User research and agile squadification at Trade Me
Hi, I’m Martin. I work as a UX researcher at Trade Me having left Optimal Experience (Optimal Workshop's sister company) last year. For those of you who don’t know, Trade Me is New Zealand’s largest online auction site that also lists real estate to buy and rent, cars to buy, jobs listings, travel accommodation and quite a few other things besides. Over three quarters of the population are members and about three quarters of the Internet traffic for New Zealand sites goes to the sites we run.
Leaving a medium-sized consultancy and joining Trade Me has been a big change in many ways, but in others not so much, as I hadn’t expected to find myself operating in a small team of in-house consultants. The approach the team is taking is proving to be pretty effective, so I thought I’d share some of the details of the way we work with the readers of Optimal Workshop’s blog. Let me explain what I mean…
What agile at Trade Me looks like
Over the last year or so, Trade Me has moved all of its development teams over to Agile following a model pioneered by Spotify. All of the software engineering parts of the business have been ‘squadified’. These people produce the websites & apps or provide and support the infrastructure that makes everything possible.Across Squads, there are common job roles in ‘Chapters’ (like designers or testers) and because people are not easy to force into boxes, and why should they be, there are interest groups called ‘Guilds’.The squads are self-organizing, running their own processes and procedures to get to where they need to. In practice, this means they use as many or as few of the Kanban, Scrum, and Rapid tools they find useful. Over time, we’ve seen that squads tend to follow similar practices as they learn from each other.
How our UX team fits in
Our UX team of three sits outside the squads, but we work with them and with the product owners across the business.How does this work? It might seem counter-intuitive to have UX outside of the tightly-integrated, highly-focused squads, sometimes working with product owners working on stuff that might have little to do with what’s being currently developed in the squads. This comes down to the way Trade Me divides down the UX responsibilities within the organization. Within each squad there is a designer. He or she is responsible for how that feature or app looks, and, more importantly, how it acts — interaction design as well as visual design.Then what do we do, if we are the UX team?
We represent the voice of Trade Me’s users
By conducting research with Trade Me’s users we can validate the squads’ day-to-day decisions, and help frame decisions on future plans. We do this by wearing two hats. Wearing the pointy hats of structured, detailed researchers, we look into long-term trends: the detailed behaviours and goals of our different audiences. We’ve conducted lots of one-on-one interviews with hundreds of people, including top sellers, motor parts buyers, and job seekers, as well as running surveys, focus groups and user testing sessions of future-looking prototypes. For example, we recently spent time with a number of buyers and sellers, seeking to understand their motivations and getting under their skin to find out how they perceive Trade Me.
This kind of research enables Trade Me to anticipate and respond to changes in user perception and satisfaction.Swapping hats to an agile beanie (and stretching the metaphor to breaking point), we react to the medium-term, short-term and very short-term needs of the squads testing their ideas, near-finished work and finished work with users, as well as sometimes simply answering questions and providing opinion, based upon our research. Sometimes this means that we can be testing something in the afternoon having only heard we are needed in the morning. This might sound impossible to accommodate, but the pace of change at Trade Me is such that stuff is getting deployed pretty much every day, many of which affects our users directly. It’s our job to ensure that we support our colleagues to do the very best we can for our users.
How our ‘drop everything’ approach works in practice
We recently conducted five or six rounds (no one can quite remember, we did it so quickly) of testing of our new iPhone application (pictured above) — sometimes testing more than one version at a time. The development team would receive our feedback face-to-face, make changes and we’d be testing the next version of the app the same or the next day. It’s only by doing this that we can ensure that Trade Me members will see positive changes happening daily rather than monthly.
How we prioritize what needs to get done
To help us try to decide what we should be doing at any one time we have some simple rules to prioritise:
Core product over other business elements
Finish something over start something new
Committed work over non-committed work
Strategic priorities over non-strategic priorities
Responsive support over less time-critical work
Where our input is crucial over where our input is a bonus
Applying these rules to any situation makes the decision whether to jump in and help pretty easy.At any one time, each of us in the UX team will have one or more long-term projects, some medium-term projects, and either some short-term projects or the capacity for some short-term projects (usually achieved by putting aside a long-term project for a moment).
