Help your team have greater impact with insights frameworks
Researchers and designers often have a tendency to think they need to run new studies every time a business question comes along. UX and Product leaders sometimes think that too. That’s natural — I mean, research is often defined as running a study. I’d argue that by synthesizing insights from multiple studies into frameworks, we can save time and have potentially greater impact than a single study may have on its own.
Think of it this way: the purpose of research isn’t to do research. The purpose of research is to uncover actionable insights that lead to real product changes. I’ve seen teams save 4–6 weeks of Discovery sprints by a single researcher spending 8–10 hours rolling up prior, relevant, insights into a framework the team can immediately adopt. If your team partners with a strong behavioral science team you probably already have frameworks like this in place — lucky you! But if you don’t have that resource, how can your team develop frameworks by triangulating UX research and Analytics alone? Here are some examples.
I’ve seen teams save 4–6 weeks of Discovery sprints by a single researcher spending 8–10 hours rolling up prior, relevant, insights into a framework the team can immediately adopt.
A resourceful researcher on my team noticed a trend across several studies. During UX research, users were responding best to in-app recommendations for behavior change that included three specific types of information. The researcher worked with their Analytics partner to delve into A/B test results, and together they discovered the best performing recommendations were the ones that followed the same 3-part pattern. So referencing both the UXR qualitative and Analytics behavioral data, the researcher summarized their findings into the Magic Moment Framework, outlining the components of the 3-part pattern and best practices for associated design and copy. This framework was enthusiastically embraced by the app team, who recognized its value in giving the team a head start when designing future recommendations. Subsequent testing showed consistent double-digit uplift in key areas of the app.
A UX researcher on another team noticed trends across several studies all focused on consumers making decisions about which financial products were right for them. That researcher summarized what she learned into a Shopping User Journey, that outlined behaviors the team observed that spanned beyond specific verticals, so whether the consumer was looking for a credit card, mortgage, or personal loan didn’t matter, they used the same decision-making process. Again, the framework was quickly adopted by the team, leading to substantial savings in development time and reducing the need for additional research.
By synthesizing similar findings from multiple studies into frameworks, UX researchers led the charge to efficiently get their teams to solutions that led to double digit wins for both the user and the business. That’s the kind of impact that we’re ultimately looking for from UX research.
