UnZipped: UX Research @ Zip

In this article we’ve turned the tables, having recently sat down to chat with our UX Research Lead, Renata Hall. Typically she is the one asking questions to our customers, but now it’s our chance!

Read on to hear Renata share her perspectives on two topics we are all passionate about at Zip; the value of conducting user research, and how Zipsters across the Product and Technology teams are encouraged to speak to customers first hand to gain insights to apply to their day to day work as Designers, Data Scientists, Engineers and Product Managers.

Tell us who you are and what you do at Zip

I’m the UX Research Lead leading our user research capability in the Product team. It’s an incredible role because it’s so much more than just leading a research team - it’s about influencing how we learn about our users as an organisation to ensure we are truly #customerfirst when we design and build products.

We are big on democratising research (i.e. making research accessible) and continuous discovery, meaning anyone in the Product and Technology teams can empathise directly with our customers. As a UX research team, we are working on big meaty projects and also enable others to run their own research with quality guardrails and coaching in place.

It’s very rewarding to work in a place where I get to shape our research strategy and influence our business priorities based on customer insights.

Could you explain what you mean by research democratisation, and how do you balance conducting research in your team with enabling other Zipsters to do their own research? Why is this beneficial?

At Zip, I think we strike a good balance between delivering high quality research in the UX Research team and supporting others - mainly Designers and Product Managers - to run their own research. We also enable any other Zipsters with an interest to connect with our customers through our 'Talking to Customers' program.

Our team tends to take on more complex projects, for example answering things like ‘Is this the right thing to build?’, or ’Is this really a problem?’ that require specific research skills such as research scoping, participant recruitment, moderation, synthesis and impactful storytelling when pitching recommendations back.

For more evaluative work centered around answering questions like ‘Are we designing it right?’, we support designers and PMs to run their own research, but will often sense check their hypotheses, help them pick the right method and refine their recommendations. By supporting others to uncover the most meaningful insights we always attempt to facilitate an optimal process which can also provide learning opportunities to those who are keen to get into research. When done right, it’s a win-win!

What is lean research and how do we approach it at Zip? Is this something common for tech companies to adopt?

In short, lean research means being creative with a given business challenge or problem when thinking about how to find answers to it. We are very purposeful about choosing the right approach for research. We tend to go lean when we need to be more agile and go more in-depth when the problem is ambiguous or we are digging into a new, lesser understood territory.

It’s really great that we can be agile when we are validating solutions especially if we are looking at optimisations or design affordances (i.e. ‘Is this usable?’ etc.). As an example, we often do in-house ‘guerrilla’ testing with Zipsters which doesn’t just save us time, it also offers a sneak peak of what we are iterating on to our newly onboarded employees. This testing is delivered through what we call ‘ZipLabs’ - it’s frequently part of induction for new employees and it often allows for a quick turnaround of insights.

What’s really awesome about how we approach launching products at Zip is the consideration of a wide range of principles to de-risk discovery - be it customer research, in-house guerilla testing, data analytics, experiments or speaking to our amazing Customer Experience (CX) team - there are so many sources from which we can learn!

Ideally, we mix different methods to obtain various sources of data, but sometimes we don’t need to go all out. A large part of my team’s role is to coach others in finding the best way to gain knowledge. We don’t always need new research, and it’s often more a matter of helping people connect the dots and point them to where they might find answers. This could include sending an existing research report, walking through hypotheses on our Jira Product Discovery board, pointing them to analytics or connecting in with the CX team for a chat. So we are not just researchers... we’re part discovery coaches, and part librarians too!

How are we facilitating continuous discovery at Zip and what’s so special about it?

This goes back to the concept of research democratisation and the idea that user research is a team sport aimed at building a shared understanding of our customers and their problems. We start with recruiting customers for anyone in the Product team to sign up and run their own research sessions with - we also offer the team research training, review their questions and help with the logistics.

It’s still early days and we are iterating on a lot of aspects but it’s been exciting to see the impact - it challenges assumptions and helps them build context on how customers and prospects are engaging with Zip.

Watch the video at the end of the article to hear first-hand how Zipsters from across the business are benefitting from UX research.

Research shows there is a huge difference in how we process data that’s learned first hand versus when digested via a research presentation. It’s been really great to see the appetite for it amongst the team; our own Chief Product Officer is a big advocate for flexing our ‘continuous discovery habits’ (as per Teresa Toress’s book) and will often jump into those sessions or watch the videos herself.

What part of the role of leading our UX research practice do you find most rewarding?

Definitely the diversity of where my time is spent. It’s so much more than just running discoveries or supporting evaluative work - it’s shifting organisational behaviours and helping all Zipsters become increasingly insights-driven.

In my day to day I get to work on a variety of projects spanning from understanding why customers may struggle to make repayments on time, to discovering their broader behaviours, attitudes and financial philosophy that is core to our customer segmentation. I also get to coach our Product Managers and Designers on how to do quality research, provide input into strategy documents and work with teams on the best way to de-risk their business decisions.

Being a small and nimble team means we have access to interesting challenges and can contribute to some pretty exciting projects we typically wouldn’t get to be part of in other organisations, where Research teams might be embedded in a specific squad or have limited access to strategic priorities.

This can limit your sphere of influence and your business impact. Being exposed to different parts of the organisation and seeing the problems and opportunities from multiple lenses helps with scoping end-to-end experiences that often span across multiple teams and objectives. Examples might include asking ourselves ‘Would this change in acquisition have an effect on how people make repayments further down the track?’, or ‘Did we consider looking at the merchant experience when making that in-store customer uplift?’. I think it’s really important for us to leverage that expertise to be able to look at our opportunities more holistically, in turn fostering a more cohesive customer and merchant experience.

What are some goals for your team this year, and what are you personally excited about when thinking about the next chapter of UX research at Zip?

I love this question. We have our broader research strategy and a detailed roadmap, but if I was to pick a couple of priorities I’d definitely talk about our segmentation research and strengthening our continuous discovery habits.

We have kicked off some really impactful segmentation work in collaboration with our Data Science and Marketing teams, and it’s been really interesting to start thinking about how these learnings can help inform our strategy and innovation canvas. As part of this work we have also been experimenting with AI in the research synthesis phase, and while this is still a fairly new territory that needs to be heavily monitored for bias, we are seeing some promising results.

As for the second one, our flagship ‘Talking to Customers’ program, I’d love for us to continue to scale it. As mentioned, we are still iterating on what works best for us and I look forward to seeing what the future holds for roll out across the broader business in ANZ.

We currently have a vacancy for a UX Researcher in the team! Please click this link to review and apply for the role.