My journey to democratize research at Miro

This series of articles aims to share the value and process I followed to enable multiple product teams to conduct and consume user research findings. I decided to write them as I found myself repeating the story of how the Miro Research team got to where we are to multiple researchers from my network. I hope you, as a UX researcher or product leader interested in conducting user research, find the process I followed to democratize research at Miro inspiring.

Why is democratizing research important?

Democratizing research is all about empowering anyone in the organization to create and consume user research insights to make more informed decisions. To do that efficiently and effectively, we leverage the researcher’s process, tools, and mindset.

There’s been a healthy debate around this topic among the UX research community.

• “Creating an army of (non)researchers” was my first article sharing the process I followed at Uber to train cross-functional teams to execute a research study
• “Democratization is our Job,” written by Bezoh Sirjani, highlighted how researchers can facilitate the inevitable contact between users and product and sales teams to be more effective

Two of the most inspiring research leaders I’ve had in my career argued against this movement of democratizing research.

• “Escape Velocity: Finding Our Path in the Next Decade,” written by
  Molly Stevens
  for her talk at UXR Conf, aimed to elevate the researcher’s profession as specialists
• “Undemocratising research,” written by
  Saswati Saha Mitra
  , highlighted that the time and effort required to enable other functions wasn’t worth the value delivered to the organization

Both Molly and Saswati highlighted how the training and expertise of a researcher set us apart as experts to gather and analyze the data gathered during research, especially for larger companies and complex problems. Their points are brilliant arguments to reduce the risks of unstructured conversations with customers being labeled as “research” to inform business decisions with a low level of competence (Dunning Kruger effect) and to make a case to scale a team of research experts. But hiring takes time and resources that smaller organizations may not have.

Reflect on the following:

• What is the size of your research team and how many of the research needs end up unfulfilled?
• What problem space are you delving into and how complex is it for a non-expert to investigate it?
• What type of insights does your organization need and who could be equipped to deliver them?

What they both missed, as Bezoh mentioned in his article, is that we (researchers) can’t simply stop people from “talking to users” and calling it “research.” No matter how deeply we choose to specialize, unlike writing code or creating designs, the barrier to shipping a research experience is almost non-existent. So we can build walls around and try to stop people from doing what they think is research, or we can roll up our sleeves and get involved to make sure that these activities adhere to some level of rigor and that the insights can be trusted. Conversations with users are already happening regardless of our investment to empower others and we, as expert researchers, can facilitate and guide that process. And to keep building on Molly’s analogy of data science, people do learn how to write SQL queries, pull up information, do light analysis, and come to some conclusions. No one is under the illusion that this makes them a data scientist. Similarly, “talking to people” doesn’t make someone a researcher, but with the help of a researcher they can at least engage in this sort of activity with a higher degree of rigor.

While I certainly see a difference between a researcher and a person who talks to users, I firmly believe that enabling others to get more out of their interactions with users and customers is valuable for any organization to build user empathy and make more informed decisions.

Testimonial video of how Mironeers practice empathy and the value they find in doing that

If you do too, here’s the journey I followed at Miro when I established the user research practice from scratch.

Part 1: Understanding the org and the research needs

When I joined Miro around a year ago as the first UX researcher at the company, the first thing I did was an internal research to understand the status of research and answer questions like:

• Who is already doing research?
• How is research being done?
• What are the most salient needs from those conducting research?
• How satisfied are those who consume research insights? What are they missing?

I interviewed and shadowed internal stakeholders that were generating and/or consuming research insights. I quickly learned that research was practiced by multiple teams at the company and in my first company-wide presentation I summarized the problem statement as follows:

“As a Mironeer, I find planning and conducting research time consuming. I lack confidence to do it well.”

I used quotes from my internal interviews to communicate that there was an opportunity to improve the research work at Miro on three levels:

1. Increasing efficiency by creating rituals and a research process: “What’s our research process? I don’t know.”
2. Leveraging tools to operationalize research: “It’s time consuming to recruit users. I need to spend a week doing interviews to validate my prototypes”
3. Promoting a research culture to establish the right mindset: “We need to ask WHY a lot more often” and “I need to understand what methods are best suited for which questions”

Doing this internal research helped me read the team needs related to conducting research, build my first allies, and define a list of potential initiatives to contribute as I established the research team.

Together with the Head of Design,

, we prioritized the initiatives that could help improve the efficiency, mindset, and quality of the research. I used a “tools over rules” slogan that implied that those conducting research at Miro could ask for help and guidance (see part 2 of this article) but they didn’t need my approval to conduct their research. That way I ensured I didn’t become the bottleneck in the decision-making process at a hyper-growth stage. This decision was a good tradeoff at the time, but now that we’ve started scaling the team, we’re implementing the right checks and balances to make sure that all research meets a minimum quality bar.

Part 2: Creating research rituals and a research process

After introducing the UXR function at Miro and sharing “how to work with the Research team” (just me at the time), I made myself available to Designers, PMs, Data Analytics and Marketing teams that needed answers to make informed decisions.

