Connected UX

8/9/2019 Connected UX

1/16

Connected UXbyAARRON WALTERAugust 27, 2013Published inWorkfow &

Tools,Inor!tion Ar"hite"ture,#ser $ese!r"h%13 oents

http://alistapart.com/article/connected-ux

Over the past six years, as Ive built a UX team from a solo

practice to a team of 11, Ive seen how design research can

greatly influence product development. arly on, we had

little time for customer interviews or usability tests. !e

were mostly shooting from the hip, listening to customer

support, and revising on the fly.

Illustration:

"evin #ornell

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!e now do scores of usability tests, user

interviews, and competitive analysis, and we

create detailed reports summari)ing our

findings. *ut this brought us to a new

problem+ without a way to preserve and

combine our results, our insights uic&ly

slipped into the ha)y distance as documents

got lost on a hard drive, or ignored by

someone in a different department.
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2/16

!e ended up living in a'roundhog

-ayresearch loop, as&ing the same uestions

and rarely building upon what we already

&new.

ow we need connections/a way to pull

together disparate data points, ualitative

and uantitative data, and long histories of

research into a central clearinghouse that

can be shared, searched, and maintained by

different teams. 0fter years on a research

treadmill, thats exactly what weve started

doing at ail#himp/and far from being 2ust

a data solution, open access to this

information has strengthened the

connections between teams, and supported a

general culture of inuiry.

It all started with a personal crisis.

A moment of crisis

#ustomer feedbac& streams into my inbox in

spades from a form on theail#himp

website. 3undreds of emails offer ideas for

new features or ways to ma&e things better. I

love reading them, but last summer I started

to feel overwhelmed. I was reading hundreds

of emails daily, many of which had useful

feedbac&, but werent worthy of adding to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog_Day_(film)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog_Day_(film)http://mailchimp.com/http://mailchimp.com/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog_Day_(film)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog_Day_(film)http://mailchimp.com/http://mailchimp.com/


3/16

our roadmap. aybe down the road an issue

would reach critical mass, but until then they

sat in limbo.

It was cho&ing my productivity, and ma&ing

my head spin.0 friend of minewhos helped

many people tame their inbox and prioriti)e

their wor& life recommended I simply nu&e

all of the emails and shut down the form. 4If

you cant process the information, then stop

wasting your time56 *ut my gut told me there

was value in the feedbac&7 I 2ust wasnt sure

how to use it.

In 'mail I starred the feedbac& that was

worthy of consideration later, and set up a

script to forward it to an email address

associated with an vernote account. It was

now curated and preserved in a searchable

database, which cleared my inbox/but I still

had no plan for how Id use the data.

onths went by. !hile studying trends in

email automation to inform some new

designs,*en #hestnut, co8founder and #O

of ail#himp, sent me an email late one

afternoon as&ing what we &new about how

customers use 9::8to8mail, a related

feature. !e were ma&ing plans for our

roadmap, and needed insights that would

help us rethin& both features to better serve
http://twitter.com/hotdogsladieshttp://twitter.com/benchestnuthttp://twitter.com/hotdogsladieshttp://twitter.com/benchestnut


4/16

customers. !ith little time for a detailed

study, I turned to my buc&et of feedbac& to

see if a search would reveal anything.

:imply searching for 49:: to mail6

returned ;< extremely helpful pieces of

feedbac& on the topic, each with an email

address provided when users filled out the

feedbac& form. ormally, when conducting a

study, recruiting users for interviews was li&e

fishing with a big net. !ed post something

on $witter, or maybe even use a recruiting

tool to find users that meet our criteria. It

can be very time consuming. *ut with a

database of feedbac& with email addresses,

recruiting was li&e spear fishing. !e found

2ust the right people to spea& to within

seconds.

=atterns emerged in hours, not wee&s. I

could see what people struggled with, and

how we could ma&e simple changes to

improve usability. I followed up by email

with a few customers to learn more, and was

uic&ly able to create a plan for how we

could ma&e this part of our app much better.

It was a lightbulb moment that left me

wondering what patterns might emerge if we

had more data to search.


5/16

More data please

I shared my story with my colleagues'regg

*ernstein,>enn -owns, and%ernando

'odina, each of whom had data to

contribute. 'regg moved user interview

transcripts and notes into vernote. >enn

added usability test findings, and %ernando,

'od bless him, read through more

than10,000account closing surveys to find

the ones that could tell us the most aboutwhy people close a ail#himp account. !e

were amassing a nice little collection of data

of various types.

