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Dollars to Donuts
Dollars to Donuts episodes
- 6. Carol Rossi of Edmunds.com
Today's guest is Carol Rossi. She's the Senior Director of UX Research at Edmunds.com. In our conversation, we discuss her small-but-mighty team, Edmund.com's collaborative workplace culture, and the personal driver of "doing good."
The post 6. Carol Rossi of Edmunds.com first appeared on Portigal Consulting.52 min - 5. Kerry McAleer-Forte of Sears HoldingsToday’s guest is Kerry McAleer-Forte, the Director of User Experience Research for Sears Holdings. We discuss how researchers need to think like storytellers, getting at the underlying need behind a research request, and the risk of using research to make recommendations.Tools are important. It’s important to choose the right one, but at the end of the day, they also won’t replace that thing inside your skull, which is your most important tool, which is being able to observe and listen and pull the important story out for your user. – Kerry McAleer-ForteShow Links* Kerry McAleer-Forte* Don Norman* Michael Kronthal* Images from Michael’s talk* Sears* Kmart* Sears Home Services* Sears Parts DirectFollow Dollars to Donuts on Twitter (and Stitcher) and take a moment to leave a review on iTunes.TranscriptSteve Portigal: Well, thanks for joining us today Kerry.Kerry McAleer-Forte: Absolutely. Glad to be here.Steve: So, let’s start, as we do, with a bit of an introduction. Maybe you could describe the organization that you’re at and the role that you have there.Kerry: Sure. I am the Director of User Experience Research for Sears Holdings, and I have a team of seven full-time researchers and we specifically focus on experience research. By many accounts, it’s a pretty straightforward organization where UCD and UX people are concerned. We sit directly within a customer experience organization that has user experience architects, and designers, and copywriters, and product managers, and product and UX work hand in hand also with analytics, and we do a really wide range of methodologies to support answering the questions that they have around design and around the experience in general.Steve: You mentioned Sears Holdings–how do we know Sears? What do we know Sears Holdings as, as consumers, or as consumers in North America at least?Kerry: The two main brands that everyone would be familiar with would be Sears and Kmart since we are under one company. So, the websites, the mobile applications and devices, and then obviously the physical stores are all things that we spend time researching.Steve: So, the websites for both brands, the stores for both brands, and then the mobile apps or other kinds of tools for both brands as well?Kerry: Mobile and tablet. Right, because of where our team sits, the UX and the product management does have a particular digital focus. So, most of our time is spent focusing on the website, mobile phones, and tablets. However, Sears has been in the integrated retail arena for a long time now, so we definitely take an approach wherever we can.We’re looking at the holistic end-to-end experience, so somebody might be at home on their tablet, they’re on the iPad watching television, they see something that’s interesting, and then the next day they’re at work and they pull it up and they’re like “Mm, that’s pretty interesting.” Then, on the weekend, they visit a store to go check out the refrigerator, open the door, and then pulling it up on their phone to check out reviews.58 min
- 5. Kerry McAleer-Forte of Sears Holdings
Today's guest is Kerry McAleer-Forte, the Director of User Experience Research for Sears Holdings. We discuss how researchers need to think like storytellers, getting at the underlying need behind a research request, and the risk of using research to make recommendations.
The post 5. Kerry McAleer-Forte of Sears Holdings first appeared on Portigal Consulting.58 min - 4. Nancy Frishberg of Financial EnginesMy guest today is Nancy Frishberg, the manager of user research at Financial Engines. We discuss recruiting participants in an enterprise setting (where users are customers of your customers), finding the generative in the evaluative and how to think about collaborative workspace as entirely separate from reporting structure.59 min
- 4. Nancy Frishberg of Financial EnginesMy guest today is Nancy Frishberg, the manager of user research at Financial Engines. We discuss recruiting participants in an enterprise setting (where users are customers of your customers), finding the generative in the evaluative and how to think about collaborative workspace as entirely separate from reporting structure.Everybody in the organization should be interested in user research and care about what our users think and have opinions based in fact, and just not see their own experience as one facet of many people’s experiences. – Nancy FrishbergShow Links* Nancy Frishberg* Follow Nancy on Twitter* Financial Engines* Salesforce* User Research Council* Fitts’s Law* General Assembly User Experience Design trainingFollow Dollars to Donuts on Twitter (and Stitcher) and show us some love by leaving a review on iTunes.TranscriptSteve Portigal: Thanks, Nancy for joining us. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us.Nancy Frishberg: I’m delighted to be with you Steve. It’s always good to have a conversation with you.Steve: Oh. Thanks. You too. Let’s just start with kind of introductions. Tell me about your organization and your role there.Nancy: I am working currently at a company called Financial Engines. Financial Engines is….We have to be the largest something. We are the largest registered investment adviser in the United States. That means that we work with organizations that you’re probably familiar with like Fidelity, Vanguard and others in that same category who we call providers. I think they call them that too.Also with the employers – very big employers – a bunch of the Fortune 500 and 1,000 Group to hold and to manage the investment funds that ordinary employees are putting away in their 401ks. We manage 401ks for people.My role here is manager of user research. I’m the first such manager that they have had or even full time user researcher that they’ve had.About two years ago, the company looked around and said, “You know, we’ve been spending a lot of time talking to the employers and making sure that they’re happy. They understand that we are sharing the responsibility with them of keeping people’s 401ks safe and well-invested. What we want to do is make a better customer experience for the end user, for the employees.”There’s a big push on. We’ve grown from one person to about 15 in the user experience group and I’m part of that big growth spurt.Steve: You’re the first person that’s dedicated to research. Have there been others as part of that growth spurt?Nancy: I have two contractors working for me now. Depending on how the planning goes for 2015, I may be hiring some people also or we may be rearranging our group. I’ve got a junior user researcher working with me and also a recruiter full time each.Steve: Having a full time recruiter sounds like a luxury. I don’t know. Is it?Nancy: I don’t think we could do this job without it,59 min
- 4. Nancy Frishberg of Financial Engines
My guest today is Nancy Frishberg, the manager of user research at Financial Engines. We discuss recruiting participants in an enterprise setting (where users are customers of your customers), finding the generative in the evaluative and how to think about collaborative workspace as entirely separate from reporting structure.