We manage our time and projects on Trello, where we can see at a glance what’s happening this and next week, and what we’ve caught sniff of in the wind that might be coming up, or definitely is coming up.On the whole, both we and the squads favour fast response, bulleted list, email ‘reports’ for any short-term requests for user testing. We get a report out within four hours of testing (usually well within that). After all, the squads are working in short sprints, and our involvement is often at the sharp end where delays are not welcome. Most people aren’t going to read past the management summary anyway, so why not just write that, unless you have to?
How we share our knowledge with the organization
Even though we mainly keep our reporting brief, we want the knowledge we’ve gained from working with each squad or on each product to be available to everyone. So we maintain a wiki that contains summaries of what we did for each piece of work, why we did it and what we found. Detailed reports, if there are any, are attached. We also send all reports out to staff who’ve subscribed to the UX interest email group.
Finally, we send out a monthly email, which looks across a bunch of research we’ve conducted, both short and long-term, and draws conclusions from which our colleagues can learn. All of these latter activities contribute to one of our key objectives: making Trade Me an even more user-centred organization than it is.I’ve been with Trade Me for about six months and we’re constantly refining our UX practices, but so far it seems to be working very well.Right, I’d better go – I’ve just been told I’m user testing something pretty big tomorrow and I need to write a test script!
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Here's a striking finding: only 16% of organizations have fully embedded UXR into their processes and culture. This disconnect between intention and implementation underscores the challenges in demonstrating and maximizing the true value of user research.
What's inside the white paper
In this comprehensive white paper, we explore:
How companies use and value UX research
Why it's hard to show how UX research helps businesses
Why having UX champions in the company matters
New ways to measure and show the worth of UX research
How to share UX findings with different people in the company
New trends changing how people see and use UX research
Stats sneak peek
- Only 16% of organizations have fully embedded UX Research (UXR) into their processes and culture. This highlights a significant gap between the perceived importance of user-centricity and its actual implementation in businesses.
- 56% of organizations aren't measuring the impact of UXR at all. This lack of measurement makes it difficult for UX researchers to demonstrate the value of their work to stakeholders.
- 68% of respondents believe that AI will have the greatest impact on the analysis and synthesis phase of UX research projects. This suggests that while AI is expected to play a significant role in UXR, it's seen more as a tool to augment human skills rather than replace researchers entirely.
The UX research crossroads
As our field evolves with AI, automation, and democratized research, we face a critical juncture: how do we articulate and amplify the value of UXR in this rapidly changing landscape? We’d love to know what you think! So DM us in socials and let us know what you’re doing to bridge the gap.
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User research is invaluable, but in fast-paced environments, researchers often struggle with tight deadlines, limited resources, and the need to prove their impact. In our recent UX Insider webinar, Weidan Li, Senior UX Researcher at Seek, shared insights on Efficient Research—an approach that optimizes Speed, Quality, and Impact to maximize the return on investment (ROI) of understanding customers.
At the heart of this approach is the Efficient Research Framework, which balances these three critical factors:
Speed – Conducting research quickly without sacrificing key insights.
Quality – Ensuring rigor and reliability in findings.
Impact – Making sure research leads to meaningful business and product changes.
Within this framework, Weidan outlined nine tactics that help UX researchers work more effectively. Let’s dive in.
1. Time Allocation: Invest in What Matters Most
Not all research requires the same level of depth. Efficient researchers prioritize their time by categorizing projects based on urgency and impact:
High-stakes decisions (e.g., launching a new product) require deep research.
Routine optimizations (e.g., tweaking UI elements) can rely on quick testing methods.
Low-impact changes may not need research at all.
By allocating time wisely, researchers can avoid spending weeks on minor issues while ensuring critical decisions are well-informed.
