Summary
This is the tale of a Mozilla product team that did user research to understand the goals and processes of organizations starkly different than its own, and how the research findings shed light on discomfiting truths about Mozilla’s own ways of working. The story will detail how the team approached learning about large companies in highly-regulated industries and how the takeaways prompted reflection and re-ordering of business-as-usual at Mozilla.
Key Insights
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Unexpected insights from user research can lead to significant organizational transformation.
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Enterprise user research revealed the critical importance of printing and PDF functionality for large organizations.
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Mozilla needed to let go of assumptions that printing is no longer relevant in the digital age.
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Collaboration across teams is essential to address user feedback effectively.
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Analyzing analytics related to browser usage is crucial for understanding user needs.
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Exploratory user research can uncover essential user needs outside typical organization silos.
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Relying on user input helps improve core features that directly impact productivity.
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User research can inform organizational change and enhance overall product development.
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Understanding the context in which users operate is vital for effective design decisions.
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Prioritizing basic functionalities like printing can greatly impact user satisfaction and engagement.
Notable Quotes
"We didn't expect to hear that we could serve customers better with core browser features."
"The cult of the new and shiny drowns out the quiet call of the well established."
"Thinking about the UX of printing is absolutely vital."
"Exploratory user research can help teams think outside commonplace organizational silos."
"These activities do take a lot of willpower, but we think it's worth it."
"At Mozilla, we too are often drawn to the siren song of innovation."
"No one wants to solve the bugs in the old thing that already does what the new thing is supposed to do."
"We are extremely careful about how we keep that data around for the time that we have it."
"No one from UX owned printing, and that is a problem."
"We have to keep making the donuts."
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