Background

In Trend Micro, the research findings and insights done in past research are hard to reach out to for UID or PM. However, there is a research insight storehouse on cloud storage, which we called Insight Repository, for them to access if needed. They still complain that they cannot find the necessary information for them. This research aims to design a better way for the product team to work smoothly.

The Assumptions

We define the stakeholders of this problem first. Assuming there are two roles in insights transmission, the insight provider and the insight receiver. The only insight provider is a User Researcher. On the other hand, the insight receiver included PM and UID.

How we define the research scope and research objective

The current situation is PM, and UID cannot reach out to past research findings and insights. We didn’t start to collect the data on this question directly. Instead, we decided to explore more of this phenomenon. Therefore, we reach the UXR builder of Insight Repository to gather the reason for building this storage to store the research finding. Then ask some UIDs if they knew the Insight Repository.

Redefine the research scope

We assume this research is about the usability or information architecture problems of Insight Repository in the beginning. However, after reaching more people to understand Insight Repository, the finding let us redefine the research scope.

First, most UIDs didn’t know about this storage, so they didn’t have a channel to access the data. Second, the purpose of building the Insight Repository is for UXR only at the beginning. The way to get past insight (or internal knowledge) is mainly through the experienced researcher.

These findings make us curious about what and how insights are needed in what situation.

The research objective

• Understand the motivation and purpose of PM/UID requiring user insight.
• Understand how PM/UID work with the insights and how they obtain it.
• Discover the pain points and needs in the current process. How can we solve it?

Research Method

We invite PMs and UIDs to share their experience making the product decision and how they conduct the design. We host one workshop and eight interviews, three for UIDs, and five for PMs.

Research Finding

The roles in insight delivery flow

Key Findings

1. The projects do not always be supported by a dedicated UXR.
2. PM is not just an insight receiver but also a feedback converter and user insight mediator.
3. If a dedicated UXR doesn’t support the project, the product’s design relies on PM’s experience and feedback from the customer team (e.g., sales, technical support).

The pain points usually happen in without a UXR situation.

1. The UIDs feel painful when the PM passes a design request that does not provide rich background about the user. So UID will ask experienced UXR to give information or search it themselves.
2. Because of lacking a well-organized user insights database, the information is hard to reach.
3. If the project needs some research occasionally, the PM usually has to conduct it themselves. However, they have suffered from organizing the feedback from the sales or technical support team.

How to solve the problems

The problems and the corresponding suggestions:

1. The customer feedback hasn’t been well organized, so the data is too raw and specific.
   → Convert the customer feedback into helpful user insight systematically, letting the team organize together.
2. The data isn’t well stored, so searching for related insight is challenging.
   → One platform(channel) for one purpose and build up an easy-to-find storing rule.
3. The user insight of the request provided by PMs is often not enough.
   → Let PMs understand which information is needed for UIDs’ work.

From the suggestions to solutions

1. Convert the customer feedback into helpful user insight systematically, letting the team organize together.
   • Build a collaborative platform for PMs to collect customer feedback, and UXR can organize and convert it into user insight directly.
   • Democratize User Research, coaching the PMs and UIDs to interview and organize the customer feedback data by themselves on the simple task in comparison(like UI validation).
2. One platform(channel) for one purpose, and build up an easy-to-find storing rule.
   • Construct a delivery rule, and let the type of information delivered on each channel/platform can be straightforward.
   • Optimize the Insight Repository by UIDs preference, involving the categories, naming rules, and metadata.
3. Let PMs understand which information is needed for UIDs’ work.
   • Provide a design request template to PMs with the title of the element that UIDs needed(e.g., persona, use case, etc.)