Usually, the primary goal of user research is to answer specific questions about a design. But what happens when you shift your primary objective from conducting research to “building a lasting relationship”? The presenters will share stories about how this approach has forever changed the breadth and depth of information that they learn about users, and how it’s actually made some of the hardest parts of enterprise research, such as recruiting users, easier. You'll learn about circumstances where this approach is (and is not) appropriate specific tools and techniques to support relationship building how this approach returns richer data which can more deeply impact products (and even the product team's culture) Handouts will be provided. This presentation is best suited for practitioners who work with enterprise or complex multi-use applications, and beginner to intermediate UX practitioners who as part of their job talk to users, regardless of their title.

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Re-Use and Recycle:
Building Sustainable Relationships with Your Users

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UX Research: A Different Approach

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About SolarWinds Users

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UX Research Arrives ...

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First Things First
» Who ARE these people who use the products?

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“Show Me How You Use It” Sessions

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Show Me’s
» One hour sessions over GoToMeeting
» Participants take you on a tour:
• Why did you buy it?
• What are the 3 most important things you do with it?
• What’s working well and not working well about each thing?

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“Show Me” Script Example

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Putting Users in the Driver’s Seat

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When Do ”Show Me Sessions” Work Best?

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Using Private Groups of Expert Users

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Private Groups Within a Community Site
• Get feedback on early designs (before we ran traditional feature walkthroughs
and usability tests)
• Ask users to share examples of alerting-related tasks
• Ask users to help the team understand concepts, terms
• Provide a collaborative sharing space between all members of the product team
and 12 users

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• What one thing would you tell us to fix or change?
• What one thing has you the happiest or most excited (if anything)?

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Private Groups Don’t Always Work…
» When product or feature isn’t big enough to sustain interest over at
least several months
» When you have too many/not enough users (magic number is ~ 12)
» When you don’t have enough content to provide regular (weekly)
updates
» When you don’t have actual designs (sneak peeks) to share
» When you don’t have the entire team willing to engage with users

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Basic Principles

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People First, Then Data

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Be a Bridge Builder

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Value of the Method

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Depth of Research

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Finding Users

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Impact on the Entire Brand Experience

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Impact on the Entire Brand Experience
IT Manager and non-SolarWinds user, during blind research, talks about
what he’s missing from his vendor and what would make him abandon the
product he just spent $120,000 buying:
“If a tool was out there that . . .if the team that builds it and works on it
actually saw us as an important customer and would actually want to know
how we feel about their tool and what they could do to make it better—
that’s the kind of relationship I would like to see.”

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Thank you!