In this episode, Jonathan Widawski, Co-founder & CEO at Maze, discusses the findings of our latest Continuous Research Trends Report. Topics include the state of the research industry, his vision for the future, and how to turn research into a learning muscle for the entire organization.
The Optimal Path is a podcast about product decision-making from the team at Maze. Each episode brings in a product expert and looks at the stories, ideas, and frameworks they use to achieve better product decision-making—and how you can do the same.
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Ash Oliver:
Welcome to The Optimal Path, a podcast about product decision-making brought to you by Maze. I'm your host, Ash Oliver. In this podcast, you'll hear from designers, researchers, and product managers about the ideas informing decision-making across all aspects of product development.
Today, I'm joined by Jonathan Widawski, Co-founder and CEO of Maze. Jo is a veteran product designer and former UX teacher previously working with clients like McKinsey, Rocket Internet and PSG where he saw firsthand how hard it is for product teams to get the data, insights and feedback they need to make confident design decisions. Now, he's co-founded Maze, a continuous product discovery platform enabling teams to collect and action insights. Jo, I'm stoked to be here with you. Thanks for being on.
Jonathan Widawski:
Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here again.
Ash Oliver:
We're going to talk about the state of the industry and some thoughts on the future as it coincides with our industry findings entitled Continuous Research Report: Trends to Watch in 2023. The report explores how product teams conduct research to inform their decision-making and presents data from over 600 product professionals. I'm super excited to dig in. Let's take it back to the founding story of Maze.
Jonathan Widawski:
All right. Let's do the trip back to about five to ten years ago. It's interesting to look back at research because in hindsight research looks very obvious in every organization today. But that was not always the case. And so before Maze, as you mentioned, I was leading UX and research in different agencies. At the time, the big struggle was selling research as a tool, but most importantly as a practice and as a cultural shift within the organizations that we've listed. Today, I think a lot of people are embedded and have understood the value of research. At the time, the sale was not really on the tool, on the system that we're going to use. It was much more about, what is the real value of research? And so, we needed to build this ammunition to go into conversation about research with our customers.
And we liked to joke at the time that research was basically the gym of the product team. That it was something that everyone said they would do on January 1st and they would drop on January 31. Product teams started to embed into the process but were never really successful doing it because the practice was very process-heavy, very cost-heavy. And then, our customers, most of the market were just very uneducated. So, it was very difficult to sell. It was very difficult to embed. And that's what we tried to solve with Maze. When we started Maze, what we said very early on was, "We want to democratize research." And for us, it was not so much about the tool. It was the democratization of the cultural shift that needed to happen with an organization so that these ammunitions wouldn't be necessary. That people would be already bought-in into the idea that research was valuable.
And I think when I look back at the history of Maze, our first hire was Elena, a content writer. And I think that's very telling of the story of Maze's journey in that we believed that the shift needed to happen first through education and then the tool would follow. Because what we saw very early on was that the market was so uneducated, there was so much mental load about research that for a long time even as a company, Maze, we didn't refer to ourselves as a research platform. Because we knew that telling people we are research was going to be associated with this long, extensive, needed very mature processes and systems inside the org to be run. And so, we shifted to rapid testing at the time as a way to kind of bypass the mental load that was associated with research. So, that's the story behind Maze.
I think that from there, when we started democratizing research, we saw an apportunity to not just democratize for the researchers, but we saw an opportunity to democratize for everyone. And I think that a lot of entrepreneurship is about shooting the arrow and then bring the target around it afterwards. And so, for us, we realized very early on that actually democratization of research needs to be more than just selling to the researchers, or selling the story to researchers. It needs to be something bigger. And so, while the product kept on building, we kept on learning on our end. We saw designers and product managers starting to hack the platform to use it. And we saw that as an opportunity. We said, well, if we can actually solve for more decisions for the product development process, then we can actually democratize research.
Not just making it a better muscle for researchers, but making it a better learning muscle for the organization. And I think that's where we stand today. And so, this industry report and the continuous product discovery positioning that we have today is kind of the culmination point of all of this. Kind of the big realization for us as well.
Ash Oliver:
When you think back on some of the challenges that occurred ten years ago in getting the buy-in for running research, what do you think still exists in terms of those challenges today, versus ones we've maybe debunked?
