Product Intern Adventure pt. 1
When I found out that I was going to be one of the first Product Internship team members at Pluralsight I was beyond stoked. I honestly don’t know how I made it to the team, but they saw something in me and I was very grateful and was ready to give my blood, sweat, and tears. I learned so much here and I’d like to share my experience and what I accomplished at PS.
Pluralsight’s experience organization is made up of product teams that consists of a Product Manager, a Product Designer, and a team of Devs. I worked with one of those teams that owned notifications and profile bounded contexts. On the first week my leaders gave me an overview of what the team is working on that quarter and gave me options on what I could work on. I chose to research motivation and how the product can help the user be motivated to continue learning.
What I Learned
I learned a bit about different design processes in school, but I am glad that this internship has properly taught me one that I can use as a foundation. Pluralsight’s design process is called Directed Discovery, currently it has four phases: Persona, Voice of the Customer (VoC), Customer Preference Testing (CPT), and Customer Confirmation Testing (CCT). Let me translate that for ya. Persona is to understand the user’s pain points and develop a problem statement. VoC is to empathize how the customers understand the idea and how they work around the problem. This phase helps to create story maps and narratives. CPT is basically building a prototype based on research from the previous phases. Usability tests and iterating on designs are mainly what is done in this phase. CCT phase is to develop, release the alpha and beta versions of the product, and continue to do discovery on the product in order to find bugs, and improve the product.
These phases are a guide rather than instructions to follow to a tee. The beauty of this gives all teams the autonomy to use the tools and methods that best fit for them in order to produce a great product.
When I jumped into the research, the team was already at the VoC stage and I picked it up from there. I needed to start creating an interview discussion guide and I hit the biggest road block because of it. It was really hard to create questions to ask that is not leading or probing. I struggled a lot, but I was able to reach out to many product managers that helped me create one.
VOC Interview Protocol: Insights/metrics
Goal: Understand how learners use data visualization to help them influence their behavior to action. Understand if insights/metrics would help users increase engagement and activity on PS.
Who we are talking to:
● Superstars that use their profile. (These learners frequently use PS and visit their profile)
● Unhealthy users. (These learners have been inactive for about 4+ months)
Intro and disclosure:
● Team
● Purpose and structure of call
● Permission to record
User Intro & Context:
● Tell me about yourself? What’s your background?
● Inform the interviewee that we will ask some personal questions regarding their patterns in their life
User’s Life Patterns
● Describe something in your life that is recurring?
— What are some things you do regularly (that’s unique to you)?
— What else (ask about other activities if they don’t give a good example)?
● Why is it important?
● What are you trying to accomplish?
● Can you talk about your progression?
● Do you track your progress?
— How do you keep track?
— How do you organize it?
● Do you use any tools or apps?
● Give us an example of how you use the tools/apps?
— When do you use it?
— How long do you use it?
— How long do you spend organizing?
— How often?
● Does visualizing (budget) or seeing (the minute on the mile) influence your behavior?
— If Yes: Could you describe a time when that has happened?
— If No: then why do you do it?
User’s Learning Patterns
● (Any follow up questions from the team?)
● Thank them and transition them in to learning topic.
● Tell me about a recent time that you learned something new and why?
● What were you trying to accomplish? Was it a time bound task (is this a scheduled task)?
— Frequency
— When
— Where
● Describe any other tools/resources that you use to learn? (Understand what other adjacency are out there.)
● How do you use PS?
— Can you describe the last time you used PS in detail (from getting on PS to
getting off)?
● What stops you from spending more time learning?
With this discussion guide I did a whopping 11 interviews. Pretty darn good. The first few interview were super stressful because I didn’t want to mess up, but with practice I was able to overcome my anxiety and relax. This helped me to have rapport and helped the interviewers be a bit more at ease. I’ve learned that it is sometimes really hard to get people to interview and on top of that for them to show up to the meeting can be very frustrating. Also, never schedule a Friday interview; they will never show up.
Synthesis
I’ve learned that data synthesis can take a long time. I’ve put together a guide for myself of how to conduct a qualitative and possibly a quantitative data synthesis. Synthesizing data is one of the most valuable skills that I’ve learned as an intern.
Synthesis Session
- Get lots of snacks and drinks. Trust me you will need it.
- Sticky notes (at least two different colors), sharpies, and highlighters are needed.
- Have each members of your team go through their assigned user interview transcript with these in mind about the user that was interviewed:
— Thinking (what are they thinking?)
— Feeling (what are they feeling?)
— Doing (what are they doing?)
— Touch Points (i.e. tools they are using) - As they go through their interview transcript they must highlight the above events and label them with a number and T (thinking), F (feeling), D (doing), and TP (touch points) next to the highlight.
- Each of the members will then go around the circle and read off their findings with context as needed.
- As they read them off the team should feel free to discuss the highlighted events as they go.
- Two members of the group will trade off in writing down the findings in sticky notes. Ex: (even and odd number trade off).
- Another member of the team will pick up the written down sticky note and place them on the wall.
- The team may categorize them by Thinking, Feeling, Doing, and Touch Points OR they may categorize them by the unique interviews.
- After all the sticky notes are placed the team will go around and group the sticky notes with other similar sticky notes.
- After they are grouped use another color of sticky notes and label the groups appropriately.
- Reevaluate the group label and grouped sticky notes to better represent the data.
- Take really good pictures of the synthesized data in order to digitize them.
- Create a journey map or use other types of synthesizing method to organize the data. Here is a framework of an example journey map. The columns are a specific journey that a user goes through and the rows are the T.F.D. and TP.
- After this you may now ask “How might we help the users?” with your team. This will help brainstorm ideas to create something for the users to destroy their pain points.
With this guide I lead the synthesis session for this project. It took a long time, but it was a lot of fun. From synthesizing the interviews we’ve come to find that it supported the team’s previous research about displaying learning metrics and gamification. We’ve come to find that these features could motivate many users and help them become a life long learner on the platform.
Although this research has confirmed to us the value of metrics and gamification, we do not know where and how to display them. Our next steps are to research where users would like them displayed and how to gamify the platform.
