Day 2-Out of the FOG: A Non-traditional Research Approach to Alignment

— Thank you so much for the introduction I’m a senior UXR at Snowflakes

 

— And I will speak to you about a non research approach to alignment

 

— We have a chance to drive alignment in orgs as UXRs, and realign teams and workshops

 

— I’ll provide a tool for realigning teams

 

— Ever heard the following quotes above?

 

 

— And have you had past product launches where the launch didn’t go as planned, and people feel misaligned?

 

— FOG is a facilitation method for performing and team/company level that can prevent these outcomes

 

— But why is this outcome necessary?

 

— Research is seen as slow and as a cost-center, and we see programs like Rapid Research that reflect this assumption

 

— But slowing down helps us move faster overall
  • It’s important to khow we think and if our ways of thinking are getting us to where we want to go

 

— Intuition, is our gut sense for how our brains form thoughts
  • Helps us find patterns and conclusion and perceptions
— Daniel Kahneman adds a definition for human error, where intuition can be wrong and right
  • Intuition is thinking you know without knowing why you know
  • Wrong decision can be generated automatically

 

— How do you judge expert intuition though? You need three conditions of context:
  1. Regularity
  2. Practice in the context
  3. Feedback on guessing right/wrong
— With three conditions then expert intuition  on what might  happen

 

— Now let’s go to System 2

 

— Analytical thinking is slow, effortful, and conscious

 

— Most analytic thinking is deliberate and rational by piecing together a judgment based on the labor of reviewing info on past experience
  • It is cognitively demanding but likely leads to better decisions
  • It engages with complexity, uncertainty, and advantage of time to think

 

— These systems function as complements to each other, as both S1 and S2 have blindspots

 

— But when applying this individual framework at the org level, something shifts in this balance between analytic and intuitive, as departments are added over time

 

— First, there is product management whose central value proposition is knowing industry, and having a plan for innovation

 

— Next, there is data scan the environment, and go beyond intuition, and look at numbers/dollars and identify what is happening and areas to improve
  • Data will establish recognizable patterns and provide answer to what is happening but not how and why

 

— Finally there UXR and research in general, as it involves actively collecting data and analyzing that data to explain the how/why
  • UXR is the most analytic form of knowledge generation

 

— But most product teams rely on what looks like intuitive thinking
  • We are often over-confident and  provide coherent stories that provide a clear narrative and mis-understand things spontaneous and automatically

 

— UXR is seen as being too analytical and a blocker to progress, and partners thinking of UXR see it as too analytical or not fast enough
  • When in teams setting, analytical and intuitive thinking appear mutually exclusive

 

— And per Peter Merholz, research has been added later to process with analytical decision making, but is seen as intuitive

 

— There in lies the danger of being  seen as not enough for decision making and alignment

 

— As UXRs, we need to create alignment and be seen as value-add in decision making, not as a blocker

 

— Moreover organizations can all get caught in a doom loop of continuously basing decisions on past experiences or gut thinking

 

— This range from start-ups digging into a bias toward action, and initial assumptions undergirding key aspects of product strategy
  • The end goal can be to launch another product, and rely on gut feeling
  • Lack of practice from new team, can suggest high potential for failure
— Or it can be a large company, where problem has been acted on intuitively with no success
  • Now we have decision paralysis and apply same processes that worked before to a new context
  • Company might have great idea, but can’t move successfully toward goals
    • Brought UXR for analytical thinking, when intuition failed
— What drives this?

 

— I’d like to introduce the concept of grinding momentum
  • There is defined as a need for speed to move decision making forward, without shared research knowledge, due to timelines and expectations
— This happens in a new product area and place without a regular practice of feedback
  • No time for analytical information processing and teams don’t understand value of cohesion and shared mindsets

 

— Challenges of researchers are:
  1. Establishing a sense of shared team vision
  2. Separating facts from fiction
  3. Moving the team past hang-ups to establish a research strategy and product direction

 

— FOG can balance thinking to slow down this grinding momentum

 

— The goals of FOG are to:
  1. Identify and understand team questions
  2. Collect existing documents the team uses
  3. Identify knowledge gaps
  4. Facilitate a brainstorming of facts, opinions, and guesses

 

— An approach I suggest is as follows:
  • Group Interviews and qualitative thematic analysis for categories of questions areas, and existing reports
  • A FOG session to capture facts options and guesses

 

— Prework involves collecting 5-10 statement that capture facts and link the sources for these statements to a dashboard and product document and add them to a digital whiteboard

 

— We then ask people what we know for sure about a product

 

— Repeat structure for opinions and guesses live, and point out
  • Opinions what people believe, but have little evidentiary support
  • Guesses are forward looking and think of where to go next

 

— Then we find a plan for success

 

— We separated existing knowledge from gaps and research amnesia prevented
  • We also have a shared understanding
— This strategy changed the way we worked toward new strategy and brought us together for company initiative, and led through self-reflection that was key to differentiate between facts, opinions, and gaps

 

— This let UXR be seen as partner in discovery than the arbiter of truth
  • Started conversation and lead team to new product progress
— We can drive alignment to integrate thinking both fast and slow to have better decision making

 

 

— Thank you so much for listening

 

Questions
  1. How to help team distinguish between the components of FOG, and can you give an example?
— Fact, link to evidence based document

 

— Opinion, detached from evidence

 

— Guess, what do you think our next steps are
  • Goal of sessions is to have prioritization sessions to prioritize what are top facts across the board, and same thing with opinions and guesses and to take a board full of statements that look equal and what are most important opinions and guesses
— Example of opinions on where product would fit in terms of people who might use it for launch, but had no evidence of why
  • More evidence on safety considerations and how to build something or construct it, but no info on audience specifically or how the audience might use the product
— These things are facts and we need to substantiate how to build things correctly within the market
  • Goal to lay aside what was an assumption, even though it was strongly repeated as a fact
  1. What if a FOG session establishes  statements that makes stakeholder uncomfortable? How to manage tensions?
— Manage color posted notes by function
  • In aggregate report, don’t include names
  • For misalignment, the opinions are not softly held, and there needs to be a discussion on them
— FOG provides  aforum to air disagreement and give stakeholder to air confidence in their opinions
  • Still need balance of quiet times and presentation components to give people comfortable avenue to express themselves
  1. Document based approach to reduce research amnesia. What are some of  your other preferred knowledge management approaches?
— Orgs learn through two theories
  1. Orgs are transactional and why they make the decisions they do
  2. Orgs learn from each other and industry
— Thinking about org evolution, two main fields

 

— I’ve used at different levels, how micro influences mezzo and macro
  • Think of Arab Spring mobilizing individual people and affordances that resulted from it
— I can talk more offline on this
  1. When is the right time to apply the FOG method? What to do about data?
— This has two components: when to do it, and what to do about bad data

 

— When to do FOG method:
  • Turning point to do this is when something is contentious. Or when you notice product direction is way off from market signals
    • If PMs are not on-board to slow down to speed up, all you can do is best you can to advocate for user, and acknowledge this
— What’s bad data:
  • Bad data is when people prioritize and crowd-source data
    • Example of team constantly congregating around a bad artifact for moving ahead with a decision
    • Raise a analysis of artifact for justification of moving forward
  1. What if people claim something is a fact without hard evidence beyond hearing it as an anecdote from clients?
— Our responsibility to bring analysis to artifacts people are using
  • If an assumption explicitly articulates the artifact as a gap to tackle, question the underlying research to support the perspective of the artifact