*en once again sent us an email as&ing for

insights about a feature. 4It seems li&e more

people are as&ing for an easier way to embed

?ou$ube videos in an email. -o you guys&now if theres a trend here@6

ormally a uestion li&e this would be left

unanswered, because its not significant

enough to warrant deep investigation/but

now we could find uantitative answers in

seconds. 'regg searched our big buc&et ofdata, and sure enough there was a small

trend emerging. 411,6 'regg told *en. 411@6

*en replied. 4?up, thats how many people

have mentioned ?ou$ube video embedding
http://twitter.com/madebygregghttp://twitter.com/madebygregghttp://twitter.com/beparticularhttp://twitter.com/beparticularhttp://twitter.com/FernandoGodinahttp://twitter.com/FernandoGodinahttp://twitter.com/FernandoGodinahttp://twitter.com/madebygregghttp://twitter.com/madebygregghttp://twitter.com/beparticularhttp://twitter.com/FernandoGodinahttp://twitter.com/FernandoGodina


6/16

in feedbac&, account closings, usability tests,

and customer interviews.6

!e were already blown away by this success.*ut we &new our data pool still wasnt

showing the whole picture. !hat poc&ets of

data were out there in other corners of the

company@

Data avalanche

!e tal&ed to our support team, engineers,

data scientists, analytics fol&s, social media

people, and the email delivery team, all of

whom havelotsof valuable data. :oon large

amounts of diverse data streamed in, and the

ownership of the data pool shifted from the

UX team to the entire company. $he supportteam shared patterns theyd seen in emails

and live chats. ngineers wrote scripts that

grabbed aggregate data about popular

pathways in the app and industry

demographics of our users, and emailed

them into the database wee&ly. *ecause

'oogle 0nalytics lets you schedule emails

with custom reports, we were able to stream

in mobile device usage data and completion

rates of important wor&flow funnels. $weets,

%aceboo&, and blog comments streamed in


7/16

with even more customer feedbac&. :urvey

data, email delivery stats, industry research,

and notes from each of our app releases/we

added everything we could to the data pool

to gain an even broader perspective.

Brinin teams toether

0s weve opened our data up between teams,

interesting things have happened. =eople

who wouldnt normally have occasion forconversation are meeting regularly to

compare notes and share what theyve

learned. Our 4data nerds6 now get together

for lunch, and share stories of the pro2ects

theyre wor&ing on. -ata sharing is leading to

new collaborations we never would have

imagined.


8/16

-esign researchers collaborated with

the-esignAabto turn a months8long userstudy into aseries of beautiful posters

illustrating ail#himps customer

archetypes. 0fter a recent ma2or redesign of

the app, support and design research teams

collected feedbac& from customers, printed it

out, and tac&ed the notes underneath each

persona poster/helping us triage issues

from different customers and devise

solutions uic&ly.
http://designlab.mailchimp.com/persona-posters/http://blog.mailchimp.com/new-mailchimp-user-persona-research/http://blog.mailchimp.com/new-mailchimp-user-persona-research/http://blog.mailchimp.com/new-mailchimp-user-persona-research/http://designlab.mailchimp.com/persona-posters/http://blog.mailchimp.com/new-mailchimp-user-persona-research/http://blog.mailchimp.com/new-mailchimp-user-persona-research/http://blog.mailchimp.com/new-mailchimp-user-persona-research/


9/16

ach persona has a name and a detailed

series of traits. !hen we do customer

interviews, we store the transcripts and notes

in our big database, and tag each with the

name of a persona so we can see patterns in

user types. !hat does 40ndre6 have to say

about coding 3$A email templates@ 3ow is

40da6 reacting to the redesign@ ow we can


10/16

answer uestions li&e this by searching with

both tags and &eywords.

$hough were not a company that struggleswith political drama, close collaboration

between teams certainly helps bring our

people together and builds respect for the

wor& were all doing.

!eve found that when people are given the

opportunity and the platform to share theirdata or do something new with existing data,

they feel pride &nowing their wor& is

valuable to others. It feels good to see

different areas of the company benefiting

from the wor& youre doing. veryone wants

their wor& to be valued and appreciated.

Ever!one is a researcher

:haring the vernote account with everyone

in the company who wants access has

encouraged ambient learning scenarios, in

which people in all departments are

browsing through our research andstumbling upon insights they never &new

existed. 0s he was wor&ing on a new iO:

interface,:tephen artin, a designer in our

obileAab team, was curious which stats are
http://twitter.com/stephenmartinhttp://twitter.com/stephenmartin


11/16

most important to customers loo&ing at

campaign reports. 3e did a uic& search in

vernote, and stumbled upon a chart from

our BC1D survey sent to thousands of

customers. 3e could see a clear ran&ing of

the stats that customers use the most. 3e

used this data to create a poster showing the

hierarchy, which helped him ma&e smarter

design decisions driven by user research.


12/16

obile designer :tephen artin turned discovered data into informed design.

ow that everyone has access to the

data,everyoneis a researcher.


13/16

Re"lar insiht o"tp"ts

ven though the power of #onnected UX is

ama)ing, its easy for insights to languish in

obscurity unless youre regularly pulling

them out and sharing them with your team.

9ather than wait for a pro2ect to provide this

motivation, every other wee& we compose an

email that goes to the entire company

sharing interesting stats and broad trends.

