product development at nerdwallet: why user research is pivotal

Product development at NerdWallet: Why user research is pivotal

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Jeff Gurr

Head of User Research, NerdWallet

UserTesting’s on demand customer insights platform enables companies to create powerful products and exceptional customer experiences.

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Jeff Gurr Head of User Research, NerdWallet

Jeff Gurr works as the Head of User Research at NerdWallet. Prior to joining NerdWallet, he worked in Global Development and Corporate Strategy for Disney and at design consultancies, IDEO and Continuum. At NerdWallet, Jeff is focused on infusing the product development process with user research and insights.

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Product Development at NerdWallet Why user research is pivotal

March 28, 2017

©2017 NerdWallet — Confidential and Proprietary

We talking to users

In 2016…

1200 300 usertesting.com tests

(not just usability – generative and evaluative)

in-person or phone sessions

20+ days with our

customers


User Research at NerdWallet

Me.

Twitter: @jgurr LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jgurr/

Thank you to the team past and present!




Our mission at NerdWallet

Providing clarity for all of life’s financial decisions.



What is NerdWallet?

Reviews Marketplaces

Best of Lists Tools & Apps



How can user research create impact?

•  Increased understanding & empathy of the customer

•  Financial results

Team Structure

Research Effectiveness

Partnership with other disciplines

•  Building a complementary team •  From service org to embedded in pods

•  Overcoming recruiting challenges •  Learning to concept test for NerdWallet

•  Understanding the user’s financial context •  The importance of financial fidelity

•  Building a testing mentality •  Design Sprints as a tool for team alignment and

speed •  Weaponize non-researchers •  Participation is essential for PMs and PDs

Impact



Team Structure


User Research at NerdWallet: Team Structure

Positioning within NerdWallet: from service org to embedded

From: Project Based To: Embedded

Product, Engineering & Design PODS

User Research Team

PROJECTS

Credit Cards Investing Mortgages

Credit Cards

PM PD xEng UR

How is user research positioned to be effective within your team structures?


User Research at NerdWallet: Team Structure

Building a complementary team

Analogy: a golf team

•  Team works mainly autonomously, but comes together to share best practices and help with research execution

•  Each member brings a unique research skill to improve the team collectively

•  When you’re in the business of ideas and insights > diversity is a HUGE advantage

Is the make-up of your team increasing or decreasing effectiveness?



Research Effectiveness


User Research at NerdWallet: Research Effectiveness

Overcoming recruiting challenges

Common user path on NerdWallet:

Search NerdWallet Partner Site

Where do you recruit people to speak with during this flow? •  Look-a-likes (UserTesting panel is

very rich and helpful here)

•  With partner cooperation

•  Through Facebook and other ad retargeting (very cost efficient)

Do you have a challenge accessing the right users to speak with? What creative ways can you use to find them?



What makes for a ”great” concept test at NerdWallet?

Two major learnings:

1. Financial fidelity is CRITICAL 2. Understanding user’s financial context is essential

For the type of work you do, what elements of testing are important?

•  Users have a very hard time relating to financial information that is not their own

•  This mean when we are testing dashboards or personalized recommendation > high financial fidelity (their own data) is very important

•  Test results (especially on user testing) without the context of the user’s financial situation were very difficult to interpret

•  UserTesting pro-tip: ask questions before the test to understand the user context for that experience



UserTesting Pro-Tips: the “before we begin” questions UserTesting script for testing our personal loan marketplace

Use ”before we begin” questions to get better context about the tester’s situation

We always ask ourselves, what experience has this user had that they are an expert in? How can we get them to tell us those stories?



Partnership with other disciplines


User Research at NerdWallet: Partnership with other disciplines

Building a testing mentality

Does your organization have a thinking or testing mentality? Why?

“We are going to be 50+% wrong, so be wrong fast!” Very difficult to overcome “rationalization tendency”: I’m smart, I can solve this problem. Help teams remember, when creating something new: •  100s/1000s of micro decisions

o  Some implicit based on experience or design conventions o  Some explicit based on expertise

•  Each of these individual decisions are right (“our best current guess”) •  It is the combination of these decisions into an experience that might be wrong

(“doesn’t work as intended for the user”)



Design Sprints as a tool for team building and speed

How could design sprints help your teams?

•  NerdWallet is a matrixed organization, which has many benefits but also means lots of meeting

•  To overcome the lack of focused time, design sprints led by the user research team have become a valuable tool

•  Sprints allow for the team to deeply explore a problem and create a great opportunity for team building



Working with Product Managers and Product Designers

How can you increase participation in research?

•  PARTICIAPTION – strong belief: “Easier to facilitate insight, than transfer insight.” o  Having Product Managers, Product Designers and Engineers participate in research is the

easiest way to facilitate insights o  No amount of debrief or synthesize makes up for being there

•  Tactics: o  Make it part of the team’s sprint process (this is one of the benefits of our embedded

model) o  Make participation an expectation - some PODs have implemented an expectation of

“customer hours”, a requirement for every team member to spend with customers



Make research tools self-serve

Who in your organization would benefit from basic research skills?

customers

Writers & Editors

Business Operations

Analytics

Many teams at NerdWallet circle our customer:

With limited resources how can we get teams close to the customer?

•  Teach them the basic skills of research (UserTesting is great for this)

•  Work with them to construct, analyze and synthesize user feedback

•  Find champions and adopters on these teams to showcase and socialize results

•  Results help adoption > everyone is looking to improve their metrics

We’re Hiring!



Passionate about helping people with their finances

Curiosity to dig into very irrational and human problems

Apply @ https://www.nerdwallet.com/careers Or reach out to me: [email protected]


Ouser Research at NerdWallet

Questions?

product development at nerdwallet: why user research is pivotal

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