User experience research findings from WordCamp Europe 2023

I recently had the good fortune to speak from a beautiful stage at WordCamp Europe (WCEU2023). I live and work in Connecticut and it’s been a lifelong dream to visit ancient Greece! Thank you WordPress & WCEU. 😍

View the -> Presentation Slides
Read the report -> WCEU Research Report: Survey Findings

The field research report: survey from WCEU

June 2023
Cathi Bosco, Senior UX Research Manager – Pantheon
Jenna Harmon, Senior UX Researcher – Pantheon

We surveyed an audience at WordCamp EU 2023 based on their roles to learn:

• What kinds of expert insights are groups currently looking for?
• Has Front-End Sites or decoupled site architectures been part of their own site portfolios or customer offerings? Why or why not?
• What is their current and future level of confidence (usability/technical requirements) for WordPress as a platform?

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The talk: 15 ways user experience impacts business success

View the -> Presentation Slides

As a long-time WordPress professional and contributor, I designed my talk with a specific goal –to help us unlock opportunities to be intellectually and emotionally honest with ourselves about the value and quality our solutions create for our customers, their end users, and each other as well. After sharing a timeline of my professional career including some key historical events for context we proceeded to count down the top 15 business success metrics we can influence when we focus on the user experience, customer value, and the pain relievers or gains created for people over time.

The most successful organizations are research-led!

First, I announced that we know the most successful organizations are research-led. They work with people to solve the right problems with the right solutions. They reduce risk and optimize with a bias towards action with their teams. As part of the talk, we also looked at some real-world examples and I showcased some of the frameworks that our teams leverage for critical thinking and collaboration.

Before counting down the 15 Ways User Experience Impacts Business Success we had to discuss the heavy costs of delivering poor user experiences. There are heavy, quantifiable costs associated with delivering poor user experiences. I shared what some of them are and who they impact.

For example, we know the costs associated with poor user experience:

• Lost sales due to demos or free trials that don’t convert or retention issues because the product is too complex to continue with.
• Support costs due to problems users can’t resolve without asking for help. Or Training costs due to complexity that make it hard for users to figure out on their own.
• Productivity costs due to users needing to go through extra steps to do simple things.
• Developer costs due to working on features that don’t produce value because nobody ever uses them. Or Redoing work because the previous version didn’t meet user needs or could be figured out.
• Product manager and team member cost due to spending time in “damage-control mode” instead of working to deliver new value or problem escalation issues instead of working on new capabilities.

Citation: Jared Spool

Research is critical thinking

User Experience Research is just a fancy term for getting to know our customers better…. We ALL do research.

1. Everyone making decisions that impact user experience is in fact making design decisions… we all make design decisions… 
2. I’m actually less interested in the internal team roles people have and more interested in the work getting done.

Businesses that invest wisely in user experience research and design deliver useful and compelling experiences for people that positively impact their company’s success and user outcomes. Learn more from the article I originally wrote for XWP on this topic.

Countdown from 15 ways ux impacts business success:

#15 Solve Problems and Reduce Risk with Evidence-Based Techniques

#14 Foster a Culture Where Learning Is Valued

#13 Attract and Retain Top Talent to the Company

#12 Communicate Better with Customers

#11 Show up the Competition

#10 Unlock Revenue for Innovation or Unique Allocations

#9 Lighten the Demand for Support

#8 Easily Report Outcomes to Impress Stakeholders and Investors

#7 Increase Existing Business

#6 Decrease Long-Term Costs

#5 Increase Long-Term Sustainability

#4 Improve Cross-Team Performance

#3 Reduce Churn…

How do teams improve the user experience for their clients, for websites, for products, for wearables?

Teams use frameworks including scenario-based user groups and other models… Every aspect of the talk was platform agnostic and features a collection of useful frameworks that successful teams leverage to measure and amplify the impact of user experience design research work.

If it’s not secure, performant, and accessible – it’s not usable. Created by the team from UXATT, myself, Jackie D’Elia, and Monique Dubbelman.

Research is a team sport.

As a function, UXR is best measured by its impact on the product roadmap or website design and function. This happens by way of the following:

• features ratified for the roadmap as-is
• features altered based on insights derived through research
• features removed from the roadmap entirely

Key takeaways

We know the costs associated with delivering poor user experiences.

The most successful organizations are research-led, and they reduce risk and optimize with a bias toward action.

We do far too little research. This forces teams to have to spend way too much effort compensating for not having the information they need.

And the top 2 ways user experience impacts business success are…

# 2 Increase New Customer Base

# 1 Increase Revenue (ARR)