Benson Low Transcript

Transcript

1. 1 www.captionslive.com.au | captionslive@outlook.com | 0425 904 255 UX AUSTRALIA Design Research 2020 Day 1 Thursday, 19 March 2020 Captioned by: Gail Kearney & Rebekah Goulevitch
2. 2 BENSON LOW: Thanks, Steve. I just want to make another thanks for the whole team in the circumstances. It is amazing we can do this. I am sure it is challenging for Steve and Annabelle and the rest of the team but it has gone great so far and it has been a great list of speakers until me. STEVE BATY: Thanks, Benson. BENSON LOW: I think the idea of scaling and prioritising the UX teams in the past, it has done it a couple of times and I've tried to do it at least twice now. I feel like there's a lot to do. But I want to give a bit more of my background and also the current context as well of what I'm going to talk through. My name is Benson Low, the current UX Research for REA Group. But the work I am going to share today casts back 12 months ago, before I even started at REA. The work is started by others, which contributed to, but it is an interesting journey. It is also a presentation about the context of this work for this organisation as well. So, your mileage may vary in terms of what you take away from it. But it definitely resonates with a lot of organisations I have spoken to. So, here is a quick snapshot of what to expect. So, these are the six findings or learnings that we will go through in depth. We will talk about how the one-way mirror is gone, no more labs essentially. Looking at empowering others from a user research perspective. Great that Benjamin talked about repositories because we first started 12 months ago it was much more rare but we will go into details about that. Talk about governance as a full-time as researcher. Mobile-first research being the priority thing that we want to start with. For our research activities. And research prioritization and also looking at partnerships and how we grow the team. So, like I said before, this is our journey. With that, I do want to talk through the REA Group and why this matters for us. So, we are the number one Australia first property portal website. The REA Group are probably better known as realestate.com.au. We started in a small suburb - in Doncaster. And this is the picture of when it started 25 years ago. The notes that we have back then were we were cutting out photos newspapers and scanning them and sharing them online and sharing them as ads from newspapers. It is amazing we have grown so fast and so quickly and also amazing to know that this is now a global business. We have gone from, you know, back in the days of a handful of people, to more than 1,500 people around the world. We've grown to be a global company with different investment in different countries. But with that, there's been a lot of opportunities for us to transform how people experience property. This is just a quick coverage of the countries we are covering. It provides you with a concept with the idea of - just got to go back to that one - that the main market that we have is Australia. And the other key markets that we have is probably Malaysia and Hong Kong. But our investors arms are in the US and India and as well as Indonesia and Thailand that we have been working pretty globally across the world. Just to give you more context, we are here to help people across their property journeys, people looking to purchase a property in a property search, getting property insights, looking into home loans, and getting into professional tools. So, we have a property search, thinking about buying but we do rent and people looking at investments and obviously,
3. 3 looking at supporting our property agents in terms of getting a lot more leads. While we are at it as well, we have exposure for visitors as well. At the back of this, it is supported by 50 design researchers and - designers, researchers and UX writers. This has been a growing team. And we've been working pretty hard to make sure that we are creating a capability that can support the global property assets that we have. But also making sure we have a great experience as well. Now, thinking back when I first jointed, less than 12 months ago from Australia Post to REA, the team has always had researchers. One of the most interesting things, one of the reasons why we are looking at establishing the capability and scaling it up is because in the past we've done great research but we haven't supported as much as we can with the rest of the teams requiring our help. So, although there's a lot of designers, the research team has been, I would say, a supportive, if not product short on hands in employing how others can do research. When I talking about scaling the research practice we are talking about supporting functions of product and designs and tech and to do that we have to have systematic tools and processes in place to do that. With exciting new ventures and problems, our teams have had increasing demands. As we speak, we have been trying to balance the demands coming through and trying to prioritise the work we do. But in the same sense, we are also looking at better opportunities to improve our practice and amplify how we improve our practice from an insights perspective. What I'm going to talk through with the next six core learnings we have started to apply, I will talk to two of them: How we did the research both internally and externally and also by that learning how we actually then change our practice at our end. The learnings that we've got from our friends and communities were through one-on-one interviews, we visited the offices and definitely done internal reviews with our stakeholders, as well as surveys and interviews with key stake holders and also defining the opportunities for realestate.com.au opportunities. And how we have been doing it in the last six to eight months that I have been trying