!e rotate authorship to ma&e sure many

perspectives are represented. ach email

concludes with an invitation to start

contributing data/or simply browse out of

curiosity.

#t$s not the tool that matters!e tried a lot of different solutions before

landing on vernote as our data hub. !i&is

and custom databases always seemed too

technical, and were bound to alienate some

people who would love to contribute or 2ust

lur&. ?our organi)ation might find a simple

-rupal install or a custom database wor&s

best. $he storage tool really doesnt matter,

so long as it helps you adhere to these basic

principles+


14/16

EA%& #N' EA%& OUT

0ny hindrance, no matter how small,

preventing anyone from contributing or

browsing data will &ill the process. =eople

shouldnt have to learn new systems to be

involved. #ontributing data via email is

perfect, because it reuires no additional

learning. Using a consumer software solution

is also advantageous because many people

will have experience with it. liminate all

barriers to participation to get lots of people

involved.

UB#(U#TOU% ACCE%%

!e all &now thatmobile devices are

outselling =#sand extending the des&top

experience into every part of our lives. *y

ma&ing your data accessible across multiple

devices, youll find insights will happen more

routinely/in the line at the grocery store, in

meetings, or on the couch in the evening.

Ubiuity of access ma&es ambient learning

easier.

DATA )OR E*ER&ONE AND E*ER&ONE$%DATA

'ive everyone in your company access to the

data and diligently invite contributions. Its

important that the data is open and shared
http://www.forbes.com/sites/benedictevans/2012/12/31/the-end-of-the-beginning-mobile-blows-past-pcs-so-what/http://www.forbes.com/sites/benedictevans/2012/12/31/the-end-of-the-beginning-mobile-blows-past-pcs-so-what/http://www.forbes.com/sites/benedictevans/2012/12/31/the-end-of-the-beginning-mobile-blows-past-pcs-so-what/http://www.forbes.com/sites/benedictevans/2012/12/31/the-end-of-the-beginning-mobile-blows-past-pcs-so-what/


15/16

so teams are encouraged to collaborate.

%rom this collaboration youll find the most

mind8boggling insights you wouldve

otherwise never discovered.

%ilo +"stin

*y connecting disparate data, youll discover

trends in seemingly disconnected things.

$hats exactly what has us so excited. !ere

finding patterns between departments, andamong customers. !ere brea&ing down the

silos that separate data streams and the

teams that manage them.

Also in Issue 381

Seeing the Elephant: Defragmenting User Research

by Aou 9osenfeld

%rom the insights were gleaning come new,

research8driven strategies for our company.

$hats new for us, and its completely

changed the way we wor& in 2ust a few short

months. Its made us a smarter company and

has helped us create more informed design

strategies. !e no longer lose research, and

were all more aware of the collective

&nowledge we possess. !hat were building

is more than 2ust connected data/its a

connected company.
http://alistapart.com/article/seeing-the-elephant-defragmenting-user-researchhttp://alistapart.com/article/seeing-the-elephant-defragmenting-user-research


16/16

$he experience has left me wondering, are

other companies also ta&ing a connected

approach to research@ !hat insights are you

discovering, and what tools are you using@

-o you have a story to share@Id love to hear

from you.

About the Author

Aarron Walter

Aarron Walteris the Director of User Experience at MailChimp, where he strives to make software more

human. Aarron is the author ofDesigning for Emotionfrom A Book Apart.Aarron taught esign at colleges in

the U! an Europe for nearl" a ecae, an speaks at conferences aroun the worl. #is esign guiance has

helpe the White #ouse, the U! Department of !tate, an o$ens of startups an venture capitalists. #e tweets

a%out esign uner the moniker&aarron on 'witter.

!RE "R! #$%S AU#$!R

(ersonalit" in Design

Brighter #ori$ons for We% Eucation

)ina%ilit", *rphan of the We% Design +nustr"
http://aarronwalter.com/contacthttp://aarronwalter.com/contacthttp://alistapart.com/author/awalterhttp://aarronwalter.com/http://mailchimp.com/http://www.abookapart.com/products/designing-for-emotionhttp://www.abookapart.com/products/designing-for-emotionhttp://www.abookapart.com/products/designing-for-emotionhttp://abookapart.com/http://abookapart.com/http://twitter.com/aarronhttp://twitter.com/aarronhttp://alistapart.com/article/personality-in-designhttp://alistapart.com/article/brighter-horizons-for-web-educationhttp://alistapart.com/article/findabilityorphanhttp://aarronwalter.com/contacthttp://aarronwalter.com/contacthttp://alistapart.com/author/awalterhttp://aarronwalter.com/http://mailchimp.com/http://www.abookapart.com/products/designing-for-emotionhttp://abookapart.com/http://twitter.com/aarronhttp://alistapart.com/article/personality-in-designhttp://alistapart.com/article/brighter-horizons-for-web-educationhttp://alistapart.com/article/findabilityorphan

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