ReOps - Democratising Research
Division
Research Operations
Role
Co-Researcher
Tools
Desk research, internal 1:1 interviews
Duration
1.5 month (Jan 2023)
Overview
With increasing pressure to provide product teams with more frequent access to customers, the ReOps and Research teams were tasked with an internal initiative to democratise research i.e. to enable Designers and Product People at Xero to run their own evaluative testing.
In order to craft a programme to best suit the ‘users’ of a democratised research while taking into consideration any risks we needed to mitigate, a small team of ReOps and Researchers ran a series of internal interviews with 8 Designers and Product People to clarify their expectations, needs, and pain points when attempting to conduct research independently or achieve customer closeness at Xero.
Output
Rapid delivery of scoping, planning, executing and analysing 8 interviews with Xero designers and product people across portfolios and seniorities.
Communicating and socialising insights back to key stakeholders (ReOps and Research leadership) via catered and concise formats: 5 min video recording to summarise key findings, one pager and full report for details.
Research and ReOps leadership alignment workshop: crafted and executed an alignment workshop for Research and ReOps leadership to process the insights from the research while facilitating conversation to reach alignment on processes going forward.
Building foundations for a Democratising Research roadmap at Xero informed by potential risks (to Xero customers and quality of research) while providing ways to mitigate these risks.
Impact
🎯 Identified the risks of scaling research, compiled specific scenarios for leadership to consider and informed a roadmap to build / improve tools to support democratisation of research at Xero going forward
“This is an incredibly thought-provoking and beautifully communicated piece of work! I’m super impressed, especially by the simplicity and clarity of the messaging.”
- Design Research Director
Project Reflections
While the research clarified a need to make it easier for non-researchers to conduct research independently, there was also a key piece around protecting the integrity of research and customer insights at Xero. For an effective democratising research programme, the two work streams must be executed in parallel to one another. Essentially, enabling non-researchers requires researchers to mentor and educate in order to serve the non-researchers while respecting the truth and time of our end-customers .