Summary
In eighteen months, Zendesk’s UX Research practice grew from a single researcher to a seven-person team. The new research program has greatly enhanced Zendesk’s design and development process. Along the way, researchers have successfully informed design strategy and helped improve product quality and usability. Veevi Rosenstein is deliberately crafting the UX research practice from the inside out to support Zendesk’s growing development organization. She’ll share her approach and overall vision for the research program, including operational plans, methods, toolkits, communication and knowledge capture strategies, and the steps she’s taken to make it all happen.
Key Insights
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Vivi scaled the UX research team at Zendask from 1 to 7 researchers, aiming for a better researcher-to-designer ratio.
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Identified six priority pain points through stakeholder interviews, framing the goals for the UX research practice.
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Secured internal support for recruiting tools, such as ZenRate, to improve participant scheduling and tracking.
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Formed a research coordinator role to centralize recruitment, enabling more efficient research processes.
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Implemented rolling studies to streamline participant feedback across product teams, enhancing collaboration and reducing participant fatigue.
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Developed templates and resources on a dedicated Zendesk site to provide research guidelines to designers and PMs.
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Encouraged designers to systematically document insights, fostering organizational knowledge sharing and improving research quality.
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Established relationships with various departments, making cross-functional collaboration essential for the UX research team.
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Utilized vendors like UserTesting and Qualtrics to enhance research capabilities and participant management.
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Initiated training programs that equipped product designers with effective research techniques, boosting their confidence and skills.
Notable Quotes
"When I started, there was a single UX researcher serving 28 product designers."
"Each project was independent and not visible to other product managers, leading to customer fatigue."
"I knew we needed a back office to address our recruiting problems."
"Having that back office support made it much easier to convince new researchers to join the team."
"Scaling up our team was essential to meet the needs of a rapidly growing design organization."
"We needed to make it easier to retain and share insights internally across products."
"The rolling study program became a successful framework across the organization."
"User research was needed to deliver and document trustworthy insights."
"We had to up-level the skills of designers and product managers to base their decisions on credible data."
"Our focus was on improving the user experience through structured research and insight sharing."
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