to set up the process and revitalising some of the tools and hopefully we can have better value and how we do better research. Who do we talk to? We talk to 20-plus companies from these companies. They have been very open about sharing their ways of scaling up research and also how they have been growing their research as well. The process of getting connection with them, trying to understand how it worked. We have done the interviews mostly in person and some have been remote. And from there, analyse and generate the insights from what we've learned from those to see how most people have been sharing their growth from a UX research growth perspective. So, one of the first learnings that we got into straight away was the emergence of all the tech that we have from streaming and tools, we have talked about across the other presenters this morning, showing there's less and less requirements to have your traditional reverse-mirror labs. The flexibility of, you know, online tools has potentially made the one-way mirror disappear in most cases. I remember back in the days when I was working for other organisations where we would literally sit behind the mirror and observing how people are testing out tools and having to see the mirror and assume there are people behind it as well,
4. 4 these are mostly gone. When we looked at our own space, we definitely have a dedicated space but we never had a one-way mirror anyway. We've started to do a lot more remote research. The other issue we've always been challenged with is accessing participants across Australia. Because everyone has a way, a slightly different way of looking at property within Australia and also different markets. That's always been quite difficult for us to access all the different contexts and different ways that people are looking to property. So, that makes it an ongoing challenge for us. The tools we have been using before but there has been challenges in terms of how effective that recruitment has been and also cost prohibitive to maintain as well. So, we have been looking at reviewing all the tools we have from unmoderated to moderated and again making a dedicated improvement on that as well. Introducing remote research, almost all projects I would say in the last three to four months have remote and in-person combinations. This means we have been able to access key markets like Sydney and Brisbane, because we are based in Melbourne, with less physical travel. That also means that we can reach out to even further places, like Perth, Adelaide, with different time zones as well, in different countries we may support. We have also improved recruitment criteria where we almost enforce how we want to make sure that we reach out to different markets, consider different regions and different timeframes and time zones for specific participants. The other one is Zoom, like we are using right now for this presentation, it has been a widely used tool for the organisation. Which means not only is it going to be easy for us to start using it straight away but it is simple for most participants to access. But we haven't noted here is our stakeholders and team members that use Zoom on a daily basis that can come and observe or potential participate in notetaking as well in the process. The next learning I am going to talk about is how we are going to empower others by having better using research capabilities. So, a lot of the things that we do at REA at the moment have been trying to understand how we can free up more research capacity, so people like ourselves can have that. It is the same learnings for other organisations, how can they enable others to do their own research, mostly, for example, for testing and then have a, I would say, a strong and consistent process for them to outline briefs and enter high-quality research to inform their own stakeholders as well. So, for REA, the opportunities have been about focus to be more strategic. The designers want to do more. We want to do more of this. And also, some of the product managers that we have spoken to also want to do more discovery. But the challenge has always been that we haven't had the capability in place, nor enough researchers to help them do all that. The other challenge we've had is designers, while comfortable doing evaluative research, they have had challenges getting the process right. So we've needed to improve the way that they conduct their research across the board. The other thing is the challenge of prioritising research is often a balancing act, whether we do the requirements for more user testing, research projects, and it is a balancing act and we never had a way to work out which ones to do better. How we do it now, in setting up standards for designers to run their own research while we have template such as research briefs, criteria, modguides, note taking, research reports
5. 5 and so on to help not only get them to understand what is required but also what is standardised. With those templates, it doesn't just self-explain. We have to provide key rituals and ceremonies for quality. Research kick-offs, how do we advise them at the very start and provide feed from a retrospective project and how to do peer reviews and improve their ways of doing research with critiques as well. The other part is providing more self-serve such as research play books. It helps them to align methods and there will be clearer and stronger outcomes when they have a way of understanding basic requirements. These playbooks are not just a description, they are a set way of almost like a cookbook in terms of how do you get to that outcome? I think the outcome here is important, why research is being done and how the insights it is going to contribute to improve our customers and users' experience. I feel like a lot of self-service tools that we are trying to do is always trying to see if we can contribute to the