Summary
A story about how to quantify and use survey data to create audience clusters that are statistically representative of the people that use your online product or service. Edgar joins the dots between multiple research/pattern finding/storytelling techniques, such as proto-personas, affinity mapping, survey creation, quantification of qualitative data, organic clustering of audiences, user interviews, journey maps, and business modeling canvas. It makes research tangible and actionable: instead of being an end-point that provides stakeholders with insights, it takes stakeholders through an inclusive and structured process they can be part of.
Key Insights
-
•
Research often fails when stakeholders are not involved or don't trust the data sources and methodologies.
-
•
Treating research as a product, with stakeholders as users, drastically increases engagement and usability.
-
•
Using proto-persona workshops with cross-department stakeholders helps generate unbiased, relevant survey questions.
-
•
Clustering survey data via Python and correlation matrices can reveal meaningful user segments with statistical significance.
-
•
Statistical validity (e.g., 95% confidence at 5% margin) is critical for stakeholder buy-in in large user bases.
-
•
Behavioral and demographic clusters need to be augmented with emotional attributes to create actionable personas.
-
•
Affinity mapping large qualitative datasets reduces noise and distills coherent narratives and pain points.
-
•
Mapping pain points to measurable hypotheses enables prioritization based on user impact and implementation effort.
-
•
Divergent and convergent workshops using tools like the business model canvas help explore and refine value proposition delivery.
-
•
Iterative, lean research with frequent stakeholder feedback helps identify and minimize bias effectively.
Notable Quotes
"Research should be done the same way products are built, with stakeholders as your users."
"If you frame the research in terms your stakeholders understand, they will become research-hungry."
"We don’t make big deliverables because they create friction; instead, we create shared understanding through conversations."
"Proto-persona sessions helped us avoid departmental bias and uncover the questions stakeholders really cared about."
"We used a 0.8 correlation threshold to tightly cluster similar survey responses, balancing cluster count and inclusion."
"Clusters alone aren’t personas; we turned clusters into interview screeners and then emotional personas."
"We wrote hypotheses as we believe this pain point matters, here’s how we test it, and how success looks."
"Different stakeholders tackle the delivery problem differently, which gave us necessary divergent thinking."
"Biases surface as you iterate, so lean approaches help you find and fix them quicker."
"Marital status mattered because some people buy cars for their spouses or kids, not just themselves."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"I don’t know what I do day to day to make anything happen, and maybe that means I have to do less."
John TaschekMaking People the X-Factor in the Enterprise
June 15, 2018
"Building relationships with stakeholders influences research impact far more than just presenting data or methods."
Sharon Banh Dave Hora Marieke McCloskey Alicia ZhongReimagining research: What does the field need to grow? [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
October 16, 2024
"Design teams reporting through engineering tend to have the worst quality scores."
Peter MerholzThe 2025 State of UX/Design Organizational Health
November 12, 2025
"We have over 140,000 IBMers who’ve completed design thinking online training."
Doug PowellClosing Keynote: Design at Scale
November 8, 2018
"Links are first-class citizens in hypertext note-taking; connecting notes brings ideas to life and reveals new relationships."
Jorge ArangoExploding the Notebook: How to Unlock the Power of Linked Notes (2nd of 3 seminars)
April 19, 2024
"I help you unlearn and relearn patterns so that you can build better products."
Alexis LucioScaling Accessibility Through Design Systems
June 9, 2022
"The Idea Exchange got 40 teams to participate together across design, research, marketing, program management, even legal."
Melissa Schmidt Adam MenterHow UX Research Hit It Big in Las Vegas
June 4, 2019
"Research participants are demanding that we see them as equals rather than vessels to extract knowledge from."
Robert Fabricant Sahibzada Mayed Nidhi Singh RathoreIndustry junctures: Paths forwards for UXR and the critical decisions that get us there [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
October 2, 2024
"Embedding micro-lessons into team rituals sets an ongoing expectation that customer learning never ends."
Crystal YanBuilding a Customer-Centric Culture
March 30, 2020
