about the internship
I interned for a year as a UX Researcher at Samsung Electronics.
I worked with the senior UX researcher, designers, and project managers in order to improve various B2B products including Samsung Knox – a mobile security solution and mobile device management (MDM) portal.
Internship Details
Role
User Experience Researcher
Duration
May 2018 - April 2019
Where
Samsung Electronics
enterprise ux research
I learned and used a mixture of research methods such as surveys, usability tests, semi-structured interviews, and web analytics. As with many large enterprises, it can be a challenge to talk to users. I quickly learned that surveys are a preferred method in such a context. The project outlined below is one of the many I was involved in during my time at Samsung, but it is one that I had full ownership of.
the survey
The Samsung Enterprise Alliance Program (SEAP) provides users access to Samsung Knox’s mobile SDKs and code libraries, helping them build secure solutions. As a SEAP partner, one also has access to business resources such as sales and marketing materials.
I was responsible for creating a survey for the project managers and UX designers of the SEAP team. A link to the survey was sent out in the monthly SEAP newsletter.
Part 1: Meet with stakeholders
The first step was to speak to the project stakeholders to align on our goals and expectations. The project managers and designers were looking for updated information on their partners, their motives for coming to SEAP, and their specific business needs.
Part 2: Make a research plan
With the information from our stakeholders, I created a research plan with the goals and key topics to focus on.
an excerpt of the research plan i created
Part 3: Design survey - iterate - design
I then came up with a list of questions that we could ask respondents.
Example 1: What prompted you to first sign up for SEAP?
Example 2: In 1-2 sentences, tell us what you enjoy the most about SEAP.
With some feedback from the Sr.UX researcher, I iterated on the questions.
Example 1: What business need were you trying to meet when you first signed up for SEAP?
Example 2: In 1-2 sentences, what do you most value in SEAP?
In the first example, the feedback I received was that the question wasn’t specific enough. By honing in on the business need, we would be able to get a more focused answer. In the second example, the word “enjoy” was changed to “value” in order to garner responses that are more concrete and relevant to the product.
I learned that it is important to be specific with the questions asked in a survey. Different words can elicit different responses from people and being very specific helps minimize confusion.
Part 4: Stakeholder review - pilot testing - final changes
Before the survey could be sent out, I asked the stakeholders to review it, had one internal participant try completing it, and sent it out to a few external users. With the feedback received, I made final changes to the wording and structure of the survey.
Part 5: Deploy survey
The link to the survey was posted in the monthly SEAP newsletter that went out late October 2018. Responses were collected for around 2 weeks.
Part 6: Analyze data
The wonderful (and sometimes messy) part of surveys is that one can get both quantitative and qualitative data. Through Survey Monkey, I got most of the numerical charts I was interested in. For the responses to more open-ended questions, I used a spreadsheet and a printed version to dissect it all. I highlighted patterns, annotated questions and insights, speculated and made correlations between data points.
Part 7: Summarize findings - present to stakeholders
Some of the findings and insights:
• Respondents care about being in an active, engaged partnership.
• For those who said that their business needs were greatly met, also had strong support from the Samsung.
• What they said they value: technological innovation, support, documentation & resources, sales & marketing help.
The last step was to share results with our stakeholders. In a meeting, I presented the findings and we discussed why they are important for the SEAP team.
Here is what a stakeholder had to say about my work:
“Jessica did a careful analysis of our SEAP survey results, and presented the material to the team in a clear and concise fashion. The material gave a good pulse on the status of SEAP, especially around how the program is meeting customers needs. This is very helpful and timely to me as the new product manager for SEAP, as it gave me areas to consider for future improvement. This feeds directly into business decisions on the program.” - A.K., Project Manager
outcome + reflection
As we approach the end of 2018, this information will be extremely useful for planning for the upcoming year. With these insights, the team has expressed that they can find better ways to strategize and personalize the experience for their users. The opportunity to conduct this research study from end to end was a learning experience for me. I learned that it can be a lengthy process to run a survey and it takes careful, deliberate design. The most exciting and challenging part of this journey was analyzing the responses. It was a messy and, at times, an overwhelming process. However, through many sessions of looking over the data, taking notes, and discussing with the senior UX researcher, I was able to gain insights from the data we collected.