The Challenge

• Product Teams were unsure of the research process

• No consistent way of planning and running research

• No sense of priority for research projects

• Research findings were not always actioned

The Idea

A process for user research to help plan, run and prioritise research projects more efficiently.

The Solution

Research Process

1. Utilising Existing Research

Stakeholders often submitted briefs focused on problems we had already researched or were related to their product area.

The first step in my process asked them to check our research area for any existing research that may be relevant and evidence this as part of the brief request if further research was required.

2. Assumptions mapping workshop

After the brief kick-off, Researchers were to run an assumptions mapping workshop that maps out what we already know, what we think we know & what we want to find out with all stakeholders.

3. UX Response to brief

UX team write a brief based on workshop outcomes and propose research methods and plan.

4. Response to brief playback

The brief & methods are discussed and finalised in a follow-up meeting with the team to make sure everyone is aligned.

5. Conducting research

UX team conducted the research and analysed the findings. The whole team are encouraged to get involved.

6. Playing back the research findings

UX present back research findings and opportunities as how might we statements.

7. Prioritisation Session

Product & UX prioritise findings and how might we’s with input from the team.

8. Ideation & Decision Making

The entire team get involved in ideation workshops led by UX and come up with ideas and dot vote on the best solutions.

9. BUILD AND VALIDATION

Concepts and Ideas are built by the product team and tested, validated and iterated on.

10. Tracking & updating

Product and UX update Sharepoint Research area- tracking actions, progress and impact for each research project.

Impact

Assumption mapping and ideation workshops became a standard part of every project and included all stakeholders and multi-disciplinary teams collaborating on goals, ideas and solutions. This resulted in a quicker and more efficient turnaround in terms of delivery as everyone was on the same page and was working towards a shared goal.

I created a shared area that stored an overview of the project and the methods, the outputs of the research findings, which team each finding related to, what action needed to be taken and the link to the JIRA item.

This not only helped us action and measure the impact of our research, but it also was a helpful repository for all product teams to find insights that could be useful to their projects.

Most importantly, it gave me a holistic view of all research across my product teams in which I could identify patterns and themes in the insights to build out a customer-first roadmap for the booking path. We conducted cross-product research studies that resulted in a more streamlined, simple and engaging customer journey which positively impacted conversion across all product areas.

Stakeholders were now bought into user research as they has seen the positive impact in the research repo and the conversion impact. More stakeholders and designers wanted to get involved in studies and run some of their own. I created a toolkit that helped them determine when research should be carried out, what research methods they needed, the tools they could use an archive of case studies relevant to research methods.

Research was now a part of every product and design process with the whole team planning, running and participating in research across the business resulting in a customer-centric user experience, an increase in NPS, CSAT and conversion.