How to deliver research results for maximum impact
You just finished a giant awesome, project. You have so many insights you can hardly stand it. What next? What’s the best way to get all this awesomeness out of your head and into the hands of your clients or teammates?
During my time leading research and insights at MyFitnessPal and Under Armour Connected Fitness (who acquired MFP in 2015), I tried many, many different methods for sharing research. Some of them worked, some of them flopped. For me, “worked” means they had impact — they changed the way we thought about our users; they affected our product, marketing, business development, and/or strategy. “Flopped” means they didn’t. Even if people really liked the presentations or data, if they didn’t change or reinforce the way we were doing something, or shift our perspective on our users, then I considered the project a failure.
Here are some key ingredients that, upon reflection, distinguished the times that our research really “worked”:
Get buy-in ahead of time
Say you walk into a room full of smart, independent-minded, curious, skeptical people and share some some research results with them that are counter to their intuitions and expectations. Then you ask them to act on what you just told them. How do you think that’s gonna go? I can tell you from experience: not well.
Instead, when you start a project, talk to at least one member from every team in the company that you can imagine using your research results. Involve them from the get-go, making sure everyone understands what questions you’re asking and why, what methods you’re using and why, and, for maximum efficacy, get them to come along for the ride.
I cannot overstate the value of having people from the teams that will be using your results actually observing your consumers and then participating in the synthesis and presentation of the data. Your recommendations will be better (because you’re collaborating with experts who think about this stuff all the time) and they will be way WAY more likely to believe and use your findings.
Here’s a list of all the steps in the process where I made sure to include my non-research teammates:
- Establishing the overarching research questions and project objectives
- Understanding the choice of methodology (I know you asked me to send a survey, but I think we should do X instead. Here’s why…)
- Taking part in the research (joining video calls, helping craft the survey, coming along on ethnographies, debriefing after each session, etc.)
- Analyzing the results (helping create the frameworks, picking out the major themes, digesting the learnings)
- Turning the results into recommendations
- Presenting the findings
- Following up with the teams to make sure everything is clear and usable, and that we’ve found and are tackling the best next steps (more on following up later)
Involving your non-research teammates in the research process is like the ultimate “meeting before the meeting.” It will drastically improve the quality of your results, help you get buy-in both with the people who participated and the other members of their teams, and ultimately, increase the chances that your work will have impact. Do it. Even if people are busy. Even if you have to push hard to convince them to come with you the first time. It will be worth the effort.
Bring your results to life
When was the last time you got really inspired by a spreadsheet? How about by a droning PowerPoint presentation that looked like it was made in 1995? Never, that’s when. And neither will your colleagues.
As research and insights leaders, it’s our job to inspire our co-workers and clients to put themselves in our consumers’ shoes — likely shoes very different from their own — and then create messages, products, and services that our consumers want and need. It’s hard. And it takes more than a humdrum, run-of-the-mill presentation, email, or wiki update. Everyone on your team must understand the people and the problems you’re trying to solve in a deep, thorough, empathic, I-can-imagine-what-that’s-like kind of way. And for that to happen, you have to bring your research results to life.
I’m not going to spend too much time on specific tactics for how to do this, as many people have written volumes on the subject, but here are a few good, tried-and-true rules of thumb:
- Show don’t tell: Walk your audience through concrete examples from real-life observations — bonus points if you can set up scenarios so that your co-workers can feel the tension/friction/problem for themselves
- Use a narrative structure with relatable heros: Make sure your presentations tell a clear story with a beginning, middle, and end.
- Don’t try to do too much at once: I always struggle with wanting to share more than is reasonable for any human to take away from one session. I force myself to focus on between one and three main points and then fill in all the other details over time, so as not to overwhelm people. Remember — you’ve spent weeks, maybe months absorbing all this stuff. If you throw it all at your audience at once, it’ll be too hard for them to isolate and focus on the main points.
