Keeping Everyone in the Research Loop

Originally posted at VZC Research on October 29, 2019.

(image credit: freepik)

Our team has been sharing lots of research methods and techniques in this Methods Mondays series, and we’re so happy to see our little blog projects sprout some wings!

This visibility is especially encouraging because all researchers know that no matter how earth-shatteringly valuable our research findings may be, they are only as effective as our communication. As one of our researchers, Marlana Coignet, previously wrote, a wise man once told us that we as researchers must “Always Be Selling”. This is not meant to be a disingenuous attitude that cheapens our efforts, but a reminder to share info in a fruitful way that highlights how beneficial our findings are to our counterparts in Product, R&D, Marketing, and other teams. Packaging and showcasing our work creatively and constructively helps to ensure that our findings actually make their way into our products, leading to positive impacts on our users’ experiences.

So, it seems like now would be a good time for us to share some methods that we’ve been using to communicate our progress and results to our broader and cross-functional teams!

1. Walk-the-Walls

At Verizon Connect, our Product, R&D, and Experience teams subscribe to the Lean / Kanban framework. At the heart of this framework are the tenets that wasteful work should be eliminated, teams should be improving continuously, individuals should be data-driven in decision making, and everyone must have respect for each other as we all work together. Kanban boards are a tool to showcase these tenets at a glance. First, we created our Kanban board with each step of research reflected. For each project, we create a ticket (each of the sticky notes you see in the picture below), and we track the amount of time it takes to move through each step of the process.

One way that we align on these tenets as a Research team is to hold weekly meetings where we “walk the wall”. Our team calls these our Walk-the-Wall Wednesdays. During these meetings, we do not just give status updates on projects. We strive to stay connected to each other as a team, taking this time to report blockers, ask each other for help, celebrate our successes, and share our results as we methodically move through the board.

Here’s a picture of our Kanban board! We started with a Research-only board, but we’ve since synced Atlanta-based Research & Design! Dubbing them #WalkTheWallWednesdays and creating a hashtag for these posts on LinkedIn has also helped us get visibility and share with teams! (image credit: our very own Alexa Carleo)

We start in the Communication / Readout column, discuss each ticket, and move the tickets that we are ready into close out into the Done column. We would then go to the Documentation / Analysis column, discuss the tickets, and move the appropriate tickets into the Communication / Readout column to prepare to share out to our teams. We repeat this process until we get to the very beginning of the board, moving tickets from our Backlog into Discovery / Planning when those projects are given the go-ahead.

Who’s in the loop as a result? We have found that going through this process helps us keep our fellow researchers (and UX designers!) in the loop. It helps us identify how our team can swarm on tasks that can be divided and conquered, or re-balance workloads to help give someone on the team more bandwidth to focus on a high-priority ask. Importantly, it keeps us connected as a team, giving us a chance to check in with each other and make sure we’re all on the same page.

2. Research Readouts

Every Friday at 3:00 PM, our Research team spends an our with our cross-functional teams to report back on research for various projects. Our team refers to these as Findings Fridays. We read out on projects that have recently closed, are still in-flight, or will serve as next steps to continue uncovering answers. For the most part, we present using Google Slides, though we’ve also had interactive, playful readouts as well, chock-full of videos, audio recordings, and pictures from job sites, people’s homes, and even inside the cars of gig drivers.

Here’s a typical #FindingsFridays scene! So grateful to our teams for sharing and dedicating their time to unpack all the rich info that our teams bring back from the field or from our interviews.

We also use this time to go step-by-step through our methods as a way to set up context and guide our teams through proper analysis of the data, particularly when the data is more complex. One great example is a readout that was led by Alexa Carleo that involved Kano methodology feature prioritization data analysis. By starting with a playful survey to plan a holiday feast, she was able to help teams understand how to gather insights from other Kano analyses. (Look out for a future post from Alexa on this great skill-share and readout!)

Based on this Kano dataset, people didn’t want Jello molds or fruitcake at this feast. Alexa and our team use this same Kano structure to identify whether customers wanted certain features being proposed by our teams.

Who’s in the loop as a result? Our Research Readouts are meant to connect our cross-functional teams here in the Atlanta office. They are attended frequently by our teammates in Product, R&D, and Marketing. Because we support all lines of business, we also have a mix of people who work on the Consumer and Commercial sides of the business. We have recently been asked to repeat these readouts with senior leaders, and we record our readouts for our collaborators in different time zones. We are so lucky to work in such a supportive and hungry atmosphere!

3. Global House Tours

We are also incredibly lucky to get to work with a fantastic global Experience Team headed by Donal O’Mahony! Our researchers and designers are spread out not just in Atlanta or across the US, but also in Dublin, Ireland; Florence, Italy; and Christchurch, New Zealand. It’s exciting to get to work with professionals from all different sorts of contexts, and the quality of our work goes up when we have diversity of thought and experience in the room!

However, being an international team also makes it hard for us to stay in touch with everyone and their work. To address this issue, amazing teammates like Amelia Diggle, Amy Hooper, Bella Morehead, and Zoe Stringer put together a Global House Tour via Miro (formerly RealtimeBoard). Our inaugural Tour took place just last week, a mix of fly-bys on projects and deep dives into ongoing initiatives.

Our Miro board serves as a virtual board and readout to showcase and support our teams!

Who’s in the loop as a result? Our entire, global Experience Team recently started organizing and participating in this Tour to showcase what everyone (researchers and designers) are working on, helping us to put names and faces to projects. This not only keeps us up-to-date with each other, but it also helps us identify potential crossover and synergy, as well as reduce unnecessary duplication of efforts. So grateful to our teammates for organizing this for us all!

Summary

Research is only as useful as its packaging. As researchers, we must take extra care and pay special attention to how we must cater information to our audiences. Walk-the-Walls, Research Readouts, and Global House Tours have helped us steadily increase visibility of our efforts and communication of our findings by giving us bigger and more interactive platforms for us to share with our teams. However, the biggest win for us is not the chance to showcase our efforts. The biggest win for us is the opportunity to learn from our customers/users, our teams, our co-workers, our collaborators, and our leaders. Protecting and actively supporting our connections to one another helps to make sure we all march toward the same goal, and that we’re all kept in the loop!