A classic problem in the world of the user researcher is that of visualising what is in your head onto paper. The ideas spinning in your brain, the echoing voices of research participants, and the insights and tensions that are hard to put into words alone. At Aritzia, I took on the problem of communicating insights from research to designers and senior stakeholders in the business.

One of my favourite phases of the research process is the communication phase. I love the challenge of using both words and visual tools to serve information to enable stakeholders to empathize, understand, and take action. I find this phase to be a make it or break it in the design research process. Good research needs great information design and communication.

When creating this piece of infrastructure for the research team, I wanted the team to communicate insights in a consistent yet flexible form. Working alongside the director of digital experience and spending time at home reading The Elements of Typographic Style, I created a robust set of slides in Figma that researchers could self-serve for their work.

A few principles I led with:
1. Caring about aesthetics is essential; if things are nicer to look at, we like them and they’re easier to use.
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2. Delineate content without lines. The grid is the gravitational force of these slides. The grid enabled my teammates to easily fit their content on these slides and have some kind of hierarchy established.

3. Keep colour at bay. Colour can overwhelm, and when used sparingly, it retains its impact.
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4. Structure content how it would be used in real life. Use scrolling and iPhone mockups to emulate the user experience.

Aligned to principle 4, "Structure content how it would be used in real life", I wanted to experiment with a new scrolling format. The addition I made to the template for this research project was a long-form Figma slide in which I would scroll with the audience sharing different findings that correlate to the part of the page we are all looking at.

The advantage of this new technique was that the findings were shown in context, at a pace similar to the customer’s experience, and helped stakeholders emphasize with findings like moments when scroll fatigue kicked in for our customers. For these findings, I also created a visual pattern to highlight triangulated data from analytics and AB testing. This was a really fun way to share findings and themes from one of my projects.

2 years later, Aritzia's user research and design team are still using these templates. I continue to be immersed in the world of data visualsation and visual design. I just completed a course from the Interaction Design Foundation on "Information Visualisation" and am leveraging the skills learnt to continue to design service maps and visual tools to relay information effectively.