#17: Driving UX Research as a Non-Researcher and Spotlighting Babs.ai
...because conducting research doesn't have to feel impossible 😅
How to manage research as a non-researcher without losing your mind.
As someone involved in product development, whether as a PM or product designer, you likely already know how challenging it can be to conduct user research. The truth is, even for those trained as researchers, it can be a daunting task. The product development process already demands a great deal of time and energy. Between creating designs, roadmaps, and PRDs, we often find ourselves stretched thin.
It's understandable, then, that adding the responsibility of driving all the research to our plates can be overwhelming. But here's the thing: user research is an essential part of the product development process. Without it, we run the risk of creating a product that doesn't meet the needs of our users. That's why I believe that companies should invest in having dedicated user researchers on their teams. By doing so, we can ensure that we are conducting thorough and effective user research while also freeing up our own time to focus on other critical tasks.
While it may seem obvious, the value of having a dedicated user researcher on your team is still overlooked by many companies. However, this is a critical oversight that could potentially limit the success of your product. By investing in a user researcher, you can unlock a host of benefits for your team, like better research quality, efficiency and deeper insights into your users. For some reason, most African companies have yet to see the value in this, but I'll speak more about this in my next deep dive.
As a product person, you may have wished for a world where you don't have to conduct any research and can delegate all research work to your research partner. However, it's important to recognize that such a world doesn't exist. The presence of a researcher on your team doesn't absolve you of all research responsibility. If you're one of the people who have this mindset, I encourage you to kill it. As a product person, you'll still have to be involved in research to do your job well. The truth is, product people have unique knowledge and experience that can contribute significantly to the research process.
The role of a researcher within an organization isn't to do all the research for you. Instead, their focus is on driving strategic research initiatives. While researchers may sometimes drive evaluative research initiatives, I don't believe it's the best use of their abilities. The core value of having a researcher on your team is having a trained professional who can act as a guide and use their expertise to ensure that you're approaching things the right way and that you can learn from them.
For a Product Manager or Product Designer without a dedicated User Researcher, conducting user research can be a daunting task. However, it is not impossible, and one solution that has been tried and tested is creating a "system" for it. As we all know, conducting research is time-consuming and requires significant planning, but what if we could simplify some aspects of the process by creating a well-organized system? That's precisely what I'm proposing here.
Meadows [2008] defines a system as an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something. All you need are three things:
purpose: identify the purpose of the system or the thing you want the system to achieve
elements: identify the elements that are required to achieve the purpose
order: coherently organize the elements in a way that ensures the purpose is achieved.
Using this framework, the purpose of the system we seek to create is to conduct more research efficiently. We need three elements for this purpose: users, templates, and automation.
Let's start with the first element, users. Finding users can be hard and easy at the same time, depending on what you're looking for. A tactic that can make this easier is creating a user research panel for your company. A user research panel is a list of potential research participants who have expressed interest in participating in user research, and you can reach out to them as needed.
One easy way to set up a user research panel is to create a form asking for some basic information like their name and email, and then include a few questions that can help you segment the users based on your persona. You can distribute this form in your marketing emails, social media posts, and even as an intercept in your product. With this list, you always have customers that you can reach out to when you need to conduct research.
Another way to find users is through other customer-facing teams in your company. You can work with your sales and customer support team to create a list of potential users that you can reach out to for research. Checking support tickets is an underrated way to find research participants. You can reach out to people that have messaged the support team recently, as they will likely provide valuable feedback.
It's important to remember that other customer-facing teams like yours have the same goal of building the best product and ensuring the best experience for users. So, there's an opportunity to work with them to create a funnel of users for research so that the unified org goals can be achieved. If these options do not work for you, you can always leverage research recruitment solutions like Kimoyo Insights or User Interviews.
The second element required to create a user research system is templates. You will need to templatize everything, from your research plans to your interview guides, your reach-out emails, and your consent forms. Create a template for everything to give you a solid starting point for things you'll need to do. This is even more important if you want to automate mundane tasks. There are free templates available all over the internet, so find the ones that are most relevant to you and use them.
