Emily

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Project Reflections

LCL/DX Optical
LCL/DX Optical

Research Planning

Kickoff workshop:

Challenge:

Narrowing research focus. We were able to narrow down on which competitors we would look into, but we did not narrow down on any of the product types (glasses, sunglasses, contacts, accessories, eye care products)

Learning:

Outline tradeoffs clearly for stakeholders to enable easier decision making. For example, I could have estimated how much time it would take to learn about each product category (e.g. 5 interviews per category = 1 week of work) and present our research timeline alongside this estimation. This would have helped show that we don’t have time to investigate all of the categories. So, the tradeoff would have been to either: 1) extend the research timeline 2) eliminate some product categories

Challenge:

Workshop facilitation through Miro created access problems for our enterprise stakeholders

Learning:

Check that stakeholders have access to the Miro board we’ll be working in beforehand. I set up a pseudo board they could play around with but didn’t test access with the board we used for the workshop.

Participant criteria:

Actively looking versus recently purchased

Challenge:

We chose to include a mix of participants who recently purchased and are currently looking to make a purchase. I didn’t want to solely rely on those who recently made a purchase because memories fade over time and I thought it would be harder for these individuals to articulate what steps they took to make their purchase. In interviews, I found that “Actively looking” participants couldn’t articulate as much information in interviews because they were early on in their search or had not started their search yet.

Learning:

Should have just focused on recently purchased participants or recruited for currently looking participants who were at a particular stage in their search. An example of a screener question that I would have included if I could do this research over again is shown below:

Which best describes where you’re at in your search for a new pair of glasses/sunglasses?

I haven’t started looking into retailers or products yet, but will start in the next few weeks (do not include)

I've browsed a few retailer sites, but haven’t decided where I want to shop quite yet (maybe include)

I know which retailer(s) I’m going to buy from, I just haven’t decided which glasses/sunglasses I want to go with (include)

Other: please specify

2. Think carefully about what recruitment criteria is critical versus nice to have.

Challenge:

The more recruitment criteria you add, the more complex and cumbersome recruitment, playbook setup, script writing and synthesis becomes.

Learning:

If the timeline is short, eliminate challenging or highly specific recruitment criteria. If I could do this project over again I would probably only recruit participants who recently made a purchase and would encourage stakeholders to look at a max of 1 product category (glasses or contacts, not both).

Research Methods:

Method: In-depth Interviews

Learning: Looking back on the project I feel that interviews were our least effective method, especially with those who were “currently looking” to make an eyeglasses/sunglasses or contacts purchase. While interviews were effective at getting at high-level user needs, they produced a lot of qualitative data that was repetitive and overlapped with our unmoderated testing data insights.

What I would have changed: Reduced interview length to 30 – 40 minutes

Method: Unmoderated Competitive Testing

Learning: A good method to use if you need to understand what features, information, services, currently meet the needs of customers. Visual stimuli help jog participants memory unlike in an interview where the details of their shopping experience (the filters they used, how they navigated, what information was important to them) can become fuzzy, hard or impossible to recall.

What I would have changed: Not sure yet!

2. Method: Concept Testing

Learning: I think this method worked well in that we had participants compare experiences across competitors which made it easier for people to talk about which competitors offer a better experience and why. We were also able to drill down into very specific parts of the experience that we wanted to evaluate such as PD measurement and prescription input.

What I would have changed: Not sure yet!

Synthesis

Keep your research questions close when synthesizing!

Without referencing your research questions during synthesis, you focus on information that is less relevant or not at all relevant to the question(s) at hand.

Synthesize throughout the research process and not just at the end

Next time, try synthesizing after each method wraps to build in time to evaluate what was learned and surface insights earlier.

Stakeholder Collaboration

Research Timelines: WHY WERE THEY SO SHORT

Participation: Would have liked to see more Optical team participation in research sessions. Next time: send out reminders of upcoming research sessions to all stakeholders and interesting notes about the participant if available to generate interest.

Feedback: Build in more time to collect stakeholder feedback. Create a calendar to show stakeholders when we’ll need their feedback by.

Touchpoints: touchpoints with the DX team were good, but weekly meetings weren’t always necessary.

Team Collaboration (Human Research)

Asking for feedback:

Be specific about what type of feedback I need and by when (what do I really need eyes on, what is optional to look at)

Presenting Research Insights

Midpoint share

Midpoint shares don’t need to be fancy

You can simply create a word document and write out insights in a table format. The point of a midpoint share is to give stakeholders a sneak peek into what you’re learning and uncover any gaps in your research thus far.

Final share

Too many slides, stuck to the same format (a presentation - didn’t experiment)

Next time I’d like to try to minimize the number of slides to a max of 30 – 40 (60 was way too many. Many of the detailed slides could have been shifted to the appendix) or try a new format for presenting research insights.

Be selective and intentional about what quotes/clips you include

More quotes do not equal more impact. Use one long quote per slide or two short quotes per slide or replace with a video. Any additional relevant quotes can be included in the presentation notes to provide more examples on the fly.

Lack of personal anecdotes

I think going through the purchase process myself for a new pair of glasses would have been an interesting and compelling story to tell to start the research presentation. This worked effectively in the past for virtual try on research. Going through the purchase process myself would have helped me understand and empathize with first time online customers and the challenges they face when making a purchase.

Research Planning

Kickoff workshop:

Participant criteria:

Research Methods:

Synthesis

Stakeholder Collaboration

Team Collaboration (Human Research)

Presenting Research Insights

Midpoint share

Final share

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