Jonathan Widawski:
It's very industry and maturity dependent, I would say. In the more mature organization challenge generally is about democratization for all roles. So, it's about the shift that the research role needs to have to educate the rest of the organization. In the less mature, we still see difficulty to secure budget as a challenge. Difficulty to secure time, which is just like budget something that's very difficult. So, in an organization where product is just seen as an input/output function, it's very difficult then to take in a process where research is perceived as something that's valuable. And we've seen this in the history of Maze and we still see it in the less mature organization.
I always found it interesting that designers, product managers, you know, when you go to a developer and you say you're going to develop these, you expect the developer to know how to build the thing. That's what you're paying the developer for. But designers and product managers, their expertise lie in the fact that they know how to ask the right questions to the market. And that's a very different expertise. And so, for companies to embrace research, they first need to understand that the expertise of the creative roles and the ones that are actually building to solve problems is not an expertise of knowing, it's an expertise of knowing how to ask right. And that's the biggest general challenge that we see. This perception of people as resources in the creative space when they are really resources that should be aimed at asking questions more than giving answers.
Ash Oliver:
Yeah, that's really interesting, especially because it makes the role of the designer or product manager much more successful. There's clearly a sea change occurring in research. You can see that on the maturity curve. Some of that is incorporated in the findings in the industry report. There's kind of three trends that emerged out of the report. One being democratization. One being the continuous kind of behaviors involved. And then, ultimately, what the outcomes are of the culmination of the the two, which is better decision-making. As you're thinking about the current state of the industry, how do you see research as discipline being shared?
Jonathan Widawski:
I think what we've seen to be the most successful, and that's why I'm so excited to see 80% of teams now having a dedicated researcher, is that the researcher is generally the one that's going to be driving the change. And so, what's interesting is that for a long time the researcher, just like the BI teams 10 years ago for data, were the ones that were the black box of the organization. They were given problems and then three months later you got the response. So, it was like an embedded consultant firm inside the organization that could process stuff and then get things out. And so, I think just like BI today is no longer expected to do this and more like educate the rest of the organization through Amplitude and Mixpanel and all of the tools that are available to them to make the data self-serve, I think what we're seeing is the researcher moved from an operational role to an educational role.
To make the research process continuous, their goal is to start advocating for research at every step of the product development process and then enabling every role to solve their own questions. That goes from the product managers to discover opportunities to solve for and then validate that the solution or these opportunities are the right ones, to the designers and enabling them to test the usability of the product that they're developing. And then closing the loop, it's going back to the product managers, product marketers, testing the value proposition, testing if the features are actually onboarded and accepted. And then going back to the loop of building. Because I think, and that's the biggest cultural shift that companies need to have for a product to be continuous, I think that a product is a living, breathing thing. There's no such thing as a product that's finished. A product is always in improvement, in motion depending on the feedback that you receive.
Ash Oliver:
It's really interesting to see how education plays such a critical role. When we're thinking about the adoption curve, and again, as you've said, so many factors at play here depending upon size of the company and the team and the maturity—how do you move from individualized teams conducting research to a synchronized team that conducts continuous research?
Jonathan Widawski:
Yeah, I think it comes down to transforming something that's an ad hoc function into a company muscle. We talked with Behzod about companies that learn, which is a topic that we care a lot about together. And the companies that will win tomorrow are the companies that have created this capacity to learn kind of synchronously, the same way that the companies that are winning today are the companies that built a function that data is trickled down everywhere within the org. It's very interesting because there's a bottom-up motion where you need to find a champion that is going to push the practice upward and then you need to have the top-down buy-in, right?
You need to have people at the top-level management actually advocating and pushing for these practices to become more synchronous. And so, if you have these two motions face-to-face, what's happening in the end is that you will have people that are building that are actually surfacing the insight to the next team that is going to take on the deliverable. And then people at the top that are going to require for things to move forward to have those insights surfaced. And when this happens, that's how you create this kind of relay race of data and research, where you discover and you validate and then you pass on this knowledge to the next team for them to execute on.
And when you do this really well, what happens is that you create a system of records of those insights for your organization. All of a sudden your product is a living, breathing thing. It has a history and the history and the why behind it is now surfaced to the rest of the organization. And so, it's great when you're building, but it's even greater when, for example, someone's joining you, or when someone's embedded in the team as a contractor because they can understand the decisions that led to where the product is today, which is often also lacking within an organization.
