In Depth Discovery Interviews
Background
The product organization I was working with had a good pipeline of product enhancements but was struggling to develop any new, innovative, ideas.
Our research to date was focused on very specific aspects of our products rather than looking at our user’s experience from a larger perspective; I realized that we didn’t have process for uncovering broad user problems and turning those into product solutions.
In order to solve this, I created and ran what came to be known as the “Agnostic Research Program.”
The program I created had two primary goals:
Uncover new product opportunities
Build empathy for the user
The Decision Statement
I try to apply the decision first framework whenever possible. In this case, the decision the teams wanted to be able to make was:
What new, impactful, user problems should we work to solve next?
Evidence Needs
In order to make this decision, I needed to gather the following evidence.
What are the most common problems users face throughout their experience?
Which of those problems, if solved, would be impactful for the user and the business?
The Approach
Because I needed to get a broad understanding of the types of problems users are facing, I determined that in depth interviews were the appropriate method.
I wrote an interview guide and vetted it with stakeholders across the product organization.
I then worked with product partners and engineering to setup an “opt-in” system which would allow our clients to become part of our research panel.
Each week I sent invitations to panelists to participate in a moderated interview.
At the end of each quarter, I reviewed the interviews that were conducted and developed a set of insights.
First Quarter Results
At the end of the first quarter, I had run 30 interviews with clients of varying backgrounds. The interviews revealed several key themes including:
Our process was not very clear and left first time clients confused about what they needed to do and where they were throughout the journey.
“I would have like a progress bar because I was relying a lot on… remembering correspondence emails with my technical director to understand where I was in the process and to understand what was coming up like an end date… or… or like when the next thing was getting ready to start”
- Travis
Clients who did not have a technical background had a lot of trouble during the hiring process.
"As a non-technical person it was a little difficult for me to navigate. Your user interface is great, but just from a non-technical background trying to select everything and choose everything was difficult."
- Jay
Our trial period was difficult to manage and clients felt as though they weren’t getting enough value from it.
“We were never really going to be able too in the period of time… have any signal related to whether or not this candidate is really gonna work out.”
- Jess
By the time a client got to the end our process their confidence in our ability to match them with good talent was low.
"I think I was presented with two choices. When I pushed back and asked for more, they said this is what I have at the moment. And you know I don't have any transparency in you know how much you actually do have. So I just have to take your word for it”
- Yoshi
Based on these insights, I developed a set of “How Might We” questions and ran a workshop with product and design stakeholders to develop specific, feasible, product solutions.
During the workshop, I had the teams brainstorm on each of the How Might We questions. In the end we had a set of 7 brand new potential product solutions based directly problems coming from our users.
I then ran these solutions through a KANO model analysis to help prioritize which we should work on first.
The product team decided to work on 3 features that were ranked as “Performance” in the KANO model. One of these ideas was put through an MVP A/B test and showed it increased a key conversion rate, talent sent to hired, by 12%.
Skills and Tools Leveraged
In depth interviews
Project Management
Miro
KANO model
Workshop Facilitation