“It’s a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.” — Sherlock Holmes.
The best researchers think like Holmes. They’re always on the lookout for evidence that informs decisions.
Research is a forensic science that has far-reaching business implications.
[Our guest speaker worked as a detective for a decade. We HAD to go with the analogy.]
Product, design, development and marketing teams all incorporate research insights into their work. Business leaders rely on customer research to make user-centric decisions.
Twilio’s Dr. Ari Zelmanow uses his detective skills in his role as a research leader today.
He recently shared his team’s process and expertise on how to influence stakeholders with vital research. (Ari even teaches a course on the subject.)
So how do you communicate the value of research to an organization?
Elementary, my dear Watson.
Watch the entire conversation about Rethinking Research
Proving Research’s Value
Researchers face an uphill battle to prove their worth to an organization. The perception around research unfortunately remains — “it’s dispensable.”
Ari wants researchers to change the narrative. “I’d argue that the field of research is undergoing a revolution or renaissance,” he said.
What can researchers do to prove their worth?
Something that they haven’t done previously. Historically, they’d spend the bulk of their time collecting and organizing data. Entirely consumed in the research methods before presenting anything to stakeholders. According to Ari, that has to change.
“Where we can have the biggest impact in the future is spending more time connecting people with evidence, insights and information,” he said.
Hypothetically, let’s say researchers spend 80% of their time on research methodology and 20% on communicating. Ari wants to flip that on its head. He wants researchers to spend more time thinking about how to communicate insights.
He coined a term for it (live, during the event!):
Strategic Communication as a Service
Speak to Business Needs
Ari shared some tips to become more strategic in your communication. He introduced us to POSTER, a strategic storytelling framework. He encouraged researchers to be more deliberate about:
- How you deliver information
- Who should receive the information
- How you tell stories
When you’re presenting, you must speak a language business leaders understand.
According to Ari, businesses care about five things:
- Growth. How is the business going to grow?
- Value. What value does it provide to customers? How can businesses better understand their needs?
- Adaptability. Companies who adapt easily are likely to be more successful. Look at companies during the COVID pandemic.
- Risk. At its core, research is all about risk mitigation.
- Speed. Time to value determines when a customer begins to see value in a product or service.
UX professionals, we know what you’re thinking.
What about users? They’re the reason we do what we do every day.
That doesn’t mean we need to lose user empathy. Tie user empathy back into influencing people and businesses to change their behavior.
Ask yourself, “How does user empathy feed into these five business concerns?”
“We are the bridge — the storytellers that need to connect those things,” he said.
3 Steps to Communicate Effectively
Ari shared his golden takeaway early on.
Here are three things you must do to become an effective communicator.
Stakeholders need clear answers to these three questions when you’re presenting insights to them:
- What are you trying to tell me?
- Why does it matter?
- What should I do next?
Failure to answer one question forces your stakeholders to figure it out on their own.
And we all know if you make people work extra, they default to “I’d rather not.”
Clear communication goes out the window.
Practice Investigative Reporting
Building a business case requires backing your position with evidence.
Ari used the term “Providence to the origin.”
At Twilio, he points stakeholders to search on Marvin if they’d like to find specific quotes and dive into research. This enables his peers to form their own opinions.
He referenced Aristotle who said to build a defensible argument, you need:
- Credibility
- Emotional appeal
- Rationale or logic
Twilio research teams use a metric of proof beyond reasonable doubt (Ari’s background coming to the forefront again).
They attach a level of certainty to every point of view or argument using four levels:
- > 75% = Beyond a reasonable doubt
- 74-51% = More likely than not
- 51-25% = Less likely than not
- 0 to 25% = Low
Notice they don’t use 50% at all. In that case, Ari suggested researchers were better off flipping a coin! 😂
He addressed the flack that qualitative researchers repeatedly get from stakeholders. You’ve probably heard it before when they say the sample size is too small. Ari attributed that to a confirmation bias. They want to disprove your theory.
Whether you’ve conducted six interviews or 60, ask questions about the path ahead:
Given that we have six qualitative interviews, what do we need to do to move forward?
Framing it like this helps qualitative researchers establish credibility so people stop viewing them as service providers. Instead, they’re respected as strategic advisors.
Learn Why Qualitative Research Matters.
A Communication Delivery Mismatch
Design and research rely heavily on communication.
