Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome back to Insights Unlocked. In this episode, we're joined by design and research leaders from TrueStage to talk about how they transformed UX research from an ad hoc inconsistent effort into a scalable, trusted practice embedded directly within their design team.
We dig into their cookbook framework, how it changed stakeholder conversations, and what it takes to operationalize research without slowing teams down.
Chapter 2: Why did TruStage shift to an embedded UX research model?
Enjoy the show.
Welcome to Insights Unlocked, an original podcast from User Testing, where we bring you candid conversations and stories with the thinkers, doers, and builders behind some of the most successful digital products and experiences in the world, from concept to execution.
Welcome to the Insights Unlocked podcast. I'm Nathan Isaacs, principal content marketing manager at UserTesting. And joining us today as host is Natalie Padilla, a research consultant here at UserTesting. Welcome to the show, Natalie.
Hi, everyone.
And joining us today from TrueStage are Benny Brooks, Nick Higbee, and Betsy Drews, three design and research leaders who helped transform their team's approach to customer insights. TrueStage is a leading provider of insurance, investment, and technology solutions, helping credit unions and their members achieve financial security through customer-centric innovation.
Welcome to the show, everyone.
Yeah, really excited to have everyone here. And Nick, I was wondering if you could start us off maybe by introducing yourself. Tell us a bit more about TrueStage and the team's role there.
Oh, sure. So maybe I'll start with TruStage and then kind of talk about where we fit into it.
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Chapter 3: How did the research cookbook framework improve stakeholder conversations?
So TruStage is a insurance and financial services mutual holding company. We're headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin. And our products really run the gamut between B2B, B2B2C, and also B2C. So we have three segments. We have our wealth segment, which is largely characterized by retirement solutions and annuities.
We have our commercial segment, which has business protection products and lending protection products. And then we also have our individual segment, which is probably a little bit more understandable, which is auto home and life insurance. So with regard to TrueStage, we recently rebranded two years ago.
So as part of a monumental single brand transformation product, we went from kind of like a house of brands under CUNA Mutual Group, and then we unified as one TrueStage. So Currently, we're kind of going to market as one true stage, but we're also internally trying to operate as one true stage. And that's where our team fits in.
So I lead our enterprise-wide user experience and digital design practice, which includes design and research, right? So... From a user experience perspective and user research perspective, we're really kind of tasked with evolving from kind of like a historic resort of cabins into kind of like this new holistic modern hotel experience. Right.
Chapter 4: What tools did TruStage use to integrate research into workflows?
So specific to this conversation, we're really changing the way we do UX research. We came from a place in, you know, before the rebrand where we had kind of like separate research teams that the design team would engage with and partner with. And now we're really embedding that user research practice like into our design practice. So, yeah.
So we went from kind of like engaging with separate teams to understand user needs to doing most of it ourselves. And so now we kind of need to have this practice that supports quick pivots between mindsets where we're either learning to build or building to learn.
That's really helpful context. And there's so many moving pieces, Nick, thanks for laying them out. I think what's interesting is that you and the whole TrueStage team have done such a good job of creating a repeatable high quality research program with shared standards clearer planning and stronger trust in the middle of all that.
And I was wondering maybe Benny, you could introduce yourself and help us set the stage for life before this project where you did all that. And why did the team think that change was needed?
Yeah, it's a great question, Natalie. So I'm Benny Brooks. I'm a UX design lead here and also design lead coach. And also sort of each lead does some other things for the team. So one of my pillars is helping to run and evolve the design operations for our group. So there's going to be, I'm not going to lie, quite a few food industry analogies being thrown around today.
And I'm just going to start that right away. So previously we were sort of running our research practice a bit like a potluck.
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Chapter 5: How did the team scale research volume while maintaining quality?
So, you know, everyone was showing up with their own contributions to the practice, their own kind of recipes for research activities and insights. And everyone was getting to see what everyone else could do. But in the spirit of a potluck, it's like you just get to see this one thing that someone did. Maybe you learn one recipe.
but nothing is really shared at a global level and there's no consistency. So that was fun, but we kind of wanted to figure out what we would need to do to stand up the practice more like a Michelin star restaurant. So we wanted it to be tight, consistent for our partners and stakeholders, polished.
We wanted to document everyone's skills and abilities so we could learn from each other in a more consistent way, in a more professional way and still creative. Like we still want room to play, but just step it up to the next level.
I mean, those food analogies, I think, really bring it to life in such a fun way and helps understand why we dubbed some of these articles that we're going to be seeing, the cookbook, the menu, all of that. I'm curious a little bit, maybe you could expand on what inspired the framework.
Like, how did you evolve particularly the materials from the idea of the playbook shared by user testing to what it became?
Mm-hmm. Yeah, so that sort of happened over a few months. I think we had a research
a roadmap that was kind of set out for all of 2025 and over the course of 2025 these things like kept evolving and changing so you're absolutely right we were also working with you we had these monthly consultation sessions and we were working on a playbook idea y'all already had this playbook idea and you had really good setups for what that should contain and we were kind of coming in every month and talking about our progress
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Chapter 6: What role did co-creation play in developing the research system?
And I think what really happened is that playbook as a sports metaphor sort of worked until it didn't. So I think what made it not work for us at a certain point in the year is we realized that playbooks are a secret. It's like the team and the coaches get to see that, but you keep it from the other team because it's an advantage.
So for us, we needed a metaphor, like a framework to think about this stuff where it was both for ourselves and also at the right level for our audiences. So like stakeholders and partners, especially. So food became a really good way to frame that. And the more we pressure tested these food analogies, the more we're like, yeah, this is like helpful.
