Creating DonorsChoose’s UX Research Library
Without a catalog of the UX Research Team’s work, our work could be found everywhere: a Trello board, Slack threads, Google Drive, UserZoom Go, Reduct, and more! On top of the research content being in various places, the Research Team was the gatekeeper to it all. If my colleagues wanted to find past research to support or inform their work, then they’d have to ask the Research Team for it. Aside from making past research learnings more accessible to the rest of DonorsChoose, I envisioned a research library that would be a multi-tool. Its users could show it to folks to get them up to speed on projects and the Research Team could have folks who hadn’t worked with us before take a look at it to set expectations about what is feasible during a round of research. Now, after several months of chatting with stakeholders, locating research content,compiling it into one centralized location, and more chatting with stakeholders, DonorsChoose has its first ever research library!
Before I got to work creating the library…
The first step in creating the library was chatting with stakeholders, my colleagues on the Product team, to understand how they find research content. I confirmed that the process of finding research content was a significant hurdle: when folks needed research content, they’d either ask the research team upfront or dig through the various places that research artifacts could be located (and if they couldn’t find it themselves, then they’d ask the research team). This proved to be enough of a hurdle to prevent one of my colleagues from looking for research unless it was critical since they assumed they’d have to “bug” the research team to find it. The ability to independently self-serve research in one centralized place was quickly clarified as one of my stakeholders’ primary needs.
After chatting about how the team finds (or doesn’t find) research content, I learned about what folks sought out: research plans, design mocks, and most importantly, results. A theme that arose from these conversations was that however folks phrased it (“summaries,” “TLDRs”), they wanted bite-sized versions of results. Learning about what artifacts are most in demand informs how I prioritize processing studies into the library today, like necessitating each study have a summary.
With the stakeholders’ needs in mind, the next step in creating the library was deciding what platform to use. I landed on Trello, since the Research Team was already using it to broadly keep track of past and present projects (albeit without research artifacts attached to them). The tool was also familiar to our organization, which was a huge plus because stakeholders wouldn’t have to learn an entirely new tool along with learning how to navigate the library’s contents.
I built the research library on the groundwork of the research team’s Trello board because the last thing I wanted to do was reinvent the wheel. I duplicated the research team’s Trello board and removed pieces that were relevant only to the research team. This became the foundation for the research library.
Creating the library
Taxonomy
I prioritized figuring out taxonomy because it loomed large in my mind as I planned the library’s content. I strongly wanted to avoid an unwieldy tagging system because I envisioned the research library to be evergreen: easily updatable for me and organized so that folks at the org can navigate it independently.
I had asked stakeholders about how they’d ideally want the library to be organized. The stakeholders had a range of responses that ranged from organizing by product feature, by audience, or by project. These needs (organization by product feature, by audience, by project) were met through the taxonomy or the card titles of the library. With my stakeholders’ organizational input in mind, I broadly organized projects in the library by FY (fiscal year) to keep it as linear as possible. I also settled on a succinct tagging system of three categories for each project’s Trello card: the audience we spoke to, the type of research conducted, and the piece of the product we conducted research on (if applicable).
Tracking down study artifacts
Finding each study’s artifacts (its research plan, results, a brief goal and summary, session recordings) was an exercise in excavation. This process took months because the breadth of the library spanned from FY15 until today (hundreds of artifacts!) and because the library took a backseat while I worked on current studies. I dug through Google Drive, searched in Slack, and looked through UserZoom Go to find and download research content.
The process took some problem solving! When study names weren’t consistent, I cross referenced the team’s Google Calendar blocks with the names of studies in UserZoom Go or scrolled through a research channel in Slack to find anything related to what I was searching for. The studies that were really far back, in FY15 for example, didn’t always have accessible artifacts because of outdated Google permissions. The library is made up of what I found in our archives — I didn’t write a summary of findings, for example, if I couldn’t find them. Creating the library was about organizing the work that the research team already had, not about creating new work.
A project’s card with attachments (tags, a description with a short goal and results, raw session recordings, a Slack thread of session recordings with tags, a report, and a research plan) looks like this:
Walk throughs and soliciting feedback
I walked through the library with the Product team once I finished processing about two fiscal years of studies. I didn’t want to get too deep into the creation of the library just to realize that it wasn’t usable for my audience! I demonstrated how to navigate the library through a keyword search and filtering through tags. Then, I explained the use cases I had in mind and my plan going forward: not every project had a short results summary and I planned to include one for new projects I’d process into the library since half of the team had previously voiced that that’s what they look for when they look for research. I answered questions toward the end, which were minimal because the team is already familiar with Trello.
Once I wrapped up a V1 of the library that included all of the studies from FY15 until this fiscal year, I felt well equipped to show the Product Marketing team. I thought they would be a good match for a sneak peek of the library because a pillar of their work is a deep understanding of our users’ behaviors. During the meeting, I gave folks context about why I created the library and demonstrated how to use it. Folks were excited to use it as the multitool that I imagined (and more): as a resource bank before projects, to get up to speed on user behavior, and to learn about gaps in our product that could potentially be filled.
Most people didn’t have immediate feedback but the suggestions I did receive were impactful, like adding dates to cards to better flag research relevance. We added dates of new studies during a refresh of the research team’s Trello board and since those cards would be processed into the research library, it’s much clearer when research was conducted. I’m taking the lack of strong reactions as a signal that the initial structure was in the right direction. I look forward to learning more from the library’s users as people dig into it!
Maintaining the library
Upkeep
The library is currently in full swing! I’ve embedded it into study’s closing out process as its last step. I created an automation button on Trello to move a study’s card within the UX Research Team board into the current fiscal year’s list within the library once the study has wrapped up. The library won’t stay static for long — I expect that I’ll always have something to add to it.
Spreading awareness
After building out the library’s framework and its content, my goal is to get the library into the hands of colleagues who it would be useful for. I’ve demonstrated how to navigate the library at a meeting focused on user insights and I’ve introduced the library to a wider audience through org-wide channels on Slack and our weekly email newsletter. Moving forward, I’m going to continue adding research library content into the email newsletter due to its wide reach. I’m also going to take a targeted approach to reach the folks that the library is relevant to by writing regular posts about the library’s contents (“This month 7 years ago, this research was conducted…”, headlines about a recent study, a spotlight on a participant whose session was especially fruitful) into Slack channels that are specific to folks who are focused on donors and teachers.
All that to say, the library is still a work in progress! Past research has been cataloged and I have a framework for how to organize it, but I’m not closing the door on changing or adding to that framework because I hope to learn more about how folks use the library as I spread awareness about it. The library is generative: it will be consistently growing as new content is added and changing as I learn the best ways to make research artifacts accessible to my stakeholders.
