Remesh – 2020
Quick Chat
Increase the usage frequency of Remesh and make it the go-to tool for quick qualitative research
Role
Senior Product Designer ― research, design, and testing
Team
Jessica Dubin - Senior Product Manager
Will Specht - Lead Engineer
Problem
High-cost, Low-usage
Running a Remesh conversation is a high stake and expensive undertaking. One conversation could take up to 2 weeks to set up and could cost a minimum of $5k. This has made Remesh a high-cost, low-usage tool.
New entry point
A simple change in allowing one button to be the one-stop-shop for all user’s needs on Remesh. Giving Pulse a differentiating brand from the rest of the offerings.
Templates
Use our proven researched-backed templates to give the users a starting point for the research that they can customize or edit before or during the conversation.
Building the workflow into modals on top of the Live experience gives instant gratification that most of the work is done on creation.
Picking demographics and quick launch
The single most important part of this flow is the ability to request an audience instantly with a click of a button. The user does not have to decide the audience breakdown in advance or the date and time of the conversation. On Launch, a user picks the audience demographics and starts the conversation – this step cuts 3-5 days of work.
Research
Finding the hindrance
When I first started to research the problem above was to identify the reasons behind the high cost, low usage, and long set-up process of a Remesh conversation. After a range of internal interviews and speaking to our clients, it was evident that the main issues are:
Recruiting participants for our conversations is costly and it could take 3 - 7 days depending on their incident rates
Writing a discussion guide for a Remesh conversation is a laborious process for our users and requires a lot of back, and forth between the different stakeholders
While the UX of setting up a conversation is easy and seamless, it still feels lengthy and users require assistance from our customer success team
These problems did not only cause Remesh to be a very low-usage between the current clients but made new client adoption virtually impossible especially for small and medium-size agencies and companies.
Analyze cost and explore opportunities
After doing a competitive analysis to understand where does Remesh stands in the market in terms of cost, I realized that we have to cut our cost by 50% at least to be competitive. During this process, I took a look at both qualitative and quantitative research tools including Qualtircs, Ipsos, and Google Survey.
As part of this initiative, I have also gone into looking at our sales force numbers and asked the Sales team to give us a better idea of when are we losing sales and the reason behind losing sale opportunities. It was clear from looking at the report that “cost” is a deterring factor for many prospects especially those small and medium-size creative agencies.
Solution
Instant Cheap Sample, Quick Setup
As a team, we had two ways to address the problems, find a cheaper and faster sample alternative to our current traditional sample providers and optimize the UX of the conversation setup process to match the instant feel of the sample.
Integrate with Amazon’s Mechanical Turks
At Remesh, we have used Amazon’s Mechanical Turks service since the inception of the Remesh app. It was a way for us to quickly test the participant experience and our voting algorithm. Over the past 4 years, Remesh has built credibility and likeness within the Mechanical Turks community. One Turker once said on a Remesh conversation:
I have seen products that I wanted to look for because of seeing them on Remesh and I also have had my mind changed after reading some comments.
Mechanical Turks love the Remesh platform because, in comparison to the other work that they do, this allows them to be creative, learn from each other and express their opinions. We had a community of people that resembles the demographics of the United States of America ready to join any conversations we put out. Our team was determined to test the value of such a community to our users, therefore we proposed the following steps:
Start running sales demos using Mechanical Turks
Integrate Mechanical Turk API with Remesh
Open it up for the external client’s usage
MVP Learnings and Optimizations
We released a button to request instant participants on the audience page, and it was very successful in attracting more usage
Clients need the ability to pick their audience demographic.
Confusion around how requesting the participants is related to publishing the conversation.
Found an increase in the usage of the platform by 20% for beta clients and it was clear that the quality of responses from the Mechanical Turkers is very good
Remesh Featured Templates
After we released the Mechanical Turk integration internally and externally with some of our clients, we realized pretty quickly that we needed to optimize the user experience so it aligns with the fast nature of the Mechanical Turk recruits.
It was imperative to design a new flow that cuts the noise and the unnecessary steps and utilize our previously designed discussion guide templates.
MVP Learnings and Optimization
50% of all accounts use it
Fast user adoption of templates and got requests to increase the range of template to include shorter and more general templates ie. demographic questions, and advertising tests
Own the input and output on Remesh
Looking ahead, we should build template library for teams and workspaces so we can own teams’ end-to-end research process
Introduce a new shorter set up flow
After we released the Mechanical Turk integration internally and externally with some of our clients, we realized pretty quickly that we needed to optimize the user experience so it aligns with the fast nature of the Mechanical Turk recruits.
It was imperative to design a new flow that cuts the noise and the unnecessary steps and utilize our previously designed discussion guide templates.
Outcome
We released Remesh Pulse and we already started selling to clients who could not historically afford Remesh, expanding our use cases and client base.
Welcome Modal – It introduces the new product with the accompanying new brand. Users only see this modal once during their setup process.
Conversation Details – It collects conversation title and main external information. Most fields are prefilled based on the information of the user.
Templates – Give the users a range of templates as a foundation for the discussion and alleviates the stress that comes with building a discussion guide
Audience Demographics – On launching the conversation, users will pick the demographics of the participants then start the conversation
Next Steps