Day 1–Under My (Research) Umbrella: The Benefits and Challenges of Building a Unified Insights Function

— Thank you for having me today, and to the conference organizers for putting it together and inviting me today

• Name is Andy Warr and I will talk about benefits and challenges of a unified insights function

 

— I’ll set the stage

• Is the above image how you feel some days about what it’s like to conduct research on company

— It can feel lonely in UXR

— You feel like you are working in a silo, and departments isolated from each other

 

— I’ve spent careers in UXR, leading teams at Uber, Airtable, Microsoft

• During tenure noticed projects I worked on have been similar to those of other functions like data science, product marketing, strategy and operations, and even finance team

— They are insight-generating functions, and had fruitful collaborations with function, depending on receptiveness and timing

• Difficulty was in assuming awareness of projects in first place

 

— Lack of awareness, is first challenge, and leads to duplicative research

• For example, at Uber, various teams would conduct research, from on ground operations, to UXR, to find new business and improve UXR

 

— Realized that everyone does research, but, per Bill Buxton, does fact that you can count change in your pocket make you a mathematician?

 

— Of course not!

• Conversation with customer different from in-depth interview, with difference being rigor of the process
• UXR is more than just having a conversation or interviewing a person

 

—

— This leads to second challenge of available research quality

• Problematic as it dilutes quality of all research by association
  • Executive doesn’t care which team did research

 

 

— I’ve come to loathe the phrase ‘research democratization’, but instead have come to prefer ‘customer connection’

• Not teaching non-UXRs to do research, but enabling them to connect with customers

 

— Multiple teams conducting UXR, and orgs that connect with customers, and sharing insights creates noise

 

— Judd Antin: “We have all people throwing insights over the wall, and want to hear from all of them, but all coming over the side, and it is too much.”

 

— To recap our challenges

1. Duplicative Research
2. Variable Research Quality
3. Research Noise

— So what is the solution?

• What if we created awareness of what each insight-generation function was working on?
• Set bar for craft of research? Coherent voice and unified insights function?

— Set out to do this at Airtable

• Met with executive leadership prior to setting up, and described challenges I faced
• No one wanted to repeat mistakes of impact when building a company
  • They bough into idea for a center of excellence, and new vision of what research teams looked at Airtable

— The functions were broken down as follows:

— Market Research:

• Address total addressable market and go-to-market strategies

—UX Research

• Embedded with product pillars to get design right, and right designs

— Principal Research

• Strategic research crossing organizational boundaries

— Research Operations

• Enabling various re-teams and enabling everyone at company to connect with customers

— It worked, and were able to point people to existing research, as all teams were notified of what happened, and centralized insights repository was created

 

— For usability tests, researcher on ReOps team consulted with them to increase effectiveness and quality of output, with UXR setting the standards for the craft

 

— With research planned and coordinated across research generating channel, it minimized noise, and created a coherent voice

• Believe in structure so much, as it was a requirement for the role he was on

 

— 1) There are exceptions

• Unified insights teams didn’t include all insight-generating functions, as data insights and research teams worked close together
  • Head of Data Insights, spoke about combining teams and majority of work quite different, with different methods— and partnerships was so strong, they were willing to accept risk of duplicative work
• Less common to see data science and UXR teams as part of same org of combining qualitative and quantitative insights

— 2) Some orgs want specific research teams to be part of their organization (i.e. market research as part of marketing), so they are close to problems they are working on, and people working on problems

• Tradeoffs with this design, so optimizing for focus on craft

— 3) Budget and headcount are complicated, as research team as part of Airtable, was based on 2:1 ratio for design, but didn’t cover other insight generating functions for org

• Requests for additional head-count require trade-offs on functions to hire for within the org

— Marketing org is part of different cost centers, so need to fund expenses through cost center

• Market research needs to cofund research depending on project

— This leads to administrative work and overhead

— So you need to understand benefits as to when it makes the most sense to unify

• Easiest way is when starting up the team

— Don’t immediately get team with insight generating functions, but need to build them up over time

• Airtable built up UXR first, as focus was initially on design and product.
• As demand for market research increased, then worked with UX teams and vendor to take on market research, until enough demand for in-house researcher was hired
  • Insights generating function and evaluating needs of org and organizational design

— Given that research team is small, might need to align to larger reorg within the org

• So what are goals of reorg? How can we position our teams to best align to meet reorg needs?

— But what if you don’t have support, despite benefits? I’ll give a few specific examples of techniques that help for collaboration

 

— Opportunity for research reviews to give feedback on other phases of research process, as research review can increase awareness, improve quality by providing opportunity for fresh perspective and maintain high quality bar

• Learning opportunities to learn from others and how they might approach own work and incorporating different approaches that might not have been considered
• Confidence in proposed approaches

 

— Airtable product ranker, monitors every product in circulation and encourages UXRs to sign-up for research review and booking page

 

— There are holds for research reviews, and there is expectation for craft level researchers to attend, and encourage all to attend to provide peer feedback and community

• A research practicioner facilitates review, along with an overview of the project, and focus on feedback they’d like
• 10-minutes to review materials provided
• Remainder of review to discuss

 

— Insight Primers are synthesis of insights and opportunities related to company opportunities to help you plan

• Overview of market, size, growth rate key trends, and find opportunities for investments and improvements company can make
  • Unmet needs, emerging trends

— Help develop strategies to capitalize on opportunities, by providing internal SWOT analysis and those of competitors

— Includes customer relationship management features like projected business impact

 

— Take number of opportunities of inter-related decisions, you get strategic research

• A link will be provided on how to create your own primer

— Third technique of an insights council, to enhance collaboration across insights generating functions

• Preventing disjointed customer experience and reduce duplicative efforts, drive collaboration, promote learning on customer experience

 

— A council consists of quarterly meetings of roadmaps, OKRs, and manage research

• Built community about insight generating functions

 

— Before conclude, would like to share lessons on building teams and techniques described

 

— May be tempting to unify all IG functions, but doomed to failure, as hard to coordinate all teams together

• Start small and pick closest collaborator and prove value before trying to scale, so people want to join, instead of being convinced

 

— Executive buy-in plays a crucial role for the insight-generation team, so speak to executives about benefits of unified insights team

• This helps ensure alignment between the two of you
• Helps with new executives joining the team
  • Dropbox hiring chief-customer officer told about team and how to best support vision at Dropbox

 

— Not doing this for good of research, but doing it for company and customer [not empire-building]

• Focus on value a unified insights builds to team and customer, ensures you are producing high quality research and effective in having data-driven research

 

— Question to leave you with, is who will get under research umbrella

 

Q&A

1. Responsibility for guardrails for non-researchers, and what has team set, if any?
   1. Researchers need to be arbiters of craft
   2. Dropbox, mandatory privacy training course on data we get
      1. Dedicated program manager for support mechanism on customer interaction, setting up a study, analyzing data
2. Size of team best for research reviews, and when to formalize process, and less feasible to do so?
   1. At dropbox team is one of three research studio, and other teams embedded in business units
   2. Noticed that if you have a bit more repetitiveness in process, and create efficiencies in it—then you can scale
   3. Started informal reviews, but extended to build into Airtable for booking page and have program manager to facilitate proces and keep rooms relatively small
3. Thoughts of balancing chance to obtain lot of insights from research, versus being quick to get insights?
   1. Not trying to force collaboration amongst everyone, and seek opportunities to come together, and feedback from others — with community support channel
      1. Individual projects can apply to certain domain, where UXR doesn’t need to work with them
   2. Focus on more strategic initiatives to pull together different researchers and work to inform primers