From exploration to launch: how to collect actionable user feedback for continuous user research

Summary

In this insightful talk at a product conference, Marion, a product and design leader at Ipsa, shares how her team optimized feedback collection to enhance product discovery. After realizing that their initial feedback approach was inefficient and repetitive, they switched to a tool called Scream. Marion walks through various use cases, demonstrating how the tool helped them gather early insights, validate hypotheses, recruit users for testing, and measure feature success. The key takeaway is the importance of actively managing feedback to make better, faster decisions throughout the product development cycle.

Takeaways

• 🎤 The speaker, Marion, is honored to speak at the product conference and introduces herself as a leader of the product and design team at Epsa for three years.
• 🏦 Epsa is a B2B2C company helping employees invest bonuses and pensions via HR tools, with a focus on simplifying complex investment options for employees.
• 💸 Marion explains that before her time at Epsa, there was no feedback process in place, so the product team introduced in-app surveys to gather user feedback, which initially helped but became less useful over time.
• 🔄 Feedback collection became repetitive, and users got annoyed, leading the team to reduce the survey pressure and explore other feedback mechanisms.
• 🚀 To improve feedback collection, the team switched to a new tool called Screeb, which increased response rates and provided more actionable insights with a flexible interface for product teams.
• 🧪 The speaker walks through four concrete use cases where feedback was essential during different stages of product development: early insights, hypothesis validation, solution exploration, and post-launch measurement.
• 📝 Marion highlights an example where surveys helped identify that users were aware of their default investments but were content with it, helping the team prioritize their roadmap decisions.
• ⚙️ They ran multiple experiments, such as surveys and MVPs, to test hypotheses like providing updated investment recommendations, and validated the need through real user data.
• 📲 The team efficiently recruited users for testing by embedding targeted properties into their feedback tool, streamlining user recruitment and reducing waiting times.
• 📉 Post-launch, they used surveys to measure how users perceived changes to their onboarding process, allowing them to gather fast feedback and avoid unnecessary iteration.

Q & A

What was the main focus of the presentation?

The presentation focused on how feedback can be a powerful tool in product discovery and development, and shared practical ways to collect and utilize user feedback effectively in different stages of product development.

What challenge did the speaker encounter early on at the company regarding user feedback?

When the speaker joined the company, there was no feedback collection process. The product had been designed by a small group without user input, which led to the introduction of an in-app survey tool to gather user feedback.

Why did the company switch from their initial survey tool to a new one?

They switched to a new tool called 'Screeb' because the original surveys started yielding redundant, non-specific feedback. Screeb offered a better respondent experience, higher response rates, and a flexible interface for product teams to configure and analyze surveys quickly.

What was the primary problem with the feedback collected from their initial survey tool?

The feedback became repetitive over time, lacked specificity, and was no longer actionable. Additionally, users were getting annoyed by frequent surveys, and the team eventually stopped using the feedback due to its lack of usefulness.

What were some benefits of switching to Screeb for feedback collection?

Screeb provided a better user experience, which increased response rates. It also offered flexibility in creating different types of surveys and analyzing feedback efficiently, allowing the team to iterate faster based on concrete insights.

Can you explain one of the use cases of the feedback tool mentioned in the presentation?

One use case involved collecting early insights on a feature that allowed users to receive investment advice. The feedback tool was used to ask users targeted questions after their money was transferred to understand why only 10% were using the feature. Insights from the survey helped the team realize that increasing feature adoption would be costly, influencing their roadmap decisions.

How did the speaker use feedback tools to test hypotheses?

The speaker tested hypotheses by conducting surveys and MVP experiments to validate assumptions. For example, they used a survey to determine whether users wanted a fresh investment recommendation during bonus allocation, followed by an MVP experiment to further confirm user interest.

What approach did the team take to recruit users for testing sessions using feedback tools?

They pushed user properties into the feedback tool and used those as criteria to recruit targeted users directly through the application. This method reduced the time spent on recruiting users for testing sessions, allowing faster testing of prototypes.

How did the team use feedback to measure the success of new features post-launch?

The team used feedback surveys to measure user satisfaction before and after launching new features. By gathering quantitative data on how users perceived the changes, they could quickly determine if further iteration was necessary.

What is one key takeaway the speaker left the audience with regarding feedback collection?

The speaker emphasized that feedback collection should be actively managed. It’s important to continuously create new opportunities to engage with users, modify surveys, and monitor the number of surveys users receive to ensure valuable insights are gathered.