Efficiently organising research findings so that we can effectively use them to their greatest benefit is often a pain point. Luckily help is at hand, in the form of Benjamin Humphrey.
Benjamin is co-founder of Dovetail, a new product that helps teams understand their customers through analysis of user feedback and qualitative research.
We were lucky to have the opportunity to pick Benjamin’s brain in our Slack channel yesterday. It was one of the busiest sessions we’ve hosted but he managed like a trooper.
If you’re interested in seeing what we discussed, or you want to revisit your own questions, here is a full transcript of the chat.
Transcript
hawk
2018-03-07 23:04
The formal intro:
hawk
2018-03-07 23:04
Benjamin is a co-founder of Dovetail, a new product that helps teams understand their customers through organization and analysis of user feedback and qualitative research. Dovetail is kind of like Google Docs meets Trello, designed specifically for researchers and product managers.
claudia.realegeno
2018-03-07 23:04
Do you find it easier to structure by primarily by participant, by event, or some other method?
hawk
2018-03-07 23:04
Prior to starting Dovetail, Benjamin was a lead designer at Atlassian working on JIRA Agile, the growth team, and Atlassian’s cloud platform. He led design initiatives to bring consistency and modernity to Atlassian’s cloud offerings and was heavily involved in shaping Atlassian’s new design language, “ADG 3”, and their new product Stride.
Benjamin is a multi-disciplinary designer working across research, user experience, interface design, and frontend development.
hawk
2018-03-07 23:05
Thanks heaps for your time today @benjamin – we appreciate it.
hawk
2018-03-07 23:05
Can you give us some history and a brief intro on the topic?
hawk
2018-03-07 23:05
Then we’ll get into questions.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:05
Hey everyone!
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:05
Thanks for joining :slightly_smiling_face:
krisduran
2018-03-07 23:05
Thank you @benjamin for doing this today and sharing your experience!
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:06
As @hawk mentioned I’m a product designer, ex-Atlassian, and now founder / CEO of a SaaS startup focused on building a great product for teams to manage customer feedback & user research.
taraleeyork
2018-03-07 23:06
Hi everyone
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:06
I’d love to talk about anything to do with research, product design, and generally just building great products since that’s my passion.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:06
To give you a few ideas for topics: advocating research inside a data-driven organization, the relationship between designers / researchers / PMs, collecting, storing, organizing, and analyzing data, sharing knowledge and getting buy-in with stakeholders, escaping the daily grind and setting long term visions, design / research team org structure, and more.
kaselway
2018-03-07 23:06
Well! There’s 7k people here so it’s a bit of chaos!
hawk
2018-03-07 23:07
Cool. Are you ready for questions?
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:07
Specifically the topic is about research data organization / sharing – but I’m also happy to expand beyond that if you have more general questions for me about design or reseach :slightly_smiling_face:
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:07
@hawk yep!
hawk
2018-03-07 23:07
Ok team, shoot…
hawk
2018-03-07 23:07
From @rachelreveley What can you do when you use various tools to create different deliverables such as Google Slides, Axure, Foundation etc?
maadonna
2018-03-07 23:08
How do you avoid re-researching the same things over and over? i.e. how do you make old research information available to start with, and only researching what you don’t know (I have never seen a team do this well – everyone just seems to re-research)
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:08
Hmm. What do you mean by “what can you do”? As in, how can you consolidate everything into a single deliverable / outcome?
taraleeyork
2018-03-07 23:08
What do you do when a client/employer tells you they don’t have a budget for research?
frankenvision
2018-03-07 23:09
Q: What inspired you to create Dovetail?
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:09
I think one of the problems I’ve seen in research is that there isn’t really a ‘standardised’ set of tools that researchers use. Unlike designers, which have Sketch / Photoshop / InVision emerging as the platform. Researchers still have a really disparate collection of digital and physical tools
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:09
They also tend not to talk to one another
rachelreveley
2018-03-07 23:09
Yes. I find that I end up with lots of very different pieces and have to somehow link them together
rvaelle
2018-03-07 23:10
And tips on being efficient on organizing and analyzing data? Not getting overwhelmed with data.:fearful:
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:10
@rachelreveley Right. I don’t feel like I have a great solution for you, to be honest. I think the variety in process / methods / and tuning the output to the stakeholders means that the number and type of tools you’ll use varies so much between projects
isha
2018-03-07 23:10
Wow – that’s a lot!
