Igloo Software • Manager of UX • 7 min
Turning scattered feedback into a scalable UX research program
Confidentiality notice
This work is from my time at Igloo Software. I’ve generalized customer data and internal details so the focus stays on the platform, the system and the results.
Challenge
What we built often depended on second-hand feedback from sales, support and other teams inside the company. It was inconsistent and hard to check, so teams couldn’t see how customers actually used the product.
Strategy
With support from the Head of Product, I created and ran Lighthouse, from the logo and swag through outreach, workshops, follow-ups and readouts. The program gave us a consistent read on users across customers and turned that into what we built next.
We ran guided workshops that captured people’s goals, problems and workflows in the same format each time, then looked for patterns across participants to find shared needs and priorities.
Results
Lighthouse gave Igloo a repeatable way to see how people really worked and to test our assumptions. The research shaped the direction of the 2025 product roadmap.
Challenge
From scattered feedback to real understanding
When I started this work, what we built was heavily shaped by second-hand feedback from sales, support and other teams inside the company.
That input was useful, but it was inconsistent, often anecdotal and hard to verify. Teams were making decisions without a clear picture of how customers used the product or where it was breaking down.
As the platform got more complex, the gap got harder to ignore. We had plenty of feedback. What we didn’t have was a way to make sense of it.
Without a structured way to gather and read what users were telling us, it was hard to spot real patterns, get teams to agree, or feel confident about what to build next.
Strategy
Building a way to learn from customers,
not just run studies
With support from the Head of Product, I created and ran Lighthouse, from the logo and swag through outreach, workshops, follow-ups and readouts, to give us a consistent read on users that we could actually use, across customers.
We replaced one-off interviews with guided workshops that captured goals, problems and workflows in the same format every time. That let us compare across participants, check priorities and separate problems that ran through the product from one-off complaints.
We documented and shared what we learned the same way each time, so teams had a growing body of knowledge to go back to and build on.
To make sure it changed decisions, I worked closely with Product and Engineering to connect findings directly to the roadmap. Over time the company moved from reacting to feedback to agreeing on needs we’d actually seen.
User insights
The same patterns across customers
Complexity slowed adoption
People relied on trial and error to set up content and workflowsGetting started took too long
Setting up and maintaining an intranet took a lot of effortContent organization was unclear
People struggled to organize information in a way that made sense for their teamsPeople expected it to be easy
They kept asking for simpler, more guided experiences
These came up session after session, which told us they were problems in the product and not isolated feedback.
Results
A repeatable way to understand users
The research shaped the direction of Igloo’s 2025 product roadmap. It also gave teams one consistent way to learn from users and build on what earlier sessions had found.
Customers engaged
5+
Worked with customers across industries to find shared patterns and check our findings
Workshops run
31+
Ran structured research sessions to capture people’s goals, problems and workflows
Decision making
2025
Research shaped the direction of Igloo’s 2025 product roadmap
Lessons
What it takes to make research stick
Running workshops was the easy part. The harder part was getting the rest of the company to use what we learned.
Sales and support feedback still mattered. Lighthouse gave us a way to check it against what customers actually did in workshops, instead of treating it as the final word.
Using the same workshop format every time was what made the 31+ sessions add up. We could compare across customers instead of collecting one-off stories.
Research has to be allowed to change your assumptions. I’d rather let what we saw reshape our personas than use sessions to prove them right.
Research can’t sit with one person. The documentation and shared format were there so other teams could keep using the findings without me in the room.
Igloo Software • Manager of UX • 5 min
Igloo Software • Lead UX Designer • 7 min