We’ve seen this story before: companies acknowledge that research is critical to placing users at the core of product development, yet many of them do not have nearly enough (or at times, any) support to realize its benefits, a sentiment we saw in our latest State of User Research Report.
Leslie Brown, a Product Manager at digital advertising company Agility, is no stranger to this dynamic. However, she has boldly gone where few PMs have before — putting the structures in place to overcome the barriers to building a sustainable research practice from the ground up.
We were fortunate enough to wrangle Leslie for a recent fireside chat with our own Morgan Mullen, where she offered up her insights into how PMs in similar scenarios can overcome three major challenges:
- Getting research up-and-running at your company when it's an entirely new discipline
- The misconception that research is a slow, drawn out process
- Anxiety around putting low-fi ideas/designs in front of users too soon
Check out highlights and video clips from our conversation with Leslie below.
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Challenge 1: Standing up a research function from scratch
Leslie has found that one key part of establishing a culture of research at your organization is addressing the initial skepticism around its benefits and impact vs the investment of time and resources it requires.
When Research is not (yet) a core part of a company's workflows and processes, Leslie has found that going a bit meta — doing her own research in the form of internal stakeholder interviews across the business — is a crucial starting point. A few questions she’s sought to answer:
- What balance of macro and micro research is currently being conducted?
- How might handoffs be hurting our team’s collaborative efforts?
- Are designs being properly pressure-tested before going to market?
From there, Leslie was able to put together a plan to align stakeholders around common goals, including stronger collaboration, expectations around the speed of research, and the best way to battle misconceptions around design fidelity, the latter two of which she details below.
📚 Check out our UXR Field Guide chapter on stakeholder interviews and alignment
Challenge 2: Convincing your org that research can be fast
One of the first challenges Leslie faced in getting research integrated into the organization was overcoming the perception that it would be a slog to the product development process.
In order to get to the bottom of this pain point, Leslie went on a listening tour to understand the landscape and start building bridges between different groups. She recommended starting with questions as simple as:
- What are your challenges?
- What are your goals?
- What keeps you up at night?
From there, she was able to piece together a clearer picture of the misconceptions surrounding research, and in turn, was able to make a better case for its value in addressing the challenges facing her colleagues.
To get these process rolling faster, Leslie said she started scheduling user interviews on the calendar and inviting stakeholders so the team would see that feedback—especially tough feedback.
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Challenge 3: Low fi ideas designs = high anxiety?
Can you really get deep user insights without a polished design concept? For Leslie, helping her colleagues overcome the anxiety about the design concepts a customer sees during the research stage and what ultimately becomes the final product was also a challenge she faced.
“Why would we put something in front of a customer if it wouldn't be (close to the final design)?” she said, pointing to as an example of the types of questions she’s fielded.
In this case, meeting the challenge head on meant bridging the gap between a lo-fi concept and a hi-fi final design with both internal stakeholders that would be clearly communicated during the user interview process.
In order to overcome these challenges, Leslie recommends:
- Doing the (prep) work to make sure that internal stakeholders understand the goals for research at this stage of the process
- Scheduling user interviews as soon as possible rather than worry about the design, which would almost certainly be in concept stage
- Making sure those recordings got into the hands of stakeholders as soon as possible to build confidence and trust in the research process
“Fidelity can get in the way of learning at times. A fancy design can cover up the functional, instrumental, value-based needs elements,” she said.
Further resources on this topic
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