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:11
In the past everything tends to end up in a document or slideshow
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:11
which is not ideal, imo
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:11
part of the issue is that the raw data is disconnected from the output
rachelreveley
2018-03-07 23:11
They do. the closest to a solution so far is Basecamp but I’m not a huge fan.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:12
Until there’s something that can suck in a bunch of data in different formats and let you manipulate that, analyze it, distill it, then spit it out as a great output for stakeholders, I think you’re a bit stuck with what we have today
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:12
At Atlassian we talked a lot about the “IDE” for people
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:12
Using that metaphor of developer IDE’s who have lots of powerful features
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:12
What’s the IDE for designers? PMs? Researchers?
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:13
I don’t think there’s a strong story yet for the latter
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:13
But you can see software emerging for the first two
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:13
Anyway, I’ll move on!
jamie
2018-03-07 23:13
What do you find is the best way to present your findings not only to stakeholders but to team members both in design and tech streams?
danielle
2018-03-07 23:13
What’s IDE?
james.g.jenner
2018-03-07 23:13
IDE = Integrated Development Environment.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:14
@claudia.realegeno I’m architecting an in-house database to store research findings and struggling with how to incorporate tagging capabilities and account for events where there were multiple attendees. How do you handle these challenges in a world of normalized databases? Do you find it easier to structure by primarily by participant, by event, or some other method?
guido
2018-03-07 23:14
Intentionally Difficult Employees
guido
2018-03-07 23:14
oh
guido
2018-03-07 23:14
well, almost got it
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:14
@claudia.realegeno Your first part of the question might be a bit complicated for me to answer here. But the second part I can have a crack at. I think it really depends whether a) you’re doing a research project, with an end date, or b) you’re embedded in a team and you’re doing ongoing research.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:15
Also if you’re doing strategic / tactical research
claudia.realegeno
2018-03-07 23:15
ongoing research
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:15
For instance, if you have a specific goal or outcome in mind
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:15
Right
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:15
So, user testing sessions, interviews, etc?
bkesshav
2018-03-07 23:15
Is there any tool that use AI and machine learning to highlight key findings and recommend areas to focus as pain points?
claudia.realegeno
2018-03-07 23:15
sometimes we have a clear measurable goal, sometimes it’s more qualitative
claudia.realegeno
2018-03-07 23:16
We’d like the flexibility for both, and even just grabbing ad-hoc statements
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:16
I think the general idea you want to get to then, with ongoing research, is building up a bit of a library of themes that you’re observing over time, beyond the specific individual events
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:16
At Atlassian, researchers are embedded inside product teams
claudia.realegeno
2018-03-07 23:16
yes, exactly!
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:16
So across a bunch of different methods, they’re forming these patterns / themes over time, and it’s somewhat irregardless of the actual method they used to discover those insights
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:17
Generally they’ll write up some stuff, maybe on a cadence, or perhaps have an ongoing short meeting, to then present the outcome of the events as evidence to support a more macro theme
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:18
So I would say, for ongoing research, you probably want to structure by theme as you go (you won’t start out with themes at the beginning) and then use the specific events as evidence
krisduran
2018-03-07 23:18
Do you have a recommendation on how to present data when talking with stakeholders?
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:18
@maadonna How do you avoid re-researching the same things over and over? i.e. how do you make old research information available to start with, and only researching what you don’t know (I have never seen a team do this well – everyone just seems to re-research)
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:18
Heh
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:18
This is like the biggest struggle that the Atlassian researchers had when I left
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:19
I think everyone struggles with this, especially growing companies where you have new people joining all the time
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:19
IMO the problem comes down to bad tooling for storing research insights
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:19
Too much reliance of “tribal knowledge” of long time employees, who would say something like, “hang on, didn’t we do this a while ago?” but you wouldn’t know that without them jumping in
jamie
2018-03-07 23:20
can you speak a bit about different methods you use to synthesize and document qualitative data
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:20
Part of the challenge is that the type of data you touch with research is so varied that no system handles it all perfectly. One product that works great for storing emails from customers or interview notes might not work for video. Another which is great for video might not work for tweets or survey results.
maadonna
2018-03-07 23:20
I’d be interested in hearing how anyone does this :slightly_smiling_face:
dorothee
2018-03-07 23:20
What do you do when you’re asked to provide a UX budget estimate for an upcoming product release, but you only have a very high-level idea of what the release theme is going to be?
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:21
@maadonna At Atlassian we had some success with organising things into “FAQ” style pages by product
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:21
Where you kind of start with the question and that links off to the research
krisduran
2018-03-07 23:21
Q: Do you find storytelling a key part of presenting data to non-research folks?
