Supergluing insights: How to make your research stick with stakeholders

Katarina Bagherian at UXDX APAC. Video: https://youtu.be/zGhG5F-L6co

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Introductions and why insights need to stick

[00:00:00] Jody: Hi everyone, and welcome to today's session. My name is Jody, and I'm a product designer over at Dovetail, a research analysis and repository tool for all your research needs. Super excited today to be bringing you this session around supergluing insights, which is all about how to make your research stick with stakeholders. For today I've brought in an expert on the subject, and I'd like to welcome Katarina, the VP of User Experience at Adyen. Over to you, Katarina.

[00:00:26] Katarina: Hi everyone. I'm Kat, and I'm originally from San Francisco, but I now live in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, with my husband and my poodle pup, pictured here, named Mousey. I'm a researcher by training. I cut my teeth in startups, then I went the consultancy route and worked with really big companies, and then found my sweet spot at Adyen when it was still a scale-up. I currently lead UX at Adyen, which includes product design, research and UX writing, and we work closely with UX analytics as well. All of these disciplines are hiring right now globally, so do reach out to me if you're curious.

[00:01:05] You may not be familiar with Adyen, but chances are your money has passed through our platform at some stage. We are a payment service provider. We work with international companies, Uber, Spotify, H&M, you name it, and we help them accept and manage payments online and in-store, providing insights and other financial products, all in one single global solution.

[00:01:30] What triggered this talk? Essentially, at Adyen I've gotten a lot of questions around how to make research insights stick and have impact. There are lots of different people and different players doing research at Adyen: there are marketers, product managers, product designers and everyone in between. When they'd come to me and ask this question, I'd do a quick Google search looking for some quick tips, and I could never really find something that would get at the heart of making them stick. So I decided to write an article about it and put it out there to see if it might spark discussion for others, and you can find that article by clicking below.

[00:02:11] The ultimate goal of doing user research, at the end of the day, is to drive business and product improvements. We want to measurably improve the user experience. So if we're putting a lot of energy into gathering insights and analyzing them accurately, all that stuff, then we should also put emphasis on making sure the insights stick, that they're applied in the products. I sometimes find that there's not a lot of focus and energy spent on making sure that these insights stick and are really relevant to the audience.

[00:02:47] What I've seen happen is people might spend weeks or months gathering answers to important user questions. They're doing this research, but then even months or years later we don't see outcomes, and that's a big shame. The challenges I've seen from not making insights stick are that the products aren't necessarily significantly improved, product teams might undervalue research because it didn't end up leading to product improvement, and then, as a result, people who do research might be demoralized.

[00:03:18] Of course, in the audience today we don't only have researchers listening to this session. There are people who are either involved in research or have to consume the research and then build something with it. My hope is that this talk will empower you to either tell the researcher that you work with what will help it stick for you and really make the insights very applicable for you, or, even better, to dive in and get involved in the research yourself as well.

Principles from education theory: make insights relevant

[00:03:47] I've been teaching for half my life in some capacity, whether it's tutoring, teaching courses, facilitating workshops, etc. I found that when I apply some principles from education theory to sharing insights, these findings have a much longer shelf life. They're more likely to be applied to products and then result in better products. So today I want to let you in on this approach, and perhaps you'll find it useful for your own research as well.

[00:04:14] These are the four principles from education theory I'll focus on, mainly because these are best practices that are tried and tested in many different contexts, and I've found them useful from the classroom to the boardroom. Let's dive in. The first one is making sure that your insights are relevant. I think we've all been in a situation where someone is giving you information that's not relevant to you, and therefore you're less likely to remember it. But if it's something that you're genuinely interested in, then it will be more likely to stick. That's why it's much easier to learn and advance in a topic or a field that you're genuinely interested in. This is because the brain finds it much easier to learn and latch on to information like this.

[00:04:58] There's a great quote by Clayton Christensen that I like to use, where he said, "Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven't asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go." It really gets at the heart of it: it's important to get your stakeholders, or whoever's going to be using your research insights, to ask the question. If they ask the question about user needs or what users are experiencing, they're more likely to then absorb the answer and be able to do something with it, because they've created that space in their mind for the answer to go. Something for you to think about is what the questions are that you have, and make sure that you are sharing those with whoever is doing research on your team.

[00:05:45] How do we make sure that these research insights are relevant? One way is to involve stakeholders at the start of the research process, and I don't just mean the main key stakeholders, the main decision makers, but anybody who needs to use these insights and build something with them. One way I do that is to involve them at the very start of the process. This is where we're scoping the research, where we're figuring out the questions that we're going to answer. I like to involve people from across the company, and I do this via a workshop that I call Research the Right Thing. You can read more about it on the Dovetail blog, and there's again a link below.

