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Insights Unlocked
Powering smarter research: what the UserTesting acquisition of User Interviews signals for UX research
00:45:42
UserTesting leaders discuss the acquisition of User Interviews, what it means for researchers, and how it shapes the future of UX research and customer insights.
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- [00:02]
A
Welcome back to Insights Unlocked. In this episode, we're diving into a big moment in the research world, User Testing's acquisition of User Interviews. Guest host Kate Tauzi joins Baran Urkel and Bassel Fakhoury to talk about what this means for researchers, the vision behind the move, and how the combined platforms will shape the future of customer insights. Enjoy the show.
- [00:25]
B
Welcome to Insights Unlocked, an original podcast from User Testing where we bring you candid conversations and stories with the thinkers, doers and builders behind some of the most successful digital products and experiences in the world, from concept to execution.
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A
Welcome to the Insights Unlocked podcast. I'm Nathan Isaacs, Principal Content Marketing manager here at UserTesting and joining us today as guest host is Kate Towsey. Kate is a ResearchOps thought leader, advisor, coach and educator. She's the author of Research that Scales, the Editor in Chief of the Research Ops Review, and the founder of the Cha Cha Club, a members club for Research Ops professionals. She is also an auto documentarian, recently exploring the past, present and future of Research Ops in a five part series published on the Awkward Silences podcast. Welcome to the show, Kate.
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C
Really great to be here.
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A
And our guests today are Baran Urkel and Basil Fakhoury. Basil is the co founder and CEO of User Interviews and Baran is the Chief Strategy Officer at User Testing. Recently, User Testing acquired User Interviews and this episode is an opportunity to talk about what that means for our listeners and in the research community. Welcome, everyone.
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D
Thank you, Nathan.
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E
Hey everyone.
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A
And a quick note that we've asked Kate to be our guest host, given her leadership role in the research community. Kate is not being paid for her appearance, but User Interviews is a sponsor of the Research Ops Review. And with that, enjoy the show.
- [02:07]
C
Wonderful. So let's really start with a big picture because we've seen a lot of chatter, particularly on LinkedIn. People have been blown away by the merger. A lot of interest in it, but also a lot of emotions around it. Basil, let's start with you. Why now? You know why now? Is now the right time for User Testing and User Interviews to become one, I guess.
- [02:31]
E
Awesome. Well, Kate, first of all, really excited that you're hosting this. For everyone who doesn't know, I've known Kate for almost a decade, since we were building User Interviews and we go way back. Yeah. Coming up with the concept of research operations, a lot of the there's many reasons now is the right time, one of which is User Testing right now. I think the leadership at User Testing I've been able to get to Know, over the past year, Baran and I coincidentally live 10 minutes from each other. We've had many coffees over the past year talking about the vision for user testing for user research, broadly about the space. And there was just a ton of alignment with our mission and user testing's mission and their plans going forward felt so customer centric and tied with what we were trying to do. So a lot of it was, was that the timing of the team and then broader for the research industry. I think the research industry is going through a lot of change right now and being able to join our best in class panel with them as the leader in the space, I think allows more researchers to have access to our participants, allows for more investment across both products. And the combination of that and the team and user testing, it just felt like, hey, now this makes sense.
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C
Baran, what's the vision for at least, what's the vision behind user testing and user interviews at this time?
- [04:01]
D
Yeah, Kate, I think Basil covered it quite well. We really want to help scale customer insights for our customers and the community more broadly. User interviews built the best panel in the industry and one that we heard from our customers that they were very, very happy with. And they asked us could we work more closely together between our platforms. You know, the vision is really to do that, to make it easier for customers to recruit the people they're looking for and to get high quality feedback and then to get customer insights in the ways that they want to through different methodologies and ultimately leverage AI to make that more efficient and scale that throughout their organizations. Which I'm sure is something we'll talk more about here.
- [04:48]
C
Yeah, yeah, I imagine. I mean, AI is such a big theme at the moment. Of course. I've got an add on question to this and what does this moment, this sort of moment of, of an acquisition like this represent for the user research community in your mind?
