Radical Collaboration: how teamwork really can make the dream work
Natalie and Lulu have forged a unique team culture that focuses on positive outputs (and outcomes) for their app’s growing user base. In doing so, they turned the traditional design approach on its head and created a dynamic and supportive team.
Natalie, Director of Design at Hatch, and Lulu, UX Design Specialist, recently spoke at UX New Zealand, the leading UX and IA conference in New Zealand hosted by Optimal Workshop, on their concept of “radical collaboration”.
In their talk, Nat and Lulu share their experience of growing a small app into a big player in the finance sector, and their unique approach to teamwork and culture which helped achieve it.
Background on Natalie Ferguson and Lulu Pachuau
Over the last two decades, Lulu and Nat have delivered exceptional customer experiences for too many organizations to count. After Nat co-founded Hatch, she begged Lulu to join her on their audacious mission: To supercharge wealth building in NZ. Together, they created a design and product culture that inspired 180,000 Kiwi investors to join in just 4 years.
Radical Collaboration - How teamwork makes the dream work 💪💪💪
Nat and Lulu discuss how they nurtured a team culture of “radical collaboration” when growing the hugely popular app Hatch, based in New Zealand. Hatch allows everyday New Zealanders to quickly and easily trade in the U.S. share market.
The beginning of the COVID pandemic spelled huge growth for Hatch and caused significant design challenges for the product. This growth meant that the app had to grow from a baby startup to one that could operate at scale - virtually overnight.
In navigating this challenge, Nat and Lulu coined the term radical collaboration, which aims to “dismantle organizational walls and supercharge what teams achieve”. Radical collaboration has six key pillars, which they discuss alongside their experience at Hatch.
Pillar #1: When you live and breathe your North star
Listening to hundreds of their customers’ stories, combined with their own personal experiences with money, compelled Lulu and Nat to change how their users view money. And so, “Grow the wealth of New Zealanders” became a powerful mission statement, or North Star, for Hatch. The mission was to give people the confidence and the ability to live their own lives with financial freedom and control. Nat and Lulu express the importance of truly believing in the mission of your product, and how this can become a guiding light for any team.
Pillar #2: When you trust each other so much, you’re happy to give up control
As Hatch grew rapidly, trusting each other became more and more important. Nat and Lulu state that sometimes you need to take a step back and stop fueling growth for growth’s sake. It was at this point that Nat asked Lulu to join the team, and Nat’s first request was for Lulu to be super critical about the product design to date - no feedback was out of bounds. Letting go, feeling uncomfortable, and trusting your team can be difficult, but sometimes it’s what you need in order to drag yourself out of status quo design. This resulted in a brief hiatus from frantic delivery to take stock and reprioritize what was important - something that can be difficult without heavy doses of trust!
Pillar #3: When everyone wears all the hats
During their journey, the team at Hatch heard lots of stories from their users. Many of these stories were heard during “Hatcheversery Calls”, where team members would call users on their sign-up anniversary to chat about their experience with the app. Some of these calls were inspiring, insightful, and heartwarming.
Everyone at Hatch made these calls – designers, writers, customer support, engineers, and even the CEO. Speaking to strangers in this way was a challenge for some, especially since it was common to field technical questions about the business. Nevertheless, asking staff to wear many hats like this turned the entire team into researchers and analysts. By forcing ourselves and our team outside of our comfort zone, we forced each other to see the whole picture of the business, not just our own little piece.
Pillar #4: When you do what’s right, not what’s glam
In an increasingly competitive industry, designers and developers are often tempted to consistently deliver new and exciting features. In response to rapid growth, rather than adding more features to the app, Lulu and Nat made a conscious effort to really listen to their customers to understand what problems they needed solving.
As it turned out, filing overseas tax returns was a significant and common problem for their customers - it was difficult and expensive. So, the team at Hatch devised a tax solution. This solution was developed by the entire team, with almost no tax specialists involved until the very end! This process was far from glamorous and it often fell outside of standard job descriptions. However, the team eventually succeeded in simplifying a notoriously difficult process and saved their customers a massive headache.
Pillar #5: When you own the outcome, not your output.
Over time Hatch’s user base changed from being primarily confident, seasoned investors, to being first-time investors. This new user group was typically scared of investing and often felt that it was only a thing wealthy people did.
At this point, Hatch felt it was necessary to take a step back from delivering updates to take stock of their new position. This meant deeply understanding their customers’ journey from signing up, to making their first trade. Once this was intimately understood, the team delivered a comprehensive onboarding process which increased the sign-up conversion rate by 10%!
