Case Studies
Case Study 1: Diary Studies for New Ventures
Due to the effects of COVID-19, all upcoming plans for in-person research were cancelled for the safety of the participants and research team. With minimal guidance from the research lead, I created and conducted a series of remote diary studies end-to-end (i.e. planning, protocol drafting, execution, and analysis/reporting) with our target population to quickly pivot into gathering customer feedback remotely and minimize interruption to the overall research timeline.
This allowed Research to continue gathering and delivering insights, which were used to inform further product positioning across multiple workstreams. I presented these insights to organization leadership and was recognized for providing timely insights to product teams.
Case Study 2: Reading Experience Redesign
Based on a planned redesign of a part of the Kindle reading experience, the design team needed to gather feedback on specific aspects of customer reading behavior. Additionally, the team needed contextual understanding of a reading feature to identify its use and painpoints in our target population. In partnership with a Sr. Designer, I planned and conducted a series of usability studies which yielded clarity on that specific feature’s usage in our target population. I also uncovered foundational knowledge related to in-book behaviors.
This research was used to inform the development of multiple major software features, and helped inform proposed portfolio changes, and is still heavily cited within the organization today.
Case Study 3: Self Service Research
At Kindle, the Research team needed to scale research resources to support product development across the organization. With guidance from Research manager, I executed a two-part strategy:
I created training materials on how to conduct scrappy research for non-researchers. Topics included the fundamentals and ethics of research, guidelines for recruitment, formulating research questions, and affinity diagramming. I presented this training, in partnership with the research team, to multiple design and product teams. Team members who attended the training said that they gained a much deeper understanding of research and were able to plan, launch, and analyze low-complexity research studies for their product areas with minimal guidance. These materials are still heavily in use by the design team today, and are used as the foundation for subsequent updated trainings with new team members.
In partnership with the research team, I facilitated research consultation hours to assist designers, PM’s, and tech roles to plan, execute, and analyze their research with ranging levels of guidance. Specifically, I helped team members by (1) Refining research questions and goals to make them actionable (2) Providing guidance on which research method (interview, usability, diary study, etc.) would best suit their research questions and why. (3) Assisting with recruiting, including liaising with recruitment agencies and reps from research tool companies such as UserTesting and Dscout, and (4) providing guidance on analysis and affinity diagramming. More than 50 unique team members utilized these consultation hours. This allowed me to deepen my partnership with design and scale the volume of research being conducted exponentially in the organization.