Table of contents TL;DR Context and research objective Research process Tactical and strategic outcomes Reflection and personal learnings
<aside>
TL;DR. Project overview
Osome is an accounting service for entrepreneurs. The product's core feature is a chat through which entrepreneurs upload receipts and other financial documents. The product was moving fast, and teams needed data quickly to keep up with decisions.
The product team came with a prioritization request: there were 40 potential chat improvements in the backlog, and they needed to know where to start. As I got into it, I quickly realized that without understanding what value the chat held for customers, any prioritization would be shallow. As a result the team got the prioritized backlog, as well as a strategic vision for the product.
Key insight: the team didn't fully understand how customers were actually using the chat, and customers weren't just treating it as a communication tool. In fact they were using it as a document cloud storage.
</aside>
<aside> ⭐
Impact for the company
The research became the starting point for a conversation about the strategic vision for chat as a product.
</aside>
<aside> ⭐
Impact for product
A prioritized backlog, formulated job statements, and a clear strategic direction for chat development.
</aside>
1 · Context and research objective
Osome is an on-the-go accounting service for entrepreneurs, operating across three markets: the UK, Singapore, and Hong Kong. The product's core feature is a chat through which entrepreneurs upload receipts and other accounting documents. The company was growing quickly, the product was moving fast, and teams needed data fast to keep up.
→ The research request came from the product team responsible for the in-chat customer experience.
"We have a list of 40 potential improvements and we want to understand where to start."
It sounded like a backlog prioritization task. The choice of methodology sat with the research lead; my job was to execute the study. After the briefing, we decided to run a Kano survey.
\ However, while working on this project, a strategic layer surfaced. The additional research into that layer was something I initiated and led myself. More on that in Stage 3.*
2 · Research process
Stage 1. #Desk research The Kano method helps to understand not just what users want, but how each feature affects their satisfaction. Satisfaction was the chat product team's key metric and raising it was one of the OKRs for the quarter.