#UXRConf Preview: Meet Nicole Hill & Ling Hu
A Q&A on building trust both inside and outside our organizations
As the 2019 UXR Conference approaches in June, we are extremely excited to share some pre-conference conversations with our speakers. Our next speaker preview is with UX Researchers Nicole Hill & Ling Hu.
Nicole Hill is a Senior UX Researcher at Groupon and has worked on some of Groupon’s most strategic initiatives. Prior to Groupon, Nicole worked at Grainger and two UX consulting firms, GfK UserCentric and Electronic Ink. She has a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from University of Pittsburgh; her graduate research focused on expertise, attention, multitasking ability, and brain imaging (fMRI).
Ling Hu is a former UX researcher at Groupon, who led the consumer experience research end-to-end, covering search & discovery, conversion and redemption. Prior to Groupon, Ling worked as a UX researcher at Nationwide Insurance, conducting research studies that informed the business strategy on self-service, claims and call reduction. She has a MFA in Design Research from The Ohio State University. [Editor’s note: at the time of publishing this article, Ling was employed by Groupon, and the interview below reflects that. She has sinced moved on from the company.]
In June, Nicole and Ling’s talk in the Leadership in Research track will be entitled, “Measuring trust when conversion isn’t enough.” Here’s what they have to say now 👇
Tell me about your professional backgrounds and how you both arrived to UX Research.
Ling:
I had a fairly straightforward journey into UX Research. I got exposed to Design Research early on when I was studying Industrial Design in my undergrad. I realized that I wasn’t into the rendering and modeling part of the industrial design process but I was fascinated by the fuzzy front end where I got to understand what drove users to make certain decisions and why they behaved in a certain way. So I went on to study Design Research at The Ohio State University. After that, I landed my first job as a UX Researcher at Nationwide Insurance.
Nicole:
My research career started early. My first job in high school was olfaction research at the Monell Chemical Senses Center. From there I went on to study psychology in college and worked in various labs focused on clinical and cognitive psychology. Brain imaging, specifically fMRI, was really taking off and I was excited to learn more about the neural basis of cognition. I went on to a PhD program where I studied attention, automatic behavior, and multi-tasking and brain imaging.
While teaching an undergrad lab course I noticed how the students struggled and were intimidated with the software that they used to program their experiments. The software was not designed from a user perspective and borrowed heavily on programming conventions. I was able to learn it quickly because I had some exposure to programming in high school. I ended up helping many undergrads, grad students, and even professors learn this software. This experience piqued my interest in how to make technology more intuitive.
At the time I wasn’t aware of the field of UX but I learned about it while talking to some friends that worked in tech. As I began to learn more I realized that some of the early pioneers of UX research shared my educational background. The more I looked into it, the more fascinated I was and the rest is history.
Tell me about how your careers researchers have evolved from when you first started to now.
Ling:
I was fortunate that I started my research career doing large scale foundational research work alongside very experienced researchers at Nationwide Insurance. This opportunity opened my eyes to the level of impact UX research can make on strategic business decisions. I also learned a lot of fundamental research skills (e.g., facilitating interviews, coding qualitative data, storytelling) through shadowing and collaborating with other researchers.
When I started working at Groupon, I was very excited to apply the same type of foundational research work in my first project, but it flopped in a big way. Nothing happened after I shared out my three months of research.
A key lesson learned was that while those strategic research questions were important to be answered, I had to find the right timing for those types of research. For a researcher new to a company or a team, it’s important to first establish credibility and earn trust by providing immediate value to the stakeholders. And that may mean starting with a quick usability study. Later on, as I better understood my stakeholders, their needs and goals, I was able to better scope my foundational research, identify right partners and conduct studies when there were strong desires behind.
Nicole:
When I first got started I did a lot of learning on the job. My first role was in consulting which gave me a good exposure to how UX could be applied to different industries. I tried to learn as much as possible from the research team but it was the projects where I was partnered with designers that I probably learned the most. I did not have a background in design so there was some much to learn, even simple things like the names of various design elements.
Like many young researchers at the time, much of my early work was usability testing, typically on the web. I remember remote research being all the buzz and it was exciting to use Ethnio to recruit for a study. I was fortunate to do some foundational research early on to develop a new system for helping scientist store their research and regulatory documentation. That was one of my favorite projects and it helped me to understand the broad potential of UX research.
Now I’m doing much more foundational and strategic work and less usability. Working in-house has allowed me to go deep and see the outcome and impact of my work in a way that sometimes isn’t possible as a consultant. It’s exciting to tackle bigger projects, more challenging problems, and build relationships within Groupon. I’ve also enjoyed paying it forward by mentoring team members and interns.
Tell me about your roles at Groupon.
Ling:
Now at Groupon, I focus on the consumer experience end-to-end from search & discovery, deal evaluation, checkout and all the way to redemption (i.e., using a Groupon deal).
