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We need to deliver UX research assets to the business, not store them in a repository
When I entered the field of user experience research in 2021, research repositories were top of mind. As a former librarian (and ethnographer), I had found my niche! Research teams were having trouble finding past research within their organizations, which led to repeated studies and duplicated efforts. I was happy to see that the solution was a library, or “repository”.
Tools like Airtable, Confluence and Sharepoint were often customized for use as repositories. And beginning around 2015, repository tools like EnjoyHQ, Condens, and Dovetail came onto the market. These tools were not just research libraries — they helped UX teams track their research studies, analyze their insights, and organize their outputs. Already, ‘the repository” had multiple functions beyond simply storing research.
As time went on, UX research repositories became impossible to define. Everyone’s repository looked different, and had different purposes and functionalities — indeed the term “repository” had gone through the process of semantic diffusion (when a term is coined with a specific definition, but its meaning weakens as its usage widens). Teams started calling their repositories “insights hubs” and “research libraries” in an effort to be more focused and descriptive.
The problem was that these tools didn’t effectively address a larger, looming problem: UX research was sorely underutilized for product development decisions. While repository tools did help researchers organize their assets, decision-makers like product managers, designers and executives were unlikely search a UX research repository for answers to their product development questions. Poor adoption became a huge reason why repositories failed. In a survey of 400 UX professionals, Nielsen Norman found that over 50% of research repositories had “fair” or “poor” adoption rates. If a repository isn’t used by an organization, its business value is pretty low.
Since 2022, UX has been in a state of extreme flux and UX practitioners are at a crossroads. The looming problem about research visibility I mentioned above? It’s now front-and-center. Thought leaders like Jake Burghardt are diving into the problem space — he writes, “even as tech organizations tout their use of ‘data’ in decision making, much of their essential research languishes in low-engagement archives, failing to drive what’s next.”
Clearly, we need to re-think our consideration of the research repository, as it exists today. We need strategy and tooling that supports the delivery of UX research assets to decision makers. The repository tools we have today typically don’t achieve this goal.
So how do we achieve the goal of successful delivery of UX research to product decision makers? First, we need to start talking about UX research assets as business assets, not simply “deliverables”. Let’s take a closer look at two tangible assets that UX research produces: customer journey maps and personas.
Personas are a powerful tool to focus design and development efforts on the users of a product or service. Rather than using a set of statistics to describe a user segment, user researchers create a fictional person who embodies the behavior and motivations of a user segment.
As Aurora Harley explains in her article for Nielsen Norman, personas can act as guides when working with outside agencies on things like participant recruitment and customer journey mapping (see below). As time goes on, personas can be refined using analytics tools — making them living documents that have ongoing value to the business.
The value of personas extends far beyond design and development. The business benefits of well-crafted personas include an improved product-market fit, more targeted and effective marketing efforts, increased user satisfaction, and ultimately — significant competitive advantage.
A customer journey map is a visual representation of the process a customer goes through to accomplish a goal. The map is based on a scenario and features a narrative of the actions of the customer, including their mindset and emotions. The map will also include actionable insights, and opportunities for improvement. Good journey maps are based on customer research, not simply putting oneself in a customer’s shoes. Customer journey maps can be used to align teams on customer experience — rather than each team relying on their own siloed data. When teams are aligned, real decision-making can take place.
Dave Seaton, founder of Seaton CX, creates customer journey maps that ladder up to the business goals of his clients. “When we deliver the journey map, stakeholders are going to be able to make better business decisions. Whether it’s, ‘do I focus my efforts on this product feature? Or fixing this product or integrating with some other partner in the ecosystem?’ The customer journey map provides that insight so the client can make better business decisions and achieve those goals” (pc, 11.18.2024).
Successful journey maps and personas are products of user research with clear business benefits. Without them, businesses who create products and services for customers are essentially “flying blind” — or at the very least, experiencing a lot of customer churn.
As I pointed out above, it is an unfortunately common occurrence that UX research teams spend time and effort setting up a research repository, only to find that stakeholders don’t engage with it. The result is that repository tools can inadvertently silo UX research.
This is worth repeating: unless 1) all stakeholders and decision makers have access to the repository and 2) they fully adopt it, the tool has not achieved the goal of increasing the visibility and usage of UX research.
While UX research is certainly presented and shared by the teams who produce it, this singular method of delivery is not enough. Stakeholders may be enthusiastic about research findings at a read-out, but that enthusiasm is quickly buried by the mountain of other responsibilities and information in their day-to-day. So how do we ensure that UX business assets stay top of mind?
- Understand your stakeholders
- Set up your strategy
- For tooling, think beyond the usual suspects
The first step is to understand the stakeholders. What are their priorities? How do they work? What tools do they use on a daily basis? Erika Hall writes about interviewing stakeholders in Chapter 4 of her book Just Enough Research. Talking to stakeholders not only gives you a window into their day-to-day — you can better understand where research sits on their list of organizational priorities.
With this information in hand, create a strategy in which research insights (and assets) are delivered to stakeholders — they should never have to “go hunting” for them.
If you use tooling, it should be second nature to use and present information clearly and concisely, so that users find answers to their questions quickly and easily. A traditional research repository may not fit the bill in this case. Perhaps what we really need right now is a “research delivery platform” — a truly self-service library, tailored to what our stakeholders are searching for.