Ash Oliver:
Let's think about the speed at which that learning happens. Is there a difference in your mind between the velocity of the learning that's able to happen when you're in a continuous kind of product habit?
Jonathan Widawski:
Yeah. The big belief that I have is that the speed at which you're right is going to be the determining factor if your company's successful or not. I'm writing a piece right now that hopefully I'll be able to share soon, and I talk about two metrics that I think would make an organization successful or not: the time to right and the cost of wrong. And I think those two things are really, really important. I think when you think about it, no one's expecting you to be right all the time. But, as a company and as an organization, the two things that you should always be optimizing for are, how long does it take us to be right and how much does it cost us to be wrong today? And as you scale, these two metrics become more and more uncomfortable to talk about. Because I remember talking to a VP of Design and he said, "Any of my decision today costs anywhere between 50K and 500K."
Meaning that every time I say something, it needs to be backed by so much data for us not to lose the money that we're going to invest in every decision that we make. And we make decisions all the time. It's not something that we make once every quarter and then we step back. We make those decisions very often. And so, what I like about this is, if you look from the IC level all the way to the top-level management, at the IC level what you will care about is, "I'm a designer. I'm a product manager. I want to make sure that the thing that I'm going to pass on to the next team is validated, that they can actually build the right thing." And then, as the director level, what you will care about is, "How efficient is my organization?" "I'm managing people and I want them to be as efficient as possible. I want them to have as little rework as possible as well."
And then, as you go up inside the organization, it's, "How do I win this market?" And how do I win this market is the speed, right? The speed at which you're right on the market. And so, research kind of trickles down this way. It starts from, it's a competitive advantage market-wise. And then, it's an organization advantage because we're consolidating our resources. And then, it's an individual advantage as well because I'm pushing things that I know to be right to the next team. So, research and continuous product discovery as a muscle make you win in the end for your market.
Ash Oliver:
Time to right and the cost of wrong is really compelling metrics. That's incredible. And the industry report shows that product teams who conduct research more often report more effective decision-making, so it just substantiates what you're talking about here. Those that conduct research less often are at a higher risk for cost of being wrong.
Jonathan Widawski:
And we see as well that, and that's a problem, only 30% of product teams have actual weekly touch point with their customers. Which is the big challenge. I think at this point when we look at the market, everyone's onboarded with the idea of research and continuous product discovery. It's not a sale that we need to make. Yet the problem is allocating the time, resources and money to make this actually happen. It's one thing to say and then it's another thing to systemize it so that people can actually engage with the activity.
Ash Oliver:
Yeah, definitely. And as you've mentioned, it's an organizational design challenge as well. It's not just about the people in place, but the culture and belief around the habits. Let's talk a little bit about the opportunities. This is kind of stemming from what you've talked about and the opportunity in being right. So, what opportunities do you think are ahead for product teams in adopting the continuous product discovery kind of habit and cadence?
Jonathan Widawski:
So, I think when we look back at the industry report that we created, what we saw is that 78% of product professionals believe their company could do more research. And so, what that really means is that the opportunity is not just perceived by us, it's also perceived by the people that are actually doing the job. They see this as, "My organization as a whole should be more invested in research," which is a great opportunity for us to solve for as well. The problem that they're facing is that, while the demand is increasing, the reality of research insight has outpaced the bandwith of most research teams. And we saw it. I talked to the Director of Research at Google Sites and it was a very interesting chat. What he had to say was that the company had eventually evolved from the point where research was still very operational.
And every organization's like that. You will have a ratio of 1-to-100 between the product team and the research organization. And I've said this number a million time, but I think this is the most telling. Your capacity to build is 100 times your capacity to learn. That's the challenge. When people say they believe their company could do more research, what they're really saying is, "We need to put the learning in the hands of the people that are actually building." And so, technically, this comes down to shifting the researcher role to become an educational role. Helping everyone within the organization to actually run research from the product managers, the product designers, the product marketers, everyone that has questions for the product development process, they should have the means to answer those questions themselves. I think that's the biggest opportunity that we have facing us.