outcomes. This is just some part of it to improve that. Research repositories are rare. So, what one of my questions I asked Benjamin just now, 12 months ago when we started doing with the 20-plus organisations we have spoken to, most of those organisations didn't have a really-well-adapted research repository in place. They are definitely, maybe in the last 12 months, set it up. But it's been a very challenging space for many organisations if they're not large enough or have enough investment into the space. The conversations we've had is pretty low, back in those days. It's a similar process with REA. We had not just repositories but where research is done in the past. What we found is people didn't know where it lived, it wasn't centralised. It is more like, I would say, a registers within silos with different teams with their own different registers which means there is a little alignment to make sure there is a single point of source of truth. And the other part is research is also stored very differently for different teams. Some people put it on to Wikis or on to different tools such as Trello, this hides and limits access when people are looking for past research and this includes people who are researchers doing research. And Benjamin talked about this as well. It is relying upon those who did the research, and most likely some of the research teams have done it, the host of the I P of the context of the past research and it does create an overhead and risk when it does happen when people do leave the organisation. So, what are we doing about it? We are actively working on a repository right now. We want to make sure that the teams can actually access it. It is still pretty much a work in progress. We haven't actually shared this with the wider organisation yet. But before we started doing that, we had to kind of really define who is it for and why do they actually need it? We've been essentially defining needs and this is a work in progress with consultation from other teams such as market research or analytics, can they join the repository as well because they are all insights in different formats. Trialling new repositories, we have been doing that, EnjoyHQ and Dovetail and integrating it for to our process. When other people do research, how do they contribute to this? Is it a step? How do we define taxonomy? How wide is the taxonomy shared? How frequently do they want to access it? We are working through it, and it is a marathon, not a sprint. The next thing I am going to talk about is governance. It is definitely a full-time job. It's clearly many, many things around operational. This is part of governance, it is part of operational. It puts a dedicated way in terms of
6. 6 understanding what we can do to ensure processes are there. We have got quality assurance. Ethics is being managed and so forth. It takes a dedicated team and person full-time to over see this. The learnings we've had from the different organisations has been large organisations, REA has strong research operations in place but many defer it being wherever the researchers are, are also risk obs people. It was similar for REA when we first looked at it. There is minimal kind of processes in place where the design committees and researchers have to struggle to manage what was agreed steps and persistent activities that took place. Recruitment was always a challenge in terms of managing with ourselves, account managers, marketing teams, to make sure we have access to what we call "customers". Which are referred to as agency roles at REA. That is often a challenging part that we always need to work through. And time for ops, a critical role and so time consuming to recruitment, planning and tools to make sure the tools across the organisation, takes a lot of our capacity. Process improvement is a key thing we need to get right. So, what are we trying to do? As I mentioned before, I feel like things at Research Brief is a critical thing we didn't do in the past. When someone does a Research Brief we want to make sure there is absolutely a brief. What that means, for example, make sure that they are doing this for really good reasons, they have clear objectives and outcomes they are hoping to achieve. Not only are they designers, but other presenters have shared in the past, just trying to validate their own designs but we want to make sure that the product teams and other stakeholders are also across the research they have shared outcomes. The common request has been completing research but we are often making sure the research hasn't also been recently done as well. It is the other thing why we do a Research Brief. Improving recruitment has been the obvious thing that we did straight away when we first tried to reset some of these processes in place for our governance. Making sure there is a consistent approach and everyone is clear and aligned with how we do this and remotely connecting with participants is the other part that we've added to this recently. Collaborating with ourselves and our account managers making sure we have increased access and they are very supportive on how we might, as ewe develop a customer panel. The other thing when we talk about having to time for this is making sure that we provide capacity for ourselves to actually do this better. One of the things that we under sell, as a community, is how much time research ops does take if we don't have dedicated team members to do this. Make sure we actually plan out the times we need to do this right. Because the last thing we want is this activity to not be achievable but it impacts quite a lot of research. We are doing this in a progressive way, improving our research framework as we go. And we're still iterating, as our team members can share. One of the most surprising things is mobile first research is on the rise. I thought at Australia Post it was a given. But talking to many organisations, they have started to focus more on mobile-first design. Unfortunately, a lot of research still desk-top based, for whatever reason. And the necessary things they need to change and also design and prototyping needs to be supported as well in order to make sure mobile-first research is thought about. It is really a different perspective. But we have also been looking at how REA has been doing it. The desktop focus is interesting for REA as well. When I first joined
