How we scaled user research for the early Digit Beta
Also: how we reached 100 member exposure hours!
Why we care about user feedback at Digit
For most user researchers, democratizing research can be a challenge. How do we navigate the resistance? Also, how do we help PMs leverage member feedback as part of the product roadmap?
I’m proud to say that our team at Digit invested as many as 100 hours in the first quarter of the Digit Beta to listen to our users, and it was a team effort.
We have a culture of internal feedback that speaks directly to one of our core values: Build Trust. This same core value also applies to our Digit members. We aim to share knowledge about our members as a team, regardless of our job roles or titles.
- Key Learnings
- Shared Insights in Real Time
- Research as a Team
- Templates & Reports
Key Learnings from creating Democratized Research
- UX objectives come before UX methods: “Which method and when to use?” is arguably the most classic UX research FAQ. But the practice of leading with a method first is outdated. Define the key research objective first and how it should inform a stakeholder’s business decisions. Your team will find the research more relevant to them. If we focus on developing UX strategy and defining the right outcomes and impact for the org, our discipline will grow with the business.
- Define research roles: In a scrappy startup like Digit, sometimes stakeholders will lead studies where the researcher acts as a “co-navigator”. Other times, the researcher acts as the “driver.” For each study, it’s important that we clearly define the roles. When stakeholders lead their own user research studies, they develop more appreciation of user problems and problem solving
- Rome was not built in a day. When I started on this journey with my product partners, it had its natural ups and downs. There were a lot of questions how research should run, and they were really interested in how they could get involved. This is a form of feedback and it showed that our team cared about the outcomes. If you’re a researcher trying to enable others to run research, help your team understand that how research efforts can help yield incredible results!
Shared insights in real time
At Digit, we have a specific Slack channel for beta triage with product, engineering, and support. When research is in flight, we share research updates and audio clips in our Slack channel for wider exposure. To help the team see the flow of user feedback in a more complete form, we tracked feature feedback in real-time from support & research sources and created a kanban board of feedback.
For the initial beta period, this has helped increase the overall awareness of our research internally. Stakeholders are able to decide how and when to implement potential solutions.
Research as a Team
When I joined Digit last November, our product & design teams were already speaking directly to users. Early on, they shared that hearing user ideas, pain points and needs is valuable. But, every study could run differently, based on who was running it.
Since January, PMs and designers work with Research and rely on us to make running a research study seamless. PMs and designers can request Digit Chats and conduct user interviews with light research guidance. We tracked user participation, troubleshooted no-shows and managed post-interview incentives to make it easier for the team.
We also try to recognize our Digit teammates for their research efforts. We call these Digits doing Research shoutouts and post to Slack in weekly updates.
Templates & Reports
When Digit stakeholders conduct research themselves, they hear about user pain points directly. When they co-write research findings, PMs or designers may consider them in their product requirements.
Building our “empathy muscle” helps our team to refine their decisions, guided by user feedback. It’s rewarding to co-create research findings with them and help clarify their recommendations.
Today, we use Coda.io to host a single, consistent template for creating research insights for the Digit Beta. It also helps us so that we can find any research related to the Digit Beta in a single location.
Stakeholders like to see a Slack post of the TL;DR or short summary of the research findings with a link to the Coda. They also like to listen to clips as evidence. For most studies I’ve led at Digit, I’ve been able to create almost zero Powerpoint decks for sharing insights (a personal goal)!
In closing… That’s the magic of Digit. Because our team is focused on impact, it helps to be part of a larger journey and to know we are helping users together.
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UX Acknowledgments: Shipra Kayan, Emily Bergeron and Mariné Palmuyatan for a lively debate early this year about Voice of Customer programs; and Brigette Metzler and the ReOps community
Digit Acknowledgments: Thanks to the PM, Marketing, Design and Analytics teams for your endless feedback.
