First 90 Days as a UX Research Team of One at Nestcoin
When I joined Nestcoin, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Part of me felt like I was taking on a little more than I could handle, while the other part was ecstatic I’d be spearheading UX research (UXR) at a web3 company.
I joined about four months after Nestcoin launched so I knew it’d be a fast-paced environment. I was initially hired to work on one product — Nestcoin has at least three products. However, a few days before starting at the company, I realized it’d be impractical to be a UX researcher for one product alone when there was no UX researcher for the company as a whole. Thus, I decided to work towards being a UX researcher at Nestcoin holistically.
I read several books and guides about this, including Think Like a Researcher by David Travis and Philip Hodgson, but it was my first time being a UXR at such capacity. It was also my first time working in the web3/crypto space so I knew reading alone would not be enough.
Nonetheless, I was excited and ready to take on the challenge of building a research practice from the ground up. If you know me, you know I enjoy getting out of my comfort zone and taking on challenging quests.
First Month
During my first week, I was urged by my manager — Henry Uku, the VP of product at Nestcoin — to create a UX research framework and present it so everyone at the company would know what UX research is and how it would work at the company.
I used this article as a guide to create the framework. The framework explained the meaning, importance, value, misconceptions, goals, and best practices of UX research. It was tailored to Nestcoin so a lot of the insights discussed user research in relation to Nestcoin particularly. During the framework presentation, I realized my manager was right — most people at the company did not know anything about UX research.
After the presentation, I reached out to c-level executives, product managers, and product designers at the company for 1:1 meetings. At the time, we didn’t have a growth or marketing team yet. The main aim of this was to understand the overall goals of cross-functional stakeholders and figure out how UXR could help achieve their goals. I also wanted to know them beyond a professional context. These conversations were immensely helpful. I put together a document outlining each stakeholders’ goals and suggestions for where UXR could come in.
A particular key stakeholder told me that while he was happy I was working at the company, he still did not fully understand the point of user research. This was actually the most insightful conversation I had. He expressed concerns he had about UXR after building products from a technical standpoint for decades. I was not prepared to address all his concerns but we ultimately agreed on an ideal way to work together.
Finally, I added myself to relevant internal Slack Channels and recurring team meetings. I wanted to be in relevant conversations so I could proactively do research where needed.
Second Month
By the beginning of the second month, I had already rounded up two research projects for two different products. I was doing a lot of user research for specific products, but it still wasn’t a structured process at the company. My manager expressed concerns that while I was doing a great job, there was no visibility because other teams did not know what I was doing. I also was not sharing my research findings on public Slack channels, I only shared them on private Slack channels and with the relevant stakeholders.
Feedback is important to me so once my manager told me this, I started posting UX research tips and findings on public Slack channels. These posts actually sparked conversations about doing research the right way. I once shared insights on counter-attitudinal findings in user research and why evaluative research is important. To my surprise, even the key stakeholder that doubted the importance of research agreed and called this one of his best product lessons.
I also created a UX research section in our Notion workspace that included the UXR framework I discussed earlier, UXR templates, findings from research we had done, and more. In addition, I started thinking about defining what impact would look like in the first quarter.
As we got more requests for UX research studies, I created an intake form. This was never filled out by anyone on the team; they preferred reaching out through Slack or setting up a call to discuss their needs.
By the end of month two, we had done two additional studies, making four successful research studies in total, three discovery/generative research studies and one evaluative research study. While I did the first study alone, I started involving PMs, the growth team, and product designers in subsequent studies, which allowed us to do them quicker and more efficiently.
We also started fairly compensating people that participated in our research studies.
Third Month
We achieved a lot around user research by the third month. User research requests kept coming in across all teams. As a result, I created a company-wide UXR roadmap, organized by team and priority. This kept every team aware of the research studies we had going on. I also created a Slack channel dedicated to UX research updates and tips.
Additionally, we kicked off a monthly UXR workshop to discuss the research we’re doing and educate people on user research methods like card sorting. Due to the way Nestcoin is structured — at least 3 products, each with a different team — it is very easy for information to get lost in transit, so to speak. As such, the main goal of this workshop was to make sure we share what we know about our users with each other.
So far, we have done over eight UX research studies across several products at Nestcoin and words can’t describe how exciting it has been working on these projects.
Looking Forward
More Research Methods
The research studies we’ve done at Nestcoin have mainly been generative because we kicked off research on most of our products prior to having MVPs or prototypes. While these studies have been very useful, evaluative research such as usability testing is just as important.
Over the next three months, we plan to do at least one evaluative study per product — especially now that we have prototypes/MVPs for most of our products. There are a lot more research methods that we need to explore, including card sorting, heat maps, and eye-tracking. With the help of everyone on the team, we will leverage different UXR methods as necessary.
Scaling UXR
Nestcoin is growing quickly. We now have at least two new requests for research every month. While the entire team has been supportive, we have plans to scale UXR within the next couple of months by hiring and training associate UX researchers.
As we get more requests for research across teams, we also plan to make the intake form easier to fill out, and direct Slack messages to the form so we can keep track of requests efficiently.
Stakeholder communication
Cross-departmental communication has been important to the success of UXR at Nestcoin. There has been good communication with product designers and product managers, however, there is little to no communication with other important teams. We plan to develop and strengthen the relationship UX research has with engineers, growth leads, the marketing and communications team, and more.
Better Structure
We’re happy with the way UX research has been going at Nestcoin, but it could be better. Over the next few months, we want to have structured and systematic UX research processes. We plan on doing this in many ways. We recently invested in Calendly to automate our user interview recruitment and otter.ai to automate note-taking.
We plan to continue investing in tools that make UX research better, including one that will enable us create a research repository.
Note-Taking
While Otter helps transcribe user interviews, it is not 100% accurate, especially for accents that are not American. I currently encourage the cross-functional stakeholders I work with to help take notes during user interviews and usability tests, however, this is something we’re currently struggling with.
Some stakeholders either forget to take notes or take notes however they feel is best. Good notes can be quite demanding so I understand why we’re having these issues. I also haven’t proactively shared best practices for note-taking across teams. One way we plan to address this is by having a note-taking workshop. I recently created this note-taking template as well. We haven’t used it yet but we plan to use it for future studies.
Research Presentation
We’ve been thinking about better ways to present our UX research findings. Some of our most recent presentations have been text-heavy with a few images included. We’re working on adding participant video or audio clips to our UX research presentations. We’ve done a few collaborative exercises like user journey maps and affinity maps and several teams enjoyed them. Moving forward, we plan to use empathy maps, affinity maps, and more visuals to present our UXR findings.
Final Thoughts
What I love the most about being a UX research lead at Nestcoin is the support I get from everyone, even the CEO. While at first, I did research alone because I knew the product managers and designers were busy and had a lot on their plate, I was encouraged by the design lead and my manager to involve people.
Yele Bademosi, the CEO, and Henry Uku, my manager, kept reminding me that research is as important as whatever task anyone has to do and should as such be equally prioritized.
Involving other people in UX research studies has been more rewarding than I expected. I knew involving other teams in research would make user research more efficient, what I didn’t know was that I’d actually learn a lot from the PMs, designers, and growth leads involved in our research.
UX research at Nestcoin has not been perfect. However, we are aware of the steps we need to make to do better research.