2. Assistance of AI: Let Technology Handle the Heavy Lifting
AI is transforming UX research, enabling faster and more scalable insights. Weidan suggests using AI to:
Automate data analysis – AI can quickly analyze survey responses, transcripts, and usability test results.
Generate research summaries – Tools like ChatGPT can help synthesize findings into digestible insights.
Speed up recruitment – AI-powered platforms can help find and screen participants efficiently.
While AI can’t replace human judgment, it can free up researchers to focus on higher-value tasks like interpreting results and influencing strategy.
3. Collaboration: Make Research a Team Sport
Research has a greater impact when it’s embedded into the product development process. Weidan emphasizes:
Co-creating research plans with designers, PMs, and engineers to align on priorities.
Involving stakeholders in synthesis sessions so insights don’t sit in a report.
Encouraging non-researchers to run lightweight studies, such as A/B tests or quick usability checks.
When research is shared and collaborative, it leads to faster adoption of insights and stronger decision-making.
4. Prioritization: Focus on the Right Questions
With limited resources, researchers must choose their battles wisely. Weidan recommends using a prioritization framework to assess:
Business impact – Will this research influence a high-stakes decision?
User impact – Does it address a major pain point?
Feasibility – Can we conduct this research quickly and effectively?
By filtering out low-priority projects, researchers can avoid research for research’s sake and focus on what truly drives change.
5. Depth of Understanding: Go Beyond Surface-Level Insights
Speed is important, but efficient research isn’t about cutting corners. Weidan stresses that even quick studies should provide a deep understanding of users by:
Asking why, not just what – Observing behavior is useful, but uncovering motivations is key.
Using triangulation – Combining methods (e.g., usability tests + surveys) to validate findings.
Revisiting past research – Leveraging existing insights instead of starting from scratch.
Balancing speed with depth ensures research is not just fast, but meaningful.
6. Anticipation: Stay Ahead of Research Needs
Proactive researchers don’t wait for stakeholders to request studies—they anticipate needs and set up research ahead of time. This means:
Building a research roadmap that aligns with upcoming product decisions.
Running continuous discovery research so teams have a backlog of insights to pull from.
Creating self-serve research repositories where teams can find relevant past studies.
By anticipating research needs, UX teams can reduce last-minute requests and deliver insights exactly when they’re needed.
7. Justification of Methodology: Explain Why Your Approach Works
Stakeholders may question research methods, especially when they seem time-consuming or expensive. Weidan highlights the importance of educating teams on why specific methods are used:
Clearly explain why qualitative research is needed when stakeholders push for just numbers.
Show real-world examples of how past research has led to business success.
Provide a trade-off analysis (e.g., “This method is faster but provides less depth”) to help teams make informed choices.
A well-justified approach ensures research is respected and acted upon.
8. Individual Engagement: Tailor Research Communication to Your Audience
Not all stakeholders consume research the same way. Weidan recommends adapting insights to fit different audiences:
Executives – Focus on high-level impact and key takeaways.
Product teams – Provide actionable recommendations tied to specific features.
Designers & Engineers – Share usability findings with video clips or screenshots.
By delivering insights in the right format, researchers increase the likelihood of stakeholder buy-in and action.
9. Business Actions: Ensure Research Leads to Real Change
The ultimate goal of research is not just understanding users—but driving business decisions. To ensure research leads to action:
Follow up on implementation – Track whether teams apply the insights.
Tie findings to key metrics – Show how research affects conversion rates, retention, or engagement.
Advocate for iterative research – Encourage teams to re-test and refine based on new data.
Research is most valuable when it translates into real business outcomes.
Final Thoughts: Research That Moves the Needle
Efficient research is not just about doing more, faster—it’s about balancing speed, quality, and impact to maximize its influence. Weidan’s nine tactics help UX researchers work smarter by:
✔️ Prioritizing high-impact work ✔️ Leveraging AI and collaboration ✔️ Communicating research in a way that drives action
By adopting these strategies, UX teams can ensure their research is not just insightful, but transformational.
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.