Pillar #6: When you’re relentlessly committed to making it work
Nat and Lulu describe a moment when Allbirds wanted to work with Hatch to allow ordinary New Zealanders to be involved in their IPO launch on the New York stock exchange. Again, this task faced numerous tax and trade law challenges, and offering the service seemed like yet another insurmountable task. The team at Hatch nearly gave up several times during this project, but everyone was determined to get this feature across the line – and they did. As a result, New Zealanders were some of the few regular investors from outside the U.S that were able to take part in Albirds IPO.
Why it matters 💥
Over four years, Hatch grew to 180,000 users who collectively invested over $1bn. Nat and Lulu’s success underscores the critical role of teamwork and collaboration in achieving exceptional user experiences. Product teams should remember that in the rapidly evolving tech industry, it's not just about delivering the latest features; it's about fostering a positive and supportive team culture that buys into the bigger picture.
The Hatch team grew to be more than team members and technical experts. They grew in confidence and appreciated every moving part of the business. Product teams can draw inspiration from Hatch's journey, where designers, writers, engineers, and even the CEO actively engaged with users, challenged traditional design decisions, and prioritized solving actual user problems. This approach led to better, more user-centric outcomes and a deep understanding of the end-to-end user experience.
Most importantly, through the good times and tough, the team grew to trust each other. The mission weaved its way through each member of the team, which ultimately manifested in positive outcomes for the user and the business.
Nat and Lulu’s concept of radical collaboration led to several positive outcomes for Hatch:
It changed the way they did business. Information was no longer held in the minds of a few individuals – instead, it was shared. People were able to step into other people's roles seamlessly.
Hatch achieved better results faster by focusing on the end-to-end experience of the app, rather than by adding successive features.
The team became more nimble – potential design/development issues were anticipated earlier because everyone knew what the downstream impacts of a decision would be.
Over the next week, Lulu and Nat encourage designers and researchers to get outside of their comfort zone and:
Visit customer support team
Pick up the phone and call a customer
Challenge status quo design decisions. Ask, does this thing solve an end-user problem?
Simply put, ResearchOps is about making sure your research operations are robust, thought through and managed.
Having systems and processes around your UX research and your team keep everyone (and everything) organized. Making user research projects quicker to get started and more streamlined to run. And robust sharing, socializing, and knowledge storage means that everyone can understand the research insights and findings and put these to use - across the organization. And even better, find these when they need them.
Using the same tools across the team allows the research team to learn from each other, and previous research projects and be able to compare apples with apples, with everyone included. Bringing the team together across tools, research and results.
We go into more detail in our ebook ResearchOps Checklist about exactly what you can do to make sure your research team is running at its best. Let’s take a quick look at 5 way to ensure you have the grounding for a successful ResearchOps team.
1. Knowledge management 📚
What do you do with all of the insights and findings of a user research project? How do you store them, how do you manage the insights, and how do you share and socialize?
Having processes in place that manage this knowledge is important to the longevity of your research. From filing to sharing across platforms, it all needs to be standardized so everyone can search, find and share.
2. Guidelines and process templates 📝
Providing a framework for how to run research projects is are important. Building on the knowledge base from previous research can improve research efficiencies and cut down on groundwork and administration. Making research projects quicker and more streamlined to get underway.
3. Governance 🏛
User research is all about people, real people. It is incredibly important that any research be legal, safe, and ethical. Having effective governance covered is vital.
4. Tool stack 🛠
Every research team needs a ‘toolbox’ that they can use whenever they need to run card sorts, tree tests, usability tests, user interviews, and more. But which software and tools to use?
Making sure that the team is using the same tools also helps with future research projects, learning from previous projects, and ensuring that the information is owned and run by the organization (rather than whichever individuals prefer). Reduce logins and password shares, and improve security with organization-wide tools and platforms.
5. Recruitment 👱🏻👩👩🏻👧🏽👧🏾
Key to great UX research is the ability to recruit quality participants - fast! Having strong processes in place for screening, scheduling, sampling, incentivizing, and managing participants needs to be top of the list when organizing the team.
Wrap Up 💥
Each of these ResearchOps processes are not independent of the other. And neither do they flow from one to the other. They are part of a total wrap around for the research team, creating processes, systems and tools that are built to serve the team. Allowing them to focus on the job of doing great research and generating insights and findings that develop the very best user experience.
Afterall, we are creating user experiences that keep our users engaged and coming back. Why not look at the teams user experience and make the most of that. Freeing time and space to socialize and share the findings with the organization.
Return on investment (ROI) is often the term on everyone’s lips when starting a big project or even when reviewing a website. It’s especially popular with those that hold the purse strings. As UX researchers it is important to consider the ROI of the work we do and understand how to measure this.