- [05:05]
D
For the research community? I think this moment we would hope represents a signal of strong investment in the importance of research in the discipline and you know, a recognition of this time of change. I think the Bassel also talked about in the need to scale research and scale insights throughout organizations, especially as companies are dealing with this AI era that is raising lots of questions, lots of opportunities, lots of risks and concerns. We think about that a lot. We talk about that a lot with executives at our customers around the CEO all the way on down thinking about this as a massive opportunity, but a massive area of potential disruption and that ultimately customer insights is one of the things that will differentiate the winners and the losers in this AI era for the next 10, 20 years. So I think the research community and everyone in this discipline has the opportunity to step up in this moment and really help their organizations lead through this change and win in this era. We really want to be a partner in that. And so we're making investments like User Interviews and others in our platform to support that.
- [06:30]
E
Yeah, maybe just add on from my perspective, for the broader research community and for other founders in the space. This investment is coming from user testing and from Thoma Bravo, who is one of the largest software investors. And I think to me this is a real testament that, hey, user Research is here to stay and it's going to grow and there's a lot of value for user research and that's why a fund like Thoma Bravo would want to put more money into this space because they believe that when they look across their portfolio that understanding your customers and getting close to your customers is incredibly important.
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C
A lot of people have spoken about this acquisition as like the big whale subsuming the small amazing company that they've gotten used to and grown to love. And what I'm hearing and what you're saying is it's much more on partnership than purely a big company acquiring a small company and then it disappearing. Is, is, is that right from your point of view?
- [07:29]
E
From my point of view and Brown, welcome to. You know, let me know if the, you, you're aligned here, but yeah, 100%. I mean we talked about that year of getting to know each other and understanding the vision and I think you, you know, the plan is for User Interviews to still be open and available to researchers to buy on their own, to buy User Interviews directly. If they do choose to use User Interviews with another tool, they're still able to do that. So you buy your User Interviews contracts, send the participants to wherever is necessary. We're hoping that the integrations that we build and the innovation and the, the broader user testing ecosystem makes the joint purchase with User testing the, the right one for the customers. But the, the flexibility for the customers will, will remain.
- [08:16]
C
Did you want to, you wanted to add something?
- [08:18]
D
Yeah, I would add. Look, Basil, Dennis, Bob, the co founders, the leadership at User Interviews have built a phenomenal company, a phenomenal product and offering and relationship with customers in the community. Our job, number one is to not screw that up. You know, we certainly don't want to subsume something that is working perfectly and change it. We want to take the best of both and really deliver that to customers. And so Things, Basil said. For example, continuing to offer User Interviews standalone and then doing deeper integrations that our customers have been asking for to make it more seamless to use them together, of which we've got lots of customers that use us together today, but making that better, easier, faster. So I would look at this as trying to really bring the best of both worlds together and deliver something for customers that delights them. And that's what gets us really excited about this.
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C
I actually think that would be music to many people's ears because that's been a lot of the emotional feedback on LinkedIn has been, oh, no, are we losing this amazing, incredible tool that we've had? And not just a tool, but also all the amazing resources and the investment in the research world at large? This is actually, I've got my notes here, so I'm going to stick with the question. But this really follows on and kind of builds on that. A lot of researchers are concerned about losing what made Hugh's Interviews so unique, such as its community, its courses and so forth. Amazing content. What can you say to those who fear that loss of openness and the loss of that flexibility and the researcher first values? Basil, do you want to hop in there first?
- [10:01]
E
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think similar to the question about the product, I think part of the reason this acquisition made sense was the User Testing team under, you know, they have scale and they've built the leader in the space, and User Interviews has built a very unique lane within that space, and the goal is not to get rid of that, it's to build and add on to that and find more ways that there can be more touch points. So, to me, I think this is just going to be the way we see this is just more investment in the research community, building on what User Interviews has built directly with the scale and investment of User testing.
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C
Baron, did you want to add something?
