User Interviews focuses on connecting researchers and participants for research studies, surveys, and focus groups. It's a small startup with a big goal of solving big time consuming logistical problems for user researchers. The company consists of  about ~120 people 4 product areas that serves the researcher experience, the participant experience for research studies and the research operations personnel that manage and maintain the product and research panels within the tool. It's a startup
"We exist to help teams discover user insights; we believe fast access to quality participants is the key to that discovery. In fact, we don't just believe it—we know it. We know it because we listen to our customers and you tell us how game changing speed to insight is. We know it because our company wouldn't exist without talking to customers."
Product teams were organized in what we called squads. Each squad consisted of a group of leads (product manager, product designer, a data analyst, a tech lead)and a team of devs (size of dev team varied). Because we had small teams and big product areas, we helped each other out wherever and whenever possible.
Each squad that had a product focus or area:Â Panel Value (participant panels and quality), Team Ops &Â Staff Ops (scaling product with focus on Admin & Reops experiences +Â internal staff support tools) and Researcher experience (2 squads spread across researcher workflows), and Growth.
UI's small design team consisted of three senior designers (me being one), two mid/junior designers, and our player/coach design manager. The design team shrank a bit in Q1 of 2023 but maintained the 4 core product squads. In addition to squad responsibilities, the design team supported the maintenance and further development of the company's relatively young design system as well as efforts to update and modernize the product with a product refresh.
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During my time as a senior product designer,  I was the senior designer on our company's  Team Operations and Staff Operations squads. I was involved and had influenced throughout the whole product creation process and contributed through the lens of a design process advocating for solutions that served and supported our target customers and our squads end user.  Team Operations squad's purpose was to provide solutions that support administrators and research operations personnel as they scaled research operations within their organization. Staff Operations worked to improve internal operations and workflows within the app for our staff to more effectively support customers needs.
Squad responsibilities involved a lot of collaboration with my product manager and dev team across every effort. From gathering feedback and conducting research across discovery to concept to usability, facilitated working sessions, to adhoc dev syncs to get involvement or when things aren't working as expected and even on to coordination with marketing and customer service reps. Â In tangent, I also mentored and guided and supported other designers across the product life cycle in their squads, helped educate and advise on WCAGÂ 2.1 application and adherence, as well as contributed to and worked to evolve UI's design system.
With a lot going on I also aimed to bring some fun and levity to my teams, peers, and coworkers during the workday as we explore our customers needs and figure out the best way to solve their problems to find that gold.
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You can read about how I generally approach new projects or new problem spaces here and it's something that, at the core is still true today because is foundational. However, every company, team, and organization is different. Every project has its own unique challenges and circumstances. The key is the application.
The application of any process "in the wild" requires the ability adapt how you work through solving a problem or pain point while still getting as close to the desired outcome as possible. There's something Darwinian about being flexible and adaptable with your process or approach that allows you evolve towards becoming a designer that can be successful during times of ambiguity and change. I am not a Super Saiyan designer by an measure, I'd say I am quite far from the likes but I am realizing the small important parts of the day to day that lead to becoming a better designer than I was 10, 5, or even 2 years ago.
My approach emphasizes continuous progress and insight seeking researcher. What that looks like in practice within the User Interviews environment looks a bit different than what it looked like during my time at Camping World, USAA, and even at all the startups I worked with or as an in house designer.
Every place was different in their own way but at a fundamental level it all began with asking three questions to get started.
The User Interviews environment tested this approach and challenged myself and team with ways to gather information, conduct research using mix methods as a way to quickly understand people, problems, and processes. Depending on timelines, our team would generally do some discovery efforts to determine areas of focus before moving into any specific problems to solve efforts, which included its own deeper dive and design cycles.
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Figma was our design teams'  primary design tool for managing and creating  solutions, prototypes, & presentations. The tool itself also allowed for live and async collaboration within our cross functional squad, other designers, as well as various stakeholders.
I used Loom primarily as an async communication and education tool for walkthroughs or design content  for different audiences within the organization.
Figjam and Miro served as collaboration tools that allowed us to  find alignment with our cross-functional team and various stakeholders, as well as facilitate research and design activities or workshops.
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‍Zoom and Grain was leverage during research sessions to help ensure we could accurately capture the feedback sessions and interviews. This allowed every team within the org to access and reference helpful insights. This also quickly create sharable highlight reels of our research efforts.
We used User Interviews in the same way researchers did to help support research efforts. Â To manage and maintain our participant panels, set up and automate our testing, incentive payouts, scheduling, and automated messaging.
Enjoy HQ participant panels, set up and automate our testing, incentive payouts, scheduling, and automated messaging.
‍ Maze, Optimal Workshop, Survey Monkey, & Appcues* were among the top research focused tools I used to conduct unmoderated user research or customer feedback outside of our 1-1 user interviews.  Each were leveraged based on our needs or each platforms specialization.
Mode and Mixpanel served as integral tools for tracking usage, detecting potential shifts in behavior, and pinpointing opportunities within the user experience. Their functionality extended to validating and identifying risks associated with product changes by comparing them against measured outcomes. These tools played a crucial role in our quantitative research efforts, providing robust support for data-driven decision-making.
Microsoft Clarity added a different layer of insights as we at times leveraged heat maps, and session recordings to better understand what was happing and identifying possible pain points that we could later explore.
Every company is different and User Interviews is no exception. After spending some time in enterprise environments I found myself back at a startup of ~100 people. Different in some regards but the same in others. I got a lot of refreshers about working in a small startup but also learned a few new things about what it means to let go.
Content coming soon...
There doesn't need to be a process for everything, but there does need to be a mechanism for accountability.