Behzod has a great sentence. He did a video conference, the UXR conference, where he said, "You as a research practitioner trying to scale your research practice is going to cost you your research practice." And what he meant by that is that research, just like data, is a tool. You shouldn't be advocating for the research team to grow. You should be advocating for the research organization to grow. And those are two very different things. And so, my belief is that we can draw a very strict parallel to data. The same way the data team haven't grown dramatically in the past 10 years, but data in the org has become just everywhere, I believe the same thing will happen with research. My belief is that when we look at the top performing companies today, which are generally consumer products or B2B SaaS, we see that the ratio doesn't change, but we see that the culture changes. And I think that that's what it's all about. It's not about the number of researchers. It's about how these researchers empower everyone within the org to run research.
Ash Oliver:
Yeah, I love that. And I think the parallel to what data did for the industry is similar to what design did for the industry as well. I think even the McKinsey Report shows that that is the competitive differentiator in performance for companies. And I think research will do the same.
Jonathan Widawski:
And I think the same way that people had to get bought-in on the design transformation, right? For a long time, design was a nice to have within the org and then we realized, actually, with product led growth, with the motion where now we sell directly to the users and we don't sell top down to the buyer, then there's a consumerization of how people consume product in general, which means that all of a sudden your product has to be great. You can no longer hide behind an effective sales team. You have to have a product that people love to use for your product to stick around within an organization, because the buying process has changed for everyone. And that's great because as a product practitioner you want to believe that the product has the impact that it should have, right?
And so, for a long time, when you were seeing trash product actually winning in market, that was tragic, right? That was a tragedy. No one loved using those products, but they were here because they were hiding behind excellent go to market motions. I think today, because of the shift that we're seeing, not just on how products are being built, but also because product is more central in the buying process, that all of a sudden sells the value of design, research, product management, et cetera, et cetera. So, it's very exciting to be in product today.
Ash Oliver:
Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. And to see these kind of cultural shifts that are happening in our industry and what that does internally. I want to shift and talk a little bit about what that does for the user, because I think one of the key points that you've made before is the difference between building for your users versus with your users. How do you see that being incorporated in terms of the actual practice or belief? What does that do for user centric products? Do you see that also being a big cultural change?
Jonathan Widawski:
Yeah, I think it's going to be one of the biggest ones. I have actually a big theory, a crazy theory. So, I think when we look back 100 years ago, companies used to have ... The top manager, the CEO, the whatever in the companies used to have all the shares of the organization. That's how it worked. And then at some point, we realized actually the people that are building the company are as valuable as the CEO, and so we made it a standard that every employee of the organization is a design partner to the organization. They are just not employees. They are people that help you shape and build what you're building. So, my key belief actually is that we're going to see a very similar shift in how we talk about our users.
We see it already. We see now startups coming out of Y Combinator, etcetera who are getting as a first advice to get design partners that are their customers. And so, I think this blurring the line between companies and their users is going to be the key game changer. That tomorrow this notion of there's a world between your organization and your users and you build for your users, so from time to time you go ask them what they want, versus actually having them embedded in the building process, just like you have your employees, is going to be the companies of tomorrow. That's going to be how companies are being shaped tomorrow. That's my hope.
Ash Oliver:
I think the industry is greatly pointing in that direction and I think the report substantiates that move as well. Do you have any key advice for teams that are hearing this and believe in this? I think some of what we've discussed is best for sure when implemented early, but if you're part of an organization and you're trying to kind of change the tides internally of how things operate, do you have some maybe advice of how someone might go or approach that?
Jonathan Widawski:
That's a very good question. I think, first of all, it starts with you. So, what that means is that you can champion the smallest research practice in the world. What that means really is if you believe that you want research to be practiced within your org and you don't have the buy-in yet, the best thing you can do is actually run the research yourself. And research doesn't have to be scary. Going into a coffee place and asking people is already a form of research. Whatever data point you can have is always better than no data. And then, your goal is to kind of bang the drum on what you've learned and the impact of the research that you ran. Showcasing where you would have gone without the research and then where you went and how successful that was. The goal for you is to kind of be the settler for research within the organization.