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:21
So if you had a question like, fairly generic, “What do people do in their first 5 days of using JIRA?” that might then link to some research on onboarding
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:21
But there are so many problems with this
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:21
It requires constant maintenance
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:21
It gets out of date
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:22
It also requires people to use the same formatting so you can compare apples to apples
krisduran
2018-03-07 23:22
Q: When do you know you’ve got enough data and need to pull back out of the rabbit hole?
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:22
Data repositories are kind of a way to solve it
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:22
But
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:23
The data itself is also quite messy in its original form so the repository ends up being tucked away out of view from stakeholders because it’s a total mess.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:23
You really need some way to say, “hey, here’s my raw data, and it’s really messy, but I can take excerpts out of that and add them into something that’s more bite-sized and shareable.”
frankenvision
2018-03-07 23:23
Q: What do you do with results of your research when you realized you’ve headed in the wrong direction on a project?
bkesshav
2018-03-07 23:24
Q: Is there any tool that use AI and machine learning to highlight key findings from research and recommend areas to focus as pain points?
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:24
So yeah, I think, in larger companies, it’s a tooling problem. I think it’s probably only really a problem in larger companies anyway, because in a smaller organisation, you’ll have less researchers / designers who probably talk more and can hold more in their heads.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:24
Heh
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:24
Popular topic
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:24
Okay, next one
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:24
@taraleeyork What do you do when a client/employer tells you they don’t have a budget for research?
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:24
Hmm. My co-founder sitting next to me says “offer them a trial”
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:24
Haha
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:24
No, I think, it really depends
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:25
If you’re really passionate about research for this project
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:25
Then I think you’ll want to find some way to do it sneakily on the fly
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:25
Even a few structured customer interviews, recorded, can be proof of the value of research
aquazie
2018-03-07 23:25
agreed on sneaking in, if needed
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:26
So for a couple of hundred dollars, you should be able to recruit maybe three people for 30 minute interviews
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:26
Then it’s just saying “the proof is in the pudding” right
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:26
We used this tactic A LOT at Atlassian
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:26
Especially a couple of years ago when research was starting to mature
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:27
Atlassian has gone through a stage of no designers → convincing the value of design → no researchers → convincing the value of research
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:27
And a lot of that was simply doing it, even if there wasn’t budget for it
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:27
Not the best answer, but yeah, that’s just the reality of organisational politics I guess
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:28
@frankenvision Q: What inspired you to create Dovetail?
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:28
I actually wrote a blog series on the beginnings of Dovetail
frankenvision
2018-03-07 23:28
Thanks @benjamin I will check it out
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:28
So for the full story I guess read that, but the abridged version is that I noticed a distinct lack of decent software for researchers when I worked at Atlassian
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:28
Research software, quite frankly, sucks
taraleeyork
2018-03-07 23:29
Thanks for the answer @benjamin
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:29
Ironically it’s often poorly designed and hella expensive
tyler
2018-03-07 23:29
Q: What are your views on prioritizing Quantitative Data over Qualitative User interviews for a consumer product?
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:29
It’s also a huge opportunity because it’s so far reaching
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:30
We think about the key tent pegs of research – collection, organization, analysis, and sharing
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:30
In each of those, you have a variety of tools
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:30
Survey software, data repositories, QDA tools, collab tools
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:30
Nobody has really flipped those verticals into one horizontal, integrated path
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:31
So that’s kind of the realization I had
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:31
@rvaelle Any tips on being efficient on organizing and analyzing data? Not getting overwhelmed with data.
cindy.mccracken
2018-03-07 23:31
Are you able to take study notes in Dovetail? Observers too?
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:31
Hmm. Being quite ruthless in what you keep around.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:31
For instance, take a user testing session.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:32
You might have 30 min of video there, but how much of that is setting up, introductions, technical issues, etc.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:32
So maybe cut your user testing videos into a “highlight reel” and you’ll have less noise in your data
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:32
Also, I like the whole “insight as a tweet” thing
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:32
I’ve seen a lot of researchers write these really long internal blog posts or presentations
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:32
And they’re really ineffective IMO
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:33
The most successful approach I’ve seen is simply showing stakeholders actual quotes from customers or video from user testing.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:33
For instance, at Atlassian, instead of creating research reports, I used to buy popcorn for our team and invite everyone (PM, developers, QA) along to watch pre-recorded user testing videos. After each one we’d discuss them together and take a few quick notes. Everyone knew what the problems were and the next steps. No need for a presentation or a report.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:33
Let the data speak for itself
cindy.mccracken
2018-03-07 23:33
In a couple companies where I’ve worked, the best way to make sure research is kept top of mind is writing stories for the backlogs. Then they get prioritized with the rest of the work.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:34
@jamie What do you find is the best way to present your findings not only to stakeholders but to team members both in design and tech streams?
