In today's ever-changing business landscape, user research is not just a tool; it's a guiding star for strategic decisions and the spark behind breakthrough product innovations. Drawing upon the wisdom and practices of our user research team at Monzo, this blog post captures ways to scale user research impact, craft effective goals, and define clear metrics. Through this blog post, you will learn actionable strategies from the Monzo playbook for elevating user research to not only align with but also significantly advance business objectives.
Prioritising Research for Maximum Impact
To truly drive transformative outcomes through user research insights, understanding how to effectively prioritise is paramount. Strategic prioritisation means aligning research efforts with the organisation’s most pressing strategic priorities. Below are steps to achieve this alignment.
Step 1 for Priorisation - Build Alignment: Prioritise research that has the potential to directly impact key business decisions and aligns with short term or long-term strategic goals. This involves mapping research initiatives against strategic plans to ensure they support immediate and future goals.
How to Ensure Alignment: Map research opportunities to business objectives. Prioritise regular review meetings with relevant leaders to review how ongoing and upcoming research projects contribute.
Step 2 for Priorisation - Market Awareness: Stay attuned to market trends and industry shifts, and allow these insights to inform the urgency and focus of research initiatives.
How to Maintain Market Awareness: Implement a system for real-time monitoring of industry news, social media, and other relevant channels. This can involve setting up a Slack channel to pull in this information, Google Alerts, or social listening tools.
Step 3 for Priorisation - Stakeholder Engagement: Ensure that research projects are defined and developed in collaboration with key stakeholders, in order to guarantee that the findings are both actionable and impactful.
How to Enhance Stakeholder Engagement: Identify key stakeholders for each research project. Create a stakeholder DACI to support effective decision making, define the Driver, Approver, Contributor(s), and who needs to be informed. Ensure regular updates and feedback loops on progress and findings.
Strategic Amplification of User Research Impact
To enhance the impact of user research, it’s essential to align research efforts with the business’s overarching goals and vision. This requires a shift from a reactive stance, where research reacts to immediate problems, to a proactive strategy, focused on long-term strategic objectives.
In a reactive stance, research addresses specific, immediate issues—such as usability complaints—limiting its scope to immediate fixes. This approach, while solving current problems, misses opportunities for strategic foresight and innovation. Conversely, a proactive strategy anticipates future needs and trends, guiding exploratory studies and strategic planning to inform product and business development proactively. This forward-looking approach not only addresses known challenges but also identifies opportunities for growth and competitive advantage.
By moving from reactive problem-solving to proactive strategic planning, user research becomes a critical tool for innovation and strategic decision-making, effectively bridging the gap between current challenges and future ambitions.
Strategies for Enhanced Impact:
Cultivate Continuous Impact Awareness: Implement a dynamic approach where impact is tracked, as a live document. This practice not only quantifies the contributions of user research but also embeds a mindset of strategic impact and accountability, to ensure that impact is always in the forefront of research efforts.
How to: Create a simple four column table that captures Date, Project Title, Impact, and Feedback and complete it for every project.
Identify Gaps and Opportunities: Examine what existing insights can be used to inform business objectives. Incorporate past feedback and leadership perspectives to shape future research directions, and ensure that every effort is strategically targeted.
How to: Develop or utilise a centralised insights repository. Conduct regular retrospectives, and knowledge audits.
Strategic Dissemination of Insights: Maximise the impact of user research by effectively communicating insights. Ensure insights are concise, clear, and directly relevant to business goals and customer needs. Leverage platforms and forums with wide visibility within the organisation to ensure key findings are acknowledged and acted upon.
How to: Create a dedicated Slack channel for real-time sharing and discussion of user research insights; keep things pithy and get innovative with visualising data through one-pagers, interactive quizzes or zines, to ensure key findings are engaging and memorable.
User Research Goal-Driven Metric Setting
The process of developing precise research goals and metrics is pivotal for the success and strategic alignment of user research initiatives. Below is a framework designed to ensure the setting of actionable, clear goals and metrics.
Framework for Effective Goal Setting and Metrics:
Set a clear time period: Define the time period for your goal-setting exercise, whether it’s quarterly, or half (6 months).
Adopt SMART Goals: Utilise the SMART framework (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) to define research goals. This method facilitates clear tracking and assessment of progress. For each goal, provide an example to illustrate what success looks like to enhance understanding.
Acknowledge your audience: Simplify your goal documentation. Begin modestly, focusing on clarity and accessibility.
Define clear Metrics: Select metrics that accurately reflect the influence of user research on product development and business performance, ensuring they are tied to goals and have clear owners.
Align All Goals with Business Objectives: Link user research efforts to business goals, and ensure that each project contributes to the organisation’s broader objectives.
Craft A Goal Document:
Incorporate a review of the previous period’s impact, outline the primary themes for the upcoming quarter or half, and also cast an eye to the future, capturing longer-term ambitions. Utilise a straightforward four-column table to display goals, descriptions, metrics, and the initiatives or actions that will support in achieving these goals.
Actionable Tips for Goal Setting and Metrics:
Foster collaboration with cross-functional teams to align research goals with broader business strategies.
Review regularly and adjust goals and metrics to stay aligned with evolving business strategies and market conditions.
Celebrate successes and learn from setbacks to continuously refine your approach to goal setting and metric tracking.
To Wrap Up
Transforming user research insights into actionable outcomes is imperative. To navigate this path successfully, it is essential to conduct a thorough review of your current user research practice, identify areas ripe for enhancement and closer alignment with overarching business objectives. Set specific, achievable goals that illuminate the way forward, and ensure they are quantifiable, relevant, and time-bound. Deepen your engagement with stakeholders, utilising goals and metrics as foundational tools to highlight the critical role of user research in fostering informed, impactful decisions.
Commit to measuring the impact of all research activities, and openly sharing the results. This approach not only promotes transparency but also fosters a culture of accountability and continuous improvement.
At Monzo, we don't just talk about putting user research at the forefront of our strategy; we live it. Every half (6 monthly planning period), we set ambitious goals, with research guiding our journey and track the impact of our work.
The best time is to start now: Take a moment to critically reassess your approach to user research. Set goals that align to the business’s, and pave the way for deeper stakeholder collaboration. Allow metrics to illuminate the path toward a future where insights shape strategic direction. Start small, aim high, and evolve strategically to realise the full potential of user research in driving transformative business outcomes.
Join the Monzo team
If you read this article and are keen to get involved, check out our careers page where we regularly update new roles.