The post 4. Nancy Frishberg of Financial Engines first appeared on Portigal Consulting.59 min - 3. Frances Karandy of CitrixToday’s guest is Frances Karandy, a senior manager within the Customer Experience Group at Citrix. We discuss doing product-focused research in a company with a large number of products, what to look for when hiring researchers, and how to select projects that not only support the business but also help team members to develop.51 min
- 3. Frances Karandy of CitrixToday’s guest is Frances Karandy, a senior manager within the Customer Experience Group at Citrix. We discuss doing product-focused research in a company with a large number of products, what to look for when hiring researchers, and how to select projects that not only support the business but also help team members to develop.Design goes hand in hand with research.. it’s about solving complex problems. How do we improve not just the UI or the screen, but also the product itself? – Frances KarandyShow Links* Frances Karandy* Citrix* Catherine Courage* Stanford’s Design SchoolFollow Dollars to Donuts on Twitter (and Stitcher) and show us some love by leaving a review on iTunes.TranscriptSteve Portigal: Thanks so much for being with us, Frances. I’m looking forward to speaking with you today.Frances Karandy: Thank you, Steve.Steve: Let’s just start at the high level. Maybe tell us about Citrix at a broad level, and what your role is, and what that involves.Frances: Yeah, great. Citrix, if you don’t know the company, is an enterprise software company. We create virtualization, device management and collaboration software. What that actually means is that employees can be mobile and working from anywhere, on any device, securely.We’re most known for GoToMeeting, you might have heard of that application, and for providing Windows applications at any endpoint. That could be a laptop, a thin client or even a Mac or iOS tablet.I’m senior manager within the Customer Experience Group. I lead a team of user researchers who primarily support our application and Desktop Virtualization products.Steve: Do you have counterparts that support other products?Frances: Yes. I would say, in all, we have maybe two dozen or so user researchers and we’re supporting different business lines in different areas of the product. In addition to that, there’s also the Customer Insights Group that we work really closely with. There’s probably about another dozen or so, maybe a dozen and a half, on that team that we work closely with. Yes, we’re aligned to different product lines.Steve: What’s the size of your team?Frances: Four people. And then, myself would make a fifth.Steve: Is there a specific type of customer for those product lines that you’re trying to learn about?Frances: Yeah, actually, I would say not just our product line that we work on, but most of the enterprise product lines within the full Citrix suite. Really comes down to three segments that we’re often looking at or working with, within an organization. When we go in and we partner with a customer, pretty much it comes down to three types of users that we’re working with.First one being the buyer. Who’s the buyer within the organization? Typically, that tends to be a C-level or IT executive. They would be the one signing the check for the technology solutions. There’s also the IT administrative team or staff. These are the folks that are responsible for setting up, deploying, rolling out, and maintaining the Citrix products within their organization.Then, we also have what we call the end users. That would typically be the employees who are within the organization and acc...51 min
- 3. Frances Karandy of Citrix
Today’s guest is Frances Karandy, a senior manager within the Customer Experience Group at Citrix. We discuss doing product-focused research in a company with a large number of products, what to look for when hiring researchers, and how to select projects that not only support the business but also help team members to develop.
The post 3. Frances Karandy of Citrix first appeared on Portigal Consulting.51 min - 2. Alex Wright of EtsyToday’s guest is Alex Wright, who is the director of research at Etsy. We discuss the partnership between qualitative and quantitative research at Etsy and how his background in journalism helps him with the storytelling aspects of managing the research function.54 min
About Dollars to Donuts
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The podcast where we talk with the people who lead user research in their organization.