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I’ve always been impressed by people and organizations that value transparency. And I’ve tried to make it a cornerstone of how Rosenfeld Media does business.
As a brand attribute, transparency sounds great. But as a way for a company to behave, it’s much more complicated, and even a little painful. It means publicly admitting when stuff goes wrong, and occasionally acknowledging your own ignorance or impotence.
Allow me to be painfully transparent: given the field we’re in, you’d expect Rosenfeld Media to be a completely user research-driven company.
And you’d be wrong.
Like many small companies — and even some large ones — we’ve made the same excuses that we begrudge our consulting clients: not enough time, staff, or budget.
Well, it’s time to call bullshit. No more excuses.
So we’re starting a new thing called The People Project. It’s a lean user research program that makes sense for a tiny company like ours. And we’ll report on it— transparently—right here on our site. That way you’ll see — and hopefully learn from — what we’re discovering.
We’re centering our research on the actionable questions — some big, some small — that directly address what people need and want most from us. We’re leaning on our roster of Rosenfeld Media UX experts to guide us when we get stumped answering these questions along the way.
And we’re emphasizing practical tools and iterative approaches over grand methods. After all, we’re in the business of UX expertise, not medical devices or Martian rovers.
I’m so excited that Rosenfeld Media is finally becoming truly user research-driven—and a little relieved. It’ll be hard, but the hardest part is, as they say, recognizing that you have a problem. Nice to check that off the list. Of course, we’re certainly not the first organization to share our user research. In fact, our biggest inspiration is the amazing UX team at MailChimp; you should really subscribe to their newsletter to see what they’re learning.
I’m especially proud of Elaine Matthias and Stephanie Zhong for pushing this forward; you’ll be hearing directly from them along the way.
Speaking of which, we’ll be posting what we learn right here. We’ll also tweet about what we’ve learned via @rosenfeldmedia.
If you’re finding this interesting or even inspiring, let us know by commenting below. In fact, if your small organization is doing something similar, would you mind sharing a bit about what you’ve learned?
Leave a Reply to Louis Rosenfeld
The People Project
Posted on | 19 comments
19 Responses to “The People Project”
Steve Portigal
This is so exciting! I look forward to learning from the results and the process. Thanks for doing this and sharing it!
Stephanie Zhong
It sure is, Steve. Appreciate you giving us some wisdom a few weeks back on how to lean up. Can’t wait to see what surprises and opportunities crop up.
Pete Kinser
This is the elephant in many of our rooms. Great to see this and like many others, I’m sure, I’ll be following along. I’ve piloted similar efforts with mixed results. Very interested in what you discover and the process/solutions which follow.
Louis Rosenfeld
Heh. “Elephant”. Like our logo; clever. 😉
Sara Grace
This is awesome!
Joel Eden
This is great that you’re doing this…I’m excited by this both because I love to use “lean design” methods and mindset myself, and because I’m sure it will help you to continue to grow and succeed and I love your books already so I want you to stick around!
Stephanie Zhong
Great to hear, Joel. It’s exciting to have a go at using lean methods. Eager to hear your experiences with “lean design” too along the way.
Jeffrey Eisenberg
This is good stuff!
Stephanie Zhong
Jeff, thanks for your early help! Elaine and I have started writing our first Buyer Legend. Will share how it goes. Great stuff.
Josephine Giaimo
Very interesting, and very inspiring. Am listening and hoping to hear more soon.
Stephen C.
Love it. It takes bravery to share things when they go wrong, but those experiences are pure gold to everyone else. Will be following closely.
James M. Boekbinder
Great news! I’ll also be happy to contribute where I can.
Toni Rosati
I’m proud of you guys! So beautiful to take a big leap forward.
I just started working for a company as their first UX research analyst. My boss says I’m the “measure” in the “build, measure, learn” model. I suppose what I have learned in my short time is that team buy-in is different than company-wide buy in. People don’t understand what I do and/or don’t know how to trust qualitative data yet. I’m in an exciting and challenging place!! 🙂
Lou Rosenfeld
Thanks Toni; wishing you well as you change your organization’s thinking (and, ultimately, culture)!
Carmen Broomes
Recently, our company started an initiative that we called Customer Research Days. Every week, we talk to 5 customers about a specific topic. This includes showing them design concepts that we are exploring, existing company products, or looking at competitive products. By using this method, we are able to quickly iterate. I’m excited to hear more!
Lou Rosenfeld
Great to hear Carmen–next phase should be getting all of your C-level folks to participate. 😉
Stephanie Zhong
What a great approach, Carmen. Nothing beats talking and listening directly to customers–and it’s easy to forget as we learned and are correcting now.
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