Continuous UX research subscription
Helping teams get regular insight
Give your team a UX superpower
We know how hard it is for busy product teams to get customer feedback. When time is tight as the team is maxed out, UX research is often the first to go. It’s a hassle to organise and stakeholders fear it might slow down the development process.
We have designed our UX research subscription to support teams in this exact situation: Get the goodness of ongoing research and usability testing without the hassle of organising them. It’s perfect for an existing design or product team that don’t have the time, resources, or expertise to run regular usability tests or first-hand customer research sessions.
Over the 12 month subscription, we become part of your team. Looking after research ops, testing, customer interviews, analysis, and recommendations. We can help with getting designs ready for testing or even making design changes afterwards. Our goal is to help your design team make more informed decisions without slowing them down.
User research is a continuous process of discovery and learning, not just a one-time event.
Steve Portigal
In his book: Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights
How it works
Frequency
Our subscriptions last 12 months and usually consist of 1 round of research a month. These rounds could be usability tests, in-depth customer interviews, or a bit of both.
Scheduled dates are flexible, so if you need to move a session out by a week or two, we will do our best to accommodate you. We can also create a custom frequency for you, every second month for example.
Recruitment and incentives
Finding the right people to test is vital so we use a team of the best recruiters in South Africa, broader Africa, Europe, and the USA. We create a carefully designed screener to ensure that respondents meet your target market criteria. We also recruit extra participants in case there are any last-minute cancellations.
The price of each package includes recruitment and incentives for South African respondents. We will need to quote separately for broader African, European, and American respondents as currency fluctuates.
Choosing what needs to be uncovered each month
Three weeks before each round, we will help you decide what topics need to be covered or what experiences need to be tested. For usability testing, we can test designs, prototypes, concepts, or live code. You will need to supply these for testing but we can help with suggestions to get them ready for testing. For in-depth interviews, we will help you form focus statements that we will turn into a script and talking points.
Creating the script
Based on what needs to be tested or what learnings you are looking for, we will formulate the best way to gather the findings. Knowing what types of questions to ask, and when to ask them, comes from a deep understanding of research theory and years of experience.
In-person or remote interviews
Based on your target market and the topics we need to cover, we can run the sessions in person or remotely. We used to run all our sessions in a dedicated research lab in Cape Town or Johannesburg, but over the years we have become adept at remote research and we now recommend it over in-person sessions. Remote sessions allow us access to more participants and the sessions are more relaxed and realistic. More about why we like remote research.
Getting the participants setup and ready
We will make sure they have access to the internet and have a device that can load your site or prototype. With remote sessions, we rely heavily on video calls so, before the sessions, we will confirm what phone or computer the respondent will be using, test their internet, and buy them data if needed.
Facilitating the interviews
Based on the package you select, the tests will be with 5 or 10 customers for 45 to 60mins each. The sessions will be live-streamed over a secure Vimeo channel as well as recorded for later viewing. If you choose to have a findings report, viewing the sessions is optional, but if would like a workshop after the tests, your team members will need to watch them all in full.
What you get after the sessions
After the research sessions, there are two ways to process the findings. You can either run a workshop to iterate on the designs, or we can create a full debrief report. Have a look at the package differences detailed below for more information.
Subscription contracts and cancellations
Our subscriptions are for 1 year but you can cancel before the end of the subscription if it’s not working for you.
Directly after the first round, you may cancel the subscription with no obligation and no notice period. After the second round (and for the rest of the subscription) we ask that you give us 2 full months’ notice.
Packages
These sessions can be usability tests, in-depth interviews, or a bit of both.
Workshop
5 user interviews (±60mins each)
Viewing day: Watching the recorded videos of the sessions we did the day before. This is a little easier than watching them live as remote interviewing and testing often has technical issues.
Workshop day: A full day online workshop with your team, directly after the viewing day, where we analyse and prioritise the findings then come up with quick win solutions and next steps.
GOOD FOR:
Longer, more complex topics, apps or websites. Requires the team to be available for two full days, stay involved and take notes. Great for teams that need quick, actionable insight.
Report
5 user interviews (±60mins each)
Viewing day (Optional): Watching the recorded videos of the sessions we did the day before.
Report: We will create a full report of the customer insights or UX issues with severity ratings and a ‘highlights reel’ of the most interesting parts of the interviews. This will include clips, recommendations and next steps.
GOOD FOR:
Larger teams that have stakeholders that are not able to attend full day workshops or viewing days and need a debrief to view in their own time or to keep as a record.
Custom
If you need something a little different, we can tailor our UX research to fit your team’s needs
This may include:
- A workshop and report
- More participants (10, or 15)
- Getting designs ready for testing
- Ideation or persona workshops
- Journey mapping and JTBD
- Consolidating other research
- Product team training
We might try a few iterations until we find something that works well for your team.