Using Evidence and Collaboration for Setting and Defending Priorities
Summary
Setting the right priorities and roadmaps can be challenging. Having a data-driven and evidence-based approach provides a robust way to prioritise value propositions and features that inform the roadmap to align stakeholders. UX research and product discovery methods that work in a complementary way are key. UX leaders can take the project-based, strategic approach to UX research to get key business and product insights. Product discovery lends itself to lean experimentation for refining products and the UX. Both are needed simultaneously for broad and focused research efforts. This session will explain how UX Research and Product Teams can collaborate to identify innovation opportunities and develop products and services customer and users need.
Key Insights
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Only 33% of businesses conduct research throughout the entire product lifecycle to guide decisions, indicating widespread underutilization of research.
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Chloe's move from UX researcher to product manager required unlearning detailed documentation habits and adopting more concise, stakeholder-appropriate communication.
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Involving stakeholders directly in user interviews, with careful preparation, helps change assumptions and align business and product strategies.
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A flexible, high-level product roadmap like the now-next-later framework is effective for managing stakeholder expectations around timelines.
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Democratizing research by upskilling non-research team members expands research capacity and embeds a culture of user-centered thinking.
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Collaborative synthesis methods like affinity mapping allow stakeholders to empathize with users and advocate for their needs.
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In small teams with external developers, clear delineation of roles and frequent communication are vital to managing priorities and responsibilities.
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Continuous discovery accelerates over time, shifting from slow, project-based research to rapid prototyping and iterative feedback.
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Balancing product priorities involves weighing stakeholder expectations, resource constraints, and clear documentation of decisions for transparency.
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Product trios ideally include more than one engineer to represent engineering perspectives adequately, but resource constraints often limit this.
Notable Quotes
"Only 33% of businesses conduct research throughout the whole product lifecycle to inform product and business decisions."
"When I first came into the role, I almost took the consultant approach of writing a big report with recommendations, but that overwhelmed the team."
"Taking stakeholders on the journey by involving them in interviews really changed how they saw the product and business strategy."
"A high-level roadmap with now, next, later helped us show we had a plan but kept flexibility for changing priorities."
"Upskilling customer success managers and others to help with testing meant we could do far more research than I alone could manage."
"We used affinity mapping with stakeholders to get them really into the mindset of the users and advocate for them."
"There was a lot of communication needed around roles, especially since our software developer was external and not always involved in day-to-day decisions."
"As the product journey progressed, research cadence got faster with prototypes and quicker feedback loops."
"For bigger decisions, having documented meetings was critical for transparency and defending choices later on."
"Researchers can overcome reluctance to include others by training them closely and collaborating on synthesis to maintain data quality."
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