Let’s get into it
When talking to my UX research team recently, I used the term "Insights Users" to talk about Research Team Stakeholders and I mean..... I kinda love it. 😍 Since then, I’ve started using the term in more settings: meetings, LinkedIn comments, and industry leader chats.
As UX researchers, we always talk about being a voice for the user. 🗣️ But we have to acknowledge that we do have different types of users – our experience/product users, yes, but also the people who use our insights to make less risky, more informed decisions for the business, the product, the experience, and the design.
This shift in perspective changes how we approach our work and relationships across the organization. Let's explore who these Insights Users actually are.
Who can be an “Insights User”?
Let’s dive into who might be the users of our insights with an example from my User Personas portfolio case study. Below, I’ve listed some of the Insights Users impacted by the work. Note: Each team is going to use the insights differently. They will all have different needs and goals (that ultimately map to larger business goals).
Executive Leadership: Enables forecasting ability (clearer understanding of who they are targeting), reduction in siloed decision-making across the company through alignment, enhanced cross-functional collaboration
UX Designers: Supports the ability to successfully journey map, empathy map, etc., and creates a referenceable artifact across projects
Product Team: Enables data-driven prioritization, provides a framework for evaluating feature ideas against JTBD
Engineering Team: Improves technical decision-making, allows for a clearer understanding of the technical limitations of certain users
Customer Success & Support Teams: Streamlines training and onboarding, enhances educational materials, updates communication strategies based on persona knowledge (how technical can we be with the user?)
Deployment Team: Updates communication strategies based on persona knowledge (how technical can we be with the user?)
Marketing Team: Strengthens product positioning, enriches content marketing through blog posts and Voice of the Customer (VOC)
As this example demonstrates, insights can serve diverse teams across an organization in different ways. Depending on the research conducted, you may not have as many Insights Users as I did in the project above. Maybe you have 2-3 Insights Users instead. But the way to determine who these people are is by looking for the folks for whom the insights are going to be impactful. Whose work is affected by the insights and recommendations you will present after conducting research? These people/teams will be your primary stakeholders – your primary Insights Users.
Now that we've identified who our Insights Users are, the next crucial step is understanding their specific needs and contexts.
Understanding “Insights Users” & their needs
As researchers, the best way to understand the needs of your Insights Users is to approach them like you would with any experience/product user – research them! Use stakeholder interviews, alignment kickoffs, cross-functional project syncs, cross-departmental all-hands meetings, internal workshops, and more to learn more about your Insights Users. Some things to look out for:
How do they like to consume information?
What are their goals? Not just for any given project, but in general? What goals (OKRs & KPIs) do they have?
What is their level of understanding when it comes to UX? What about UX Research?
What constraints do they have?
What priorities do they have?
What decisions do they own?
What time constraints or deadlines are important to them?
What language do they speak? Will UX jargon trip them up?
These questions form the foundation of your Insights User understanding, but gathering this information requires more than just a one-time interview. Ultimately, understanding your Insights Users lies in the art of relationship-building. It doesn’t all have to happen at once; your relationship – and subsequently your understanding of your Insight Users – will grow over time. To be a successful, strategic, and impactful UX researcher, relationship-building has to be a key tool in your toolkit. The ability to be impactful as a researcher is heavily tied to your ability to foster relationships with cross-functional partners and stakeholders across your organization. Time spent learning about your Insights Users will help you roadmap future research studies, prioritize research recommendations, and clearly map insights to specific teams and goals. This means you will want to focus on all the fun relationship-building things like establishing and building trust, creating feedback loops, and setting and understanding expectations. You will also want to be their trusted resource and guide for all things research.
💡 Tip: Some ways you might keep track of the information you learn over time include: ecosystem maps, stakeholder maps, insights maps, or even service blueprints!
Once you've built these relationships and developed a deep understanding of your Insights Users, you can focus on delivering research in ways that truly resonate with them.
Tailoring insights to different “Insights Users”
Once you know your Insights Users well, how can you share insights and recommendations with them in a usable, clear, and successful way? There are a few considerations that will be important here:
Format matters: Is it best to present this in a slide deck? A written report? Will the insights land better in a workshop setting? Knowing your Insights Users (and having answered some of the questions from the section above), you can decide what makes the most sense for them. As a researcher, I’ve done everything from presenting live in company-wide meetings to sharing recorded presentations with cross-functional teams to representing the user in an Ask Me Anything (AMA) Q&A session to facilitating a prioritization exercise.
Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF): My husband says this all the time (a Navy-ism from his time as a submarine officer) and it’s always a welcome reminder. Don’t bury the lede by trying to get an “A-ha!” moment out of sharing insights. What does your Insights User need to know, and in what way will the information be most valuable? Tell them the need-to-know and why it matters to them specifically. Effective insight delivery is about making your research immediately applicable to your Insights Users' work.
Digest and suggest™️: This is my new favorite catchphrase, FYI. Insights without recommendations mean you are making your Insights Users decode why insights matter to them. You need to digest the information (research) and then suggest explicitly & specifically how that information can be used to further their goals. Without clear, actionable recommendations, you have only done half of the job. Don’t half-bake the recommendations – be your Insights User’s partner in establishing next steps, enabling decision-making, and paving a clear way forward.
Focusing on “Insights Users” for impact
Reframing stakeholders as Insights Users is a mindset shift that can help position researchers in a more strategic position. When viewing our stakeholders and cross-functional partners through this lens, we naturally apply the same user-centered thinking that makes us effective researchers in the first place. We become more deliberate about understanding their needs, tailoring our deliverables, and measuring our impact based on how well our insights enable better decisions.
This approach can elevate research from a support function to a true strategic partnership. By treating the consumers of our research with the same care and attention we give our product users, we create a cycle where insights are more readily understood, valued, and, most importantly, actioned on. So, the next time you're launching a research study, I encourage you to expand what it means to be user-centric by understanding all of your users – including your Insights Users – and Digest & Suggest™️ (haha) your way to being an impactful partner 🙌