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D
I would just underline what Basket said earlier about openness. We believe in customer choice. We talked about this with our sales group this morning and with our leadership team. We want to support customers and which tools they want to use, and so they'll be able to do that with User Interviews and the tool of their choice. Now, our job, you know, as leaders of the business here at User Testing, is to make the experience with User testing as great as we can and then, you know, let customers make their choice there. So we'll be focusing our investments there, but also supporting the openness that User Interviews has been so successful with. And we have no plans to change that it's amazing.
- [11:31]
C
I'm excited to see what you do with all the extra firepower. From the participant side. There's been anxiety about stricter screening and fewer tests and lower pay. Braun, do you, what do you have to say to that? Is that something that they should be fearful of?
- [11:53]
D
I've been on Reddit as well. I've seen those and we have very, very active participants and we think a lot about participants at user testing. Since in my chief strategy officer role, I also manage the operational side of our panel and have spent the last year really going deep into panel operations and our participant network and the participant experience. And we spent a lot of time talking about elevating the role of the participant and the focus on the participant to be equal to how we talk about customers and employee experience. And so for us that's a very important question that you asked. What we want to do is continue what works well for participants and customers today. And so the different models that we have with user interviews, flexible payments, you know, deeper profiling and targeting and then user interviews, the sorry, user testing, the kind of more, more rapid fixed incentive model, we want to blend and keep the best of both worlds and let both groups of participants, both panels partake in those. And so ultimately they should have more opportunities, not less. Now they are two different operating models and two different tech stacks. We're working on how we bring those together now and it'll take us some time, but we're going to be really thoughtful about not just the customer experience throughout that, but the participant experience as well. And ultimately participants need to be happy. They've got lots of choices in where they spend their time and how they give their contribution to the world and how they make some extra money. We want them to continue with us and so hopefully this will be a better opportunity for them if we do our jobs right.
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C
And there's just so many, so much stimulation or information requests in the world today. You've got to offer a really great experience to keep drawing them back in to spend that time, I guess.
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D
Absolutely. It's a never ending thing. We have to continuously be a great partner and platform for them, just like we have to win our customers mind shares on a regular basis as well.
- [14:03]
C
On the topic of panels, we will user interviews and user testing panels be blended. Who wants to jump in on that?
- [14:11]
D
I can take it. And Ambassador, you can jump in. The vision is ultimately to provide our customers with the best recruiting experience possible. And so how we do that on the back end is gonna be driven by the customer experience, how they find the best participants quickly and then how they get the best high quality feedback quickly. I think the end state that I would love to see is one panel, one panel technology stack. And that will just allow us to have faster innovation on the panel, faster innovation for participant experience and ultimately one marketplace that we can manage most effectively for both customers and, and participants. I think that'll be much better than if we, if we run two in parallel. So we have to be really thoughtful about how we get there. It does involve, you know, being thoughtful about the change journey for, for our participants. But that is the ultimate vision that we have.
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C
Basil, do you want to jump in?
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E
Yeah, I agree. And I think though, you know, when you talk about a panel, you know, if someone who hasn't managed one, me and Braun are very in the weeds there. But there's a lot of nuance within a panel. Right. So there is all of the tech on top of it that matches the right participants, sends them the right studies. There is all the fraud detection. So we want to take the best from both, so that we think that if we take the best from both, that builds the best experience for the participants. So through merging the panels, we might be able to combine our kind of fraud detection and find out that hey, we can have an even higher quality rate than we already have. Or we might say, hey, you know, combining the panels means that some participants from this panel probably don't want to do this type of study. So we'll have to make smart tagging. So it's not like you just pour both of them in one bucket and they're all mixed together. There's a lot of nuance and tech and data that combine the company to spend decades building together. So when we do that, it'll be very nuanced, but it makes sense to put them together because as we continue those investments, we can deploy it across the whole combined panel going forward.
- [16:26]
C
Yeah. And use the strengths of each side, which makes a lot of sense. I'm going to stick with the topic of panels. This is for you, Basil. Will user interviews move away from also maintaining and enhancing Research Hub the CRM? This seems to be a move away from that space for many people.