[00:06:28] To just summarize the gist of it quickly: I do this kickoff workshop for research and gather people from across the business together in a room. These will be people from the onboarding team, or the know your customer team, or the point of sale team, and the marketing team: people from all across the business that are interested in this audience and work with the audience in question. I get them together in a room, or in different rooms, and get them to plot out the things that we know about our users, about this audience, and then to plot that based on confidence.

[00:07:06] These are great ways to then seed questions for the second part, which is: these are the things that we need to know about this audience that we don't yet know. These end up turning into questions, and we then prioritize these on a matrix based on the feasibility of actually finding the answers and the business impact that the answer would have. Then we focus on the ones that fall in the top right quadrant, and these end up being the main research questions that we scope into the research project.

[00:07:38] Here's a picture of a Research the Right Thing workshop that I facilitated. I got stakeholders from different parts of the company into this room, and I had them brain dump on Post-its. Right here on the left-hand side you can see what we know about the audience of interest, and then I had them rank those in levels of confidence. Then I also had them plot out what we want to know on the board here, and then they took these Post-its and ranked them, as you can see my colleague doing here, on a spectrum from not so useful to very useful. All the while I was taking notes in Excel to capture everything and then share it with the stakeholders, to keep us on the same page about scope throughout.

[00:08:22] The impact of doing this was that it actually led to the first strategic research project at Adyen, which brought a lot of visibility to UX research and was the foundation for us actually starting a team that's now eight people strong.

Incorporate learning styles: visual

[00:08:38] The second education principle that I apply when sharing insights is to incorporate various learning styles. Back when I was learning education theory years ago, there were three primary learning styles that I learned about. By applying these learning styles to sharing research insights, I found that they're much more likely to stick. Let's walk through each of them in turn, with some examples.

[00:09:03] The first learning style I want to walk through is visual learning. Visual learning is all about processing information through the visual sense. To appeal to learners that learn best in this way, you could consider including these types of deliverables in your insight sharing presentation. The first one here is the classic journey map, and here's a picture of one that I created for the terminal support journey, specifically for franchisees that weren't working with Adyen yet. We were doing prospective franchisee research. Journey maps are a great way to visualize an experience that users are having, and they're a great tool to really bring attention to pain points, for example, that different types of users might have. You can do that with precipitous drops like this in the map.

[00:09:54] Another visual learning device that I like to use is diagrams. We've all grown up with lots of diagrams in textbooks and whatnot, so this is very common in education, but it's a great way to visualize and simplify and really make more complex topics coherent. I found that the diagrams I've shared here have helped people make more sense of the information and the insights that I'm sharing. The first one at the top here is a representation of communication models and information flows between my company and other partners that we work with. I felt I needed to represent this visually because it would help product managers really think through how information and updates would need to flow from their product to the different audiences, and take that into account when we're building new products as well.

[00:10:46] The bottom one is an example of how I've shown the different ways that we segment the audience for a study. I do this visually, and I animate them to give a sense of, okay, these are the different audiences that we talk to, and to see the diversity of that. The impact of this has been that I've heard people who weren't even in the insight sharing for this presentation talk about the triangular communication model, so it seems to have helped this concept stick.

[00:11:18] Another tool that helps with visual learning is to show videos. Videos are great tools for showing the emotions and humanity of our users, so they're really good for empathy. I like to keep the videos that I share of users and user interviews really short, 10 to 15 seconds ideally, to best capture people's attention but still zoom in on how personal experiences can be. Studies have found that personal stories tend to work better than statistics at building empathy among audiences, so this is definitely a great tool that I like to use.

[00:11:53] Finally, the last visual device that I like to use is illustrations. I find illustrations are a great way to tie together themes and patterns that we're seeing and sharing in the research insights in memorable ways. We have an awesome brand design team at Adyen, and they have an illustrator that really helps bring to life some of the insights that I find, through these custom illustrations. Here, for example, I was trying to convey that sometimes the experiences some users have feel like missing puzzle pieces, so I created this metaphor, and then we created an illustration to go alongside it to really help bring these insights to life.

Auditory learning and storytelling

[00:12:40] Moving into the next learning style: auditory learning. This is learning by hearing sounds, music, patterns. I found that one device for helping with auditory learning is to discuss insights in breakout rooms. When I'm sharing insights over Zoom, as we've had to over the course of the pandemic, I like to break the audience into different breakout rooms at the end and allow them to hear the insights from different angles, by having the people in that breakout room share their main learnings and findings. Hearing these insights from all these different angles and voices really helps to reinforce them for the audience.

[00:13:24] Another device I like to use is mnemonic devices and poetic patterns, to make concepts, or, for example, in this case personas that we found through the user research, stickier. In this case there were two key personas that came out of some research that I did, and in order to make them very memorable, I worked with our UX writer to give them names. We chose Monitoring Milo on the left and Driving Dre on the right. This was more than a year ago that we shared these insights, but I still hear the persona names Monitoring Milo and Driving Dre throughout the organization. There seems to be something simple, poetic and sticky about using alliteration for persona names.

