How Product Teams Can Get the Most Out of Research
As 2016 wraps up and teams are gearing up for what promises to be a busy 2017, here are a few tips and reminders for how Product Managers, Designers, Engineers, and other stakeholders can get the most out of research (and the researcher) on your team. For each, I’ve also included details of why these tips are important as well as what stakeholders can expect from the researcher.
1. Bring research in early, even before you know you need us.
2. Be transparent about short-term and long-term research needs.
3. Ask for answers to business and research questions, not for specific methodologies.
4. Be actively involved in the research process.
5. Turn research findings into actions.
Which resonate with you and your teams the most? What else would you add to this list?
1. Bring research in early, even before you know you need us.
Involving research early on in the product development process helps a team start off in the right direction.
Growing up, I was a Boy Scout who spent many weekends hiking around and camping in the woods of New England. From experience, I can say with confidence that it’s best to be headed in the right before starting off on a hike and to periodically check your compass bearings along the way.
Now, as a researcher on product teams, I know that the same thing applies to product development — research can be a compass throughout the product development cycle. Having research involved and informing product directions at the outset helps teams move faster by pointing them in the right direction right off the bat — that is, ways that address people’s needs. Bringing research in early also allows researchers to do their best work, with more flexibility in terms of timing and methodologies.
You can expect your researcher to: Be the compass immediately by regularly and proactively seeking out and resurfacing relevant past research. Actively engage with teammates and show the value of research by proposing ways to help the team address open questions. Diligently follow up with research briefs with scoped research ideas stemming from those discussions.
2. Be transparent about short-term and long-term research needs.
By laying out what are the near-term (in the next month) and long-term (in the next 6 months) priorities for the team and what open questions the team has, researchers can do our best work and find creative solutions to even the most difficult questions.
Like everyone, researchers can sometimes find ourselves bouncing from urgent project to urgent project and never getting to turn to “important-but-not-urgent” projects. Although these types of research studies are often the most impactful, they often fail to get off the ground if stakeholders don’t recognize their potential value and help keep them prioritized.
Of course, needs and priorities can and often do change, so it’s wise to revisit this list often and regularly bring new research questions to us — we’ll (re)prioritize, leverage other research workstreams, outsource the research to external research suppliers, or try to find other solutions to make it work.
You can expect your researcher to: Regularly review the product team roadmap to ensure the proposed research aligns with the most important workstreams. Be in the driver’s seat when it comes to laying out and executing research roadmaps. Share updated research plans, including key dates and milestones, and solicit feedback about the priorities and timing. Particularly for longer-term studies, get stakeholders on board and excited about what the investment in this work will yield…it’s perhaps the best way of ensuring the study is prioritized.
3. Ask for answers to business and research questions, not for specific methodologies.
When stakeholders ask for answers to business and research questions, rather than for a specific methodology, researchers are able to consider different research approaches to the questions and ultimately do our best work. We bring to bear experience researching similar questions and a deep understanding of the benefits and tradeoffs associated with different methodologies. Most importantly, some of the most successful research projects I’ve worked on started off as a specific ask from a stakeholder but evolved into a larger, more impactful project because stakeholders were passionate about answering the questions, not married to a specific methodology.
Of course, it’s perfectly reasonable for stakeholders to have thoughts and opinions about what methodologies might be most useful. If a researcher proposes a methodology that you’re not familiar with or that you aren’t sure will best address the questions, ask them why that’s the approach they recommend, ultimately arriving at an approach everyone is comfortable with.
You can expect your researcher to: Listen carefully to the team’s needs and reflect them in the study design (I’ve written before about the importance of letting the business and research questions drive the methodology and not the other way around). When laying out a research proposal, provide the rationale for the chosen method(s) and what the output will be…and how the team will use that output. Be open to new methods if that’s required for the business questions at hand.
4. Be actively involved in the research process.
Whether it’s sitting in the back room during focus groups or reviewing a survey draft, stakeholders who are more engaged with research tend to find it most impactful — don’t be shy to ask your researcher how your involvement can be most useful. Once findings come back from the research, roll up your sleeves and get into the data. What’s resonating most? What’s most surprising? Where would you like us to double-click and dig into more?
You can expect your researcher to: Set expectations in advance and along the way regarding the team’s involvement. Make it easy for stakeholders to jump in — send out calendar invites for UX sessions; send the survey draft around; solicit feedback; hold workshops and presentations with findings.
5. Turn research findings into actions.
One can design and execute the best research methodology ever, but it goes to waste if the team doesn’t use the findings. When stakeholders work with researchers to understand and translate data into insights and insights into recommendations — and ultimately into product changes — that’s when our work really matters. Being a good partner to research means taking meaningful action on what the research findings tell you.
You can expect your researcher to: Deliver the research results in the most digestible and actionable way for the team. Follow up after delivering the findings to help implement insights. And — going full circle back to the beginning — since researchers are brought in early to help set future product directions, researchers can be expected to pull up research and help turn those findings into actions right from the start.
