Estelle van Ravestyn
Back to overview
Section 02 · Spotify ·

Spotify

Research Ops · enablement

Democratizing unmoderated usability training for designers

Co-created a company-wide training program with 3 fellow researchers, scaling unmoderated usability testing (Research Ops, UserTesting) so designers across Spotify (enabled ~30 designers across 5 teams) could self-serve early insight.

Role
Co-created a company-wide training program and ran the training
Partner
Representative of usertesting.com
Audience
Designers
Cadence
Every quarter · 2024
Program overview slide — this program offers Guidelines & Templates and Usertesting.com tutorials, with an illustration of three people in front of a blue cloud.
Program overview — guidelines & templates and Usertesting.com tutorials for designers.
01
Business goals & context

Stage 1. Empower designers to organise usability testing themselves to speed process & catch low hanging fruit insights right during the design process already.

Stage 2. Improving this training in collaboration with user researchers across the company to incorporate this training and organise it on a larger scale for the whole company. And streamline the process where every team has other needs.

Business Problem — Should we implement it, and how? ⭐ Empower stakeholders (Designers). ⭐ Continue to support data informed decision-making. ⭐ Enhance quality of insights.

Should we implement it, and how?

CadenceEvery quarter
AudienceDesigners
Partnerusertesting.com representative
Feedback loopPost-training survey
02
The problem

TODO — add copy: the business + user problem, and what you got wrong.

03
My role

TODO — add copy: your scope, influence and what you initiated.

04
Direction

TODO — add copy: the decision you took, before the solution.

05
Impact
0
Parts to the programme
Inventory, streamlining, internal advertising, the training, and the feedback survey.
0
[add text] Designers trained
Total across all quarters the training ran.
0
[add text] Quarters run
This training got conducted every quarter.
06
Approach & rationale

Part 1: Inventory of the documentation we already have and teams are using. Collecting internally all the documentation such as research plans across the different teams.

Part 2: Streamline the process. Make decisions which topics are part of the training (ex. Analysis, practicalities how to set up the test, mindful of questions that can introduce bias, how to consolidate insights, …).

Part 3: Advertise the training internally. Sign up list for designers published on Slack.

Part 4: Conducting the training remotely. Together with representative of usertesting.com, we walked the designers through the process of how to set up these tests, create research plans, work with insights and take action on these insights and share with the team.

Part 5: Collect feedback on the training. After the training we send out a survey to people participating in the training. This training got conducted every quarter.

Documentation inventoryProcess streamliningRemote trainingusertesting.com partnershipPost-training survey
Figure 09
Five parts, repeated every quarter
01
Inventory the documentation
Research plans across the different teams
→
02
Streamline the process
Decide which topics belong in the training
→
03
Advertise internally
Sign up list published on Slack
→
04
Conduct the training
Remotely, with usertesting.com
→
05
Collect feedback
Survey to every participant
Stage 2 scaled this up in collaboration with user researchers across the company, streamlining for teams with different needs.
07
Final solution

The training was advertised internally with a sign up list for designers published on Slack, and conducted remotely together with a representative of usertesting.com.

01
Consolidated documentation set
Research plans and existing team documentation collected into one place, then streamlined into a curriculum.
02
The training itself
How to set up these tests, create research plans, work with insights, take action on these insights and share with the team.
03
Post-training survey
Sent out to people participating in the training, feeding the next quarter’s version.

Stage 2 took this further: improving the training in collaboration with user researchers across the company, to organise it on a larger scale for the whole company and streamline the process where every team has other needs.

08
Outcomes

[add text] How many designers were trained, over how many quarters, and what changed in how teams ran their own testing afterwards.

Empower stakeholders (Designers). Designers can organise usability testing themselves rather than queueing for research capacity.
Continue to support data informed decision-making. More decisions in the design process backed by evidence, earlier.
Enhance quality of insights. A shared standard for how tests are set up, analysed and consolidated.
Catch low hanging fruit earlier. Insights surface right during the design process already, which speeds the process up.
09
Reflection

TODO — add copy: what you would do differently.