[00:14:10] Much like children throughout history learned through fables and stories, our brains are wired to process information more easily when it's organized in a storytelling format, and when there are common threads throughout. We're exposed to movies and books throughout our lives where stories are organized in a certain story arc. So this is a great device to use when you're sharing insights, especially if they're more complex: put them in this storytelling format. Here one of my amazing colleagues has outlined some of the key storytelling formats that are most popular, and I like to format my research insights story into these types of formats.

[00:14:54] I can walk you through an example of how I've done that. One was with the franchisee research, where I used the hero story format. It's all about somebody, the hero of the story, going on a journey, and in this case I wanted franchisees, this potential audience that we were going to serve, to be the heroes. I started by introducing them: who they are, what their roles are, what their responsibilities are, what a day in the life looks like. I did that through the different devices we talked about before: videos, journey maps, all that stuff.

[00:15:29] Then, as I introduced them, I added more and more color about who these people are, what matters to them, what doesn't matter to them, why they do this work. Then I really wanted to show something that they're struggling with, and that was the drop that you can see in this story map here: they struggle with terminal support when they're working with some of our competitors. That was the precipitous drop, to really show, okay, this is something they're really struggling with, and I used a lot of different devices to share that. Then finally, ending on a high note: if we do this, if we offer this, or if we really focus on these types of solutions for them, we could really impact the quality of their lives and resolve their major pain points.

[00:16:14] That's an example of how I've used the hero storyline in sharing insights in a presentation. Here I've just shared a little snippet of how it looks in the process. It's a series of Post-its that I line up to try to create this story.

Tactile learning

[00:16:32] The next and last learning style that I'll share with you is tactile learning. This is processing information by physically interacting and engaging with it. One way that I like to do that, and I alluded to it earlier, is to have the audience actually engage with the insights in some way. When I'm doing an insight sharing presentation, at the very start I'll share a Google spreadsheet with everybody in the room, because it's collaborative in real time, and I'll have everyone write their name at the very top of a column. Below their name, I ask them to take note throughout the presentation of anything that stands out to them as interesting or surprising, something that they can apply to their product or service.

[00:17:18] While I'm sharing, people are filling out this spreadsheet, and writing while hearing information is an age-old tool for helping to aid memory. I found that even weeks after these insights presentations, I'd go back to this spreadsheet and see that some of the participants were still revisiting it and had it open.

[00:17:45] Another way to have the stakeholders in a research project interact with the insights is to create an interactive research insights museum, where people can physically move through space or interact with the insights in some way. Before the pandemic, when that was more possible, I would do it this way. This is where I had a client actually interact with a journey map. Part of it was filled out, and we had her fill out the rest of it. Through this process of physically putting Post-its with insights onto the wall, it helped her to remember them and interact with them.

[00:18:22] And then, of course, there's the device of playing and gamifying. This is a great way to get the brain engaged, for example by creating persona cards or some sort of way to have people interact and create a game out of the insights. All in all, when all these different learning styles are incorporated into your insight sharing, you're more likely to have the insights be memorable and applied to your product.

Present a challenge and keep it minimal

[00:18:49] The third education principle I'd like to share is to present stakeholders with a challenge. The human brain really loves to noodle on a challenge or a puzzle. It's a way to get engaged and interested in content. In addition to using all the devices I mentioned before, what I like to do is position an insight as a challenge that the audience cares about.

[00:19:13] An example of how I've done this before is to use the devices I mentioned: sharing the insights and the challenges our users are facing through a colorful journey map, through videos explaining the detail of their experience, and direct quotes that actually show the monetary and time implications of their experiences. Then, at the very end, framing it all as a "how might we" challenge to discuss. In this case it was: how might we demonstrate the speed of our support to our merchants? This was used as the foundation for a discussion after the insight sharing, again in those breakout rooms. People were formed into groups where they would discuss this, and by framing it as a challenge, people really had to engage and already start to think, okay, how can I apply these insights? I found that really helps people remember them better.

[00:20:07] The fourth and final educational principle that I'll share today is to keep it minimal. We've all had the experience of a lecture that included way too much information, and we were left not really grasping anything. One way to prevent that is to prioritize the challenges or the insights that we're sharing. I like to do that through an impact feasibility matrix, where on one axis you have user value: how much pain does this insight cause the users, how painful is it for them, how much value does it offer them. On the other axis is the effort by our organization to resolve this: what would it take?

[00:20:47] When I map those, I really focus on the top two: high user value, of course, but also effort by the organization, this one being what we might call the low-hanging fruit, the ones we should address immediately. Those are the ones I'll really focus on first when I'm sharing an insights presentation, and these ones when I share it the first time as well, but also increasingly over time.

