How to synthesise insights at speed
Having become a household name for online used cars in the UK in just three years, the speed of growth at Cazoo has led to product teams needing to make quick decisions and build at pace.
The challenge of working in this environment is ensuring that fast delivery is not achieved at the expense of the user’s experience. This can be especially challenging when it comes to our Operations product teams who build tools for our internal users. Due to the speed of growth at Cazoo, product teams in this area of the business are currently working with a combination of internally built tools and third party solutions.
To support product designers working at Cazoo, my colleague Kate Sims and I have put together a series of training sessions with tips and tricks. For this blog, we’re going to share with you our top tips for synthesising insights at speed.
1. Do the work upfront
A large part of being able to synthesise insights at pace is being prepared. By ensuring you have a clear objective in mind for your project you can keep that goal front and centre throughout the research.
It’s important to have a shared goal for your project that both you and your team are invested in. Having a shared understanding of the scope for the project can really help when it comes to spotting themes and insights that relate to your objective.
Discussion guides
A method you can use to support you with being prepared and aligning on your objective up front is a discussion guide. You can utilise your guide as a way of communicating the objective of each question with your team and with key stakeholders. Consider what you will achieve by asking each question and state this in your guide so that your stakeholders are aligned on what your questions aim to achieve. We use this template at Cazoo to support colleagues with making their own discussion guides.
Assumption matrix
Another tool to help you to be prepared up front for synthesising your insights is an assumption matrix. This is put together ahead of a research session and can help you with evaluative user research. The matrix consists of simple statements that you can provide a yes or no answer to based on what your participants do during the study. Good statements focus on what the users do and aren’t open to interpretation by observers e.g. “User completes the check out with no major problems”. Monzo talk about how they use this tool here to action user insights quickly.
2. Synthesise as you go
Taking the time to synthesise your research as you progress through the project can help to support you to spot themes early and develop your insights as you go along.
One way of doing this is to identify key learnings after every interview or usability session. Ensure you make time for a break between each session to come together as a team and discuss some of the main insights you noticed. Keep a note of these and as you speak to more users you can see whether these become strong themes.
Synthesising insights about the day in the life of one of our colleagues at a Cazoo Customer Centre
3. Synthesise as a team
Whenever you can, involve your product team and key stakeholders in the research and synthesis. Not only will this mean that the team gets used to thinking about the user when developing products but it will also help to build a shared understanding of the insights you gather.
Involving your team also helps to avoid applying any personal biases as you’ll get to hear a range of peoples’ perspectives on the sessions. You’ll also be able to discuss things like feasibility and potential opportunities off the back of the key learnings you discover together.
It’s also important to support each other during research. If you are not moderating, support the moderator by taking notes and looking out for themes as you go along.
Grouping key insights with your team into main themes using an online whiteboard
4. Let tools do the hard work for you
There are many tools out there to support you with synthesising at speed. Miro is one of our favourites at Cazoo, but you can also use tools such as AirTable, Notion or even a Google Doc to document and synthesise your findings. Just be sure not to share any personally identifiable information there so that you’re keeping your participants’ data safe.
If we take Miro for instance, you can set up a board in advance of your research to capture key insights across your research and use this board to look for themes. Below is a screenshot of one of the templates we use at Cazoo which is set up in Miro to support our colleagues with capturing insights and speedily synthesising.
Setting up a note taking grid in advance can support synthesis
This format can be useful for either usability testing, where you can put a screenshot of each step of the digital or physical flow, or user interviews where you can put a different topic in each of the horizontal boxes at the top of the grid. We’ve added participant numbers vertically down the page (P1, P2), meaning each row relates to a different participant.
By colour coding the sticky notes you use for note taking it also makes it easy for your team and stakeholders to easily spot pain points, positives and observations that come up throughout the study.
These are just some of the ways we synthesise at speed at Cazoo. We’re keen to hear your thoughts on these tips and whether there are any other synthesis methods you swear by.