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E
Yeah. I think we just had RKO for user testing last week in Atlanta. And I will say if, if we take away investment from that, I think the whole multi hundred person sales team user testing will be very mad at me. There's a lot of excitement about Research Hub within user testing. If anything, even more than the panel I think there will be a renewed and increased investment in Research Hub based off the excitement. And I think that's another thing where, you know, user testing has these larger relationships higher up within the organization. And Research Hub is a product where you need the whole Org to use it to get a lot of value. And you know, this, Kate, is one of, you know, bringing it into Atlassian a long time ago. It's, it's not something 1pm just necessarily brings in. You need kind of a real executive sponsor there. So we think the combination will be very good for a Research Hub and allow for, for more investment.
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C
So just summarizing this little bit, the sort of section that we're at is it sounds, you know, from the outside it sounds if I'm putting my research ops and researcher hat on that, I will still be able to access Research Hub. I will still have access to the amazing user interviews panel I've been used to. There'll be the firepower of user testing behind it as well. There's a lot of, you know, from the consumer's point of view, from the researchers point of view, it doesn't sound like a huge amount is going to change immediately. Maybe a bit of branding and evolution in the tools as would happen if you went independent. Right?
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D
Yeah.
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E
I mean, and we're hoping the change is very positive. Right? We're hoping that the change that does have. We are hoping that people choose to use User interviews and user testing together because it is the best experience and an amazing experience, but not because they have to and not because if for whatever reason they choose not to, they won't be able to. So it'll be a lot of choice and, and we think just more positive investment and innovation across both products.
- [18:43]
C
Baran, did you want to add something in there?
- [18:45]
D
I think you summed it up nicely, Kate. The, you know, the fears maybe in the first hours or days hopefully can be settled in terms of openness, in terms of the products that customers have grown to love over the last 10 years of basil and team have built User interviews. They're still going to be available. We're going to increase investment in them, especially Research Hub. We love Research Hub. I didn't get to chime in there but I mean our customers have been asking for Research Hub like capabilities for quite some time. So we're super excited about it. But yeah, we hope to delight if we do our jobs well and we're very focused on doing the integration well. We've got a whole team that's dedicated to it. We've got a team that's done integrations before at previous companies. So we have a playbook. It's very employee centric, it's very customer centric. Now participant centric may be a new chapter in the playbook. And so, yeah, we hope that we can offer things they loved and then new things that the community will look forward to.
- [19:56]
C
This is related, I'm going to put in anyway, you've emphasized that User Interviews remains independent and open. How do you plan to achieve that in practice? It really builds off what we've been talking about anyway. But we might consolidate some ideas in there.
- [20:12]
D
Yeah, I can start. So we are, I should make clear we're bringing the companies together and our teams together. I think we are going to be better together. And there's a lot of knowledge sharing that's going on right now, a lot of roadmap planning around integrations and capabilities. We can accelerate across the products in terms of commercial offerings, own products that, you know, people can buy. That's, that's where the openness will, you know, in the independence. Openness will be seen by the market and by the community. So, you know, we'll continue to offer recruitment as a standalone, we'll continue to offer Research Hub as a standalone. And then you'll also see bundles and integrated offerings where it's just easier to. Easier to buy or easier just in the workflow based on the product integrations that we're investing in.
- [21:04]
C
Basil, did you want to add anything there?
- [21:07]
E
Yeah, I think that that's exactly it. You know, there will be still the ability to buy user interviews directly and, you know, on its own, but then they will also, like Bron said, be bundles. And then for people that have user testing already, they'll have, you know, easier access to user interviews, Research Hub or their recruit participants. So, yeah, it's one company. We're going forward together, but we want to meet researchers where they are just.
- [21:39]
C
Having empathy for folks who are in deep in procurement. Because when you can procure one tool that offers you so many things versus handling multiple relationships, it's a real time saver. You don't have to procure user interviews and user testing. You get the whole lot bundled into one. That can be a massive time saver.
- [21:59]
E
And for, I mean, we have so many researchers who are now going in between the products back and forth trying to send participants to user testing. And you're using your Research Hub with user testing and our schedulers are running into each other. It's going to be a really good experience for all for everybody. Already using both of them as well.
