There’s Always a Way to Do UX Research
Insights can come from colleagues who have close relationships with or similar roles to end users
Designs are created and the next engineering cycle is about to begin. There’s no time for UX research — or is there?
When you can’t put mocks in front of end users, consider seeking input from internal proxies. Pre-release internal testing is most effective with colleagues who either frequently interact with users or have a similar role to users.
“It’s directional feedback that can go a long way toward a product that helps users be successful,” says Steve Goforth, Salesforce Senior Product Designer, who adds that future phases of customer research are still important to conduct.
Makers get so close to the product that they can miss key points of friction in the user experience. It’s worth getting a quick pulse to take out the subjectiveness and gain clarity.
Salesforce Principal Researcher Kathleen McClelland sees the results of design-led research. “It gives us insight into any problems that people might have — and aren’t easily apparent,” she says. “It also helps with user experience, because if people don’t know how to use it, where to go, or what the flow is then it’s going to be a lot harder to adopt. So it allows us to make a better product and make it easier for the customer.”
Her counterparts in Slack Research & Analytics agree. When designers and product managers need input on their Slack prototypes, Senior Manager of Customer Insights Jennie Rounds puts together a plan.
“Pre-release research is our secret sauce. We don’t always get it right but the majority of the time we get it right because of our upfront work and beta programs.” — Jennie Rounds, Senior Manager Customer Insights, Slack
One of her go-to tactics is to enroll a group of Salesforce employee volunteers. With them, she’s uncovered common use cases and adoption obstacles without making assumptions.
“We update designs based on internal feedback loops all the time,” says Rounds, who leads the effort. “Pre-release research is our secret sauce. We don’t always get it right but the majority of the time we get it right because of our upfront work and beta programs.” She reinforces that the first step is identifying what you’re trying to learn.
Are you after usefulness (mapping to user needs) or do you want to learn about usability (being intuitive to navigate)?
When you have clarity, identify the best-suited internal research candidates. Anyone can give you responses so you want to ensure that the insights you get actually lead you to the right design decisions.
Select people who deeply know your users
Look out for individuals in your org who work with users on a day-to-day basis. These could include pre-sales marketers who know common use cases or account executives who learn what improvements customers want.
On a recent fast-track project, Goforth and McClelland sought out the sales engineers who have close relationships with marketers — the anticipated end user for an email marketing feature. While the internal folks were not marketers themselves, they were still effective at evaluating the working prototype and speaking on behalf of their customers. The internal research helped the team understand how the product might fit into the user’s existing processes. “We uncovered so many nuances that we had no idea could be potential issues,” says Goforth.
For example: Website copy written as “Start from scratch” was interpreted to be a starter template instead of an empty container. The revision resulted in “Or, skip for now.” That change may seem insignificant but it was the entry point for a new product. A moment of confusion so early in the experience could have made users give up and abort their trial.
“You just need feedback,” says Allison Burnett, the Salesforce Director of Product Management on this team. She finds internal UX research helps to not waste engineering cycles. So for the last decade, she’s incorporated it into her process. “At kickoffs, my UX partner (Goforth) and I just keep asking, ‘How are we going to get feedback on this? And how are we going to get feedback on that?’”
This can take many forms: qualitative, quantitative, roundtables, worksheets and online surveys. Burnett is also known for walking over to the sales or marketing halls to huddle at someone’s desk. These days, she also loves to huddle on Slack. Recently, her colleague and Salesforce Senior Manager UX/UI Bradly Zavakos performed a randomized test of three proposed navigation naming options. The research was performed internally (with account executives) and externally (with Trailblazers) and measured on time-to-task and overall satisfaction. Both groups reported the same findings.
“When it’s just a guessing game, if you could be even 50 percent more sure than you were it makes everyone feel more confident — even if it’s not a hundred percent,” says Zavakos.
Find people who have similar roles as your users
Alternatively, find employees who take part in similar processes, skills, and workflows as your users. They have the lived experience and market context to provide feedback as a potential user themselves. For example: When we were testing a new offline-support feature for areas with spotty connections, we included our own Field Services team.
Another team that does this well and often is Slack Research & Analytics. They get feedback from colleagues who are on the productivity platform daily. “Testing with Salesforce employees is a gift because it’s a large enterprise like many of our users,” says Rounds.
This was especially helpful during the pre-release internal pilot of Slack Canvas, a straightforward tool for colleagues to collaborate, create, collect and propagate information with the people who need to know it. Employees tested its many new features. They also flagged a potential issue: The bookmark was an extra click away. One tester shared that they missed the convenience when investigating multiple customer cases. Others noted that it took more effort to organize channel resources. Because of feedback like this, the team reversed the bookmarks bar back to its original one-click location. Now, end users could keep their saved bookmarks in a visible and top-of-mind folder structure — without experiencing any friction.
When Slack Canvas went live a few months later, Slack VP for Product Management Nate Botwick thanked the employee volunteers: “You helped us discover and action bugs, understand that the bookmarks bar changes needed some more thought, and inform where we should start developing next.”
Learnings that teams can apply quickly or fix efficiently provide real value to end users.
“If you can do that with internal research among participants who accurately represent, that’s even better than launching directly,” says Tina Lee, a Salesforce Lead Researcher who often partners with McClelland. Together, they’ve performed scores of global corporate studies and offer their knowledge to UX teams, even on a consulting basis when timing is tight and research is design-led.
Key research considerations
Anyone who hasn’t been trained in research should make sure to tap their organization’s research teams. They are highly skilled at defining and conducting assessments, as well as overcoming research interview angst. Even with a deep background in research, Zavakos makes sure to always loop in his research partner to ensure bias is mitigated as much as possible and the data is clean. McClelland shares, “My UX team has been kind of like a second home. They’ve been extremely inclusive and seemed to really value my input. We both make each other smarter. They have certain expertise that I don’t have and I have certain expertise that they don’t have. As we collaborate and work together, we’re able to come up with a better plan.”
She also calls out that better is never perfect.
Even though teams always put their best effort forward, it doesn’t mean everything is exactly the way a user would want. Designers and researchers are constantly learning how to optimize a product. After a product goes live, teams need to continue to track it to see how it’s being used, what’s causing problems, and what’s not being used as much. The agility of internal UX research is a fast start to using this mindset. Technology and users are evolving rapidly. A gut check can affirm you’re on the right path.
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