User Research, Design, and Product - A Love Story
Summary
Come listen to real stories of how User Research has worked closely with Product Design and Product Management at Compass. Moderated by Anna Avrekh, Director of User Research, this Q&A session will cover how teams work closely with user research, how they have taken action off of user research, and the keys to successful relationships. Feel the love!
Key Insights
-
•
User research at Compass reveals vast diversity in agent workflows and needs across different markets.
-
•
A key discovery was that agents use competitor products differently than expected, leading to a hybrid product approach.
-
•
Embedding researchers within squads fosters more meaningful collaboration and lifecycle involvement.
-
•
Tight timelines and shifting priorities create challenges in scheduling impactful user research sessions.
-
•
Designers and PMs must balance the desire to research all details with limited research capacity.
-
•
User research often uncovers insights beyond the original questions, leading to broader strategic shifts.
-
•
There is a common misunderstanding equating user research with simple user feedback collection.
-
•
Cross-training product teams on research principles helps scale basic user insight gathering.
-
•
Having researchers present in executive meetings adds critical nuance and authority to product discussions.
-
•
Empathy for the difficulty of conducting research sessions is vital for better collaboration and respect.
Notable Quotes
"I’m always shocked when my design is just the perfect solution from the get go."
"We found out there wasn’t just one best in class solution and needed a hybrid approach."
"User research revealed agents didn’t know the difference between two similar products and treated them as one."
"Prioritizing research questions is key because we can’t validate every single detail."
"Having the researcher in the room throughout the product lifecycle is super helpful."
"User research is not just collecting feedback; it’s a methodical process to avoid bias."
"Sometimes you just have to do without research if the timeline is too short."
"You don’t know how hard it is until you’re leading a user research session yourself."
"Research produces so much data, but synthesizing it and choosing what to act on is a real challenge."
"Democratizing research is about teaching people to fish, but research remains a specialized craft."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Users immediately assumed that a single identity meant our products would work together naturally, even before we proposed product connectivity."
Dawn ResselFull-Stack User Experiences: A Marriage of Design and Technology
June 9, 2016
"Trust is fragile with designers; without clear communication, metrics can feel like micromanagement - Dave Malu."
Bria Alexander Patrizia Bertini Peter Boersma Jon Fukuda Dave Malouf Theresa Slate Changying (Z) ZhengCharting the future of DesignOps: A community workshop
April 18, 2024
"The team was defunded partly because we didn’t engage enough internally to make the case for our work."
Kara KaneCommunities of Practice for Civic Design
April 7, 2022
"Prioritizing research questions is key because we can’t validate every single detail."
Anna AvrekhUser Research, Design, and Product - A Love Story
March 11, 2021
"Mastery is achievable, whether you have 10,000 hours or not—it’s about building that portfolio and case studies."
Liam ThurstonWhy Your Design Team Is Quitting, And How To Fix It
June 10, 2022
"We started to reference something that became to call the triple D challenges: duplicated efforts, disjointed workflows, and distance from users."
Sean Fitzell Sarah Han Kayla FarrellCraft of User Research: Building Out Jobs to be Done Maps
March 12, 2021
"Great design does not happen in isolation; it’s subject to power dynamics inside companies and requires cross-functional collaboration."
Nina JurcicThe Design System Rollercoaster: From Enabler and Bottleneck to Catalyst for Change
October 3, 2023
"Sketch made it possible to build a scalable library that millions of customers rely on with just a couple clicks."
Mitchell BernsteinOrganizing Chaos: How IBM is Defining Design Systems with Sketch for an Ever-Changing AI Landscape
September 29, 2021
"It took a long time for teams to prepare their first growth board presentations because many weren’t used to roadmapping or metrics."
Jackie HoLead Effectively While Preserving Team Autonomy with Growth Boards
January 8, 2024
