Weeknote 6: User research and summer holidays!
I’m guilty of not writing weeknotes for 2 weeks. But I’m back, and that’s what counts. That said, this is going to be REALLY short! I’m on annual leave from 5:30 pm today for 2 weeks, and the list of things I need to get done is epic!
My focus for H2 is to drive user research and feedback. And that is where my head has been all week. I like to think of research as when we reach out to users, and feedback as when users reach out to us. We need a strategy for each of these.
In my humble opinion, there are few things more important than listening to our users.
Aptitude recently undertook a large piece of client research, which I helped to analyse. Based on the insight from this, each area of the business has been asked to prioritise a couple of impactful things we can deliver in the short term (3-6 months). Nothing says “We hear you” more than acting on research results.
Here’s the word cloud and sentiment analysis from the research I analysed:
Based on what we heard, the UX team will aim to deliver on the following in the next 3-6 months:
You said our Aptitude Revenue Recognition product was too complicated, so we will implement digital adoption software to help with complex and less frequently performed tasks.
You expressed that we don't understand the nuances of how you use our products, so we will implement a feedback tool into our cloud products to gather your thoughts and suggestions.
Step 1 - I also reached out to Userlane (our selected digital adoption platform vendor) this week about implementing their product on AREV. I hope that by mid-late October we’ll have our first few user guides created, and our users will feel the difference. I'm really excited to get to work on this.
Step 2 - Feedback tool. It is so important to gather feedback because this will enable us to set a baseline measurement on metrics such as customer satisfaction or net promoter score. Only when we have this baseline, can we start to measure how effective our work is. The sooner we begin gathering feedback the better! I've found a tool called Usabilla who I'm exploring in more detail.
Feedback is great because:
In other ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT news, we have made a job offer for a Junior UI Designer role and I can’t wait to welcome Klaudia Zdanowicz to Aptitude! This small team is growing!
Finally, more ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT news: I will be travelling to St. Ives in Cornwall on Monday morning for a much needed digital detox and family fun! See you all in September!