- [22:17]
C
Yeah, very cool. I have got a couple of questions that came through from members of the Cha Cha Club, not the dance club, a members club for research ops professionals. And this is one of them. Long term, will user interviews continue to support integrations with unmoderated survey and testing platforms that are competitors to user testing? These integrations are very, very valuable.
- [22:42]
D
Yeah, I can take that one. We will. You know, we talked about the openness of customer choice in testing tools and so, you know, the integrations that the user interviews platform has today with other tools, those will remain and customers will be able to use the tool of their choice. I'd say future investment. We're going to be very focused on improving the user testing and user interviews integration and making that, you know, seamless and hopefully preferred. But we will, we will support the existing integrations.
- [23:18]
C
Great. Anything to add, Basil?
- [23:21]
E
No, I think, yeah, they're going to remain, they're going to be there. People can continue to use them or use user interviews with user testing through a more direct connection.
- [23:34]
C
Basil? There's a growing worry amongst researchers that industry shifts like consolidations and budget cuts are making research feel more fragile. I know a lot of people are feeling pretty fragile with the layoffs of the last four years as it is. How does this acquisition support the long term health of the research profession? And what message are you sending to researchers who are questioning the future and their place in the field? It's a pretty heavy question.
- [24:00]
E
Yeah, look, I mean, there's dislocations across all markets, across a lot of tech now. And I think we know research has been affected by these dislocations. I personally believe that the technological shifts, specifically with AI, mean that there's more of a need to understand users because as behavior changes, your kind of preconceived notions become less, are less, you know, consistent going forward. So you need to better understand your users. And I think that, you know, as people are investing in AI, better understanding your customers will more and more become a differentiation. But for this acquisition directly, I think one, it's now a stronger company. Therefore there can be more investment in our products and a delightful experience for customers, but broader. Going back to what I said before, I think it's showing that some of the best investors in the world have a strong belief that user research will continue to be important, will continue to grow, and it's worth investing in because of that growth going forward. So to me, I think it's just a really good signal for a future of user research. That being said, I do think there will be a lot of change in that transition. It's a moment of change across many industries, including user research.
- [25:22]
C
The thing that I've been thinking about a lot recently is Schumpeter, I think he was the Belgium economist. His notion of creative destruction. And I feel we're right in the heart of Schumpeter's creative destruction where for me, when there is change, acquisitions are a change, but also the industry is in a state of flux and there's enormous opportunity for the research world to step in. But in order to step into a new space, you've got to reconceptualize what it is we even do do as a profession. A lot of that. It really, it sits right in with this topic of an acquisition like this. Because for me the next evolution of, for researchers and certainly for research ops is building these big scaled up systems that shunt in most elegant ways insights across the organization. And so when we have tools that are integrated as user interviews and user testing is becoming, that's a real firepower for that kind of work. It possibly doesn't, you know, some people might assume that it doesn't look after the one researcher delivering a report as things have been in the last 10 years. But for me it certainly builds the technology that we need for the future of research in my mind.
- [26:37]
D
Yeah, Kate, I couldn't agree more. I think this is an opportunity, the change driven by technology in the industry for researchers to rethink their role and up level their role. And I know a lot of the discussion, I know you lead a lot of it around research ops and really being agents of orchestration and scaling of customer insights is I think that opportunity. And we hope to support that because that's our vision too. You know, we think more insights are required, not less. We think change demands more and the customers that heed that will be more successful. And who better than researchers who are closest to that experts in that to be parts of that change. But they need the right tools, they also need the right structures and the right advocacy. So I think it's a multi pronged kind of approach for the community. You know, there's a saying when you kind of go from being maybe an individual contributor or a manager to a real leader of a business, sometimes you hear people talk about, you know, I used to work in the business, now we work on the business really thinking about the overall org and the vision and all of that. And maybe for researchers it's thinking about going from working in the product organization to on the product organization, because CPOs and everyone on down is thinking about roles and how they change, especially given AI right now. Designers, product managers, engineers, and the researchers should be thinking similarly. How do they change? How do they enable everyone in the organization with kind of their superpower, which is more relevant than ever, we think.
