UX research: user interviews + Qualtrics
Generative Research
My manager and I were the first user researchers at Dictionary.com, and not-so-coincidentally, the first to ask questions about their users to get leadership interested in the blank spaces.
Overview
Role
User researcher
Team
Me, manager
Project timeline
6 weeks
The problem
Dictionary.com thought their user base was just students and teachers, but they were running on 25-year-old assumptions.
→ They didn't know exactly what users were accessing Dictionary.com.
The solution
In order to best serve our users, our research goal was to identify the actual populations and their needs.
→ We determined the main user groups, their jobs to be done, mindsets, and pain points, then sought to address how to improve their process moving throughout the site. Finally, I presented the findings to leadership to get approval for more targeted impending research projects.
Tools
Research
Dictionary.com users—so who are they?
Partnered with Qualtrics, three thousand users were surveyed, but it wasn’t really that simple.
A majority of Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com users were white males in their thirties, but who were the over one million users who subscribed to the newsletter? From further surveying, we found out those recipients tended to skew older.
As a user researcher early in my career, the complexity of the data received was perplexing.
→ In an attempt to demystify the data, my manager and I set up 33 user interviews.
Affinity mapping
We used Dovetail to arrange quotes into ideas and then into larger insights, which were used to determine jobs-to-be-done and user mindsets.
It’s important to note that we weren’t specifically requesting people who were familiar with Dictionary or Thesaurus.com.
→ The necessary criteria to participate included respondents who regularly accessed online dictionaries like Dictionary.com, Merriam Webster, Oxford English Dictionary, etc.
Similar to Figjam, Dovetail has a board view to organize quotes
Jobs to be done
We determined each site’s jobs-to-be-done:
Dictionary.com: find the definition of a word
Thesaurus.com: find synonyms and antonyms for a word
→ This wasn’t groundbreaking news, but it was useful to establish.
Within each website’s job-to-be-done were drivers, behaviors, pain points, and success criteria:
Mindsets
Affinity mapping was key in determining the mindsets of each user group.
Parents wanted to know how they can provide their children opportunities to learn and grow.
Teachers wanted to know how they can teach vocabulary in a classroom in order to set their students up for success.
Professionals wanted to know how they could make their writing shine.
Word enthusiasts wanted to learn how they can learn more about words and language more broadly.
Impact
Lasting data
Because our goal was to uncover a variety of research not pertaining to any one area, our generative research was incredibly impactful for many following projects from Q2 of 2023 on.
By doing this, my manager and I saved resources for Dictionary.com, and it gave us the opportunity to create a knowledge repository that could inform projects across the organization without increasing cost.
Reflections
Personal growth
My manager and I were the first user researchers at Dictionary.com, and not-so-coincidentally, the first to ask questions about their users to get leadership interested in these blank spaces.
There were some initial adjustments I experienced—particularly with interviewing—but I feel so fortunate to have gotten to work with a manager who was dedicated to mentoring me, answering every silly question I pulled out.
What I would do differently
This was my manager's and my first time using Dovetail for their user interview video transcription and data-to-insight process, and we did surprisingly well with the new software.
We encountered some confusion during our affinity mapping exercises on the insights canvas due to an ineffective tagging system. To address this in our subsequent research project, we implemented a more generalized tagging approach, which saved us time upfront while preserving the ability to analyze detailed quotes later on.