The 4 stages of the research process executed by non-researchers

Stage 1: The research request

Requests did not take time to come in. Once they reach out for support, I share with them the following message in Slack:

“I’d love to help you! To keep things organized, can you please complete this form? It will guide you to book 30min with the UX Research team“

The form covers the basic information they need to prepare to start a research plan:

• Intro: Let us know how Miro UX Research can support you with your research study. To keep things structured, please fill out the form. It will make you think about the research and save us both time ahead of our meeting.
• Q1: What problem space are you looking into? What are your research questions?
• Q2: What (product) decisions are you hoping to make with the research findings?
• Q3: What type of support do you (ideally) need?
  Help me design the research
  Review my research questions
  Observe my first research session & give feedback
  Execute the entire research
  Other
• Q4: Please submit the link to your research plan. Here is a template that will guide you to think through 4 simple steps. Could you try making a copy of this template and spending some minutes to fill it out?
• Ending: That is all, thank you! If you want to further discuss your research needs, let’s have a 30-min meeting [Calendly link]

This form introduced just a tiny friction to ensure that the research request was complete enough and worthy enough to dedicate a few minutes to fill it out. That way reaching out to a researcher for support wasn’t “free” and a shared ground was created ahead of the meeting.

As a researcher, think twice how much you can help others and what’s the response time that you can promise your broader teams in order to keep a healthy balance of doing the research work and supporting others to do it.

Stage 2: The research review meeting

In the next 24–48 hours we would meet to have a 30-minutes Research review meeting. I come prepared with questions and feedback after having understood the project background and their goals. The meeting focuses on clarifying the open questions they have and refining the research goals. We tend to end with clear next steps that build confidence in the non-researcher to take the first steps.

The support does not end in that one single meeting, but my level of involvement varies depending on the confidence level they have and the complexity of the study.

If the conversation did not cover the basics of the research plan — research goals, research questions and recruitment criteria — I tend to follow-up in Slack with the following message:

“The 1st step to do this study properly is coming up with a good research plan 📃

I created an easy-to-use Miro board that will guide you to think through 4 simple steps. Could you try making a copy of this template and spending some minutes to fill it out?

https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_lzC4Ci4=/“

Sometimes, I would asynchronously review their discussion guide or survey design. Occasionally, I would join their first moderated session to provide feedback on their moderation style and give specific feedback into moments they asked leading questions or left data on the table. The more times the non-researcher goes through this process, the less handholding is needed.

I lean in more, or even take on the study completely, when the research request is too complex or comprehensive or a major or high-risk decision is at stake. In those cases, an expert researcher or research agency provides a more rigorous process and therefore more trusted insights.

Stage 3: The research evaluation form

After the support was provided, I automatized a follow-up email in Calendly to request an evaluation of the research support. If that did not get answered, I would follow-up in Slack with the following message:

“I wanted to ask you for feedback on how the support from UXR went by simply answering 3-questions in this form”

This helps me understand if the support was enough or felt short and what to improve. I got great quotes to later make a case to hire more dedicated researchers:

• “Edu gave really great advice and guidance to help with the initiative we were working on. His expertise was invaluable in giving us tools and frameworks we could use.” Tishia Que, Product Designer
• “Edu supported the creation of the PSAT survey end-to-end. He not only helped define WSLL but also looked into a question set-up and user data. I felt supported and overall the collaboration led to much better user research than it could have been without his support. Thanks a lot for your support Edu!” Sultan Seitbekov, Product Manager
• “Practical and actionable recommendations that were given — I felt much better about the quality of the survey I sent out to users.” Lena Shenkarenko, Product Marketing Manager
• “Edu is very structured, experienced and fast. In the clustering initiative I asked him for help to revise questions, but he went above and beyond. He pushed me in narrowing my research goals. Then he worked with me to understand the best method for research, and re-drafted the questions based on this.” Julia Rudge, Product Manager

Stage 4: Documenting findings in the insight repository

The last part of our research process is to document their key insights in the research repository. This part does not come naturally at first, so I encourage them via Slack with a motivating message:

“I’m so looking forward to learning about your research findings. As you move towards writing the report, I’d appreciate if you could capture your main takeaways following the structure of this research report template. This way it will get broader visibility (outside of your direct team) and be used by other colleagues.”

Leveraging tools to operationalize research at Miro

The process to request and plan research at Miro involves multiple tools: Slack, Typeform and Miro. To recruit users, we rely on email invites, Calendly or UserTesting. During and after the research is completed, we use Miro and Confluence.

Calendly and UserTesting to quickly recruit users

One of the bottlenecks to conduct more research was the time it took Mironeers to recruit users. We embraced the tools to make the recruitment and fieldwork process easier. With this shorter time to recruit participants and conduct research, Miro designers evolved their attitude to research “Now I launch an unmoderated test in the evening and get results next morning”

Slack to disseminate research findings

At Miro, Slack is where the conversation happens. Many decisions and informations are communicated in Slack without requiring a face to face meeting. Therefore, the research findings too have to be in Slack. We use a dedicated #product_user_research channel were different teams communicate their intentions to do research and their top research findings. That way we make ongoing research work more transparent and enable the possibility to invite additional observers of the fieldwork or recipients of the research findings.

Miro to make the analysis visible and transparent

We drink our own champagne when it comes to using Miro for research activities. As I shared in a recent virtual event “How UX Researchers can get the most out of Miro”, there are multiple advantages when a researcher uses Miro to plan, take notes during the fieldwork, conduct the analysis and communicate the research findings. Yes, Miro can be a presentation tool too, but most importantly Miro makes it so easy to create interactive workshops that make your research findings easier to digest and act upon.