{"id":6043,"date":"2014-08-08T08:04:53","date_gmt":"2014-08-08T08:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/insideintercom.io\/?p=6043"},"modified":"2020-07-30T13:03:54","modified_gmt":"2020-07-30T12:03:54","slug":"intercom-user-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/intercom-user-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I left Google to join Intercom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"opening_paragraph\">After a 7.5 year international adventure with Google, I\u2019ve joined Intercom as Director of Research. So, what lured me away from the company frequently cited as the <a href=\"http:\/\/fortune.com\/best-companies\/google-1\/\">number one<\/a> place to work in the world?<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"1-user-research-is-in-intercoms-dna\">1. User Research is in Intercom\u2019s DNA<\/h2>\n<p>At Intercom, everyone\u2019s a researcher. We empower our customers to be researchers too. The platform we\u2019re building enables Intercom\u2019s product managers, for example, to ask people who\u2019ve used a new feature for feedback directly. Likewise, Intercom\u2019s customers can reach out to their own users any time. Intercom\u2019s app let\u2019s you see exactly who your users are and how they\u2019re using the product. Many tech companies have surprisingly limited awareness of their users\u2019 behaviour beyond a few dry usage metrics but this kind of constant exposure to your users\u2019 behaviour makes research part of Intercom\u2019s daily routine.<\/p>\n<p>Intercom is also very focused on designing for the jobs that we have research evidence that people want to do, rather than designing features we\u2019re not sure if people need or want. This focus on JTBD (<a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/the-job-to-be-done\">Jobs To Be Done<\/a>) came from Intercom\u2019s founders. I spent two days last week holed up in a research workshop with CEO Eoghan McCabe, our VP of Product Paul Adams (previously a User Researcher at Google himself) and co-founder Des Traynor, analysing these jobs. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s a better way to persuade a user researcher that a company understands the value of research and of focusing on the user.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"2-enterprise-apps-are-the-next-frontier-for-ux\">2. Enterprise apps are the next frontier for UX<\/h2>\n<p>Enterprise apps that are emerging today, like Intercom, offer exciting opportunities for UX designers and researchers to transform the lives of people who use them. This is a space where UX improvements are sorely needed. So little care and attention has been channelled into the user experience of enterprise apps historically. They are too often the tools of frustration and despair, with interfaces only a mother could love.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201c10 years ago, all that was required for an enterprise app was a basic interface. Many of these apps (they weren\u2019t called apps) used featureless, default UI\/UX provided by Microsoft Visual Basic, or worse.\u201d Reuven Cohen, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/reuvencohen\/2013\/11\/25\/the-state-of-enterprise-software-in-2013\/\">Forbes<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Microsoft found that office workers spend on average of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.winbeta.org\/news\/microsoft-us-workers-spend-7-hours-computer-day-average\">six hours<\/a> a day conducting work on a computer, five days a week. This equates to around 125 hours a month of being required to use apps the worker typically has little or no choice in selecting. Meanwhile, US adults who own Android or iPhones spend around <a href=\"http:\/\/www.statista.com\/chart\/2415\/app-usage-in-the-us-by-age\/\">30 hours<\/a> a month using mobile apps. Peoples\u2019 experiences of mobile apps they\u2019ve chosen to use outside of work are influencing their expectations of apps they\u2019re required to use at work. To quote an ex-colleague now at Facebook;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cIt&#8217;s also the norms which are starting to change. People who are now accustomed to the high quality of successful mobile applications are now transferring those expectations to other areas of software.\u201d &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fountly.com\/musings\/2014\/3\/16\/why-beauty-matters\">Margaret Stewart<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h2 id=\"3-researching-the-future-is-fun\">3. Researching the future is fun<\/h2>\n<p>It\u2019s exciting to be a researcher in uncharted territory that\u2019s evolving rapidly. When I started at Google back in early 2007, the iPhone hadn\u2019t been born. Android was a top secret project. User research was used to observe if people could use the new smartphones that emerged and what they wanted to use them for in those early days.<\/p>\n<p>A kind of shuffling dance of courtship emerged. The consumers tried stuff out, the content providers and app developers watched. Everybody experimented and iterated. Initial consumer behaviour was not a reflection of the later patterns that would emerge. For example, the Google search queries we saw on mobile were <a href=\"http:\/\/dl.acm.org\/citation.cfm?id=1526817\">different to the queries on desktop<\/a>. This was attributable in part to device differences and the mobile context of use but also due to the differences in content that was being served and the mobile UI. As Google evolved the content and UI of its mobile search product, so in turn the behavior of the mobile search users changed. When products and people are rapidly shaping one another, the researcher is constantly challenged to decipher what users really want and need from a product. It\u2019s challenging figuring out where things are going in future but that also makes it fun.