Continuous discovery and research in product teams—a report by Maze in partnership with Atlassian

[#1]

Hi everyone, I'm Giada, content marketing manager at Maze—a continuous product discovery platform for user-centric teams. I'm excited to share that we have partnered with Atlassian to create the Continuous Research Report: Trends to Watch in 2023. 

User insights are the driver for innovation. The best product organizations today are the ones that learn as they build, putting customer needs at the forefront of product development to deliver constant value and react effectively to changes in the market.

With data from 600+ product professionals, this report explores how product teams use continuous discovery and research to inform their decision-making and best practices for adopting a continuous research mindset across the software development life cycle.

More and more product teams see the value of building products with their customers

The report shows that most product teams see research as a powerful tool to inform decision-making at each stage of the product development life cycle and are investing time into research. 78% of product professionals believe their company could do more research. Yet they still face many challenges in running more studies—the main ones being time, budget limitations, recruitment of respondents limitations, and tooling limitations.

Continuous research enables more effective product decision-making

As a result of conducting research, organizations improve decision-making and experience higher customer satisfaction, product adoption, and user activation. 74% of the audience reported that research is effective or partially effective in determining decision-making. In particular, product teams who conduct research more often, weekly or daily, report more effective decision-making than those who conduct research less often, quarterly or yearly.

Research is a marathon, not a sprint

A digital product is never really finished—that's why research findings will continue to be a key factor in determining product decision-making. The challenge is no longer around convincing organizations that they should do the research but around making research continuous.

The Atlassian Way of approaching the research practice is a great example of how to get started. At Atlassian, research isn't confined to one stage of the product development process but is a marathon that extends across the entire product life cycle. Turning research into a team sport is a crucial step towards that. By empowering every team to engage in research, product orgs can uncover customer needs and motivation and constantly improve their product as they build.

We hope you find this report useful—let us know what you think in the comments below! 

[simon fj]

Happy New Year Giada,

You got me thinking (quite a novelty). I'm not quite with you on the idea of a "product discovery platform". The one thing which really doesn't click with me is your comment "User insights are the driver for innovation". That's starting with a focus on a product, which limits a focus to an existing process or entrenched/generally accepted application. 

 Drucker always taught there are 7 drivers of Innovation, and the big ones seem (in my experience) to require perceptions that very few users will have, simply because they have a tool, or couple of tools, which they use in a certain way. They will probably notice a need - a shortcoming or potential improvement. Every imaginative mind does. But their insight is unlikely to lead to some far-ranging process simply because they must unlearn their accepted way of usage, and that's hard when one is busy performing a role.

I was just looking around for where one would look, inside Atlassian, to discover the beginnings of an approach to wide-reaching Innovation. It's somewhere between a product designer's role in this team (This team's mission is in the seams) and this External Collaboration role (again, in a team in the seams).

So Maybe that's a new slogan which we could use. Innovation is in the seams. (between Atlassian products, and others). We know that's where Atlassians are looking (for growth). So maybe we could tease a few insights out of them as to why? and how?

I think this is going to be an interesting year. My focus is on two of Drucker's sources of Innovation; Demographic changes and Changes in Perception. They seem to have changed already. All the best!