Louise, leveling-up in research as a Product Manager
Louise participated in the first batch of Cousto. Her objective: level up her skills in UX Research and lead a research project for Wecasa through the training program. Here is her story.
What was your background before joining Cousto?
I worked for 3 years at an 8-people startup in Boston, building virtual baby books for parents. First, as a business analyst and then as a product manager. When I started as a product manager, I took classes at General Assembly to get better at the job. When I came back to France, I joined Wecasa (at-home services marketplace) as the customers’ product manager. It’s been a blast.
What was the research project you lead through the program?
Wecasa’s goal is to triple every year. In order to do that, we need to launch new services. Childcare was launched a year ago but is still not as successful as it should be. The goal of this project was to increase the conversion rate of our childcare funnel before September (as childcare is seasonal). We wanted to find product-market fit for this specific offering.
How Cousto helped you with this project?
Cousto has helped me structure the whole project and gave me sound advice for all my future research projects. This project was slightly overwhelming at the beginning. However, thanks to Cousto, I knew where to start and how to build my research plan. This was extremely helpful for the rest of the project as it allowed us to have clear hypotheses and steps to validate them (or invalidate). I also learned a lot of actionable tips on how to conduct user interviews, build surveys, and analyze feedback (to name a few).
Masterclass on Research Approach with
What would you recommend to product people willing to level up in UX Research?
Cousto 😉 and practice. Few people are naturally at-ease when doing interviews but the more you practice, the better you’ll get. You’ll learn how to avoid your pitfalls, how to react in uncomfortable situations, and how to probe to get to the meat of the matter. Get as much feedback as you can from your peers (Cousto was great for this as we worked in groups and we had a mentor coaching us).
What are your main research challenges in your job as Product Manager at Wecasa?
Find the time to do it and then structure it properly to avoid getting lost. As product managers, it’s easy to get caught in the day-to-day operational stuff we’re working on on a daily basis and not make time for user research. Clearly laying out your hypotheses at the beginning is key to learn actionable insights.
Rahul, Head of Product at Wecasa
What is the place of UX Research in your product development cycle?
At Wecasa we have a strong culture of user-centric product development. Our success largely depends on our ability to get out of the building to test our hypotheses. UXR is an integral part of achieving this throughout our product development lifecycle — from ideation through to iteration on product-market fit.
What did you think of the work Louise did on baby care through Cousto?
It was incredibly insightful and helped accelerate the project. Her findings provided more context for the team’s engineers and designers allowing them to better understand the problem space. The entire team could easily rally behind the data she had gathered. In the end the research Louise conducted led to a significantly higher quality solution in a shorter period of time.
If you want to know more about Cousto — UX Research training program and mentors, go to cousto.io.