<\/p>\n<p>Business and customer communication is in a similar place today as in those early days of mobile search at Google. The invention of the Internet has turned traditional marketing upside down and people are still trying to figure out what it all means. Working at Intercom is a chance to shape the future of this communication between businesses and their customers.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"4-an-existential-crisis\">4. An existential crisis<\/h2>\n<p>When you leave a design job at a tech company, you leave empty handed; all your work is left behind on servers you can no longer access. When you work with pixels, your work always seems rather ephemeral, intangible. Yet you\u2019ve spent your life making things every day, helping to design and build <a href=\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/five-essential-onboarding-tactics-for-complex-products\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">complex products<\/a>. It\u2019s a strange thing, to dedicate yourself to building things out of empty space and points of light.<\/p>\n<p>Similarly, when I left Google a few weeks ago, I had to wave goodbye to 7.5 years of work, including fascinating projects researching the redesign of <a href=\"http:\/\/youtu.be\/nvPsM3uHeVw\">Google Maps<\/a> and creation of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Q8TXgCzxEnw\">Material Design<\/a> (Google\u2019s new visual language announced at I\/0 in May). And somehow, the pain felt sharper than if I was a designer. As a researcher, your insights are often about products that no longer exist or about people who are constantly evolving and may now behave differently. Great user researchers strive to pinpoint insights about human behaviour that have longevity but the majority of UX research insights are time sensitive.<\/p>\n<p>It all leads to an existential question. At the end of a digital career, what do you have left? I think it boils down to experiences, stories, friends and a few copies of the things you helped create along the way. If you\u2019re lucky, products and companies that live on, rooted in foundations that your ideas fertilised. There\u2019s nothing like this epiphany to make you seek out an opportunity to be much more directly involved in the creation of a company and its products. To be one of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/about\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">small team<\/a> of employees compared to Google\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/investor.google.com\/financial\/tables.html\">52,069<\/a> voices. That\u2019s why I\u2019m so excited to have joined Intercom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After a 7.5 year international adventure with Google, I\u2019ve joined Intercom as Director of Research. So, what lured me away from the company frequently cited as the number one place to work in the world? 1.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":6045,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"category":[5],"tags":[54,143,26,144,145],"coauthors":[376],"class_list":["post-6043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-product-and-design","tag-google","tag-intercom","tag-jobs-to-be-done","tag-research","tag-ux"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.5 (Yoast SEO v27.5) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Why I left Google to lead Intercom&#039;s user research<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sian Townsend explains why after a 7.5 year international adventure with Google, she&#039;s joined Intercom as director of user research.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/intercom-user-research\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why I left Google to join Intercom\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Sian Townsend explains why after a 7.5 year international adventure with Google, she&#039;s joined Intercom as director of user research.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/intercom-user-research\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Intercom Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/intercominc\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-08-08T08:04:53+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-07-30T12:03:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/research_sian3_370.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"370\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"230\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Sian Townsend\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@intercom\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@intercom\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Sian Townsend\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.intercom.com\\\/blog\\\/intercom-user-research\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.intercom.com\\\/blog\\\/intercom-user-research\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Sian Townsend\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.intercom.com\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/543dc7c0dcb43c6874e692fd1c07f0f3\"},\"headline\":\"Why I left Google to join Intercom\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-08-08T08:04:53+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-07-30T12:03:54+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.intercom.com\\\/blog\\\/intercom-user-research\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":1076,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.intercom.com\\\/blog\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.intercom.com\\\/blog\\\/intercom-user-research\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.intercom.com\\\/blog\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2014\\\/08\\\/research_sian3_370.png\",\"keywords\":[\"Google\",\"Intercom\",\"jobs-to-be-done\",\"research\",\"UX\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Product &amp; 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