The last element is automation. Time is money, and with research, there are mundane tasks that can steal your attention from more valuable work. Find a way to automate the things that can be automated, like reach-out emails, scheduling, compensation, etc. Workflow automation tools like Zapier and Integromat are helpful, as are scheduling tools like Calendly and Great Question.
After identifying the purpose and elements, the last step is organizing the elements coherently to ensure the purpose is achieved. To coherently organize these elements, you need to experiment with different structures and iterate until you find the best one for you and your organization. Building and maintaining a research system requires some manual work, but once you have done the foundational work, it becomes easier.
Also, the importance of compensation in research cannot be overstated. It matters when you're trying to optimize for responses. By rewarding participants for their time, you show them that you value them and their time. And you're able to get great results with little effort. If you're low on money, you can get creative with compensation. It doesn't have to be cash; it could be a month-free subscription to your product or 5% off their subscription or credits to their account or sending them merch. It could be anything; just find a way to reward them for their time.
Finally, it is important to have a plan for analyzing data. Creating a research plan and strategy is essential, but planning for how to analyze data is equally important. Many people gather data without considering how they will analyze it, which can be a problem. Gathering data is not enough; you need to analyze it well to gain valuable insights. Creating a plan for how you will analyze the data gathered will prevent you from being confused or overwhelmed in the analysis stage.
In conclusion, setting up an efficient research system requires manual work to build and maintain, but once the foundational work is done, it becomes easier. Iteration is essential in developing anything, and as you iterate with your product, iterate with your research system. With the right elements in place, a purpose identified, and coherently organized order, you can achieve an efficient research system. With a solid system, you can conduct more user research easily and efficiently, and deliver the best product experience to your customers consistently.
If you have any questions, you can leave them in the comments or shoot me a message.
If you haven’t read January’s Deep Dive, be sure to check it out here.
Product Spotlight
Profile
Name: Babs.ai
Website: https://babs.ai/
Countries Served: Worldwide
Product Space: Productivity [AI]
Product Released: 2023
Founder: Temi Babs
Open Roles: Senior Software Engineer (Python)
In their own words:
Babs is your AI personal assistant and the only assistant you’ll ever need. Babs will learn about you and help you make the best decisions. Babs can schedule meetings, get calendar summaries, and manage emails for you with efficiency. With Babs you get:
Intelligent Scheduling: Easily create meeting invites, get a summary of your schedule, and find the best time to do things.
Optimized Inbox: Get only the important emails and email summaries so you don’t spend time reading through every single one.
Easy Communication: You can chat with Babs on WhatsApp or Telegram, making your conversations as convenient as possible
Vibe Check:
As someone who tends to be a bit scatterbrained, I've come to rely heavily on productivity tools to help me stay organized and focused. I'm the kind of person who puts absolutely everything on my to-do list and Google calendar because if it's not written down somewhere, it simply won't get done.
I am constantly on the lookout for tools that can further enhance my workflow and productivity. Thus, when the hype around ChatGPT began to grow, I naturally became intrigued and started my search for AI-powered productivity tools that could take my productivity game to the next level. That's how I stumbled upon Babs just a few days ago, and I have to say, I was immediately intrigued.
One of the things I particularly love about Babs is the experience of sending it a request through WhatsApp, almost as if you were texting a human assistant or friend. The simplicity of the tool is another aspect that I find particularly appealing. As someone who struggles to navigate the ever-growing mess that is my inbox, I was hopeful that Babs might be able to provide some much-needed relief.
While I don't have any strong opinions on Babs at this point, as the product has only recently launched, I'm excited about its potential—especially as more integrations and features are added. From a business standpoint, I can see a possible use case for Babs in user research panel management or customer service management. I think there’s a solid B2B case lurking somewhere, but that could potentially be another product altogether.
Ultimately, I am thrilled to have stumbled upon this tool and look forward to watching it grow and evolve in the months and years to come. As someone who is always seeking out new ways to improve my productivity and organization, Babs is a welcome addition to my toolkit.
What do you think about Babs?
On an unrelated note:
Here are three of my favourite reads this week:
Bowing out:
That’s all folks! I hope you enjoyed this week's newsletter and found it informative and engaging.
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Yours in Product Discovery,
Dumss.