People say that User Research is important, so you talk to your Users. Then what?

The crux of User Research is the interpretation and application of its results to your product strategy.

Here's a recent case study for RewardNation

#buildinpublic #uxdesign #productdesign

Our product strategy is to be a self-serve B2B platform, growing in the same way as @SlackHQ and @airtable; through employee evangelism.

However, our #ux and design was at odds with that strategy and hindered it.

How did we find this out?

When we did User Research, our Onboarding and Set Up process was praised by Users as simple and intuitive.

Users showed no signs of difficulty in using the interface and breezed through the process.

But few converted to a Paid Account.

Here's a few screenshots!

We wondered why and did a replay of all our User interviews.

#buildinpublic tip: Always record your User interviews so you can replay them!

Tools like @loom and even good old @Zoom offer this.

Turns out, a recurring comment kept being said at a particular screen, which we did not pay attention to:

"I'll need to get final budget approval from boss / finance."

The particular screen in question:

Here's the thing we didn't realise:
- Our software was cheap, just $1 per User
- The budget to claim Rewards, was expensive, at $20 per User, 20x the cost!
- At company level scale, this goes up to 1000s of $$$
- This goes beyond a typical employee's budget approval

On the surface, the app seemed to work and Users understood how to use it.

But we failed at a basic #uxdesign principle, which is to consider human interactions that happen off-screen.

Our software's cost was easily within a typical employee's power to adopt and pay for.

But the budget to claim Rewards was not, our Users got stuck gaining approval from boss / finance, and so did not convert to Paid.

To implement a bottom's up adoption strategy like @SlackHQ and @airtable, employees need to hold sufficient decision-making authority to adopt the solution, without raising it up to higher management.

We'll be removing the need to ask for budget in our next iteration.

#MVP

Hope our mistake helps others avoid pitfalls in future! #buildinpublic

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