7. 7 REA, there was a long period of time before we did a mobile benchmark. That was surprising to us. Since then, we have definitely prioritised that. The market has changed. This makes it a way better reason for us to make sure that we focus on this, more than half of our visits to our property portal are mobile. Whether it be an app, the browser, the consumer coming to us looking at rent and property pages is mostly mobile. The tools in the past may be limited. We didn't have enough to go around. We want to make sure it is set up, and the designers have access to the right tools to do designs and testing. So, the first thing we did, as I mentioned just previously, we kicked off mobile benchmarking last year to baseline all the core usability tasks that we've focussing on and compare to the best-in-class in the market as well. We have been able to really get a lot of buy in and making sure our designers and product teams are focussed on getting mobile-first, not only from a design perspective but also from a research perspective. Is the concepts have been coming thick and fast from a mobile-first design. That is an easier pathway for us to test mobile designs. And a lot of tools for our designers, to make sure - and instructions in how to set up mobile testing. The next thing is something we are actively still working on. Strategic prioritization. What we learned from the 2020 organisations, there has been a very difficult challenge where people haven't been prioritising for strategy. Researchers have often stagnated. The idea is how do you prioritise to ensure that the right research gets done? And this resonates very much so to what Leisa talked about earlier is to make sure that the right effort is being focussed on, the right risks, but also focus on value to the organisation. We also found with similar things at REA. So, getting good direction is something that's had. We always had a very clear purpose on how we are changing the way people experience property. But one of the things that we have been working with is we need to align, be clear to our key pillars in terms of property advertising, finance services and from a global perspective as well. The UX Research is not clear how it aligns. We have been working in the past 12 months to make sure we are prioritising all our efforts to these company strategies. The ways we have been doing is sitting down with each product area in terms of how they are planning their quarterly OKRs, managing how they might need support and then from us managing capacity and how to support them. In order for us to actually support that, we need to grow our team. So, there is only so many hours that we have, we have been progressively growing our team to make sure we can meet the demand. We are actively looking into doing that. But really looking to the future is building partnerships. The learnings from the other organisations we have spoken to and also in my past experience is in order for us to do this well we have to dedicate researchers in specific key areas where the company is very much invested into. What that means, we work out how much effort and demand there is from one particular area and we feel like if that area can support this role as a full-time researcher we will try to push for that. The partnership means that we have someone dedicated in that space for that product team, to make sure they have someone to either manage ops and then focus on strategic discovery as well. So, just to quickly summarise, there is a lot that we have learned in the past 12 months. So, we've gone to a lot more remote research and we've done
8. 8 definitely less of the lab work, but we still do that where we can. We've standardised a lot more of the tools and methods and make sure it is more consistent so we can empower other people that do research. Although, what we found 12 months ago, research repositories are rare, we still want to make sure we have a centralised space and actively working on repo ourselves. Governance is a full-time job. Operational is key to make sure the processes are paired with rituals. Mobile-first is on the rise. In order for us to do the right research based on organisations's priorities and making sure we can grow through partnerships we are actively aligned to those strategies of our organisation and making sure we grow through partnerships. These are the key takeaways we have covered before. But before I want to wrap up, I do want to have one last thing to talk about and that is establishing research ops. A strong vane, enabling better research. We have been actively trying to do this as best we can to make sure we can align and prioritise the efforts to this. So, I'm also part of the research ops committee as well. These aren't new. These have been active things we have been doing. We can enable others to do better research and also enable researchers to focus on their skill sets to have a better career path in an organisation like ours. I think I might be throwing to the questions soon but I do want to lastly thing Chris and Dan who are working with me on this presentation. Chris couldn't copresent with me on this one as we changed formats, unfortunately. And also Dan has helped with the presentation as well. And last but not least, Ren and Cam have been part of the research presentation. I've got to throw back to Steve, and thank you your time. We are hiring. Reach out to me, if you can.