Special Edition / Revolutionize Your Product Development Process with Customer Feedback, with Jay Brewer & Zhuldyz Alimbek

It hurts to admit, but product designers and teams don’t always know what our users need. We need to seek out user feedback and create ways for them to tell us spontaneously, often in the heat of the moment. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Jay Brewer & Zhuldyz Alimbek – fresh from the stage at Pendomonium 2023 – join Sean Flaherty and Kyle Psaty to talk about UX research and customer feedback and the essential value they deliver throughout the product development process.

User roles have become increasingly specialized in recent years, and so have user demands. At the same time, the pace of change is accelerating wildly. Taken together, these factors create a scenario that only adds to the importance and urgency of gathering feedback regularly – and from a variety of sources.

Zhuldyz, a UX researcher, highlights the power of spontaneous feedback, “which is received in the moment of frustration. That’s super important for us. It’s a different type of emotion,” she adds, “and it’s a different sense of responsibility you have as UX researchers or design team. It’s crucial to pay attention to this type of feedback, as it often reveals critical pain points and usability issues.”

Jay, Sr. VP of Digital Product Design, says it’s also important to find a balance between the spontaneous and interruptive feedback, as well as the negative and the positive.

“Finding that balance tends to even out those data doubters or those feedback doubters that we’re not actually getting a representative of engaged, kind of frustrated customers, not engaged customers. We need to go back and make sure we have a well-rounded set of feedback.”

Be sure to catch the entire episode with Jay Brewer & Zhuldyz Alimbek; they bring the UX perspective into the frame, doubling down on the power of collaboration within the product trio and the empathy required not just between builder and user – but among researchers, designers, and the product team as well.

It’s the ideal way to align user needs with product roadmaps to ensure that the right solutions are delivered.

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