Defining the Damn Data

Defining the Damn Data

@nstopUX

Jen Matson Sr. UX Designer, RealSelf

Photo: https://www.flickr.com/photos/rh2ox/9989876925

Everyone

data…right?

Photo: https://www.flickr.com/photos/barnism/429618154

We are:

The world's largest community for learning and sharing information about cosmetic surgery, dermatology, dentistry, and other elective treatments.

In 2014, our users:

• Numbered 51 million (unique visitors)

• Viewed half-a-billion pages

• Spent 5 million hours in their research

• Are predominantly mobile: 72% and growing

Core team: UX designer, product manager, developer(s)

Supporting players: Business analyst, community manager(s)

Team

Agile process: 2-week sprints, PM and design at daily stand-ups

Bite-sized work: Build and launch many smaller things, test, iterate, improve

Project approach

?

Ongoing data sharing

Weekly meetings:

• Business analysts present Google Analytics data to full product team

• Community managers share user insights

How do we interpret the data?

Featured project: Question & answer page

Step 1: Define the problem / opportunity

• What’s wrong, or where can we do something great?

• Why do we think this might be worthwhile?

• Do we have any data to support this?


• High traffic, but high bounce rate - most visitors view 1 page, leave

• We have highly relevant content, but it’s not easily discoverable

• Issue identified via analysis using Google Analytics


Step 2: Define your users

• What’s the profile of auser visiting this page?

• What motivates this user, and how does that intersect with what we have to offer in our product?


• Someone Googling for answer to a specific question about a medical treatment

• Motivated to the get that answer first and foremost

• Unaware of RealSelf brand


Step 3: Define the desired business result

• What does product success look like?


• Reduce bounce rate, converting some portion of casual users to active users

• Active users contribute content that increases value of site for all

• Increase awareness of RealSelf brand


Step 4: Identify the highest-value work

• Where do user needs and business goals overlap?


• Focus on getting the user their answer quickly, easily

• Provide relevant related content for those motivated to dig deeper


Step 5: Define what to design and build, and how

• What content, interface and functional changes will we make?

• How long will it take to design and build?

• What can we deliver quickest, of highest value to the user?


• Remove irrelevant content/UI so we can move valuable content further up the page

• Tweak existing design for initial experiment


Step 6: Define metrics, measurement, launch

• What data will we use to determine success or failure?

• What do we have the ability to measure now?

• How many people will see this and on what devices/in what regions?


• Show reduced bounce rate % in Google Analytics

• Increase clicks on specific links to related content

• Target mobile for initial test

• Expose to a small % of users to start


Step 7: Design, build and instrument

• Create final visual design

• Build design in Optimizely using HTML, CSS and JavaScript

• Set up click and other goals in Optimizely keyed off of defined user behaviors

Step 7: Design, build and instrument

Step 8: Launch, observe, learn

Results?

New design

Old design

New design

BUT…

This is by design

• Someone Googling for answer to a specific question about a medical treatment

• Motivated to the get that answer first and foremost

• Not engaging with doctors at this point in their journey

Another lesson

• Photo upload was clunky, so users created multiple review entries for multiple photos

• We made uploading photos easier, data showed sharp drop in reviews

• Initial data was misleading - we didn’t break anything, we made the experience better

Always test before you launch to all

So…

1. Define the problem / opportunity

2. Define your users

3. Define the desired business result

4. Identify the highest-value work

5. Define what to design and build, and how

6. Define metrics, measurement, launch

7. Design, build and instrument

8. Launch, observe, learn

Thank you.

@nstopUX

Jen Matson Sr. UX Designer, RealSelf