So why weren’t they taught the invaluable skill of communication?
Communication was never taught as a core skill during their training or education. It’s led to a mismatch in how information is relayed across an organization.
“The problem is we’re not communicating in a way that stakeholders need us to communicate,” Ari said.
He highlighted how we consume information on our phones. We pick up our phones and doom-scroll through content.
If we’re not interested, we fly by. If we are interested, we stop and click in.
The problem is that researchers haven’t aligned themselves with this communication delivery. Research decks are a thing of the past.
“If you think a CEO is going to read your 100-page deck on the regular, I’ve got really bad news for you,” Ari said.
Will they read the headline though?
YES! You bet! Keep reading to hear how Twilio proves it.
How to Level Up Your Storytelling
Ari encourages researchers to challenge traditional communication methods.
At Twilio, research workflows operate as insight newsrooms. How so?
Researchers must act as investigative journalists. Collecting insights helps them make connections across business functions. Since research encompasses various domains of a company, researchers must report “breaking news” about customers to different teams.
Relaying this information to product, marketing and customer success teams connects employees to user experiences and customer emotions.
So how do they communicate effectively with various stakeholders?
Create a Format that Works
At Twilio, decks are a thing of the past.
They use topline reports for 95% of their research output flows.
Topline reports break down complex topics into digestible headlines. Readers scanning through headlines can dive deeper into a topic if they choose.
Ari shared the flow of a topline report that engages readers effectively:
- Start with the headline. Include highlights, reels and key takeaways.
- Go into the feature film. This includes the entire report and findings.
- Substantiate with providence to the origin. Here’s where Twilio uses Marvin.
He also shared some tips on how to select details that go into a study:
- Don’t waste a reader’s time with aim, methodology and explanations etc. They don’t want to know how sausages are made.
- First slide / page must include the researcher’s point of view.
- Provide context for consumers of research, but don’t make it a requirement.
- Constantly keep the 3 questions from the section above in mind.
- Share on visible platforms such as the company’s Slack channel.
This way, readers get the headline news. They can easily see what’s happening with users without diving too deep into one topic.
Now it takes only three to four minutes to get up to speed.
Twilio’s internal newsletter has an 80% open rate, which is HUGE! This indicates that everyone across the organization stays engaged with users in some way.
Use AI in the Research Process
AI is here to stay, and Ari’s excited about it. He thinks researchers should leverage this revolutionary technology.
At Twilio, Ari and his team primarily use Marvin’s AI. With the capacity to generate and summarize large transcripts, it is a game changer.
“Anything that can reduce time to insight is a win,” he said.
AI points you in the right direction if you’re starting from scratch. It changes a researcher’s workflow, shifting a researcher’s role. Ari calls this new activity insight engineering.
He stresses that it’s important to not to view researchers as just collectors of data — they are interrogators of evidence.
When you receive results from AI, review them. Corroborate and triangulate them. Most important, have a strong POV on them and build defensible business cases with AI.
Is AI’s word the letter of the law? Of course not.
He painted a vivid scenario to illustrate this:
Imagine a fight breaks out at a restaurant. A group of detectives having dinner are witnesses to the fight. Once the police arrive, should they ONLY interview the detectives?
Of course not.
They interview everyone at the restaurant.
Similarly, don’t let AI be the single source of truth.
Ari acknowledges that AI isn’t as capable as a human. However, it provides a starting point or foundation from which to begin research work.
He’s careful about where he draws the line of AI’s involvement, though.
“Where I will not allow tools to fully step into the arena is in the insight generation and counsel giving,” he said.
The Future: Rebranding Research?
What does the future hold for the research profession?
Ari issued a wake-up call to researchers everywhere:
“We live in a market-based world, where companies will pay for the things they value and not pay for the things they don’t. It’s supply and demand. Research teams and UX have been cut. That is a clear, implicit statement of the value that we’ve delivered to date.”
Research impacts all aspects of the business — from product and design to marketing and customer success. Sharing insights across an organization is becoming increasingly important.
Researchers are the connective tissue, building bridges. They teach what they learn to other stakeholders.
“We need to evolve and change and adapt to what the market is telling us,” he said.
“We need to rethink what we are, how we work, and how we’re going to communicate that to the business,” he said.
All insight-related functions need a rebrand. What do you suggest, Ari?
He likes the term “Reconnaissance.”
We like it, too.
