Insights Unlocked

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that REI, the nation’s largest consumer co-op with some 23 million members, loves to talk with its customers. In this Insights Unlocked episode, UserTesting’s LeTisha Shaw talks with REI’s Monique Lalonde about their continuous interview program with customers to support the product development life cycle. “As our product-led practice matured, we saw an opportunity to foster a habit of talking to customers on a regular basis in support of the product development cycle,” said Monique, REI’s Director of Product Design. “Layne Foit (REI’s senior manager of UX research & Content) developed a scalable framework for continuous customer interviewing with a goal to empower teams with just enough research skills so they feel comfortable talking to customers, are able to analyze what they hear, and use those customer insights to drive innovation and customer centricity.” Once a week, members from REI’s UX research and product teams meet up to talk with a customer about a specific problem they are experiencing. They then evaluate that interview together, listening for all the different things that people observed. We often talk about shifting left in the product development lifecycle when you’re talking with your customers and prospects. This helps you develop products your audience wants, needs and will pay you money. It also helps avoid or reduce the cost of rework (estimated at more than $1 trillion annually) because you built something no one wanted. REI is a purpose-driven specialty outdoor retailer dedicated to enabling life outside for all. The co-op was founded in 1938 as some mountaineering friends in the Pacific Northwest sought access to better climbing gear. As a co-op, with about 23 million members, they measure success differently than many companies.  “Our goal is to run a healthy business, which enables us to make a positive impact on our employees, members, and society,” Monique said. “Our product design practice plays a critical role in supporting our goals, measuring their progress and impact in all our experiences.” So far the program has been successful in conducting continuous research that can be measured and tracked, Monique said.  “This shared experience is helping in cross-functional alignment, promoting a user-centered culture, and understanding a holistic picture of our customer journeys,” she said. “An unexpected benefit has been team building. Our product teams are 100% remote and our pilot teams reported feeling more connected to their co-workers thanks to the program.”

In this Insights Unlocked episode, Andy MacMillan, CEO of UserTesting, talks with Dave about the rapidly transforming UX research landscape, shedding light on how technological advances are reshaping our approach to understanding user experiences. Dave has written several essays on the subject over on his website. “What we're doing in user research compared to what we were doing 10 or 15 years ago is a much more understood set of activities,” Dave said. “And that means that the way that we undertake them, the amount of effort that it takes to undertake them is decreasing and the amount of knowledge that we as an industry have about how the craft of user research itself works is increasing.  “User research is only one small piece of the puzzle,” he said. “And the user of user research are the product teams who are actually taking these insights and are weaving them into our ongoing processes. So as we look to the future of user research, I think we actually need to shift our view a level higher and look to the future methods of product development that will unfold along with a now more commoditized version of research.” Dave suggests the future of UX research is to be closer aligned to the product development process.

In this Insights Unlocked episode, UserTesting’s Sean Treiser talks with UI/UX and product designer Karla Fernandes about designing, developing, testing and launching products on your own.

In this Insights Unlocked episode, Lawrence Williams talks with Dawn Procopio, founder and principal UX researcher at AI-Ethicist.com. They explore the critical role of UX researchers in ensuring that machine learning models are human-centered and ethically sound.

In this Insights Unlocked episode, UserTesting’s Lija Hogan talks with Jorge Arango, author of the new book Duly Noted: Extend Your Mind Through Connected Notes. They discuss the power of note-taking to help you be more knowledgeable and creative, both at a personal level and collaboratively with teams.

In this Insights Unlocked episode, Teresa Torres — author of Continuous Discovery Habits, which has now sold more than 100,000 copies — talks about the importance of customer input earlier in the product development lifecycle to better dial in product market fit and reduce wasted costs. Teresa has coached hundreds of teams at companies of all sizes, from early-stage startups to global enterprises, in a variety of industries. She has taught more than 11,000 product people discovery skills through the Product Talk Academy and her coaching practice.

In this episode of UserTesting’s Insights Unlocked podcast, Andy MacMillan talks with Pablo Stanley about AI’s impact on design. Pablo is the founder or co-founder of several design brands, most recently Bueno and the Musho AI plugin for Figma. Previously he was a lead designer at InVision, as well as a staff designer at Lyft and Udemy. He teaches art and design on his YouTube channel Sketch Together, as well as supports the Latinx community through his projects Latinx Who Design and Dreamer Stories. “I am a techno-optimist,” Pablo said. “I believe in the potential of these tools to enhance our lives in general and, specifically, that of creative individuals, assisting them in taking their creations to a different level.” The pace of the change is happening quickly, he said, and some people may get caught in that disruption, including on the creative side, and get left behind. “It would be naive not to see the challenges this brings,” Pablo said. “The pace of the AI evolution is making traditional systems and industries slow to adapt, sometimes causing an existential crisis. So, there's going to be a transition period where a lot of people will be affected by this shift.

