Rapid Research: 30+ studies in its first quarter, and cycle times cut about 30%
I helped found research operations at Reddit and co-built the Rapid Research Program, which cleared a company-wide backlog of unanswered questions. It cut research cycle time about 30%: a typical study ran in two weeks, and some took as little as one. Output doubled once dedicated researchers staffed it, and research earned a bigger seat at the table.
- Role
- User Research Operations Program Manager
- Team
- New UX Research function
- Timeframe
- 2021 – 2022
- Partners
- Research, design, marketing, finance, data science
- studies in the program's first quarter
- 30+
- studies in the program's first quarter
- shorter cycle time: two weeks typical, some in one
- ~30%
- shorter cycle time: two weeks typical, some in one
- contract researchers converted to full-time
- 2 of 3
- contract researchers converted to full-time
Overview
In 2021 Reddit passed 1,000 employees for the first time and was racing to catch up with competitors that had invested heavily in product design and research. A new UX Research team was there to inform product strategy, and I was brought in to build the research operations underneath it.
Alongside the foundations, I co-developed the Rapid Research Program with a senior UX researcher: a rolling way to answer the questions piling up across the company.
The challenge
Research headcount was small and mostly embedded in high-priority work, so many teams had no research support at all. Their questions sat in a scattered backlog, unanswered.
Past research wasn't being found or used, and influential stakeholders weren't attending share-outs. Teams outside design had stopped asking for help because they didn't expect to get any.
That boiled down to three problems: scaling research, sharing insights, and building bridges to teams research had never worked with.
What teams told me in discovery
Sales and marketing specialist
Hadn't worked with research, because research sat inside product design rather than customer experience or marketing.
Design manager
Was already running informal research with engineers and designers, and wanted more ability to follow up on what it surfaced.
Product manager, voice of the customer
Needed basic answers quickly, and a month-long research timeline was too slow to be useful.
What I built
From discovery to a running program, in the order it happened.
Discovery
Interviewed stakeholders across sales, marketing, design and product to find where research was missing and why.
Alignment and budget
Brought prototype guidelines to design, research, marketing and finance and worked through ROI reviews with the research director, a skeptical VP of product design who wanted even faster cycles, and finance. We secured budget for tooling and three to four contract researchers.
Foundations
Wrote research NDA standards, ethics principles, guidelines and training, and set up global compliance workflows. Onboarded and negotiated UserTesting for moderated and unmoderated tests, User Interviews for hard-to-reach participants, plus Qualtrics and Ethnio, and managed the participant incentive budget.
Backlog audit and intake
Centralized every scattered question into Jira with an owner, a point of contact and research tags, and launched a company-wide intake form with automated ticketing so new requests landed in one place.
Trial, then scale
Started small with design questions, iterated on cycles, deliverables and intake, then rolled out company-wide. Partnered with data science on internally managed panels and onboarded external panel providers, with a focus on reaching non-users.
Staff and socialize
Opened three contract researcher roles, built their onboarding and meeting cadence, and co-managed them with a senior researcher. Took the program on a speaking tour of teams and earned a standing slot in company all-hands. Set a regular share-out cadence and built Tableau dashboards to track insights.
- 1
Intake form
Anyone in the company submits a question
- 2
Jira triage
Screened for rapid fit, tagged, assigned
- 3
Recruit and schedule
UserTesting, User Interviews, internal panels
- 4
Run the study
Moderated or unmoderated, inside the cycle
- 5
Share out
Results to the team that asked, then wider
- 1. Question
- 2. Recruit
- 3. Schedule
- 4. Results & share-out
Including time to pull findings together and share them
Iterative tests, once dedicated contract researchers staffed the program and output doubled
Impact
- 30+ studies in the first quarter and research cycle time cut about 30%: two weeks for a typical study, as little as one for some. Output doubled once dedicated researchers staffed the program.
- A visible drop in the backlog of old, unanswered questions, alongside new requests from teams that had never worked with research.
- Research pulled into planning earlier and more often, beyond the rapid program itself.
- Two of the three contract researchers converted to full-time, and the program's track record helped make the case for more research headcount.