We’ve lined up 5 key ways to measure ROI for UX research to help you get the conversation underway with stakeholders so you can show real and tangible benefits to your organization.
1. Meet and exceed user expectations
Put simply, a product that meets and exceeds user expectations leads to increased revenue. When potential buyers are able to find and purchase what they’re looking for, easily, they’ll complete their purchase, and are far more likely to come back. The simple fact that users can finish their task will increase sales and improve overall customer satisfaction which has an influence on their loyalty. Repeat business means repeat sales. Means increased revenue.
Creating, developing and maintaining a usable website is more important than you might think. And this is measurable! Tracking and analyzing website performance prior to the UX research and after can be insightful and directly influenced by changes made based on UX research.
Measurable: review the website (product) performance prior to UX research and after changes have been made. The increase in clicks, completed tasks and/or baskets will tell the story.
2. Reduce development time
UX research done at the initial stages of a project can lead to a reduction in development time of by 33% to 50%! And reduced time developing, means reduced costs (people and overheads) and a speedier to market date. What’s not to love?
Measurable: This one is a little more tricky as you have saved time (and cost) up front. Aiding in speed to market and performance prior to execution. Internal stakeholder research may be of value post the live date to understand how the project went.
3. Ongoing development costs
And the double hitter? Creating a product that has the user in mind up front, reduces the need to rehash or revisit as quickly. Reducing ongoing costs. Early UX research can help with the detection of errors early on in the development process. Fixing errors after development costs a company up to 100 times more than dealing with the same error before development.
Measureable: Again, as UX research has saved time and money up front this one can be difficult to track. Though depending on your organization and previous projects you could conduct internal research to understand how the project compares and the time and cost savings.
4. Meeting user requirements
Did you know that 70% of projects fail due to the lack of user acceptance? This is often because project managers fail to understand the user requirements properly. Thanks to UX research early on, gaining insights into users and only spending time developing the functions users actually want, saving time and reducing development costs. Make sure you get confirmation on those requirements by iterative testing. As always, fail early, fail often. Robust testing up front means that in the end, you’ll have a product that will meet the needs of the user.
Measurable: Where is the product currently? How does it perform? Set a benchmark up front and review post UX research. The deliverables should make the ROI obvious.
5. Investing in UX research leads to an essential competitive advantage.
Thanks to UX research you can find out exactly what your customers want, need and expect from you. This gives you a competitive advantage over other companies in your market. But you should be aware that more and more companies are investing in UX while customers are ever more demanding, their expectations continue to grow and they don’t tolerate bad experiences. And going elsewhere is an easy decision to make.
Measurable: Murky this one, but no less important. Knowing, understanding and responding to competitors can help keep you in the lead, and developing products that meet and exceed those user expectations.
Wrap up
Showing the ROI on the work we do is an essential part of getting key stakeholders on board with our research. It can be challenging to talk the same language, ultimately we all want the same outcome…a product that works well for our users, and delivers additional revenue.
For some continued reading (or watching in this case), Anna Bek, Product and Delivery Manager at Xplor explored the same concept of "How to measure experience" during her UX New Zealand 2020 – watch it here as she shares a perspective on UX ROI.
It’s no secret - New Zealand has a diversity problem in design and technology.
Throughout her career, Sachi often felt like the odd one out - the only woman, the only Pasifika person, the one who laughed too loud, the one who looked different and sounded different. But as a leader, Sachi has been able to create change.
Sachi Taulelei, Head of Design, ANZ, recently spoke at UX New Zealand, the leading UX and IA conference in New Zealand hosted by Optimal Workshop, on how she is building a diverse team of designers at New Zealand’s largest bank.
In her talk, Sachi shares the challenges she’s faced as a Pasifika woman in design and technology; and how this has shaped her approach to leadership and her drive to create inclusive environments where individuals and teams thrive.
Background on Sachi Taulelei
Sachi is a creative strategist, a design leader, and a recovering people pleaser. She has worked in digital and design for over 25 years, spending most of her career creating and designing digital experiences centered on people.
As a proud Pasifika woman, she has a particular interest in diversity, equity, and inclusion. She has spoken out about the need for more diversity within design and technology and the impact it can have on the technology we create.
Sachi is passionate about giving back - when she's not running after her two kids, you'll find her mentoring Pasifika youth, cheering on young leaders through the Young Enterprise Scheme, judging awards for Women in AI, or volunteering at the local hospice.
Odd one out: embracing diversity in design and technology ✨
Looking and sounding different from her peers, Sachi always felt like she was trying to find her place in the office. She always felt like she didn’t belong.
