Lean and collaborative UX for agile: why we acquired Validately

Alongside the announcement that UserZoom has acquired Validately, I wanted to go into more detail around the ‘why’ behind the deal. Watch the video below I made with Validately CEO Steven Cohn where we discuss why this is such a game-changer for the industry, or read on to learn more.

This summer, UserZoom will turn twelve years old. During this time, while our mission of helping companies build better user experiences has remained the same, we’ve seen a shift in the way in which companies are focusing on UX research (UXR) and UX design (UXD).

First off, compared with a decade ago, recognition of the value of good UX design has increased hugely, with research demonstrating that design-focused businesses can increase revenues and shareholder returns at nearly twice the rate of their competitors.

Then there’s the clear realization that UX research is one of the best ways to deliver great UX design—no more guesswork or shipping a product and hoping it will stick. UXD is not UXD without UXR. Understanding the end user needs, attitudes and behavior is a must-have during the design and development process. Without customer input, organizations risk creating interfaces that fail.

Today, companies that are truly serious about their digital properties, websites or apps, conduct more UX research (both quantitative and qualitative) than ever before—I’m talking hundreds of studies in a year—so they can become more customer-centric, make smarter, data-driven decisions throughout the development process, and focus on what matters most. As Invision puts it, ResearchOps is an essential part of the Design process.

Finally, demand for UX insights has become so great that we’re witnessing the move towards the so-called ‘democratization of UX.’ The need for businesses to be laser-focused on the end user means that UX is no longer left in the hands of expert or formally trained researchers alone. Product Managers, Designers, Developers and even C-level execs want a piece of it too. It’s become a much more collaborative process. Technology has enabled easier, faster and more collaborative collection and sharing of insights, to fit in with the cadence and requirements of agile design sprints.

Enter lean and collaborative UX research

At UserZoom we’re focused on building the most robust UX insights platform in the market. We offer more ways to conduct user research and usability testing and measurement within a single platform than any other solution, allowing customers to benchmark and quantify their user experience to make better design and product decisions. In recent years we’ve seen two big challenges emerge in the market:

1. The need to integrate UX research into Agile development methodologies, and
2. Meeting the research demands of non-researchers such as UX Designers, Product Managers or Digital Marketers.

To address both challenges, we wanted to make the entire product experience a whole lot leaner, simpler and more collaborative. That’s exactly why we have acquired Validately. They’ve built an amazingly simple user testing platform, focused on Lean UX, to make UX research easy for Product and Design teams to build better digital experiences, and we couldn’t be more excited about this!

Insights for the entire product development lifecycle

UserZoom and Validately complement each other in a phenomenal way. It’s a game changer kind of deal. UserZoom’s Enterprise UX insights platform combined with Validately’s lean UX research product capabilities will give our customers the insights they need to make both longer-term strategic product and design decisions, as well as tactical, agile ones.

That means we’ll have you covered, whether you need quick, easy feedback on UI prototypes for a Design Sprint, or want to understand user behaviour over time through a diary study—all from a single source of UX insights that will help you make product and design decisions with confidence.

Finally, and just as important, as we got deeper into conversations with Validately CEO Steven and his team, it became apparent that they would be an awesome cultural fit for UserZoom, and be the perfect team to join us on our mission of delivering the world’s best UX insights solution to our customers.

We’re all super excited for the possibilities this acquisition brings, for UserZoom, for Validately, for our customers, and for the UX industry as it continues to evolve. As the impact of UX design continues to accelerate in organizations across the world, we will remain on the forefront of the charge to deliver the UX insights business, product and design leaders need to deliver better digital experiences.