- [28:24]
C
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Varan, this isn't your first merger and acquisition. What hard lessons from past acquisitions are shaping how you approach this one?
- [28:37]
D
Oh, that's a great question, Kate. Acquisitions, mergers are complex things. Humility, I would say, is something that a lesson me and my team have learned over and over in listening and learning as much as talking and kind of directing as the acquirer, as an early acquirer, you can make the mistake of thinking you've got everything figured out and you've got the plan and trying to snap something into that structure and plan. Over my years, I've learned to listen first, learn as much as possible, and really engage our new teammates in building the plan, building the vision of the future. That's at the foundation of how we, how we, you know, how we think about acquisitions. And so Basil, you know, his leadership team, they're engaged in our weekly efforts to, you know, come together, talk about how things are going, and then build the plan across our 15 or 20 work streams. So I'd say humility and just being very thoughtful is one. And then customer centricity. I mean, we have talked so much in the last two months about how do we make this just amazing for customers, really customer friendly. You know, regards to the acquisition, over the years, I've found that if you do that well, you can make mistakes elsewhere, but things usually take care of themselves if you take care of customers.
- [30:06]
C
Can I ask a question about pacing? I'm curious about humility and putting customers first, but is there something around how quickly things happen? I've heard about certainly mergers in the past, not even just an acquisition, but emerging of technology where the pacing has been off and things have been done in too much of a hurry. Have you got any thoughts around the pacing of an acquisition and the emerging of technologies?
- [30:35]
D
Lots of thoughts. I mean, the short answer is it's highly dependent on the situation and what you're trying to do in the two companies and platforms that you're potentially trying to bring together. I think there's a balance, though. There's, you know, you can go too fast and not be thoughtful enough and make mistakes. You can also take way too long and, you know, not show value to customers for too long because maybe you're striving for perfection or maybe you've bit off more than you can chew and took on something unrealistic. And so we're trying to be both very thoughtful and very fast. There's natural tension there, but it's healthy tension, I think. And so if you sat in our product and engineering meetings last week, this week, next week, there is that very real tension of, all right, how fast can we go? But how thoughtful are we? What value is this adding to customers? What's going to change that? They may not like? How do we minimize that? And it's fun, you know, it's not easy, but it's fun doing hard things sometimes.
- [31:36]
C
Nice. Basil, what would you say to a research team who's currently using User Interviews but not using User Testing?
- [31:47]
E
First, I'd want to understand how they do research, right? What, what are they trying to solve? What, what problems, why, what tools do they use, if any at all? And I would say we're super happy you're using User Interviews. Is there anything we can do to get, get better there? And then, you know, if it does make sense, you know, based off that, that, you know, everything I've learned about user testing over the past months, that, hey, this could be a great solution for your problem, would definitely bring in more of the team to see if that makes sense for them. But as we all know, research is so idiosyncratic. Based off the company you're at, the needs you're solving. I think it really just comes from understanding what they're trying to solve, what their problems are.
- [32:32]
C
I have got a question that's popped into mind that actually I haven't written down, but I've heard both in the club that I run, but also on LinkedIn and there's been a lot of concern around. Hang on, I'm a very small team of one person, two person, three person, team, whatever it is, it's micro. And user testing is for really, really big teams. And so in User testing, acquiring User interviews, am I just basically washed out because I'm too small for this new for the combination of the two tools?
- [33:05]
D
Yeah, great question, Kate. We've heard those too. We at User Testing have historically or for the last 18 months or so, since the new leadership team has come on board. Eric Johnson, our CEO, and then me in late summer 2024, looked at what we were doing and did say, hey, the company was trying to serve too many segments and not doing it very well. And so let's focus on Mid market and enterprise companies and do that, do that very well. And that's been the focus for user testing for the platform. Now with user interviews, one of the things we really liked was how easy it was for anyone to recruit, to get started, to get some benefit. And so, for example, they have a pay as you go model, they serve enterprises and small companies, the whole spectrum. We don't plan to change that. So we think that's actually a great way for people to get into research, for people to get access to great participants and then if it makes sense for them to scale up from there, but recognizing that some people are at smaller companies, maybe one, you know, one person teams. And back to our comments around openness and maintaining the products, we're going to maintain access to user interviews for those teams and those products. So we see it as a great on ramp and if they want to scale with us further, that's fine, but they'll be able to buy user interviews just like they are today.
