Democratising Research in Product Development
Credit: Alexander Suhorucov
In a talk I’ve done recently about the role of UX Research and Product Discovery simultaneously in product development, the discussion of the democratisation of research arose.
First, I want to explain what UX Research and Product Discovery are in the context of innovative product development as there are many different definitions of both.
UX Research as Project-Based Research
UX research involves deeply understanding the target audience’s needs, behaviours, and preferences. A significant cause of product failure is not identifying the actual problems of users. Researching and validating the problem before jumping into solution mode is critical.
Product Discovery as Continuous Discovery
Where UX Research looks broadly at the product and users, product discovery is more focused on the product being developed and perhaps insights as a result of doing research on the product. The way Teresa Torres describes it is:
"We typically define product discovery in contrast with product delivery. Product discovery is used to describe the work that we do to make decisions about what to build, while product delivery is the work we do to build, ship, and maintain a production quality product.
Good product discovery includes the customer throughout the decision-making process. We have dozens of tactics and frameworks that are often associated with product discovery: customer interviews, usability tests, A/B tests, demand tests, assumption tests, customer journey mapping, experience mapping, story mapping, assumption mapping, OKRs, opportunity solution trees, impact mapping, jobs-to-be-done, ethnographic studies, customer visits, and so on.” (Teresa Torres, Product Talk)
Democratising Research and Discovery
The democratisation of research means making the doing of research and discovery more accessible and understandable to a broader range of professionals involved in product development. It’s about moving away from complex methods to more inclusive approaches within a business. This shift ensures that anyone, from entrepreneurs to product managers, can effectively incorporate research into their product development processes.
How can this work well in practice?
Communication and education will be key, as well as buy-in from research professionals. There are concerns by research professionals that the research may not be of good quality, however it means that more people within a company can be an experts in the user rather than research. Overall, being an expert in the user and customer can increase the quality of that particular department, be it development or even leadership. It helps everyone connect with what the business is looking to achieve and what everyone is working toward.
The outputs of research can be harder to digest by those that have not been fully involved in the process. Reading a report is just not the same as hearing someone’s story directly from them.
Involve people as observers in research
Take a coaching approach to research so it becomes part of the business’s DNA
Research is a team sport, everyone has a part to play in making the research a success
Research is a mindset that can only benefit the business: being curious, asking questions to understand people and being open-minded when mistakes happen
Research regularly and report frequently in meetings so everyone can stay up to date with customer and user needs and market changes
One of the audience members mentioned that developers and engineers who have been involved in the user research process is that they think more about the user experience and have user needs in the back of their mind.
The process of upskilling non-design and research stakeholders
Through the democratisation of research, the aim is to share the workload that comes with research and discovery but also to get everyone excited about being experts in the company’s customers and users to develop new ideas or perhaps improve existing products and services. It’s not about taking the researcher’s job away as they are pivotal in the process to ensure everyone is doing research to a high standard, in an ethical way, analysing findings without bias and using a research repository for transparency and sharing across the organisation.
The process that I’ve used for democratising research is to involve key stakeholders in the data collection process. So, as a consultant, my clients observed interviews and testing sessions. As a product manager in a small business, leadership were observing interviews and also involved in the development of the research materials to ensure we not only understood the needs of the customer but also the business aspect could be considered early on.
Through being an observer and at times, asking clarifying questions or perhaps explaining the concept or doing a demo, stakeholders were getting upskilled in the process of doing data collection. My role was as a coach but also a researcher, analyst and knowledge management curator. I didn’t feel my role as a specialist was devalued, but had evolved and I could share my skills but also discuss with others and get insights from them as more people were involved. I felt the research had improved as a result of business experts being included. They valued the fact that they had the opportunity to ask questions that they wouldn’t have had otherwise.
Before bringing in stakeholders to observe interviews, they were prepared in the following ways:
Developing the aims of the research
Timelines for doing research
Outlining user groups based on current customer information or new markets
Recruitment of the participants as they had stronger relationships than I did
Interview materials including consent forms
Given an overview of the whole process; what happens during the interview and after
A brief on what their role in the interview or testing session was and when and how to ask questions
If stakeholders couldn’t be involved for example they were busy at the time of the interview, they would view the recording.
Analysing Together: Synthesis Workshop
When the research was done, I typically analysed the research myself but also ran a Synthesis Workshop using Affinity Diagrams either in person or virtually through Mural or Miro’s whiteboards.
Involving stakeholders in the research process meant that they listened more to what was being said as it came directly from the users and customers, rather than through a report or presentation.
In preparation for this workshop, consider who will be present as you don’t want too many people. Then consider the following:
Cleaning transcripts and anonymising participant data to distribute to analysis workshop attendees who can run their own analysis. They can consider whilst reading through the transcript: What surprised you? What did you learn? What are the top three takeaways for you?
The transcripts could be for interviews they weren’t involved in if there are enough people, to get a different view.
Together in the workshop, each person begins with a summary of the participant and the key interview findings, based on the questions prepared beforehand. These are written down on to post-it notes (real or virtual!).
Once everyone has given their summary, as the researcher who has done their own analysis, ensure that the key themes and sub-themes that were found are covered in this session too.
Now everything is captured, sort the post-it notes into groups, or themes together. Then label the theme.
Then, evaluate the themes, to define if there are any that could be blended or which ones are the major, key themes.
After doing this exercise, the main key themes can be turned into a design problem through “How might we…?” questioning or into user needs that can underpin the next phase which is typically ideation.
Summary
Democratising research with an organisation, no matter how big or small can have its benefits as key individuals stay involved and interested. As researchers, it can be difficult to ‘let go’ of some of aspects of data collection so use an approach that works for you and that you’re comfortable with too. This may be that you observe the interviews or coach or train stakeholders and when you think they are ready to collect data on their own, you can trust them to lead on interviews/testing sessions.
I’ve found that having other experts involved in the research perspective, particularly developers, leaders and founders, can share business knowledge, market insights and customer information, together this enriches the research project as we’re not all starting from zero. The approach contributes to stakeholder buy-in and interest because they know how the research is going and become experts in the users and customers, which can only be a good thing for the business and its future strategy.