You need to show your group or your pod, basically, the value of research. Then bang the drum and advocate for it inside your department. And then, hopefully it goes up to the top-level management. But it can start with you. What we've seen most times, especially in the less mature organization, is that a single champion can entirely shift the culture around the research. So, yeah, as an individual, you need to bang the drum. And then, if you're listening to this and you're building a startup, if you're trying to create this culture for your company as well, I think the most important thing before going into the research is actually creating a culture where being wrong is okay.
And I think that's the most important thing actually in supporting research, is that going back to the role of the product managers and the researcher and the designer, your role is to identify the right opportunities. Which means that you should not only celebrate when things are right, you should celebrate killing things wrong early. And those things, if you don't make it a system that you celebrate these things, then people are going to be shut off from actually being wrong. And so, it creates a practice where people would rather be wrong but no one knows, rather than being wrong but moving forward with the right idea next. So, I think that that's my big advice on this.
Ash Oliver:
Huge advice. And totally draws back the cultural elements that need to be in place in order to make this work. It's not just the tactical elements.
Jonathan Widawski:
Exactly.
Ash Oliver:
That's a beautiful place to end it before we transition into our personal questions. Jo, this is great because obviously I know you and work closely with you, but I don't know the answers to these questions. So the first one is, what's one thing you've done in your career that has helped you succeed that you think few other people do?
Jonathan Widawski:
So, it's going to be a very broad statement, but I think the most important thing is ask. And so, what that really means is that, throughout my career and in my journey as a founder, I always felt shameless just adding people on LinkedIn, asking people for help, asking people for perspective and advice. I remember early days as a founder, I had this friend that was also a mentor to me that I would literally send emails to for him to proofread and make sure that I was not saying stupid things. But often, what you like is the perspective, to get to the place of confidence. And so, for me, asking people, trying to connect with people has been, "Oh, I really like what that person is doing" or "I'd really love to understand how they're thinking about this thing."
And so, I would just ask. And I think that's a muscle that you build as well. Of course, at first, it feels very uncomfortable. But then it just becomes something that's extremely powerful. And the beautiful thing is that then you can give back, and then you can do it as well for other founders, for friends, for everyone, where you give back. And so, that's the thing that has helped me succeed the most—being open to ask, not being afraid to ask and just connecting with the right people.
Ash Oliver:
Amazing. And that is indicative of the practice of research in general as well.
Jonathan Widawski:
True.
Ash Oliver:
My next question is, what is the industry-related book that you've given or recommended the most?
Jonathan Widawski:
So, industry-related, there's two that I recommend a lot. There's The Design of Everyday Things that I think is kind of a staple because often I find, especially for UX, that people come into UX practice and there's very little UX proper training and background. Meaning that they come here from a developer background. They come here from a product manager background. So, it's very difficult to kind of get back to the basics. I find that The Design of Everyday Things makes you think the right way about design and accessibility in general. So, this is one I recommend to everyone. And then, the Mom Test, which I think is a great read because it's a very entry level book when it comes to how to ask questions. How to understand that by default people will want to support you, which means that they will bias their answer for you. And I think that's the 101 on how do you actually get started with research as well. So, those two books I recommend to everyone.
Ash Oliver:
Yeah, great recommendations. My last question for you is, what is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?
Jonathan Widawski:
Holy shit. This one is tough. I would say I probably geek out too much on shows. So, what I will do generally is when I'm watching a show, I will have Twitter open and then I will have Reddit open and I will go very deep in series, and comments, and trying to make my own understanding of the show. And then I will debate this with my brother and some of my friends that have the same level of craziness about it. So, I would say that this is probably very telling about who I am as a person, but that would be my absurd thing probably. And I love it.
Ash Oliver:
I love it as well. And it does say a bit about your character, which is amazing. Jo, this has been so great. Thank you very much for walking through some of the findings in the report and for your thoughts in the industry, past and present, and to a very fruitful future for us all in product.
Jonathan Widawski:
Thank you. Thank you for having me. It was really fun.
Ash Oliver:
The Optimal Path is hosted by Ash Oliver and brought to you by Maze, a continuous product discovery platform designed for product teams. If you enjoyed this episode, you can find resources and companion links in the show notes. If you'd like to hear more, you can subscribe to the Optimal Path by visiting maze.co/podcast and send us a note with any thoughts or feedback to podcast@maze.design. Thanks for listening, and until next time.