Insights From a Senior User Experience Researcher
Applause has a global community of a million plus testers and researchers. They are as individual as a fingerprint.
In this interview, we chat with one of our diverse community members, Sam Silver, senior UX researcher at Applause. Sam shares some of her experiences from the field and highlights the importance of not making assumptions about your customers, but rather, directly engaging with them and involving them early and often in your product and services roadmap.
How did you get involved in UX research?
I went to undergraduate and graduate school for sociology. I had it in my head that I would be a professor, but when I was in grad school, I had the opportunity to volunteer/work for a nonprofit, Humboldt Center Area for Harm Reduction, which focused on drug-consuming and houseless individuals. I did a research project for them to drive empathy with their users to help them get a grant for that program. It opened my eyes to the power of research, the power of driving empathy to groups, the power of giving voices to groups that typically don’t have them. That really sparked my interest in research.
From there, I started as an intern at a small boutique design agency in Miami Florida and worked my way up. I did every aspect of the user experience research process from recruiting, calling participants, managing scheduling to running end-to-end sessions. I eventually became a researcher and then moved to a bigger UX organization and did some in-house work there. After gaining a lot of experience, and because I was interested in returning to the consulting space, I got the opportunity to join Applause.
Tell us a few types of projects you’ve worked on.
I am predominantly a qualitative researcher by trade and I love doing it.
One project that really stands out was for a well-known bank and focused on victims of wire scam fraud. This type of scam really increased during the pandemic and continues now with the prevalence of AI and the ability for deep fakes, etc.
I Interviewed victims and discussed their experiences and we talked about different potential interventions that financial institutions could use to reduce scams. That was a really powerful and special project because the client was so interested in the very detailed experiences of their customers. From a more human perspective, because the scam victims felt ashamed of being taken advantage of, these sessions served as a therapy session of sorts. They found the sessions very helpful because they didn’t feel they could talk openly about what had happened to them. Research can be very intimate and personal and can help people avoid a lot of hurt.
Another standout was research for a luxury goods retailer. They wanted to understand how customers are shopping at the luxury brand level. We proposed a two-phase research project: one with a task-based study where we had folks go on the website and locate stores and shop for things. This piece had more of a functional usability feedback slant. The second phase was an index interview on why people become luxury shoppers and why certain brands interest them. We got really interesting emotive and personal stories and ended up presenting our findings to the C-suite of the sponsoring organization. There were a few interesting themes that surfaced around how folks become luxury shoppers:
- Family/social influence – people saw relatives spending money on luxury items, so got used to it at a very young age and it became an aspirational goal.
- Salary level – would-be luxury shoppers start to see luxury items as being emotive (my mom wore this), but also foundational in how people think about presenting themselves. (If I have an expensive bag at work, people will see me as more/professional/put- together/accomplished.)
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What is a fun fact about UX that folks may not know?
I think that many people think that UX research is this very specific, niche kind of thing. That we just have people going through apps or websites and telling us how it works. Of course, that can be part of it, but the field is really so broad. For example, I did some research at an engineering company to understand women engineers’ experiences with discrimination and sexism in the workplace. So, in this case, it was the user experience of the workers within that firm. I think that many people might not know that we do that kind of thing.
What has surprised you most in your work?
There have been times where we uncovered some really cool things. I’m thinking back to a project in my early years where a sporting goods client came to us and wanted to test the usability of one very specific flow of their website. The wild thing was that while we were doing this research, we found a lot of unknown customer wants, needs and motivations that we shared with the company. These were truly new insights for them. This product had a lot of variables – it could be used for regular hobby use, vacation, as a gift, and so the research yielded a lot for the brand to consider.
Again, considering the work I mentioned for the bank on wire scams, that project really had surprises. The bank came to us looking for very tangible things they could do: Could they implement a pop up, some type of message in the app or some type of blocker that would prevent these scams? But what we discovered was that this issue was primarily about mind state. These victims were either in a state of desperation or in love, so they were not thinking rationally. Little would block them from proceeding. So, the focus in this case became about proactive education: being with the client at all parts of the journey, providing education on wire scams and how people become susceptible, reminding them to constantly be vigilant, these types of things.
To sum this up, I think a lot of groups enter UX wanting to examine one little piece of the customer experience, but when we get into it, we discover all these adjacent issues that open up new possibilities, new ways to think, new innovations. Sometimes we’re told “we didn’t talk to the right people.” That’s a favorite of mine, because it shows that the client has some preconception of who their customers are, which is normal, but really are not aware of all of their customers and their needs, and so they’re surprised by what we tell them. There are a lot of assumptions that get cleared up when you do UX. We move teams from assumptions to truth. In the end, you can’t refute the data. It’s such a useful process, it’s hard to imagine that some organizations don’t use it to their advantage.
When does not doing UX create issues?
There have been many times where we’re brought in to test a product that is already fully fleshed out, yet there has been no foundational UX research. It’s really hard to imagine this, but I’ve seen it several times. This can be a result of an insular culture where stakeholders talk among themselves and say “We should go ahead and build this, because Jim in IT said it would make a big difference.” There’s never been any communication with their users around whether it would be something they want or would find even marginally useful.
It’s really putting blinders on and just going with a gut feel, but this so rarely works. Then, of course, there can be this desire to hold onto the product since you’ve put so much effort into it, but the reality is the product is not for you – it is for your users.
And for stakeholders that really feel confident about who their users are, I’d say it simply cannot hurt to double check with users. In a world of massive consumption and millions of apps, you really need to build something that is going to integrate seamlessly into peoples’ lives, and you can only do that if you understand them.
What are a few of your favorite things about UX research work with Applause?
We have a lot of really cool clients at Applause that touch most of the industries I can think of. We work with clients in financial services, luxury services, ecommerce, food/quick-serve restaurants, healthcare, for example. It’s also really exciting to see the motivations of clients that want to employ UX research, what angle they’re looking at.
I also love working with our uTest global community. It’s really robust and makes it easy to source all the folks we need for studies. In my past experiences, I was always the one who had to go out and recruit, and that could be tough. So having an eager community of people to help really makes a difference.
What would you like people or organizations who are considering UX research to know?
That it’s not scary. Some people find it intimidating, or think it’s complex, expensive or time consuming. It can be a short, iterative UX study or a quick unmoderated test. Nielsen Norman Group has this mantra of sorts that you just put your product in front of people and see what they do. It’s this simple and core idea that’s at the heart of UX research. This research doesn’t have to be epic (though it can be if you want).
Also, really listen to any insights resulting from studies with an open mind and center the user as the core of empathy, the core of the experience, and the source of truth. This can soften the rough spots where product teams may feel a bit stung by feedback. Instead of being defensive or refuting usability findings, realize that this is the beginning of reaching new levels of product development, and innovation, and creating a UX that your users really want and will use. Nothing else really matters.
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