Balsamiq - How Balsamiq does user research

The latest news from Balsamiq:
An interview with our Head of User Research

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Ciao friends,

After 16 years of building products people love, we've learned a thing or two about what works—and what doesn't. There was a time when we weren’t doing proper user research, but everything changed in 2018. Today, we’re sharing the journey of our user research (UR) transformation and the insights we've gained along the way.

Jess Orellanes, our head of User Research, gives us the inside scoop.

Q: What was life like at Balsamiq before formal user research?

Jess: Before formal user research, we relied on social listening, our industry knowledge, and intuition. We were small enough to have several team members paying attention to customer support, forums, and social media. This kept us close to our customers, but it wasn’t sustainable and left us with two main challenges:

We recognized problems but often couldn’t fully understand their causes.
We missed subtle pain points and opportunities, making it tough to address the right issues effectively.

In 2018, we introduced a dedicated User Researcher role, formalizing and expanding our existing program. This has improved our research operations and introduced diverse listening methods, allowing us to reconnect with users more efficiently as a team and making our development process progressively smarter. For example, we can now build sample groups from our research program (customers who sign up to participate in research and have a high level of interest), third-party services (non-users who meet our qualifications for a study), and our customer database.

Q: What’s the focus of Balsamiq user research?

Jess: We have two goals:

Understanding our customers to inform product design and strategy, and
Validating our product designs to ensure they meet user needs.

This approach builds confidence that our decisions are based on a deep understanding of user needs and behaviors. It also lets us run projects that are more open and exploratory in nature, especially when working to find new opportunities in the market.

Q: What’s in it for us and for the participants?

Jess: For us, user research ensures our product development is grounded in real needs, not just trends. Too many tech companies die by chasing trends, and addressing real needs is a big part of what has helped us stay in business for so long. We learn about pain points and usability issues early, and iterate.

For our customers, it’s a chance to influence the product. We really do want to make them happy. They get our full attention, immediate support, and a nice thank you—like an extended Balsamiq trial, Balsamiq credits (a one-hour interview is nearly one year of Balsamiq Cloud), swag, and generous gift cards (up to $100).

We found that higher budget incentives help us land the right target audience, but we started small. Plus, every audience is different.

Q: What projects are you working on now?

Jess: We’re working on projects that aim to better support our customers' workflows and enhance their experience with Balsamiq. Think zenware.

We’re enhancing our templates library based on user feedback and usage patterns—a recent project showed us that users often gave up on templates because they weren’t tailored to their needs but still wanted them.
We're also improving our in-app notifications to provide value without being intrusive.
We’re working on some internal education to familiarize more teams with different parts of the user research process, like discovery.

Q: Any advice?

Jess: Make user research accessible within your organization. Encourage and empower those who want to do research—direct conversations with users provide exceptional insights that analytics (or intuition) alone can’t discover.

If you’re interested in learning more, here are two of my favorite resources:

Early stage user research programs: How to Start Talking to Your Users | Balsamiq
For user research nerds: Leaders of Awesomeness

Q: How can our readers participate in Balsamiq’s UR program?

Jess: We’d love to hear from you! Your feedback is critical in shaping the future of Balsamiq. Sign up for our research program, and we'll reach out with opportunities to provide input and get exclusive goodies.

Happy customer of the month

I used Balsamiq today to create a low fidelity wireframe for a new product I’m working on and I couldn’t be more proud of myself.
— Anu

Product news

We’re working on a major revamp of Balsamiq Cloud billing to give you even more flexibility, with additional plans between 2 and 20 and 200 and beyond. This is a major behind-the-scenes effort to modernize our tech stack and make it possible for people to pay with various payment methods.

We’re also working on simplifying the admin interface for Space Owners. Stay tuned!

Company News

We’re currently exploring a potential new format for a company All Hands and better ways to surface monthly metrics. Our managers sent out a survey to learn more about how we can better facilitate teaminess (what we call a feeling of belonging). It’s important to make sure everyone’s voice gets heard in this process. Plus, as a fully remote team stretched across several time zones, that connection doesn’t just “happen”—you have to work for it.

We’ve had programs like our All Hands for a while now, but our needs have changed over the years. It’ll be interesting to see how we adjust, and we’re looking forward to testing the new ideas!

That's it for this month!

Is there a topic you’d like us to cover next? Just hit reply and let me know, I read every email. See you next month with more behind-the-scenes news from your friends at Balsamiq.

Arielle for the Balsamiq Team

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Balsamiq - How Balsamiq does user research

Happy customer of the month

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Company News

That's it for this month!

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