Elevate your Shopping Studies with Lindsey Kite

Observation is a critical skill for any user-centered thinker. It's also important for actors: cues, shifts in tone, as well as character immersion are all improved from the habit.

Lindsey Kite, a research advisor for dscout, is a professional observer. She honed that skill first on the stage and then later in her transition to UX research.

Lindsey supports many of dscout's retail clients, making her a perfect person to ask about the hybrid world's effects on shopper studies. She even offered a go-to mission design if you want to be a fly-on-the-wall with your customers remotely.

What was your path to user research at dscout?

My journey into UX was definitely roundabout. I actually received a B.F.A in acting and was a professional actor and arts administrator for about six years before making the transition to user research.

Throughout that time, I held down a lot of what artists call “day jobs” in various customer experiences roles at tech companies in Chicago. Most of these jobs were focused on answering questions about app/website functionalities, general support, and working cross-departmentally to share user or customer feedback.

The companies I had previously worked for had been fairly young with small teams, so I hadn’t had the opportunity to work with any UXRs and honestly wasn’t aware that there was an entire line of work dedicated to supporting the user experience and product development/strategy.

When searching for a new career path, I stumbled across a posting for the Research Advisor position at dscout on Built In Chicago. After reading copious amounts of People Nerds articles (shoutout), listening to podcasts about the UX industry, and interviewing with the folks here at dscout, I decided to make the shift to working in UXR.

Which kinds of companies or industries do you (usually) work with? Are there frequent types of questions/problems you're helping clients answer?

At dscout, the Customer Experience Research (CXR) team is broken up into what we call “pods.” Each pod is assigned dozens of clients, so I work with a wide variety of companies and industries. We work with online retailers or e-commerce companies, consulting agencies, automotive, healthcare, consumer products, apparel, housing, education, and more.

Our pod does a lot of work around shopping online. We explore: how are people navigating various apps and websites? How do people shop for specific types of products? How do people use the various app/website features to make shopping easy, fun, enjoyable, etc.? That being said, a lot of the research differs depending on the client.

The nice thing about dscout is that you can customize the tools to fit most of your research needs. When working with new clients, the most common feedback I get is how versatile Diary missions are. My clients love using diaries for shop-alongs, both online and in-person, to understand people’s experiences on a retailer’s app and website (diary missions allow you to conduct omnichannel research), and to compare their shopping experience against their competitors.

Two pieces of advice for folks new to dscout?

1. Streamline your research!
When clients wrap up their first mission on dscout, the typical response is, “I have so much data! I didn’t expect to get so much data!” Think about the amount of time you have for analysis, what your output will be, and share that with your Research Advisor. They can help you craft a study that will get the answers you need while ensuring that the amount of data you get will be parseable and digestible.

2. Keep the scout experience in mind!
Remember that scouts are people too. They have lives, families, jobs, and are choosing to give you feedback amidst their busy schedules. Think about this as you set up your timeline, tasks, and questions. The more enjoyable a mission is, the better the data will be, and the more engaged your scouts will be.

Lindsey’s e-commerce gap analysis

I’ve talked about shopping studies quite a bit in this article, so let me show you a template that will be a good basis to understand how your shopping experience compares to others.

When you see [X] feel free to fill that in with whatever type of product you wish. It could be groceries, insurance, household items, electronics, apparel, etc. The sky’s the limit here!

Part 1: Introduction

Part 2: Time to shop

Part 3: Compare and contrast

Part 4: Innovate and improve