Thank you
Sources:
Presentation content is based on the blog post ‘Why is it important to engage people in user research’ by Kate Kapp, London 2016
Presentation content has been proofread by Kenneth Yau.
Page 02-04: idea taken from ‘Hellon_05052016_for Tesco 5-5-16’, © Hellon 2016
Page 07: Image taken from www.effectiveui.com
Page 09: Icon set ‘Tesco Transformation team’ by Carl Holderness, Noun Project 2016
Page 15: Image taken from www.londontheatredirect.com
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Page 22: Image taken from www.social.eyeforpharma.com
Page 23: Idea taken from ‘Hellon_05052016_for Tesco 5-5-16’, © Hellon 2016
Page 24: Image taken from www.word.jobstheword.co.uk
Page 08, 12, 18, 20, 27: Images taken from www.pexels.com
Roman Schoeneboom
Senior Service Designer
roman.schoeneboom@uk.tesco.com
Office: +44 (0) 20 3681 4325 | Extension: 367325
Tesco PLC, Digital Product
Third Floor | Lever Building | 85 Clerkenwell Road | London | EC1R 5AR