From my time in the military, to my first real design job at a design agency startup, through the monolithic halls of USAA and back through a small start up in user research, culture has always impacted strategy. Whether its the company you work in or the companies that use the product you are designing, culture will dictate how people will behave and the loopholes that will be created to get things done. How is this helpful? You can't control the environment that your product is being used in but you can seek to understand a portion of it and consider its impact and relationship to what you are designing and the problems you are trying to solve.
The trickle down effect of
The trickle down effect of
Poorly designed experiences of the tools & processes employees use to support ongoing business operations and customer support impact the end customer experience just as much as the product itself. Often underserved, internal experiences that are tied to customer facing experiences tend to become unmanageable and an obstacle to better support over time.
Working at User Interviews, I was deeply involved in a team dedicated to solving internal product support challenges for our internal staff employees and customers who were administrators of our product. Being a smaller company and having this close involvement allowed me to witness firsthand the detrimental effects of experience gaps on our end customers. Ineffective processes, outdated tools, and manual workarounds frequently hindered customer tasks, leading to frustration and delays in using our product as intended. It became evident that both onstage and offstage processes significantly impact the overall customer experience.
As companies expand, the scalability of their products and services becomes paramount. This expansion necessitates a seamless user experience not only for customers but also internally. By refining internal processes, automating tasks, and optimizing workflows, we can make the intricate machinery behind the scenes function smoothly, allowing the focus to remain on delivering exceptional customer experiences. This philosophy aligns with the notion that "good design is invisible," where the intricacies of well-designed systems fade into the background, enabling users to effortlessly navigate and interact with the product or service.
Good design is invisible. But so is design that harms... I think I'll leave that conversation for another time, though ;)
A valuable lesson learned from working with a design system in a small team with limited capacity is the importance of prioritization and adaptability. While facing similar challenges to previous design system endeavors, such as ensuring consistency and scalability, the context of a smaller team and limited resources adds a layer of complexity. This experience emphasized the need to tailor our approach, focusing on essential components and gradual expansion, while remaining agile to accommodate shifting priorities and resource constraints. Flexibility and strategic decision-making emerged as crucial skills, enabling us to navigate the unique challenges of managing and maintaining a design system within our specific organizational context.
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Conducting just enough research to gain meaningful insights without getting bogged down in exhaustive data collection is a lesson that I seek to continue to improve through practice. Emphasizing agile methodologies and rapid iteration allows for quick feedback loops, enabling the team to iterate on designs based on initial insights and refine research approaches as needed. Additionally, leveraging existing research resources, such as user personas or industry benchmarks or standards, can expedite the process while still providing valuable insights. Ultimately, this underscores the importance of adaptability and pragmatism in conducting user research within constrained time frames, ensuring that research efforts remain focused, actionable, and aligned with project objectives.
Projects:
• Good Sam:
• Extended service plan QUote flow
• ESP web site
• Travel Assist Research and Discovery
• Campground Search UX
• My Accounts
• P2P
Team &Â Processes
• Design process
Organizationally, there were two design teams, the marketing design team and the newly stood up UX/UIÂ design team, which I fell under as a senior designer. The UIUX team was flat and size fluctuated, consisting of eight designers at most, all with a variety of experience and backgrounds. All designers reported up to a single product owner/manager and projects were assigned based on availability and, generally, designers stayed within a particular brand, working end-to-end based on project needs. Product and project roadmaps were not well developed or built out creating some challenges for the design team as size and capacity fluctuated across projects.
As one of two senior designer on a team of eight, I oversaw, mentored, and guided designers throughout the design lifecycle and worked to improve process challenges, some being requirements gathering, integration of research, as well as long business feedback and engagement loops. Project focused responsibilities involved the ownership and execution of design efforts for Good Sam products and services. This also included developing and evolving the design language system and components, processes and engagement model with business and development partners to meet project goals and objectives and identifying future opportunities within the each of the brand verticals.
Good Sam Branding is owned by the Good Sam marketing team, while the the UXUIÂ team had control over the majority of digital assets.
Phew! Got a bunch to prep before the big go-live moment on which of the 30+ feature and experience efforts I will include here. While I roll up my sleeves to craft pages that truly capture my User Interviews journey, dive into some help articles that give a peek into some of the experience? They might spill the beans on the end features I'm about to expound here but it may help you get an idea . If there's a specific one you're itching to know more about, don't be shy – hit me up!
Send bulk emails from your Hub Panel!
‍In-app spend reporting metrics
‍New Role & Permissions
‍Payment method designation
‍Prepaid balance
Projects:
• Good Sam:
• Extended service plan QUote flow
• ESP web site
• Travel Assist Research and Discovery
• Campground Search UX
• My Accounts
• P2P
Team &Â Processes
• Design process
Organizationally, there were two design teams, the marketing design team and the newly stood up UX/UIÂ design team, which I fell under as a senior designer. The UIUX team was flat and size fluctuated, consisting of eight designers at most, all with a variety of experience and backgrounds. All designers reported up to a single product owner/manager and projects were assigned based on availability and, generally, designers stayed within a particular brand, working end-to-end based on project needs. Product and project roadmaps were not well developed or built out creating some challenges for the design team as size and capacity fluctuated across projects.
As one of two senior designer on a team of eight, I oversaw, mentored, and guided designers throughout the design lifecycle and worked to improve process challenges, some being requirements gathering, integration of research, as well as long business feedback and engagement loops. Project focused responsibilities involved the ownership and execution of design efforts for Good Sam products and services. This also included developing and evolving the design language system and components, processes and engagement model with business and development partners to meet project goals and objectives and identifying future opportunities within the each of the brand verticals.
Good Sam Branding is owned by the Good Sam marketing team, while the the UXUIÂ team had control over the majority of digital assets.