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:34
Nice segue there
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:34
I can rattle off another couple of examples of techniques I used at Atlassian
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:34
I had lots of success bringing developers along with me on contextual inquiries or having them sit in on interviews. Assign them a role like photographer or note-taker. They love it and they can experience customer pain first hand.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:35
Another technique I used at Atlassian was to set up a HipChat room and connect it to Twitter using IFTTT. All it did was show all the tweets mentioning @JIRA on Twitter, and spoiler, most of them were not happy tweets.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:35
This brought customer pain in front of the team in the tools they use every day. We even put incoming user feedback on wallboard televisions alongside the developer’s build status.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:35
I think the most effective researchers are the ones that simply act as a messenger for the data / evidence from the customer / users in the research
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:35
In some ways you’re kind of like a director of a movie
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:36
You have all of these clips on the cutting room floor
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:36
You need to take those and edit them into what you’re going to show, fit it into 1.5 hours
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:36
(hopefully a lot less than that)
frankenvision
2018-03-07 23:36
Q: How do you sort through pain points once you find them? Do you put them in a severity chart and vote on them with your team?
hawk
2018-03-07 23:37
FYI We have 10 questions queued up which will likely take us to the end of the session
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:37
Time is flying!
tyler
2018-03-07 23:37
I create a sortable excel sheet
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:37
@bkesshav Is there any tool that use AI and machine learning to highlight key findings and recommend areas to focus as pain points?
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:37
I don’t think there is any software that can do what researchers do today
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:38
There’s lots of ML that can *help* you get insights
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:38
For example, we just shipped automatic sentiment analysis yesterday
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:38
This is kind of helpful for parsing large amounts of data
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:38
It gives you a bit of a starting point to work from, everything strongly negative is in one place
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:39
Unless you have an enormous data set (which most companies do not), ML will not be able to uncover key findings / distill insights etc from a variety of raw data
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:39
I think eventually we might get to “black box research” but empathy and context are so important for research
davidbaird
2018-03-07 23:39
parsing is an interesting term. :slightly_smiling_face:. There in lies the appropriate degree of ‘filtering’
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:39
So I think computers can absolutely aid researchers
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:40
And there is not enough of that today IMO
cindy.mccracken
2018-03-07 23:40
I like this idea, but you’d need to capture those next steps somewhere, right?
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:40
But I don’t think researchers need to worry about being replaced by ML / AI
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:40
@krisduran Do you have a recommendation on how to present data when talking with stakeholders?
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:41
Somewhat covered above – keep it simple, brief, present the raw data / evidence where possible, stay away from long presentations. In Dovetail, the idea is that the raw data is stored alongside your insights, and then that can be shared with stakeholders to collaborate on. So then they can just click around and explore the insights, and dive into the raw data if necessary. It removes the disconnect between what’s in Powerpoint vs. what’s in your spreadsheet or Dropbox.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:41
Another technique that I’ll quickly mention is to involve them throughout the process
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:41
This isn’t always feasible
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:41
But if it is possible, (same goes for design), it’s great if you can have your team involved in collection / analysis etc.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:42
Again at Atlassian we tried to do this where possible
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:42
Turns out a developer is going to be much more likely to be excited about a new feature if she’s been invovled in the design process from the start
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:42
@dorothee What do you do when you’re asked to provide a UX budget estimate for an upcoming product release, but you only have a very high-level idea of what the release theme is going to be?
frankenvision
2018-03-07 23:43
Q: How many researchers did you work with at Atlassian?
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:43
Tell them estimation is hard and add 50% ?
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:43
I’m not sure, to be honest!
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:43
That’s what developers do to me all the time, so maybe it should go the other way too :joy:
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:43
@krisduran Q: Do you find storytelling a key part of presenting data to non-research folks?
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:43
Yep, absolutely!
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:44
At Atlassian, every year, the design / research / writing team come together from around the world in Sydney and have a week together
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:44
I’ll find the video, hang on
bkesshav
2018-03-07 23:44
I didn’t ask if AI can replace researchers, can technology like AI infer and create insights from the research outcomes.
Most time is spent looking in to the raw data and research findings. Can technology use the data to make the process of analysis and drawing insights.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:45
Anyway, the theme from a couple of years back was storytelling
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:45
I think it’s a critical skill for designers and researchers, and PMs. Everyone, really.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:45
You need to take people on a journey, build empathy with characters (often the users), and propose a solution
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:45
It’s somewhat like making a film. Pixar are very good at this. Channel Pixar in your research!
