Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Theme 3 Discussion
Gold
Tuesday, June 4, 2019 • Enterprise Experience 2019
Share the love for this talk
Theme 3 Discussion
Speakers: Smitha Papolu , Nova Wehman-Brown , Melissa Schmidt and Adam Menter
Link:

Summary

In this session, a panel including Nova, Adam, Melissa, Ken, and others shared their experiences and advice on enhancing UX and product outcomes through effective collaboration with customer success teams and embedding research in product processes. Nova emphasizes partnering with customer success early in scrum teams to ensure customer insights shape product decisions. Melissa and Adam talk about documenting design decisions clearly and embedding customer profiles within user stories to help engineers understand issues. The conversation highlights the vital role of research ops not just as execution but empowering cross-functional teams to do research themselves. Adam and Melissa also describe challenges in synthesizing large datasets and the importance of organising before research, using tools like Mural, and creating a closed feedback loop with customers. They discuss prioritization approaches like the RICE method to avoid over-focusing on isolated feedback. Nova and Ken advise building strong relationships with product managers and coaching them to ask better questions to improve research inputs. The panel reflects on how realistic customer expectations must be managed by listening, showing progress, and co-creating product visions in partnership with customers. They close by sharing tactics such as engineering days for acting on research findings and usability labs to demonstrate continuous improvements to customers.

Key Insights

  • Embedding customer success leaders directly into scrum teams early boosts product alignment with customer needs.

  • Documenting design decisions linked to specific screens with rationale helps cross-functional teams understand trade-offs.

  • Research ops adds greatest value by enabling others to conduct research, amplifying impact beyond dedicated researchers.

  • The RICE framework (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) is effective for prioritizing customer feedback and avoiding overreaction.

  • Building strong human relationships with product managers allows researchers to coach them on framing better research questions.

  • Organizing synthesis of research data prior to collection improves quality and ensures no findings are lost.

  • Closed-loop feedback systems that show customers how their input shaped product changes build trust and retention.

  • Engineering ‘head-down’ days focused on tackling customer-researched bugs or requests help close the action gap.

  • Managing customer expectations by balancing visionary co-creation with delivering tangible improvements prevents relationship damage.

  • Distributed teams benefit from virtual tools like Mural to collaborate effectively during data synthesis phases.

Notable Quotes

"I recommend you find who the customer success leader is and get them embedded right in your scrum teams at the beginning."

"We would put decisions along with each screen, explaining what we’re going to do and why, so anyone can refer back easily."

"Researchers are much more than research ops but empowering others to do research really magnifies our impact."

"We use the RICE method to prioritize requests: Reach, Impact, Confidence divided by Effort."

"You have to build that relationship first; you can’t just tell a PM they’re asking the wrong questions."

"We start organizing before the research happens so teams know what they want to learn and can identify themes."

"If customers see you’re listening and making progress, they stick with you—it’s worth the effort."

"Every six weeks, engineers have head-down days to pick up ideas from research and build small improvements."

"Show customers that you heard them by taking designs from research into sprints and then back to customers for validation."

"Doing strategic co-creation sessions is powerful, but delivering only one feature next year risks damaging relationships."

Ask the Rosenbot
Jay Bustamante
Navigating the Ethical Frontier: DesignOps Strategies for Responsible AI Innovation
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Sam Proulx
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Screen Readers
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Chris Geison
What is Research Strategy?
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Louis Rosenfeld
Discussion: What Operations can teach DesignOps
2017 • DesignOps Summit 2017
Gold
Ethics in Tech Education: Designing to Provide Opportunity for All
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold
Peter Merholz
The Trials and Tribulations of Directors of UX (Videoconference)
2023 • Enterprise Community
Ignacio Martinez
Fair and Effective Designer Evaluation
2024 • DesignOps 2024
Gold
Sarah Fathallah
A Typology of Participation in Participatory Research
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Lada Gorlenko
Theme 1: Intro
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Aditi Ruiz
Pulse Check: Empathy Mapping Your Product Manager, Pt. 2
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Alana Washington
(Remote) Service Design: A Transformation Case Study
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Sahibzada Mayed
The Politics of Radical Research: A Manifesto
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Jon Fukuda
Theme One Intro
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Anna Poznyakov
Get The Most Out Of Stakeholder Collaboration—and Maximize Your Research Impact
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Tamara Hale
War Stories LIVE! Tamara Hale
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Sahibzada Mayed
Cultivating Design Ecologies of Care, Community, and Collaboration
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold

More Videos

Adam Cutler

"I have to triangulate socially because Yorkshire folks are quite reserved; they won't openly admit issues."

Adam Cutler Karen Pascoe Ian Swinson Susan Worthman

Discussion

June 8, 2016

Peter Merholz

"Playing politics in UX leadership is about maximizing relationships ethically to advance your agenda, not about being underhanded."

Peter Merholz

The Trials and Tribulations of Directors of UX (Videoconference)

July 13, 2023

Lisa Welchman

"Nobody knows who’s supposed to decide what around digital, and that’s the problem."

Lisa Welchman

Cleaning Up Our Mess: Digital Governance for Designers

June 14, 2018

Vincent Brathwaite

"Policy change is the backbone of effective climate strategies in urban areas."

Vincent Brathwaite

Opener: Past, Present, and Future—Closing the Racial Divide in Design Teams

October 22, 2020

Brenna Fallon

"OKRs are a tool for each of us to tidy our house and focus on what’s important."

Brenna Fallon

Learning Over Outcomes

October 24, 2019

Tricia Wang

"Treat identities as elastic, not as fixed personas, because people’s needs and roles are complex and changing."

Tricia Wang

Spatial Collapse: Designing for Emergent Culture

January 8, 2024

Edgar Anzaldua Moreno

"Research should be done the same way products are built, with stakeholders as your users."

Edgar Anzaldua Moreno

Using Research to Determine Unique Value Proposition

March 11, 2021

"Our brains are terrible at operating only on one type of information, whether object-oriented or context-oriented."

Designing Systems at Scale

November 7, 2018

Erin Weigel

"Randomization is magic — it evenly distributes confounds so the only difference affecting results is your change."

Erin Weigel

Get Your Whole Team Testing to Design for Impact

July 24, 2024