Today, I’m excited to announce a suite of new enterprise features for Research Hub. Built in close collaboration with enterprise customers like Atlassian, Bill.com, and Rocket Mortgage. Research Hub has been reimagined to meet the needs of seasoned research, research ops, and product teams, at many of the world’s most customer-centric companies.
Research Hub now stands alone as the panel management solution for organizations that conduct user research at scale.
👉 Learn more about Research Hub, the #1 panel management solution—now a whole lot more powerful.
The evolution of Research Hub
We launched the first version of Research Hub in 2018. To say it was “feature poor” would be an incredible understatement. There were no branding options, no email customizations, no opt-in forms, and no way to sort or filter participants in your panel.
And yet it struck a chord. Early adopters valued being able to email, schedule, and pay participants, all in a single workflow. Over the next few years we iterated on that MVP, adding new features, automations, and integrations, while layering on privacy, security, and support to serve a growing number of loyal users. Of course, we did all that through the superpower of user research.
Fast forward to 2022 and over 1,700 teams currently use Research Hub to streamline their workflow and support scaling research programs. Yet we are still in the “early innings” of user research as an industry. Soon enough, every customer-centric organization will need participant management software to coordinate their research efforts across teams, methods, and segments of their user base.
✨ Learn how the internal research team at User Interviews uses Hub!
The evolution of an industry
Looking ahead, we see a vastly different space—and a much bigger opportunity—than we did just 4 years ago.
Some of the major trends we’re seeing in user research right now:
1. Research teams are growing incredibly fast.
Linkedin cites “user researcher” as the 8th fastest growing job over the last 5 years. Executive teams aren’t the reluctant stakeholders they used to be; the ones who have been paying attention have fully “bought into” the power of research.
2. Democratized research is inevitable (and it’s here).
As quickly as research teams have grown, demand for customer insights has grown even faster. Empowering product managers, designers, and others to conduct research on their own is the only way to bridge the gap.
3. Research Ops makes it all work.
In our first State of User Research report published in 2019, “Research Ops” wasn’t even on the map. Now, just a few years later, the #re+ops community has 12,000 members worldwide and 1 in 5 researchers say that their company has a dedicated Research Ops role—a necessary component for setting up democratized research for success.
4. UX research tools are proliferating (across all methods).
Our first UX Research Tools Map, also published in 2019, included 90 tools. It was a fairly simple map! In our latest (launching in November 2022 👀), we expect to include closer to 200 tools. Researchers have unlimited choice—and some highly specialized options—for connecting with users.
A new suite of features, designed for enterprise teams
Our vision for Research Hub has expanded dramatically to meet teams where they are, and to support them to where they’re going. Read on for the product changes that I’m most excited about.
1. Support for multiple teams and multiple panels
As we started working with larger organizations, we quickly realized that our application models (one team, one panel, one brand, one shared set of customizations) were too limited.
Starting today, we can support organizations with multiple teams and multiple panels (including overlapping participants). Each team can be configured with its own branding, opt-in forms, templates, privacy settings, SSO, and more.
2. Unparalleled control for admins
Admins can set up guardrails and communication standards directly in the app, allowing teams to safely open up self-serve recruiting, and minimizing the need for manual oversight.
Create invite rules and limits, customize your brand everywhere it appears, build reusable email and page templates, and set smart defaults to guide researchers to the best and safest options.
3. Integrations with popular research tools
Research Hub is designed to be an open platform, and with our growing suite of integrations, managing participation across different testing tools and study methods is easier than ever.
We’re integrated with Zoom, Google, Lookback, SurveyMonkey, and Typeform—and we’re just getting started. Keep your eye out for Qualtrics, Loop11, and Sprig integrations, just around the corner!
4. Participant API + Census integration
Build a custom integration with our API to sync user data securely from any system, keep participant records fresh, and delete data for GDPR compliance.
With our Census partnership, even teams with limited technical resources can sync customer data from any of these data sources into Research Hub.
5. “Smart flow” for unmoderated studies
We’ve revamped our unmoderated research workflow to be simpler for participants, more hands-off for researchers, and, soon, more affordable for teams.
We’re calling it “smart flow” because it intelligently adapts the participant experience according to the unique design of your study. It’s simple when it needs to be (just 2 steps from invite to task), and flexes up for more complex studies (with screeners, manual approval, NDAs, and so on).
👉 Learn more about Research Hub, the enterprise panel software for customer-centric teams.
Research recruitment, reimagined
At User Interviews, our mission is to help teams discover and embrace user insights. We believe that every team’s research toolkit should “just work”—so they can focus less on logistics, and more on their research.
The features we’ve launched today bring us meaningfully closer to that goal. We’re looking forward to supporting many more companies in their quest to build great user experiences.