Sachi has experienced all forms of racism and discrimination as a result of her heritage. These experiences aren’t spoken about and often go unnoticed by the majority. She has held equivalent jobs to male counterparts but received lower pay, and was advised to change her name from Sachi to Sacha on her job applications to improve her chances.
Sachi’s response was to work hard and become great at what she does, which was recognized over time. Slowly, she began to rise through the ranks. However, having reached leadership roles, she struggled to be heard and participate, without knowing why. The advice was given freely by managers to “stick at it”, to “grow thicker skin”, and to grow through the “school of hard knocks”. Although this advice worked at face value and she flourished, Sachi began to feel like a fraud and constantly second-guessing herself. She began to “edit” herself to fit into an acceptable mold and, in doing so, felt like she lost part of who she was.
What is success? 🏆🎯💎
Success often comes in the form of our leaders who have already climbed the mountains of achievement. When you see success in this way, as someone who doesn’t fit the mold, there is pressure to conform to get ahead. Using the same tools and advice given to these leaders, she realized, would actually hold her back.
Realizing true value through our uniqueness 🪐🦋
Sachi recounts the treatment of Japanese-American citizens in the U.S. in the years following Pearl Harbour, where Japanese-American citizens were moved to concentration camps. This happened despite an official report finding conclusively that there was no threat from this population. Even though Germany and Italy were also at war with the U.S., for example, citizens with Italian and German heritage were not treated this way. This caused immeasurable pain, shame, and fear for the victims, and fostered a head-down, work-hard mentality in order to try and forget the treatment they received. This attitude, Sachi believes, was passed down to her from her ancestors who experienced that reality. Sachi explains that while there are many things that can hold someone back in life, creating meaningful change starts with introspection. Often, that requires us to work through fear and shame.
Reflecting on her heritage, which is part Samoan and part Japanese, Sachi started to embrace her unique traits. In her case, she embraced the deep empathy and human compassion from her Japanese side and the deep sense of community and connection from her Samoan side. Her uniqueness is something to celebrate, not to hide behind.
Becoming a leader and realizing this, Sachi wanted to create a team culture based on equity, openness, and a sense of belonging – all things that Sachi wished for herself on her journey.
Why it matters 💫
Once she understood herself and what she wanted for her team, Sachi set to work on building a new team culture. Sachi breaks down key learnings from how she turned this vision into reality.
Define
Define what diversity means for your team. You need to clearly understand what it is you want to achieve before you can achieve it. For Sachi’s team, they knew that they wanted to create a team that was representative of New Zealand. Sachi knew, for example, that she had a lack of Māori and Pacific representation within the team. Māori and Pasifika represent 25% of the population. So, an effort was made to increase ranks by hiring talent from these cultures.
Additionally, Sachi focused on creating new role levels - from intern right through to graduates, juniors, and intermediate-level positions. This helped to acknowledge age differences within her team and also helped to manage career progression opportunities.
Effort
It can be difficult to achieve diversity and inclusion and it requires a lot of work. For example, Sachi learned that posting an ad on job boards and expecting to receive hundreds of Māori and Pasifika applicants wasn’t realistic. Instead, partnerships were built with local design schools, and networking events were consistently attended. Job referrals from within the team were also leveraged, as well as establishing a strong direction for recruitment specialists within the organization.
Sachi also recognized that, as a leader, she needed to be more visible and more vocal about sharing her views of the world and what she was trying to achieve. It was important to be clear about the type of culture she was building within her team so that she could promote it.
In less than a year her team grew (from 11 to 40!) which meant a focus on building an inclusive team culture was required. The central theme throughout this time was, “You have to connect to yourself and your strengths first and foremost, before you can connect with others and as a team”. This meant that the team used tools like the Clifton Strength Finder, in order to learn about themselves and each other. Each designer was then encouraged to delve into their own natural working styles and were taught how to amplify their own strengths through various workshops. This approach also becomes handy when recruiting and strengthening potential weak spots.
Integrity
It’s important to have leaders who care - you can’t do it on your own. There can be pain points on the journey to creating diversity and inclusion, so it’s necessary to have leaders who listen, support, and work through some of the challenges that can arise.
Benefits of diversity and inclusion in design teams 👩🏼🤝👨🏿
Why push for diversity and inclusion? Sachi argues that the benefits are evident in the way that her team designs.
For example, her team:
Insist that research is done with diverse customer groups
Advocates for accessibility when no one else will
Understand problems from different perspectives before diving into a project
Most importantly, the benefits show up in the way that each other is treated, and the relationships that are built with key stakeholders. Diversity and inclusion are wins for everyone - the team, the organization, and the customer.