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:46
@bkesshav Right. My answer would be not right now, but in a few years, possible. At the moment the ML / natural language stuff is mostly helpful for broadly categorising large sets of data.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:46
To get true insights you need a human touch to understand the context and the goal of the research
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:46
@krisduran Q: When do you know you’ve got enough data and need to pull back out of the rabbit hole?
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:47
Good question. When you start seeing the same things over and over.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:47
In theory, the obvious themes will emerge quite quickly during your research.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:48
It also depends a lot on how rigorous you want to be
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:48
Often, with research, you’re not looking for statistical significance
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:48
There’s usually no need for that level of certainty
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:48
Research is very helpful as a quick, lean, and directional approach a lot of the time
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:48
I’d recommend Erika Hall’s book Just Enough Research
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:48
Which is entirely devoted to this topic
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:49
@frankenvision Q: What do you do with results of your research when you realize you’ve headed in the wrong direction on a project?
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:49
If the data is valuable, keep it, and maybe write a brief summary of what you learned, even if it’s not relevant for the project.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:49
Again depends on whether you’re embedded, doing ongoing research, or whether you’re working on a once-off project
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:50
If it’s completely worthless and will be in the future, then chuck it. Don’t fall into the sunk cost fallacy.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:50
@tyler What are your views on prioritizing Quantitative Data over Qualitative User interviews for a consumer product?
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:50
Spicy question!
frankenvision
2018-03-07 23:50
thanks
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:50
I don’t think there’s any need to prioritize one over another
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:50
They’re very different
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:51
A huge myth in software development is that these two things compete against one another
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:51
That couldn’t be further from the truth
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:51
Quant can tell you *what* users are doing, but qual can tell you *why*
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:52
There’s a whole topic here, in itself, which is using qual and quant data in software development
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:52
humans love certainty
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:52
people think quantitative data brings certainty
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:53
but often, it’s really misleading / open to interpretation
hawk
2018-03-07 23:53
You’re rocking this @benjamin
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:53
There’s been a huge trend the past few years
hawk
2018-03-07 23:53
We have 2 questions left and we’ll call it a wrap
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:53
Companies think quantitative data has become a “solution” for a lot of people, a silver bullet
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:53
Partly because it’s been much more accessible
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:53
Before we had Mixpanel, GA, etc.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:54
We had to talk to users, talk to customers
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:54
These tools made quant much easier to access, and since humans love certainty, they seemed to provide it
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:54
As someone who worked on growth / analytics at Atlassian, I can assure you that analytics are often anything but certain
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:55
There’s a bit of a renaissance happening now I think
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:55
A few years back, the 4th or 5th hire in your startup would be a data analytics / growth person
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:55
Now I’m seeing more and more Dovetail customers who are startups with researchers as that hire
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:55
@cindy.mccracken Are you able to take study notes in Dovetail? Observers too?
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:55
Yep. Not 100% sure what you mean by observers, but it has a real time collab editor, like Google Docs.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:56
@frankenvision Q: How do you sort through pain points once you find them? Do you put them in a severity chart and vote on them with your team?
cindy.mccracken
2018-03-07 23:56
Yeah, that’s what I mean.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:57
@frankenvision Yeah, sort of. It kind of depends on the team. With a newer team, you’ll need more structure, so probably some card sorting or meetings to prioritise what to work on. If the team is smaller, or more established, then you’ll probably have more trust, so maybe the researcher can just suggest an ordered list of pain points to work through.
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:58
I can show you a screenshot of our customer feedback board on Dovetail
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:58
The tags, that is
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:58
@benjamin uploaded a file: https://uxmastery.slack.com/files/U9B1TRPDX/F9LFUNSJ1/image.png
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:59
This is basically how we manage our pain points / customer feedback
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:59
So everything is tagged, then we use the board to group the tags into product areas or existing vs. new feature
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:59
Then rank them
benjamin
2018-03-07 23:59
So something similar to that is probably a good way to sort / organize your pain points – either on a post-it note board, or Trello, or Dovetail if you want to try that
benjamin
2018-03-08 00:00
That was the last question, I think!
hawk
2018-03-08 00:00
Nice!
benjamin
2018-03-08 00:00
I can stick around for a few more minutes, if anyone has anything pressing
hawk
2018-03-08 00:00
That was pretty full on but you killed it.
__end transcript__
__end transcript__
benjamin
2018-03-08 00:00
Or maybe a follow up from anything I said?
frankenvision
2018-03-08 00:00
That was a great session, thanks
hawk
2018-03-08 00:00
Much appreciated.