Building a UXR Strategy from Scratch

Much of my career has been spent in ambiguous spaces, and so I’ve grown adept at creating, organizing, and maintaining all the processes that make UX Research run like a well-oiled machine, while also setting the foundation for scalability.

I. The First 30 Days

Gather data to craft a research strategy

I love to hit the ground running, but I also love to have a strategy in place. In the first 90 days of a new company, I do my best to try to accomplish the following tasks:

Week	Goal	Activities
Weeks 1 + 2	Understand the company and space I’m in	- Understand my vertical(s) business models - Launch an internal skills survey - 1:1 stakeholder interviews - Observe how things work - Audit: Review existing UXR tools + past research
Weeks 3 + 4	Get a high-level understanding of current user experience	- Heuristic Analysis of the current experience(s) - Initial User Interviews - Define level of UX Maturity

See Process for Weeks 1 + 2

Activity: Stakeholder Interviews + Team Mapping

Stakeholder Interviews are crucial whenever I enter a new space. For me, they give me a better understanding of the company, the people working there, the projects they’re working on, and how their work may overlap the work of others. During these, I try to identify the following:

Potential areas of UXR opportunity

How I can best support these stakeholders/how do I make research accessible to them

Any obstacles that may arise when conducting UX Research in their space

and more

In my first week at Camping World, I conducted around 20 stakeholder interviews with various product owners, designers, developers, data analysts, and executives.

I then took the opportunity to map out my team and how they interacted with each other and in what ways their work may overlap.

Activity: Lean Canvas Model

Filling out Lean Canvas Models with product owners, product managers, and executives allow me to align research with any strategic goals they may have. Communication is so important, so much so that I say that about 50% of my role is collaborating with stakeholders to efficiently run campaigns that will have a true impact on their products.

Lean canvas model of company vertical (sensitive details redacted).

In this activity, we discuss the main issues a product or team is experiencing, brainstorm solutions, and really burrow into what the product is, who is using it, what’s important to its growth and more. — Lean canvas model of company vertical (sensitive details redacted). In this activity, we discuss the main issues a product or team is experiencing, brainstorm solutions, and really burrow into what the product is, who is using it, what’s important to its growth and more.

Activity: Tool Audit

Conducting a tool audit gives you a great understanding what tools are available, and what sort of research you conduct. But, more importantly, cutting out scarcely used tools saves you money. Whenever I enter a new space, I recommend running a tool audit, cutting the fat, and redirect those funds towards incentives to attract high quality research participants.

A Tool Audit while at CW made it very clear that we had tools with redundant functions, and so everything in orange was what could be cut immediately. Cutting these subscriptions (all plans at an enterprise level) saved the company around 300K. — A Tool Audit while at CW made it very clear that we had tools with redundant functions, and so everything in orange was what could be cut immediately. Cutting these subscriptions (all plans at an enterprise level) saved the company around **300K.**

Activity: Internal Skills Survey

Running an internal skills survey allows me to gauge, early on, what areas of research the team needs further education on. One of the biggest obstacles at a new non-tech company is that a good amount of the team don’t understand what you do, and since I love everything UX, I don’t mind teaching it to my teammates, giving a solid foundation for research to scale on an enterprise level.

See Process for Weeks 3 + 4

Activity: Initial Heuristic Evalutions

As a researcher, I need to acquire a deep knowledge of the products I’ll be conducting research for. Conducting Heuristic Evaluations allows me 1) evaluate the product on an in-depth level, understanding it as a user would and 2) allows me to recommend quick wins based on UX best practices.

II. The First 60 Days

Turning learnings into a vision and mission

Week	Goal	Activities
Weeks 5 + 6	Quick fixes and setting up a centralized location for research	- Highlight what UXR tools can be removed from our tool stock, and what tools could be better utilized - Create a centralized place for insights (research repository) - Define clear taxonomy and naming conventions for insights
Weeks 7 + 8	Identify core objectives for long-term UXR strategy	Define core focus areas for UX Research for the next year. Take, for example: - Mapping out customer journey maps for each our segments - Get an in-depth understanding of users’ mental models - Democratize research across the company and make it scalable

See Process for Weeks 5 - 6

Activity: Cleaning out the tool shed

If things have gone as a plan, a tool audit has already been conducted. This would be the time when pitching the idea to relevant parties would occur.

Activity: Choosing a centralized place for research

One thing I’ve run into with companies who are still growing in the UXR practice is that their files are often everywhere—One Drive, Confluence, Teams—so I always suggest starting the process on building a research repository if one doesn’t exist. The research repository would be built according things like amount of data to store, whether stakeholders want immediate access, pre-determined taxonomy and more.

Camping World conducted a lot of user interviews, which required a tool that could performing coding — so we chose Dovetail.

Here’s a quick glimpse of the sort of content kept in our repository, with tags determined via inductive coding.

See Process for Weeks 7 - 8

Activity: Identifying UXR’s Core Objectives

So, at this point we’ve conducted stakeholder interviews, familiarized ourselves with each vertical and each product in that vertical. We’ve identified our UXR mission based on the above mission and have chosen a place that will serve as the single source of truth for research. Now that we’ve gathered that data, we conduct a gap analysis—where we are, where we want to be, and how we’re gonna get there.

A Gap Analysis, while it can be conducted alone, is best done within a workshop so that as many parties as possible have a clear view of where UXR is heading.

III. The First 90 Days

Creating and socializing long-term UXR Plans

Week	Goal	Activities
Weeks 9 + 10	Solidify UXR process and how it will communicate with Data, Dev, Marketing, Product and so on	- Map out UXR process company wide - Create research testing templates - Create research presentation templates - Present process to stakeholders
Weeks 11 + 12	Create a present a 1 year plan for UX Research and identify how and where scalability can happen	- Socializing UXR strategy - Setting up sessions so non-researchers can learn more and give them the tools to conduct non-strategic UX Research themselves

See Process for Weeks 9-10

Activity: Solidifying UXR Process across the company

I love visuals and I love knowing exactly what’s expected of me and when. That’s why I try my best to take all the information I’ve gathered and put it into an easily digestible format that can then be shared to all the team, and that will serve a reference point for all oncoming teammates.

One of my main goals as a researcher to foster transparency and collaboration as much as possible, because knowledge doesn’t mean anything if it can’t be communicated.

Having this visual available is not only helpful to the UXR team, but its helpful to all stakeholders and non-research folk asking research for help. If they know what the process looks like, they can better tailor their UXR requests.

See Process for Weeks 11 - 12

Activity: Creating Templates for non-strategic research

Scalability. Creating easy-to-use templates for designers to use to conduct non-strategic research like usability tests or preference testing, allows for more teammates to evangelize research across the company. That, and it gives a lot of valuable time back to UXR to conduct deep research like understanding customer journey maps, jobs-to-be-done and more.

This is a template I created some time ago. It’s to be used for a Heuristic Evaluation, and lists out exactly what a Heuristic Evaluation is, how to grade, and each question the evaluator should be grading on.

Activity: Presenting a 1 year plan

All the data gathered and all the framework building has led to what I consider an invaluable deliverable for an organization: A 1-year Research Plan that:

Aligns with business goals

Allows the entire company to understand what is coming up and when (less putting out fires 🔥🚿)

Allows UXR to prep ahead of time and conduct research according to best practices