The results

[00:21:10] When we have taken all these educational principles, prioritized the challenges, limited our presentation to the most relevant insights, incorporated three learning styles, and involved stakeholders early to submit research questions, we've gone from insights presentations that looked like these ones to ones that look like this: way more engaging, and most importantly, way more impactful. The insights ended up actually getting applied to creating better products much faster, and these products are actually aligned with users' needs.

[00:21:48] In research projects where we apply these sticky tricks, we see that the user experience is significantly improved. We see product roadmap changes, such as new features and flows, and new channels are created for our users, such as apps that they can use to manage their payments on the go. At the end of the day, the user experience is improved through fewer support ticket tags for topics like finding something in our products, or a faster time for users to complete their tasks, because at the end of the day a lot of them come in to try and complete a task.

[00:22:22] Another benefit is that people who do research end up being more motivated. We see that the likelihood of people doing research again and getting involved in research again significantly increases, and that researcher career paths and interest increase in the organization as well. We've recently had some transfers into the research team from other teams.

[00:22:43] And finally, research is valued, and this of course creates a virtuous cycle. We see that research gets cited at all levels throughout the organization. We saw the research team grow from two people to eight people in a matter of one year. We also see that research requests increase quarterly by more than 20 percent, and that research insights are used for different ends. The presentations that I've created are now also used to train new team members, new joiners to Adyen. We also see higher engagement during insight sharing, and especially over Zoom you can see that pretty easily in the Zoom chat. So hopefully, by applying these sticky tips, you can have the same impact on your products as well.

Q&A

[00:23:28] Jody: Awesome, thank you so much, Katarina. That was amazing, to see how you've brought across those different education principles and applied them in a way that really makes insights resonate and drive impact, which I think at the end of the day is what we all want. I have a burning question. You've gone through all of that detail about how to actually go through that process, but as you mentioned in the beginning, there's often a lack of content around that, and the focus is more on sharing the insight out and not necessarily on making sure that it sticks. What do you think are the hurdles at this end part of the research process?

[00:24:06] Katarina: I think some of the hurdles, to start, are that often for researchers, or even non-researchers, people who do research, doing research can be a very consuming task. It can take a lot of time, it can take a lot of effort, and analysis can be very mentally draining. Once the researcher has gone through that whole process and found the insights, it can be really tempting to say, okay, great, found them, share it real quick and let's move on to the next project, and not really make a lot of time at the end for sharing and really formatting the insight sharing in a way that will make it stick.

[00:24:52] Another reason, I think, is that maybe it's not in the toolkit for a lot of researchers. The skills that it takes to set up a study, recruit the right participants, actually run the study, execute it, do the analysis, aren't exactly the same ones that it takes to create a sticky presentation. They're different skill sets, so it's almost asking researchers, or people who do research, to learn a whole new skill. But I do think it's super important to get it down, because I've seen the impact of doing that.

[00:25:27] Jody: Yeah, absolutely. It shouldn't all be on the researcher, though. On the flip side, for these product teams who are consuming this research, how can they actually empower their researchers? What can they do to support them and help them along in this journey?

[00:25:43] Katarina: One thing that product teams can do, first off, is to even ask for research and want to do research. That's a great start. And when that does happen, get involved in the kickoff and really bring questions to the table: thoughtful questions that they need answered for their product. It helps to think about, for example, what's the experience that we're trying to achieve here with this product, and what are the meaningful ways that we might be able to do that? What is missing right now? What do we not know about? What are some assumptions that we're constantly repeating, or that we're building this on? Those are all good seed or trigger questions to bring proactively to a kickoff session, so that we can make sure the research that is being kicked off is comprehensive and is answering the most important questions.

[00:26:40] Another way that product teams can help out is to actually get involved in the research. That's a whole other way. This presentation is really focused on the insight sharing part, but a good way to learn about the insights is also to be involved in gathering them, because it gets at that tactile learning style. When you're engaged with information, you're hearing it, you're trying to process it, you're analyzing it, you're more likely to remember it. So also get involved in research and ask to be involved in the interviews or usability testing sessions or whatever is happening, even in the analysis as well. We've found great success with doing co-analysis before. These are great ways for everyone to learn about the insights, and that's definitely something product teams can get involved with.

[00:27:31] Jody: Awesome, that makes a lot of sense. I can definitely relate to that. Getting in, getting your hands dirty: there's nothing like customer empathy, like sitting there and actually experiencing their pain with them. So I think that's something we can definitely take on board. Thank you so much for all of your wonderful insight today. It's been amazing to chat to you and hear from you, but I think that's all we have time for, so let's wrap it up. Thank you so much, Katarina.

[00:27:52] Katarina: Thank you.