Continuous discovery: bring the voice of the customer to product design
Case Study
Vessel Health
Vessel Health is a wellness product that enables home biomarker testing and offers nutritional and lifestyle advice.
About
- Website: Vesselhealth.com
- Industry: Wellness
- Timeline: 18 months
Services
- User Research
- Concept validation
- Usability testing
- Research operations
- CX Strategy
- Repository Development
- Surveys
Deliverables
- Product Feedback strategy
- Research Ops Playbook
- Research Repository
- Feature Validation
- Dovetail Implementation
- UX and CX Reports
- Feedback Dashboard
Team
- Bryan (Research strategy/ Operations)
- Lisa (UX/CX Research)
Project Info
Challenge
As a startup, Vessel needed a system to efficiently validate ideas, designs, prototypes, and newly released features. They also wanted a customer feedback platform for continuous discovery that both Product and Support teams could use.
While they had built great flows for getting early adopters to give feedback, Vessel had no system in place to synthesize that data and integrate it into a lean design process. Nor were they conducting concept and usability testing to validate feature ideas or benchmark the user experience. The lack of expertise in UX research led to blind spots and design decisions that were misaligned with customer needs. The end result was a high churn rate and low product market fit. This had to change!
Solution
We created and implemented a product feedback strategy that captured consistent, contextual feedback with speed and efficiency, measuring CSAT at 8 key touchpoints in the customer journey that fed into a product scorecard. These quantitative metrics were combined with qualitative data from user interviews to deliver monthly feedback on the customer experience. We also helped Vessel conduct concept and usability tests to evaluate new feature ideas and identify usability issues.
Our work kept Vessel close to the needs of its customers, helping improve the user experience and informing the product roadmap in a truly customer-centric culture.
Bryan came into Vessel at a time when I thought we had a pretty good customer feedback system in place, boy was I wrong. He brought in a level of sophistication that turned our customer feedback into actionable, measurable improvements to the product and experience.
Our Process
Title
Strategic Audit
Our collaboration began in January 2022 with an audit of the existing product feedback strategy and the roadblocks Vessel was facing. We identified three main areas to make improvements.
- Reviewing and refining the strategy for product evaluation
- Establishing a Lean design process
- Building a user base for research
Feedback Strategy
Over the next two weeks, we developed a new product feedback strategy that would deliver on Vessel’s goals of being a customer-centric company and designing in fast iterative cycles. The new strategy aimed to leverage human-centered design practices while keeping product development Lean.
Systems Building
We then implemented the new strategy, building internal systems and launching new measures within 4 weeks. We chose Dovetail as the research repository and qualitative analysis tool, and then channeled all customer feedback from surveys and interviews into a continuous discovery project. Complementing this tool, we set up a Google dashboard to capture data from product analytics and surveys that measured the customer experience at 7 key touchpoints. By combining qualitative and quantitative data, Vessel had a holistic, continuously updated perspective to inform their decisions.
Research Management
Rill Insights provided ongoing support to Vessel by recruiting for and conducting user interviews every month, as well as managing product feedback surveys. Concurrently, we ran concept validation and usability tests to evaluate existing and new features. Every month we delivered CX reports and made recommendations for where the experience could be improved. As a team we reviewed this data and made quick iterations to the product, operating fast and close to the voice of the customer.
Project Completion
The project closed with a handover of the research operations to the product team, leaving Vessel with a detailed playbook so the team could leverage the tools put into place.
Usability Testing
In quarterly usability tests, we delivered reports that illustrated where UX issues lie, task success metrics, quotes from customers, highlight reels, and design recommendations.