- Use lots of high-quality pictures and videos: Like the good little researcher you are, you took tons of pictures while you were conducting the research. Use them. It will help your audience understand the research process and imagine your users’ lives, motivations, and obstacles.
Give clear, actionable recommendations
No matter how cool a research result is, if people don’t know how to apply it to their job to meet their objectives and goals, they’re not going to take it with them. They’re going to leave it on the table alongside their disposable coffee cup immediately after your presentation and resume their regularly scheduled programming.
When you get to the end of a project, think of your co-workers/clients as your users and your research results as your product. How do you sell it? How do you reduce the friction to make it impactful and sticky? How do you increase engagement and repeat visitors? The answer will likely be different based on your organization and the particular project that you’re working on, but one good place to start is by giving concrete, clear recommendations for how to use it. That’s just good marketing. Good user experience. Good stuff.
Your recommendations don’t have to be perfect; they just have to be conversation starters that are in a language and format your audience is used to. They have to help your team wrap their heads around how to use what is often abstract, fluffy stuff like users’ “goals” and “motivations” and “mindsets.” How do you translate this mental mumbo jumbo into marketing campaigns and product strategy that move the needle on metrics that they care about? Give them some examples to build on — don’t make them do all the heavy lifting. (Given that we’ve identified these 3 unmet user needs, we recommend considering features A, B, and C, perhaps alongside blog posts X,Y, and Z.)
Note: this is especially important when you’re working with colleagues who haven’t encountered design researchers before. This may be a completely new way of thinking for them, and what is an obvious translation from persona to product to you, may be nonsensical to your teammates. Help them out. And, ideally, use this as a jumping off point for the next phase in your collaboration: working together to create and test out solutions — be they banner ads for A/B testing or paper prototypes of a new mobile app feature.
Follow up
After you’ve delivered your results, try to resist the temptation of jumping immediately into the next big project or interesting question. Stick around and collaborate with your teammates to make sure your hard-earned research results are actually helping them do their jobs better.
This can take a wide variety of formats. Sometimes this means:
- Break-out sessions or workshops with individual teams to help them better understand your frameworks or customer journey.
- Generative brainstorming sessions for new ideas to guide content marketing strategy or product roadmap
- Collaboratively designing and testing a physical or digital prototype of a new idea
- Working on a round of follow-up research to fill in remaining information gaps or test a new hypothesis
…the list goes on and on. Just make sure you’re doing everything you can to help your team act on your findings. Otherwise, what’s the point?
If your research results aren’t having an impact on anyone’s work, take a step back and try to understand why. Talk to your colleagues and figure out what you can do differently next time (or this time!) to make the output more actionable.
Share regularly and broadly
At Under Armour Connected Fitness, I made it my personal mission that everyone in our branch of the company was able to easily put themselves into the shoes of our users. From marketing to engineering to operations to the C-suite, I wanted everyone to feel like they knew our users to the point where they could easily imagine what our users’ lives were like — their goals and motivations, what got in the way of meeting their goals, what it felt like to make progress or fall off the wagon. And now I do the same for our clients.
As with most things, the best way to build this kind of knowledge and empathy varies based on your organization. Often, regular updates at All Hands meetings are really effective. If this seems like a good cultural fit for your organization, make sure you’re on the agenda at least once every month to report on whatever you’ve learned recently and keep the user top of mind.
Other successful approaches I’ve seen include updating a Slack channel, Twitter account, Tumblr, or Blog with pictures, updates, insights, quotes, etc. from users. Some teams try having User Research “office hours” or taking over large, visible walls in the office to display new, creative visualizations of results. Just try a few different formats and see what seems to stick for you (because you have to commit to doing it regularly) and your audience. Then do it consistently, et voila: mission accomplished.
Research is only as good as the results it drives. The more people who know about it and understand it, the more impact it will have. So make the time. Make it a priority, and your efforts will pay off. Promise.
How to deliver research results for maximum impact:
- Get buy-in ahead of time
- Bring your results to life
- Give clear, actionable recommendations
- Follow up
- Share regularly and broadly