I use a wide range of tools and methods to help drive evidence-based product decisions throughout the product development cycle. Some of the interesting questions I have tackled include “How do we make the restrictions buried in Fine Print more clear to users without negatively impacting conversion”, “How might we reduce checkout abandonment”, and “measuring consumers’ trust in ratings and reviews on Groupon” which we will be presenting at the conference.
Nicole:
I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of variety in terms of the projects that I work on while also being able to go in depth. I’ve done research on new redemption mechanisms such as our voucher-less cash back deals and bookable deals. I’ve also focused on our health, beauty, and wellness vertical.
Much of my work was focused on the consumer experience but recently I’ve done some foundational research to understand how merchants run their businesses, why they choose to work with us, and how they are using our tools.
It’s a lot to tackle both merchant and consumer but it’s good to connect both pieces of the experience and work on projects that solve user needs for both audiences.
What do you enjoy most about your research work at Groupon?
Ling:
The range and diversity of problems is something I enjoy the most working at Groupon. Since there are only three researchers in our team, each of us work with several product teams.
At any given time, there are always a mix of strategic and tactical research opportunities available, keeping my work balanced and interesting. Also, because we work across multiple product teams, we are well positioned to connect the dots, providing unique value to teams.
On top of all these, we are empowered to explore new ways of doing research (e.g., trying new methods, experimenting with new tools) and learning new skills through projects.
Nicole:
I enjoy that I’ve been given the time, resources, and latitude to take on meaty projects. The project that my colleague Ling and I are presenting would not be possible if we didn’t have the time and resources to partner with psychometric experts who are professors in Industrial and Organizational Psychology. This is not a quick or cheap approach so I’m grateful that Groupon understood the potential of this work.
I’ve also enjoyed being able to employ a wide range of methods during my time at Groupon and getting to work with so many talented people.
How has your research work had an impact on Groupon as a company and organization?
Ling:
The impact happens at multiple levels depending on the research problems.
- At a product user interface level, I have done research that has informed design decisions such as whether to put CTAs in a dropdown menu or exposing them all on a page.
- At a product user experience level, I have done research that has influenced the hierarchy and organization of content on Deal Page based on users’ mental model and shopping journey.
- At a product strategy level, I have done research that has shifted our product team’s thinking on checkout abandonment and drove the roadmap development for checkout.
Depending on where the product teams are at in their product development cycle and what decisions they need to make, my research plays different roles.
Nicole:
Beyond the obvious impact on shaping product and strategy, I’ve noticed that more and more teams are interested in working with UX research. We are still a small team and so, unfortunately, we can’t take on all requests but it’s good to get to a place where people are seeking us out.
Like many places, the challenge can be pulling us in early so that we can make the maximal impact. We work hard to educate our partners and include them in the research process. We have also run some training workshops where our colleagues in product and engineering get to spend the day as a researcher.
How do you feel the research role and the impact of research companies in general has evolved during the course of your career?
Ling:
While in many companies, Research is still organizationally positioned under Design or Product org, I see more and more research studies starting to influence decisions on business rules, sales training, and business strategies outside of Product and Design.
Nicole:
It probably depends on where you work and the maturity of the design organization. More and more I believe research is being seen as a strategic partner and not just a service. Many companies are playing catch up and they don’t understand user experience. If they know anything about research at all they think in terms of usability, surveys, or even focus groups. It’s exciting to see more and more companies bring this capability in house but we clearly have a lot of educating to do.
You both are speaking at the Leadership in Research track. What will your talk be exploring?
Ling:
In our talk, we will give a case study on sentiment measures, specifically on measuring trust. More and more often, we realize the traditional behavioral business metrics (e.g., conversion) aren’t sufficient in measuring success. Sometimes, when we do what’s right for customers such as making restrictions more clear to users, these changes can result in negative conversion during experiments. However, such transparency can improve trust and increase the number of purchases overtime. But how do we prove that?
To do so, we turned to sentiment measures by applying psychometrics to the field of UX. In our talk, we will discuss a step by step process on how we went about measuring trust and the impact.
Nicole:
Our talk is about the development of a psychometric scale to measure trust in Groupon’s ratings and reviews. This project is a melding of my past background in academic psychology and design research.
Although you may have never heard of psychometrics, most people are familiar with psychometrics tests which are used in the fields of education and clinical psychology. These survey or measurement tools are developed through a rigorous process and can be used to benchmark and track change over time.
Our qualitative research led us to conclude that it was really important to measure trust in our ratings and review platform as we rolled out several feature enhancements.
However, the power of this approach is that it can be used to measure many psychological phenomena such as various attitudes that customers have to your company or its products. In e-commerce, so often we measure the impact of change through conversion and AB testing. While these approaches are important, sometimes we need to measure our impact through a different lens to make sure that we are successful long term.
Join Ling & Nicole at Strive: The 2019 UX Research Conference
📅 June 6–7
📍 Roy Thomson Hall, 60 Simcoe St, Toronto, ON, M5J 2H5
