For a while now, our team at Sephora was functioning on quantitative data to drive product decisions for our online store. The perception of our users was just an extrapolation of the quantitative data, built on assumptions. As a result, our solutions were often reactive to the quantitative performance of our product, or top-down business requirements. We were overlooking the fundamental knowledge gaps of our users.
We had to go back to first principles--user needs--to guide our problem statements and solutions for the following year's roadmap. We took a two-step approach--(1) workshopping; and (2) user research. [Note: This page covers workshopping only. I made a separate page for our user research here.]
Workshop organiser and facilitator
Primary: We want to determine the assumptions that need validation. If not validated, they might set us in the wrong direction for Roadmap 2024.
Secondary: We want to (a) bring stakeholders - business and tech - onto the same page about our user needs; and (b) strengthen everyone's view of the nuanced user.
What do we already know about our users' needs? What assumptions are stumbling blocks for us? Which are worthy of investing resources into to validate?
The assumption smash workshop was basically a prioritisation workshop for us. We needed key decision makers to come together, and identify the fundamental questions we had about our users which needed answers to.
The image below is the output we needed from the workshop. The most important bit was the red box - assumptions about our users we needed to validate. These would go on to form our research plan hypotheses.
The way our tech team functioned was based on smaller teams - squads. Each squad owned a different aspect of the product: Sale Engine, Data, Discovery, etc. We decided to conduct 4 separate workshops for 4 different themes - Personalisation, Discovery, Membership Experience, Purchase Intent.
Participants were a mix of PMs, Engineers, UX Designers, and Business Stakeholders.
To get our participants warmed up with each other and the tools, we conducted an icebreaker: Assumptions About Me. This served as a primer for the main content, getting participants warmed up to the concept of assumptions.
Fun stuff: A few great answers came out of it like, "In my culture, my name means 'bamboo', so people assume I'm strict and serious." Instead, this participant is the opposite; she's fun-loving with a great sense of humour!
What do we already know about our users - their goals, needs and desires?
This was the overarching question we posed to the participants. But we couldn't leave it at that. We need to give them context and something concrete to work off.
So, we created users stories to help participants step into the shoes of the user, a different story for each workshop group. For instance, the one below was for the User squad, whose focus was on membership experience.
With that, it was "blue skies". We gave participants 8min to pen down as many answers as they could on post-its. We requested they begin each statement with "I believe..." (see prompts below), so they would be comfortable expressing their opinions.
Finishing off this segment, participants stuck their post-its on the board.
I got everyone to look through the post-its for a couple of minutes. Then, I drew a line down the board, separately it into two sections - "Assumptions" and "Facts". All the post-its were parked under "Assumptions". Based on their knowledge, participants spent 8mins in silence moving the post-its into what they knew as "Facts", grouping similar ideas together as a lead-up to the Affinity Mapping (see image below).
Drawing another line, we created a sub-category of Assumptions: Assumptions that need validating. At this point, we had to emphasise that this exercise should be guided by their squad goals. Say, you're in the User squad, and have been focusing on giving every Sephora member a customised experience. This has been an assumption you've held for a long time; can I continue living with this? If not, what else do I need to know?
Zooming in on the "need validating" quadrant (bottom section of image below), we began spotting patterns in the post-its, grouping common themes together. We focused the discussion on key questions: Are these assumptions crucial to our squad goals? What do we lose if we don't validate them? Together, we articulated the common themes we saw in the post-its contributed by everyone.
We had to make hard decisions as a group. If those themes weren't crucial to our squad goals, we cut them out from this quadrant. After some back-and-forth (this required much people-management), the outcome was an average of 4-5 assumptions that we could confidently say, needed validation with research.
Very nice. We got our deliverables from each workshop -- the 4-5 assumptions to validate with research. But with 4 workshops, that was a total of 20 assumptions to bring to the next research phase. It was untenable to take them and run.
So, we brought our PMs and Product Leads together to prioritise the key themes that not only could be addressed efficiently with a user research, but also had the potential to build a business case for the 2024 Product Roadmap. There were gives-and-takes where some fundamental user needs we should have answers to, had to be deprioritised -- these were either questions that called for resource-heavy research, or had smaller business impact.
Click here to see how we took this forward into research.
This UX-led discovery process was ultimately a big step for our team. It formalised the role UX plays in Product Roadmap planning, moving us towards design-thinking-led product development.
I'm so grateful I had the opportunity to take on a strategic role, developing a framework to engage various stakeholders in the organisation. It gave me space to explore the dynamics of decision making in the organisation's landscape, and explore ways to create a level playing field for all voices.
While this wasn't my first time facilitating a workshop, it was definitely a first in the corporate context. I was faced with a room of diverse voice, strong personalities and experienced leaders, with challenging power dynamics. As a young woman, I felt it was an important opportunity to exercise assertiveness and confidence, taking control of the room, while facilitating discussions with kindness.
Facilitating these workshops reminded me that it's not just about empathising with users, but also the participants. The skill of active listening and reflecting the participant's thoughts back to the group was important to create space and invite more voices into the discussions.