- [34:39]
C
I can literally hear one person team's sigh and relief and go, oh, that's such good news to hear because it has been a big worry for many people. Basil, did you have anything to add to that?
- [34:52]
E
No, no, that's, you know, agree 100% with what Baron said.
- [34:57]
C
We've got a few more questions in 15 minutes, so it's very, very good timing. Baron, for you again, what investments do you plan to make to improve user testing's testing capabilities? And this is a question that came out from the Chacha Club as well.
- [35:14]
D
Yeah, we've got a lot of investments this year in the testing capabilities on the platform. I can rattle off a few. So first is an embedded FIGMA experience that we're very excited about. I think we've talked about it in late 2024 and we've got some customers in a beta now. We're working closely with our partners at figma to get that submitted to their approval process soon. But essentially this is all about helping scale insights and helping designers be part of scaling Insights in their organizations. So the user testing experience will be fully embedded in the FIGMA designer application. So the designers will never need to leave figma, they won't need to go to user testing. They will be able to launch a test recruit, see the results, do the analysis, all within figma, and we are very excited about that. When we've demoed that to customers, it's been honestly a reaction I've never seen in my 25 years or so in enterprise software. It's super exciting and we Love figma and the team there. So that's coming very soon. Very excited. And I think we will continue to invest along those lines in designers and Figma and the partnership there, along with other tools that our customers use for this kind of embedding in their workflow theme. So you'll see that more from user testing. We've got additional survey capabilities. Survey is one of those things that you improve it. And the features requests keep coming and we continue to improve our surveys and add more advanced capabilities in surveys. We've got some interaction or, sorry, information architecture capabilities like tree tests and card sort that are coming later this year. Some great enhancements to our think out loud and our live conversation. Testing. Live conversation, especially around scheduling and just a more modern experience. And then what else? Oh, part of the Figma experience is an AI first test creation experience. So where it's really natural language way of just generating the test and designing the test that, you know, then can be tweaked but very quick and easy like we're all getting used to now with, you know, all these AI tools. We'll be also bringing that to our unmoderated testing capabilities for the researchers, designers, product managers that want to, you know, use that faster natural language experience and then maybe just tweak some things. So lots of stuff. I'm probably leaving things out. We've got a big roadmap for this year. Lots of innovation and excitement around testing capabilities.
- [37:59]
C
Well, I can see your eyes light up, which is always a good sign.
- [38:03]
D
I'm genuinely excited.
- [38:04]
C
You look genuinely excited.
- [38:06]
D
This is going to be a fun, a fun and busy year.
- [38:09]
C
Yeah, yeah. It's great to see Basil looking ahead. What does success look like for this partnership from both the platform and the community perspective?
- [38:21]
E
Yeah, I think they're combined. Right. But to me it's that we, as the leader in the space, the community thinks of us as great advocates for them and we're able to help push the research community forward. Baran used the word advocate earlier and I kind of latched onto it, but. And I think that comes from building amazing products to help people do their job better and where they are and the way they want to. And also from a partnership perspective, whether that's content and training so that you can become a better researcher and adapt with the times, or whether that is, you need a. A real partner who can explain, you know, the value of research to your boss's. Boss's boss. Right. And help you get the budget to do more research and expand your team. And I think the, the combined or user testing now with user interviews as part of it, I think can be that advocate.
- [39:18]
C
Baron, did you have anything to add there?
