Product strategy through contextual interviews

In early 2015, the ITBM group started work on a large scale research project to determine and align the product strategy for one of the flagship products. I was the lead researcher and project coordinator on this initiative. I was responsible for everything from recruitment to interviewing to analysis and strategy delivery. The product has a very large scope and user base. Through stakeholder interviews before going into the field we had identified we had identified 8 roles we wanted to target for the first iteration.

Over the course of eight weeks, we visited 17 different companies and interviewed 132 people. Working as a team, I primarily moderated the contextual interviews and my co-worker was responsible for notes.

Picture of Janna conducting and interview and taking a picture of the participant.
Myself conducting an interview and taking a picture of the participant.

Once the interviews were completed we started the analysis phase. Following a modified version of the Cooper methodology we started cataloging the insights with affinity diagraming. As we went deeper into the research we uncovered organizational variations, personas and scenarios. Our original 8 roles were expanded into 15 personas in order to cover the product ecosystem that we observed.

Notes

The insights and personas were distilled and shared with the greater product team. Using the research we guided the team to develop a new product strategy and new UI designs to better suit the user’s needs. The product strategy will culminate in a 3 to 5 year plan for the product.

 

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