Written by Lindsay Derby, Design Lead @ HubSpot

As a product designer embarking on a new project, the blank slate can be intimidating. Over the past year, we have taken a research-driven approach to steer the direction of the project. Without a dedicated researcher on the team, I used my user-centered design approach to build understanding of customer needs and empathy for their pain points. This has laid the foundation for our approach to the project as we approach the public beta phase.

Research artifact used to organize findings and keep stakeholders informed on the process.

Building empathy and basic understanding 

The first and most important thing to establish is understanding who we are building this feature for. There are a few key takeaways I needed to establish before any design work could get started:

• Who will be using this feature?
• Why do they need it?
• What jobs will be done with this feature?
• What is painful about the way they are currently doing these jobs?

Working with our product partners, we were able to establish a part of the market and target user types who we believed would most likely need this feature. The first step was finding these people to talk to. 

We worked our LinkedIn networks and reached out to existing customers who matched this persona profile to set up initial user interviews. Unlike usability testing, we had nothing at this stage to show them. Rather, we had a list of questions to help us understand how they do their jobs and identify important pain points, needs, and potential use cases for this feature concept. With these discovery interviews we learned how they currently worked so we could decide how to improve their workflow and add value with our feature. 

After holding one-on-one calls with about 10 potential users, we felt confident in some major themes and takeaways to push further. 

Quantitative Data

We needed hard data to support the qualitative insights we were learning on these calls. A part of this was done for us with our UXR team’s foundational research into the target persona. What we needed now was to understand if the general target user would think about tasks and priorities in the same ways as the customers and people we knew. Those familiar with our product have an implicit bias and, so far, we had a small sample size. 

In order to add a little more validity to the feature list we were quickly developing, we decided to deploy an unmoderated survey to reach a wider audience. 

We asked questions aimed at uncovering ways the general persona works, how they measure certain data or performance metrics; test the assumptions we have, and invite them to prioritize and add features and tasks we had not yet thought of. 

The results of this survey were very insightful, questions as we now had statistics to back up the patterns in which our target persona works and operates. This added confidence to our design decisions and helped us decide on certain use cases to prioritize.

Design Thinking Workshops

The next phase of the project was a bit more hands-on, but still very much in the pre-design phase. We invited a small number of users who we believed would be ideal users of this feature. The workshops focused on taking the learned insights and assumptions from our calls and organizing them into ways that will most effectively serve this group. Goals of this exercise were to: 

• Validate what information is needed in the experience and how users prioritize it
• Pressure test use cases we learned in our interviews and with our initial assumptions
• Gain deeper empathy and insights into how users accomplish daily tasks

I chose 3 time-boxed workshop activities each targeted at accomplishing different parts of these goals.

• How might we
  This exercise challenges participants to reframe challenges and prompt creative solutions. We start by identifying a specific problem statement and transforming it into open-ended questions that inspire brainstorming and ideation. 
• Prioritization ladder
  This exercise helps prioritize ideas and align on the best course of action. It involves listing solutions and options on a ladder, with the most preferred at the top and least at the bottom. We collaboratively discussed and moved options up or down.
• Co-design activity
  This is where designers collaborate with end-users in the early development of solutions. It involves bringing diverse perspectives together to brainstorm, co-create, and iterate on ideas towards a shared goal. 

Workshop activities conducted in Figjam

Competitive Research

By this point in the project, we had a pretty good idea about what kinds of things our feature would need to include to satisfy the user needs and accomplish the needed tasks. This meant we could take a look at how other tools on the market attempted to solve similar problems. 

We used foundational market knowledge from our UXR teams and product leaders to direct the search. After identifying a few competitor products that aimed to solve similar user problems, we evaluated each on market positioning, key features, pricing, and target audience.

The goal was to make sure we included table-stakes features our customers would expect in this type of feature, learn from how others solved this problem, and ensure we were differentiating ourselves in the market. 

Concept Testing

Through each of our discovery research exercises, we compiled themes and learnings that helped shape our approach to the solution. At this point, we felt ready to explore some early design concepts and get them in front of customers! For me, this is always the most exciting part and opens the door to so many valuable insights. 

Using Figma, I designed a lightweight prototype of the feature populated with placeholder data. In this phase, the goals were to: 

• Expose initial solutions to users to gain feedback and refine the design
• Identify knowledge gaps, wish list items, and unresolved pain points

This initial feedback was critical in shaping the direction of the rest of the project. We pressed for crucial clues by asking questions and observing how the user interacted with the prototype, prompting them to speak aloud as they moved through the experience. We looked for first impressions, where they gravitated to first, what pieces of information they missed or ignored, and anything that seemed frustrating or confusing.

Concept testing worked for several weeks on a “design, test, iterate” cycle. We would make small changes based on feedback, expose it to more users, and refine based on what we learned.

Design Thinking Process

Bring on the code

At this late discovery phase of the project, we were confident in many parts of the design and ready to get an MVP into the hands of customers for further feedback. At this point, we needed users interacting with the feature beyond what a prototype could provide. They needed to interact with the small details and see the views populated with their own data. 

We brought in the engineering team to scope out the project and agreed on which features we wanted to ship first. 

After we had working code ready to go, we invited a small group of users to participate in a private beta. We held unboxing calls with many of these people to once again see how they interacted, but this time with working software. We then instituted a multi-pronged feedback collection strategy to help us collect learnings during the private beta. This included: 

• In-app feedback loops
  We introduced “helpful/not helpful” microinteractions at key points in the design to track how users perceived the information we were serving them asynchronously 
• Analytics
  We added tracking to key interaction points in the design to see which parts of the feature users were interacting with and which were not being used. We were able to track this using Amplitude dashboards
• Contextual usability testing
  We continued scheduling calls to observe users and add qualitative context to the quantitative data we were now receiving. Unboxing calls provided first impressions and periodic check-ins allowed us to see how ‌users were enjoying the feature as they got used to it.

In app microinteractions provide a constant asynchronous feedback loop

At this point, we are building velocity with feedback and continuing to make our MVP as impactful as possible. We have identified success criteria that will indicate when it is time to move into the next stage and add more to the new product feature. We are targeting next quarter for public beta testing where the feedback will come in even more! 

Final thoughts

In wrapping up, the journey of a product designer diving into a new project can feel pretty overwhelming. But by taking a research-driven mindset and a dedication to truly understanding ‌users, things start falling into place. From those initial user interviews and surveys to the creative design thinking workshops and concept testing, each step has played a key role in shaping where this project is headed. By bringing users into the design process and constantly tweaking based on their feedback, the roadmap ahead looks promising and we're feeling pretty good about heading towards the public beta phase with a commitment to delivering a valuable and impactful solution to users.

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