Product development is constantly getting faster and more iterative. As development cycles tighten, it can be difficult for UX research to keep up and stay relevant using a traditional project-based approach.
Always-on (aka Continuous research) transcends the traditional project cycle. Instead of answering a discrete set of research questions, researchers collect general user feedback on a regular basis. These findings can be integrated throughout the product development cycle, without waiting for fielding.
Modern tools like Sprig make Always-On research a breeze to set up. Simply select your audience and a few simple questions (made easy with Sprig’s preset templates), and hit launch. And just like that, you’re generating a continuous stream of in-context user feedback ready for analysis.
The Importance of Strategic Always-On Delivery
Unlike project-based research, Always-On research doesn’t have one-and-done deliverable. Your team needs to figure out a strategy for how they will share their findings on a routine basis. Otherwise, all that fantastic data will just sit gathering dust at the back of everyone’s to-do lists.
That being said, not all routine sharing is made equal. In fact,
Being careless with always-on delivery can dilute the value of research rather than enrich it.
It’s tempting to deliver templatized results to your product teams every week, or even to just send out a link to the results in-platform and let your co-workers take it from there. But I advise you to be careful with this kind of unguided sharing. Even if it doesn’t cost you a lot of time, it costs your stakeholders time and attention.
If you’re going to ask stakeholders to read something regularly, you should have a clear and confident justification. Share without adequate reason or context, and you risk your stakeholders feeling like you’re wasting their time. Do this enough and stakeholders and your stakeholders will tune you out entirely; your valuable always-on data will become white noise.
On the other hand, a smart delivery strategy can turn always-on data into a strategic powerhouse for your team.
With good strategy, even a simple 2-question feedback form can:
- Supplement user engagement + usability metrics
- Quickly identify and communicate urgent bugs and product issues
- Nimbly identify product gaps and help with early design
- Build cross-functional relationships and increase goodwill for your team
- Prove the ROI of UX research
All it takes is the right plan. Here are 5 ways you can think about using your always-on data to achieve these goals.
- Integrate User Feedback with Traditional Metrics
How to Analyze
Work with leadership to choose a quantifiable user satisfaction metric, like NPS or CSAT. Launch a continuous feedback project to track this metric; add optional follow-up questions to get more nuanced insights.
Pull and record the distribution of results on a regular cadence (e.g. weekly, bi-weekly). Track your changes over time. If you also have access to other metrics, you can also dig for correlations between satisfaction and specific user behaviors.
How to Share
Your organization likely already tracks other usage metrics, maybe it’s even your team! Coordinate with whoever is in charge of those metrics and deliver in unison with them.
Once you’ve established user satisfaction as a long-term metric in your organization, you can also use it as a benchmark for product success. Increasing your NPS score, for example, could be a measurable goal that your organization pursues alongside other key metrics.
- Post-Release Feedback
How To Analyze
Once you understand your organization’s baseline customer satisfaction (as in strategy 1), you can watch for major fluctuations as indicators of success or failure. Pay close attention to your always-on research directly after any major product releases. Sudden drops in satisfaction or retention might tip you off to any unforeseen issues with your release.
How to Share
Share any issues (or lack thereof) with your product teams in the days and weeks following the release. Use this light-touch data as a guide post to do deeper-dive usability studies if need be. With time, you can integrate this as a routine step in the product team’s release process.
You can also set up a dashboard for product managers to monitor the score themselves. Sprig has unlimited seats, so with some onboarding, you can enable your product team to own this part of the research process without additional effort on your part.
- Catalogue Negative Feedback for Product Strategy Conversations
How to Analyze
Add a quick qualitative follow-up question to your feedback survey to see why people gave their satisfaction ratings. Or, you can launch a separate project to directly solicit suggestions for product improvement.
Then, every month or so, dive deep into the low scoring feedback and catalogue what’s bothering people. Rank by frequency and severity to get an overall sense of what’s most important to fix. Keeping track of frustrations and suggestions is a low-lift project from an analysis point of view, since Sprig AI already auto-summarizes themes for you.
If you want even more nuanced feedback, you can use Sprig’s continuous Replay to see what exactly happened before you got a frustrated survey response.
How to Share
Detailed constructive criticism can be challenging to swallow. So unless the problems are sudden or severe (see strategy 2), be selective about how and when you share unsolicited negative feedback.
These findings are best for product and design leadership while they’re figuring out their next moves. Bring this data to product strategy meetings, or provide a light-touch report or dashboard as a resource if you can’t be there. Showing up with this data during an actionable moment makes you helpful, fast and hyper-prepared, rather than needlessly negative.
- Share Good News and Shout-outs in Public Spaces
How to Analyze
Once every week or two, pull one piece of good news from your always-on research. This could be a successful interaction with a new release, a rise in your satisfaction score, or a really positive quote from a user. No analysis needed.
How to Share
Pick somewhere public – a company channel, a team meeting, or even an all-hands. Share your data, and if you can, shout out the particular teams or employees who are responsible for the win. Encourage people to congratulate them. Make it a ritual.
Will this impact product strategy? No. But is it a good time? Heck yes. And as a bonus, it keeps research visible and top-of-mind for people who otherwise wouldn’t interact with you, and associates you with positivity and encouragement. Those good vibes will come in handy if you have to share more challenging insights in the future.
- Take Snapshots to Prove Research ROI
How to Analyze
If your team invests heavily into research on a specific project, start paying extra attention to your always-on research.
Before you begin your project, pull a “snapshot” of your always-on: any recent quantitative averages and key quotes to justify your investment into your current research.
Keep tracking and recording periodically as you complete your research and any resulting product changes are released. If your quantitative metrics went up, or if any qualitative data reflects positive feedback on your teams’ work, then capture it and keep it aside.
How to Share
When it comes time for your team (or even for you individually) to report on your progress for the year, you have a new, compelling form of data to show your direct impact on product success.