- [39:22]
D
I would add, I agree with Bassel and I would add, you know, it all starts with people. The team that builds technology, that serves our customers, that runs the business and User interviews has a great team. I've gotten to know a lot more of them over the last several weeks. But just getting to know Basil and some of the leadership team during the process was a big part of this acquisition. Just incredible talent. So success for me when we look back in 12, 24 months is did we keep the great talent that has now joined user testing? That's, that's, that's very key and something me and my team are very focused on. And then second is really, did we deliver the innovation, the experience that, you know, we've had in mind in doing this deal for our customers and the community? You know, are we really making them happy and, and getting the feedback and hopefully seeing then the LinkedIn and the Reddit posts that are like, wow, these guys delivered. You know, this was faster than we thought, better than we thought. You know, this, this, this, this really makes a lot of sense and we're happy about it. That's, that's what I want to see.
- [40:32]
C
In 6, 912 months, there has been on, on LinkedIn. I mean, LinkedIn can be a bit of a shark pit. I think we can all be honest about that at times. But there has been this very instant reaction of it's terrible, you know, another acquisition that's destroying the research world and, and we want open systems and all the rest of it. And I agree with you. I hope that what we see in a year's time is that people go, wow, okay, this one was different. This was great. This has really pushed the field forward. It's given us the tools that enable us to procure less, move between tools less, and all the stuff we've already spoken about in terms of time savings. I loved the FIGMA points. The fact that you have this incredible experience coming around figma because so many research operations folks and researchers now are being tasked particularly with layoffs to roll out research capabilities to designers, product and more across the organization. And they're stitching together experiences for people, particularly for designers with figma. So it would be really great and interesting to see just how smooth the workflow becomes with the shifts that are happening or the integrations that are happening between the two tools that you've got. I think that we are at an End. I've covered all my questions. I've got my notes here and I've gone through all of them. I can't think of anything that's come up just in terms of the Club or on LinkedIn that I've seen that I feel deeply needs to be answered. If people do have questions, someone listens to this and they think, Kate missed out the biggest question of all, or they've got some other question. How do they get in touch with you? Or who do they reach out to to ask?
- [42:12]
D
They can. I'm glad you set that up. I was going to say we want to hear from the community. You know, you talked about concerns and questions, so we definitely want to hear what they'd like to see, any questions they have. I'm available anytime. Be orkelsertesting.com I'm on LinkedIn as well. I lurk on Twitter. I don't have the time to post, but I read a lot. I try to keep up with all this AI news there. But I would just say reach out to me, to Basel, to the team. Like, we. We want to hear from customers, we want to hear from the community. And, you know, Kate, I would love it if, you know, people hold us to the promises, you know, that we've made on this call, and maybe we get you to come back in a year and we do a retrospective and, you know, we look at the report card and see how we did. I'm sure we love straight A's, but business is hard. I don't know if we'll get everything perfect, but we certainly want to do our best and listen to customers in the community.
- [43:12]
C
I would love to do that. I think that'd be so much fun. I think something that you said that we've spoken about openness and flexibility and transparency, and it's very easy to hop on a LinkedIn post and dive into a frenzy around something. But then people can tend to go quiet if things are going well or there's something small that needs to be adjusted. So I think that's a really great encouragement that if something's not right or you're feeling like you're not quite getting something, reach out and say so. Because you're human beings trying to pull something together and make something even bigger and better.
- [43:45]
D
Absolutely. Let's have a conversation. Let's see if we can help each other.
- [43:49]
C
Basil, as you said, it's been a decade. It's been incredible to watch your growth over that time. You've been there right from the start, and I'M very excited to see what happens in the next 10 years.
- [44:05]
E
Yeah, I think it's going to be a fun next decade. It was a fun last decade. Lots of ups and downs but overall a ton of growth for the community. And K thanks so much for taking the time and it was great to chat with you about this next chapter for user interviews. And yeah, if anyone wants to reach out, I'm@bfakoriusertesting.com thanks so much Kate.
- [44:26]
C
Thank you. Thank you very much.
- [44:29]
B
Want to keep the conversation going? You can find the show notes@usertesting.com podcast if you haven't already. Don't forget to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast or Google Play so you never miss an episode. And if you enjoyed today's show, please share it with a friend or leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And until next time, this is Insights Unlocked, an original podcast from User Testing.