Need user insights? Get the Playbook 📕
Ads Manager digital experience is a core product of Facebook’s (now Meta) revenue generating model. Ads Manager powers the experience of small, medium, and large advertisers who want to expand their reach through Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp platforms. The tools have more than 100,000 daily active business users (DAUs). These range from mom-and-pop shops to global Fortune-500 brands.
In 2020, we had the opportunity to augment an existing team of 20 researchers by building out a rolling user testing process. The goal and result was to ensure the Ads Manager product teams were speaking / interviewing / prototyping with their end users on a weekly basis. We achieved this by creating a repeatable process by which we identified target user groups, formulated testing plans, executed, synthesized and delivered insights & recommendations. All within 2-week turnaround. Often with 3-4 projects running at a time.
View related UXR best practices learned from this project and more. See Top-10 Reasons for Unmoderated UX Research for why and how to run un-moderated user tests, and 6-Step Guide to Drafting UX Research Tasks for how write interview questions to elicit great user feedback.
rolling research User-Testing scalable UXR processes SQL unmoderated research insight reels standardized outputs cross-project synthesis Behavioral interviews
First, our mission (as it often is) was to establish foundational working relationships with our product and design partners in the organization. We had to communicate our team makeup, levers of support, key deliverables, and approach to partnering. In this case, our Rapid Research team was meant to support embedded researchers within their own product teams - Designer, Engineer, Data Science, Product Manager, Content Strategist, Marketing Manager, and Researcher.
We supported 20 researchers (and respective product teams) who had worked on various products, such as advertising onboarding, lightweight ads, mobile ads, native app ads, and desktop Ads Manager. One of the absolute best learnings from this engagement was working closely with so many researchers to trade tips, tricks, and insights.
Second, we tasked ourselves with establishing repeatable research processes. Our team had access to some very useful industry tools, such as: UserTesting, UserZoom, dScout, Optimal Cardsort, and more. However, in order to take full advantage, we had to employ scalable internal tools. To do this, we spent a portion of our time as a team to create & manage research protocols, recruiting screeners, task management, project tracking, and key deliverables. This helped us be streamlined and aligned in our approach to tackling new projects.
During this position, we were able to go deep on the development of frameworks that we’ve since used in other project environments. Predictable screener practices, share-out structures, interview guides, tactical question approaches, and master synthesis spreadsheets are some examples of these tools in our belt for future engagements.
Third, we not only had to deliver value to the immediate project / product teams with whom we partnered, but we also were tasked with boiling up opportunities for the broader organization to tackle and/or consider. We had monthly engagements with senior leaders that looked to our lean / nimble research team for new opportunities we were seeing across all the products we engaged.
As mentioned before, we had the privilege of augmenting researchers and their product teams across a multitude of user touch points. This gave us broad-based insight as well as on-the-ground experience of what was working, or not in our business user experiences. We took advantage of our position in the organization to highlight larger concerns and areas that require investment. This is something we look to do at any organization with which we work. Not only provide value at the tactical product level, but also to senior leadership / strategic level.
Finally, we were tasked with scaling to support even more teams. This underscores the business value we were driving. Leaders were beginning to ask our team to support more product teams with their respective business and user touch points. We took this as a compliment; however, it intensified the need to identify more efficiencies in our processes.
Specific examples of changes we made as a result of taking on more projects was continued refinement of our intake method (Google site questionnaire and automated response system) and developing a cadence of interchangeable job roles within the team (lead intake, lead tracker, lead presenter, lead synthesizer, etc.). As a result of this job’s experience, we're more confident to onboard to new teams with ideas already in mind on how to scale and operationalize UX research.
“I’m amazed to see how you quickly immersed into the problem space we were trying to solve, for moving feedback into actions while creating the research plan, for being a great facilitator, for helping my team to see the value of research during the playback and for showing me the world of unmoderated research.” – UX Researcher @Facebook
“#Thanks Paul for your very thoughtful insights and recommendations on the PCM project. Loved working with you throughout – you take so much initiative, responsibility and go above and beyond what’s been asked. The team will benefit immensely from both the immediate term recommendations, and the food for thought, you have planted in your presentation.” – UX Researcher @Facebook
“I took Paul’s insights database framework and immediately applied it to my business. My research lead skips some of the steps that Paul tackles in every project... and I’ve gone back to the basics to make our practice more organized. I’m really grateful for his willingness to methodically walk us through his methods.” – UX Research Mentee