Welcome back to Insights Unlocked and a very happy holidays to everyone. For many people, the holiday season is a time for taking a break from work as we visit friends and loved ones and otherwise recharge our batteries.  In this short encore episode, we listen to the conversation UserTesting's CEO Andy MacMillan had with Sarah Doody from Career Strategy Lab about making ourselves recession proof. One recommendation they had was investing time at least once a year in updating your LinkedIn profile, resume or CV.  Seems like these slow days between the holidays are a perfect opportunity to track your accomplishments over the past year, update your LinkedIn profile, and make a plan for the new year.  Enjoy the show.

In this episode, UserTesting’s Lija Hogan talks with Leeyat Tessler, Senior User Experience Researcher at Capital One's Innovation Lab. Leeyat provides an inside look into the Lab's purpose-built space, where groundbreaking digital products are born. From initial research to the Wizard of Oz testing, they explore the intricacies of UX research and digital product design.

In this Insights Unlocked episode, we talked with Siena Hickey from Sanzo Strategy Group about why startup founders should lean into talking with their customers more, and what the risks are if they don’t. Siena has consulted brands across America, Europe, Asia, and Africa on the nuances of product market fit. Customer feedback allows you to identify and remedy small problems before they have the chance to become critical issues down the line. “People hear that word feedback and they often assume that it’s inherently negative,” Siena said. “Customer feedback is the way to decide how your business moves forward, and it does take a different type of vulnerability to open up your hard work to the people that you want to like it the most.”

In this week’s Insights Unlocked, Alex Mullans, product lead at Figma, provides insightful perspectives and strategies for maintaining human connections in remote design teams during his conversation with Liz Miller, vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research.

In this week’s Insights Unlocked, we chat with Aline Thomé, a senior UX/UI designer at Raiffeisen Bank International about the challenges she faced introducing UX research to a large and established international organization, highlighting the importance of resilience. The Austrian banking group operates 13 subsidiary banks in Central and Eastern Europe and serves 16.3 million customers through more than 2,100 business outlets.  Aline has been there just over two years, but has been a UX designer since 2009. She quips that her relationship with her profession “is my most stable relationship.” “I love it, I love design. I went into this field because I love challenges and I love problem solving,” she said. “And what I really love about it is that you can make a true impact in people’s lives. We are using websites, we are using apps all the time. And we have the power to make them better, to make them more intuitive, to make them more accessible.” She’s developed a two-step matrix for helping her share user insights throughout the organization in a way that makes them more actionable.  The first step is to assess how critical a finding or issue discovered in the user feedback truly is. Mark it green if it is not too bad; yellow if it is medium; and red if it is really critical. The second step is to assess how much effort will be required to fix the problem. “I usually put small, medium, large and extra large,” Aline said.  For example, if you see something is red, but the effort is small then let’s tackle it right away. If a finding is green and requires a large effort, addressing it can be pushed out.   “This is a game changer because you can identify quick wins very easily,” she said. “And the stakeholders also appreciate it because it helps set priorities.”

In this Insights Unlocked episode, Liz Miller interviews UserTesting’s Chief Scientist Ranjitha Kumar about her unique perspective on integrating AI and machine learning (ML) into UX and experience research.

In this Insights Unlocked episode, Anne Wilbers, a Senior Design Researcher at Canopy, shares her experiences UX testing the new Canopy Pickup Cam system ranging from the installation guides, hardware, app, website landing pages and more. The Canopy Pickup Cam is a smart security camera that works for most trucks. Theft from trucks and other vehicles is a big deal. In fact, $7.4 billion was lost to auto theft and property stolen from vehicles in 2020, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The company was spun out of Ford, where the initial research that went into the product was developed. In the episode, Anne shares her experiences over the past year getting the UX research program started, planning an internal alpha pilot and then a beta pilot with Detroit-area truck owners—a continent away from her offices in London. She includes her lessons learned, such as the benefits of having an alpha test. And be ready to plan more than you’d originally would expect, she said. For example, they rehearsed before the beta pilot launch, where they were able to address such details such as where would participants park their trucks, who would greet them, and was wifi available?

In this episode of Insights Unlocked, Liz Miller from Constellation Research talks with Dr. David Evans, a Senior Research Manager at Microsoft and author of Bottlenecks: Aligning UX Design with User Psychology. Listen to their conversation to get a better understanding on why certain designs work and others fail and what that may mean for your organization.

In this episode, Constellation Research’s Liz Miller talks with Adobe’s Katie Cook about AI, how workflows are changing for designers and researchers, adn her tips for better cross-functional collaboration. Enjoy the show.

Teams often tell us they have trouble connecting the dots between business value and experience research.  Whether you’re a marketer, UX practitioner, or project manager, you should be working to match what you do with measurable business results. In this week’s Insights Unlocked, UserTesting’s Chief Operating Officer Josh Maltz talks with UpTop's Craig Nishizaki about getting executive buy-in for experience research.

In this week’s Insights Unlocked, UserTesting’s Paige Musto talks with Kristy, a senior manager for digital intelligence and optimization at F5. Their conversation was recorded at UserTesting’s The Human Insight Summit (THiS) in Seattle last month. They touch on various topics related to digital marketing, including creative and prototype testing, using qualitative insights to better understand the why behind web analytics, and more.