UXR newsletter: An alternative way to share research insights | 99.co
As cliche as it sounds, it’s the start of something new! In 2023, I started a quarterly newsletter publication, with the goal of sharing valuable, interesting insights to the wider team @ 99.co. Here I document my process & outcomes.
How it all started
It started with my user research sharing woes 😟
1. Engaging the uninvolved
I finished my research study, wrote my final report, and I’m finally ready to present my findings to the wider team. But alas, the challenge has just begun — engaging non-stakeholders with user research insights. On the day of the presentation, some people are on leave, others can’t attend the sharing because they have urgent work tasks. And some are just mentally clocked out after a long day of meetings.
🚩 It is still really important for non-stakeholders, (especially teams like engineering or data that don’t interact frequently with users) to be updated on user insights, because a lack of understanding of the user makes it difficult to critique the products and experiences we create.
2. Lack of time to share all insights
Being in a fast-paced start-up, I often find myself pressed for time. Presenting every single research study I complete to the entire team is time consuming and sometimes impractical. It’s much more efficient to focus on discussing the findings with key stakeholders, and move on to the next project. I do post my research reports, but it’s rare for a non-stakeholder to want to read a full research report, so it was difficult to get viewership when I shared it.
3. Product gatekeeps user research insights
One question that is asked often is: Why is product building this? Why not do something else? A lot of our decisions are actually influenced by user insights, but the problem is that these insights are often kept within product, specifically within the design and product manager teams.
🚩 The user’s experience doesn’t stop at the product level. It extends to the content users see on our blog or social media, the marketing material we send out, and the customer service we provide them. It’s valuable for everyone that serves the user, to learn more about our users. Because after all, how else are we going to create useful and delightful experiences for them?
My solution: UX Research Newsletter 📰
To bridge these gaps and help the rest of the team make sense of why we do what we do, I started the UXR newsletter! This is a curated quarterly publication aimed at (1) sharing valuable, interesting findings from the quarter (that I had no opportunity to share) to the entire organisation, (2) provide updates on user sentiments, and most importantly, (3) spark interest in understanding our users, so our products remains user-centred.
The process of creating the newsletter 👩💻
1. Writing the copy
To get people to read the newsletter, I knew it had to be:
- Easy to read: simple, concise, and bite-sized language
- Engaging: a variety of visuals, infographics, and illustrations should be included, and the writing should be fun, yet professional. Different data types (e.g. heatmaps, user quotes, analytics), should also be used to paint a well-rounded picture.
- Short-formed: frankly, not many apart from UXRs themselves, wants to read a long-form research report. 😰 Striking a balance in the length of the newsletter turned out to be my biggest challenge: if it was too short, results could be misinterpreted. But too long, and viewership would be low. I ended up reducing the number of topics to write about, so I didn’t need to sacrifice the depth of each one.
I brainstormed some topics to write about, such as:
- Everything wrong with our filters.
- aha! moments for users on our portal
- How does the experience between churned and retained users differ?
- Why did [xx metric] decline in Q2?
With my list, I asked others (from different teams!) around the office, which sounded the most interesting to them. I shortlisted 3 topics and finally kickstarted the writing and designing process.
2. Creating a moodboard
It was my first ever design project, and I had a bad case of choice paralysis 😰: There was way too many colours, fonts, layouts I could choose from.
To get past this, I screenshotted marketing emails, magazines, infographics, and ux design case study portfolios that I liked, and put it into a moodboard. This helped me identify the fonts and colours I naturally gravitated towards. These artefacts were also good references because they all involved organising large amounts of content in a digestible, visual manner.
3. Designing the newsletter
As a non-designer, I never had to use Figma for my work. I wanted to use this opportunity to challenge myself to design the newsletter with Figma.
Thankfully, Figma’s youtube tutorials made it really easy for beginners like me to learn the tool. I also downloaded a few Figma community plug-ins to use as components for the newsletter. The product designers also gave me lots of constructive critique, to improve the design.
4. Distributing the newsletter
When I was finally done, I sent it on our company’s #announcements slack channel. To maximise readership, I also printed a physical copy and left it on the office pantry. It was the part of the office that everyone frequented, so people would literally see it on the table, and could pick it up and read while having a quick snack break. This move ended up being really effective for views 📌.
Presenting 2023Q1’s issue! ✨
The image below displays the key elements of the newsletter. The final newsletter was 11 pages long. (due to NDA, some parts are censored and not all pages are in here).
Outcomes… was it worth it?
The newsletter was quite successful at:
- ✅ Increasing interest and engagement with user research
- ✅ Gathering product ideas from those in non-product teams
- ✅ Giving more more power and influence to design and user research teams. ⭐️ I realised that the more people I share user insights to, the more likely user research will get acted on. This is because people started asking more questions, and holding product accountable for addressing user pain-points and usability problems.
- ✅ Increasing accessibility to user research within the organisation. I linked the relevant documentation and final reports in the newsletter for others to read more if they were interested.
Check out the team’s reactions 👇🏻
However, there were also downsides:
- 💔 It’s very high effort. Because I did the writing and design of the first newsletter solely by myself, it took a lot of time and labor. For the subsequent newsletters I involved the other designers, so we can co-produce and split the work.
- 💔 The people who aren’t interested, still won’t be interested. The newsletter was good at making user research more accessible to those genuinely interested in user research. Unfortunately, it still did not engage those who didn’t really care about user research.
- 💔 Very technical or purely quantitative projects seems to be less interesting to some. This is because it takes more effort to understand, and even though there are charts and graphs, it’s still less visually engaging than heatmaps, journey maps and personas. (am still practicing my storytelling skills for numbers heavy studies 💪🏻)
In retrospect, I feel that this initiative was a worthy endeavour to try out! It’s also provides a nice summary of the quarter’s most valuable and exciting insights. However, it’s important to monitor if the rest of the organisation is receptive, to avoid investing a large amount of effort on something which wouldn’t be read by the others.
Final reflections ✍️
- A new found appreciation for design: There’s a lot of considerations I had to think of, like how to cater to the different types of readers in the organisation (product vs. non-product), and how to fit lots of information in a format that is readable and easy on the eyes.
- I’ve been thinking of this newsletter idea for months before I actually started on it. I wasn’t sure if people was going to be receptive to it, and I spent a long time contemplating on whether it was even worth doing. Looking back, there was only one way to know if others would like it, i.e. worry less, and just start it!