So just to run that down quick for you, it's like recipes for the cooks. and menu listings for the diners. So they both describe a dish, but one tells you how to make it, and then the other tells the diner what they're getting and what the cost to them is. Additionally, that analogy led us later to the idea of like tasting menus or meal plans, which are helpful to both sides of the scenario.
A tasting menu lets cooks know what each course needs to be and in what order. And then it lets the diners know what to expect for the whole experience. So as we started leaning into that, It was working, and what we ended up building is these sort of flashcard-esque components in Figma, which we think of as menu items, recipes, and meal plans.
And the set of them was about creating tools to speak to those two different audiences, the cooks, or the doers, the designers and researchers in UX, and then the diners, who are our stakeholders and our partners on these projects.
And so just to kind of like finish the analogy or what that looks like when you take it out of the analogy and you make it real, these cards that we have in the cookbook describe specific research methods primarily. So for example, we have a recipe card for usability tests, and that tells the UX team everything they need to socialize and plan and execute.
And the menu version of that card, so the version we would show to stakeholders and partners, is actually the same component in Figma, but we use variants to turn on and off details. So that just explains the benefits, the required resources, and the duration of a usability test without overburdening them with everything we need to execute. And then that third... Oh, go ahead, please.
Oh, I was just going to say this is such a great example, but definitely feel free to expand on it because I'm just so excited about it.
Yeah, I got you. So that third artifact is that meal plan or the tasting menu, which we wouldn't have gotten to without recognizing the other things were separate, right? So the meal plan is like a set of predefined studies that can be matched to various recipes. phases of a product development cycle. And so for example, we have this program kickoff one.
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Chapter 7: How did the research cookbook enhance team collaboration?
program kickoff is like a tasting menu it includes stakeholder interviews generative user interviews and competitive analysis and what's nice about that is then when a program kicks off a design lead can just take that off the shelf make stories in the backlog get everything set and get things moving with like minimal rework trying to like reiterate our practice every time something starts up they just we just run the play or run the tasting menu in this case
So a good case study here, just to give some backup for how it worked out, is we did have a situation a few months ago where a lead was asked to skip usability testing because we had the unfortunate situation where Stakeholders believed that was going to take too much time. It was going to push off timelines. So we didn't have room for it. And so we did what we were asked. We pushed back.
We did what we were asked. But then once the code was going to demo, a higher-up stakeholder started asking for validation. They're like, well, did we validate this? And that was a tough spot for our design lead, right? But because we had this, she was able to pull it, make stories, turned everything around in less than a week. and the quotes on both sides were really good.
So our stakeholder came back saying like, wow, I expect this would be a month before we saw results. And the design lead came back and said, this was very easy and it was nice to be able to pull it into a sprint without having to reiterate everything that I had expected from the research in the story. I didn't have to rewrite the whole practice. I just pulled the card and said, do this.
And then that worked. And it pivoted and delivered very quickly.
I find what's so compelling about this system is it's easy because it's embedded, it's integrated. And even though you have multiple customers, right? You have your team in some way, they need the artifacts. You have your stakeholders who also have different artifacts. It allowed you to design a process and a system that delivered real results.
And I was wondering, Betsy, maybe you could expand a little bit on that, particularly introduce yourself and tell us a little bit maybe about how the system helped the team to approach research more intentionally and with consistency.
Yeah, for sure. Thanks, Natalie. I'm Betsy Drews. I'm a senior designer on the team, and I've been running UX research on usertesting.com for like eight years or so. And then for this project, I'm also the team's point of contact with usertesting.com, working with Natalie quite a bit and just like running her account. And I just want to say I've always been a big fan of the platform.
And then especially this past year with research support, I feel like it's totally helped us focus and stay dedicated to our objectives that much more. So yeah, I just wanted to call that out as well.
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Chapter 8: What strategies helped TruStage operationalize research effectively?
And one example I want to call out is a couple months ago, like maybe a little more than that over the summer, Benny and I were pitching a research effort. So like kind of what Benny was mentioning, added time to a project, which is not everyone's favorite thing. Yeah. And then we were also with a newly formed product team, and this was during a refinement meeting.
So it could get a little bit hairy, but because we had the cookbook just like already in Figma at this point, and we were running refinement in Figma, when our stakeholders had questions about our research approach, we just dropped the cards into our file We used the program kickoff card, which helped align the group on getting started with a new feature.
And then we had our research method cards. And I think it was like five minutes, maybe less, to run through like our full research plan. And it removed everything. A lot of effort for us as designers and just like recalling details on the fly and just Benny and I, even just between the two of us speaking the same language with stakeholders can be challenging. So just like completely removed that.
And then when we did that rundown of our research plan using the cards, it's just like the energy changed in the group and it seemed like the team was a little more at ease. You know, you're in good hands. It sparked more discussion and questions, like some immediate buy-in, which being in UX for quite a while now, like I just feel like that's such a struggle sometimes.
So I think just like the visuals itself, professionalism, just like...
created that buy-in um and then by like building that trust with our new effort benny and i were able to move into other design goals we got through the whole refinement um just like not having that ux agitation derail a meeting uh the cards prevented that quite a bit and then i saved a quote from one of our stakeholders from that meeting i wanted to call out um
This is when we were walking through some of the method cards. He said, your team was already impressing me with your practice and your skills. The way you just have this all ready to show and explain is beyond my expectations. So I just wanted to pull that quote. It's just good to hear stuff like that when you're with a new group.
So just putting that intentional thought into the cookbook and how we wanted to interface with teams, I think it's already paying forward. And that's just one example of how the card helped us with that newer team. But we have bigger plans.
And I think this is where consistency can come into play and creating that common language that can be so hard to achieve, especially in a big organization, different product areas, different design leads. Because our material in the cookbook, and you were mentioning this too, Natalie, because it's like a visual artifact, I think those are already starting to form a consistency on their own.
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