Establishing ResearchOps (ReOps) for a Financial Services and Audit Service-line
Ernst & Young (EY) LLP- Lead UX Researcher
A foundational 4-week research program designed to empower researchers across the service-line to deliver insights faster and more effectively by standardizing processes, centralising tools, and creating a single source of truth for all research data resulting in higher research programme efficiency over next 6 months.
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My Role
Lead UXR with experience with founding and leading ReOps
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Duration
A 4-week long study to discover the problems in the process and 6-8 months of solution implementation and tracking
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Collaboration
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UX Designers
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UXRs
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Product Managers
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Engineers
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Leadership aka Partners
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Legal and Compliance
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Key Impact
80% improvement in UX Research efficiency
Overview
Disclaimer: Due to NDA, I will not be able to share any original documentations or designs tested and will be focusing on process, high-level findings and recommendations.
​ "We have 5 UX researchers working across our multiple applications, interacting with users, yet why do we have a low ROI and low user satisfaction for those applications?"
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UX researchers in the Financial Services and Audit service-line faced increasing administrative burdens, scheduling conflicts, participant unavailability that slowed down their work and led to fragmented insights.
These significant operational bottlenecks impacted the research outcomes. While their insights were valuable, the process of conducting research was inefficient and inconsistent leading to delays and causing frustration among stakeholders.
​ How might we identify and mitigate the stumbling blocks in the research process and implement the actionable insights for UX research?​
Specific Goals:
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Guage how UX Reseach studies are planned by UXRs for their projects
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Expectations from PMs and other stakeholder
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Identifying & improving the process barriers UX Researchers
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Gather actionable insights to enhance the UX Research process for entire sevice-line
MY ROLE & CROSS-FUNCTIONAL COMMUNICATION
​ A Collaboration was happening daily-mainly through meetings, MS Teams messages, Comments via MS Word comments
Cross-functional teams involved:
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Customer Success- Centre of Excellence (A central service-line catering to individual main service-lines' UX and CX needs)
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UX Designers
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UX Researchers
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Product Managers
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Engineers
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Leadership aka Partners
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Legal and Compliance
As a UX Research Ops Lead I...​
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Led the kick-off meeting to understand what the key problems in different the research studies by the UX Researchers, and Stakeholders
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Study design and planning
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Created discussion guides (For UXRs and Stakeholders)
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1:1 Interview moderation
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Data collection and analysis
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Reporting and Read-outs
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Post-study collaborations
​ A game changer in the recruitment strategy for this project was to involve not only UX Researchers but also different stakeholders who invested in the process​
Methodology- UXR & Stakeholder Interviews
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Scheduled-1:1Remote interview session with 14 members of the service-line, which included
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5 - UX Researcher (working as individual contributors)
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5- Project managers for 7 different applications (catering a vast group of consultants)
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2-UX Designers
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2- Leadership/ Partner members (decision makers)
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45 to 60 Min Duration
Timeline-Phase I-
Timeline
Week #1- Project Kick-off
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Meetings with UX Researchers and Stakeholders
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Sent 1:1 Interview invites
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Create Discussion Guides
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14 Remote and moderated 1:1 interviews
(5 UXRs, 5 PMs, 2 UX Designers, and 2 Partners)
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45 min-60 Mins per interview
Week #2- Conduct Research
Week #3- Analysis & Report
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Qualitative insights from the interviews with UX Researchers and Stakeholders
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Thematic analysis of the pain points
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Share insights with the team
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Prioritise action-items for the next phase
Week #4- Share out
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I thematically analysed problem areas and their potential causes as qualitative insights from interviews with UXRs and Stakeholders in Miro​
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These themes helped to find the missing link between UX Research execution and stakeholder expectations to carve the solution as the next phase of the project. ​
Analysis
​Insights & Recommendations
The main deliverable of this phase was to identify the problem areas in the process.
These insights and recommendations were shared with the leadership and UX researchers.
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High Impact Findings
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A lack of centralised process was greatly felt by UXRs and the leadership
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All agreed upon the need for more participants for research studies to avoid scheduling conflicts, overuse of existing group
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Inconsistent standards- Each researcher developed their own ways to work around consent forms, report format, storage, participant communication templates.​
Actionable Recommendations
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Form a centralised research process to facilitate -
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standardised participant recruitment
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Encourage a higher participation from EY consultants at different levels and locations
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Develop governance guidelines
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Develop standard documents for reports, participant communications etc.​
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Form a research repository accessible to all UXRs and stakeholders (e.g. Dovetail)
​Behavioural Insights
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All researchers mentioned the burnout they faced due to more time spent on administrative tasks than conducting research and generating insights
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Many PMs mentioned the stress to boost adoption with none to very little knowledge of how current features are being utilised
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Impact​
Recognising the unsustainable nature of the current UX Research process and its impact on efficiency, quality, and scale the leadership decided to invest in the ResearchOps function in small steps as next phase.
Launch of 'Research Hub'
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A SharePoint site developed to create research repository called " Research Hub"
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Accessible to all UXRs and Stakeholders
Common Research Wiki
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A common place for all the UXRs to find templates for Consent forms, Recruitment invitations, research plans, interview scripts, and reports, GDPR information for MS Teams calls and Third party applications
Matrics for Improvement Tracking
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Efficiency Metrics for Time for recruitment,
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Quality metrics-
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Participant database quality
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Efficiency of UX studies
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Impact Metrics- Track research studies, Product impact
Communication to Encourage Participation
Collaboration with dedicated service-line communication team to sign up for participation in UX Research process