Taking Flight: Our UX Research Transformation
Note: This article was originally published in 2020 for Resmed on LinkedIn Pulse
At the 2020 Design and Innovation Awards, ResMed was honored as a finalist for the Research Transformation category, a testament to our efforts in creating a culture of empathy and understanding through research. At times, our journey may have been met with high winds, but we were still able to soar. Let’s take a look at our transformation…
Rewind 5 years ago to the UCSD DesignLab Creative Connections event where I stood up front in the audience as Don Norman, the Godfather of User Experience (UX), addressed a room full of designers and entrepreneurs. There, he talked about how San Diego has long been an innovation hub for biotechnology and is home to one of the top medical schools in the US. Given that, it was only fitting that we dedicate our efforts in those industries to make a positive impact in the community. This is what led me to ResMed, where I would develop a new UX organization and start our multi-year research transformation in Digital Health Technology.
The start of something big
Generally, working in UX has its challenges and what is taught in school isn’t exactly what it’s like in the real world. In particular, trying to incorporate regular research and best practices in product design can be difficult. When I started at ResMed, our department was fairly new. We had a few decentralized UX designers influencing projects where they could, but with limited capacity to develop research practice. To accelerate, we knew we couldn’t stay heads down, focused only on producing output. We needed to stay on top of routine projects, plus look for opportunities to scale and maximize the impact of our work.
Making change happen
We went through several stages that led to the integration of UX research into the DNA of our digital products and processes, increased user empathy, and time and cost savings.
Stage 1: Egg, Defining the ‘what’ and the ‘how’
Research from McKinsey and Company shows that 70% of all transformations fail. It’s not enough for teams to want change. It takes a relentless delivery on the ‘how’ to make it happen. There were two important tools we used in these early days:
- A combination of several UX maturity frameworks, which helped us to understand where we were, what strategies to carry through to progress our maturity, and how quickly companies typically mature.
- A UX operations (UXOps) roadmap, based on our UX maturity and an established short-term and long-term vision of where we wanted to be.
Our roadmap includes items focused on People, Process, Tools, and Technology. We iterate it regularly by assessing priority, impact, and feasibility. As we executed on the roadmap, we also recognized that some initiatives didn’t quite work out, either because it wasn’t the right timing or the right approach and that was okay, as long as we learned and persevered.
Stage 2: Caterpillar, Starting small
Our team was small, but it was mighty. When trying to gain support for new ways of thinking and doing, I thought about some advice Jeff Gothelf gave me years ago, which was to start small to demonstrate the benefits and keep building on from there. We hired a specialized contract user researcher with a focus on integrating research. For one project, we formed a small, multi-disciplinary and balanced team, partnering closely with the product manager to incorporate research and achieve a shared understanding of our user problems.
Bringing others along and introducing them to user research methods helped to foster collaboration and support for designing based off research. We also had the opportunity to partner with the SaaS leadership team to spread Design Thinking mindsets and behaviors through our first internal digital innovation competition. UX helped the teams test their ideas by bringing in patients to provide feedback. Efforts in user research led to one of our multidisciplinary, dispersed teams winning an internal innovation award for quality in usability testing.
Stage 3: Chrysalis, Expanding into Tactical
With a strong foundation in place, we created processes and templates that enabled the team to move faster, take on more projects, bring users along the design process, and ultimately have a greater impact on product design. Some examples include:
- A consistent issue severity rating scale
- Return-on-investment (ROI) case studies
- A central repository for reports
- A Design Thinking Toolkit
- User panels
Even though we focused on a tactical role, we didn’t lose sight of our vision. We kept an eye on our progress to avoid becoming stagnant. A tool that really helped us accelerate was a stakeholder enablement map which identified enablers for our transformation. Any sort of change requires strong support from allies in other functions and leadership. Recognizing that we couldn’t do it alone increased our chances of success.
Several other materials contributed to our transformation, particularly in elevating UX literacy and a creating a shared understanding of our users across product teams. These included fliers that promoted the ROI of UX, a UX Myth or Fact game to shut down common misconceptions, regular Yammer postings, and UX showcases.
In addition, journey maps, empathy maps, personas, and more helped us to spread a shared understanding of our users and the value of UX methods. Our patient experience map, a synthesis of clinical, market, and user research, for example, is used for onboarding new team members, discussing opportunity areas with partners, and aligning on user problems for exploration.
Stage 4: Butterfly, Strategy and Scaling Impact
Now, as butterflies, we’re soaring in this stage of our journey. User research plays a role not only in informing product design but in decision-making, and has helped save on time and costs. Outside of product design, other teams reached out for help in applying user research methods. By taking these on, we contributed to a growing understanding of the importance of research, thereby improving our staff and customer experiences.
We grew from small and mighty to a high-performing team employing an expansive research playbook, including:
- A variety of user research methods and Design Thinking methods used throughout discovery and delivery
- Service design and service blueprinting to uncover bottlenecks that impact the customer experiences
- Evidence-based behavioral design interventions
- The intersection of qualitative and quantitative data
Our efforts in the past few years have led to substantial changes in how we work and realization of the value of research. Some examples of successes include:
- 380% increase in number of UX studies since 2016
- 80% reduction in recruitment time and up to 75% cost savings per study through the use of our panels
- A benchmarking study on patient engagement concepts that lowered design risk and avoided wasted efforts
- A new ResMed ReSupply feature that avoided unnecessary training, saved time, and made customers feel heard
Reflecting on our journey and preparing for the next
While we’ve made significant strides in research, we recognize that transformation never ends, especially in today’s fast-paced digital world. Sometimes leading transformation feels like a game of Mother May I. One moment you take 10 baby steps forward, and the next, you find yourself taking 3 ballerina steps back. Transforming and scaling isn’t an easy endeavor, so it’s important to remember that:
“[Scaling excellence] is not moving one person a thousand feet forward, but moving a thousand people one foot forward.”
-Rao and Sutton, Scaling Excellence
It takes time, teamwork, and perseverance. It’s those adverse winds when we’re reminded of why we do what we do. It’s not uncommon for people or even strangers at an airport to tell us how much our products have truly helped them. In fact, a former colleague of mine has told me several times how our products have changed his life. This is the essence of Norman’s message I shared earlier when he said UX can really make a difference in the health industry and contributing to that makes all our efforts worthwhile.
Acknowledgments
- ResMed UXers past and present who worked hard to collectively advance UX research across the company and whom I personally learned so much from; product, engineering, leadership allies and supporters
- Hoa Loranger for her advice when I was hiring my first User Researcher; Evelyn Huang, CXO and transformation leader, from whom I learned the strategic stakeholder mapping to drive change
- Barry O’Reilly from whom I learned about and adapted improvement kata and radar mapping to create our UXOps roadmap
Image sources: Employees, SDXD.org, and Getty Images
