Capital One + UserTesting

Challenge

Composed of UX Research, UX Analytics, and UX Research Ops subject matter experts, the purpose of Capital One’s Experience Insights group is to empower product teams in Capital One’s Commercial Bank to do their own UX research—research often held in-person at client sites and in Capital One’s own User Labs.

The team was on track in 2020 to surpass 2019’s impressive tally of 79 research studies involving 555 participants when COVID-19 abruptly and unexpectedly required members to work remotely—and forced Capital One to pause all client UX research and in-person research. But team members knew moving ahead with important UX projects without the critical insights provided by UX research was a risky endeavor. That’s when they decided to give remote UX research solutions a try.

Solution

Krista Jodoin, Senior Manager UX Insights Strategy, heard that other teams at Capital One had had success conducting remote UX research with UserTesting's human insight platform. So she spearheaded a trial with a UserTesting license to keep the centralized Experience Insights team operating during the pandemic.

The UserTesting platform, with its broad set of UX research features and enormous panel of participants located throughout the world, proved to be exactly the right decision. The software itself was easy to learn and effective to use. Plus, UserTesting's support and customer success teams made everything feel seamless for the Capital One Experience Insights team as they transitioned from in-person to remote research. 

With UserTesting as a strategic partner, Capital One's research operations team was able to help all their stakeholders to easily design and launch tests, recruit participants (even hard to find ones), and get familiar with the new approach. 

Results

As a result, the Capital One Experience Insights team is doing more high quality UX research than before the pandemic. Everyone was impressed that responses came in hours or days, rather than weeks like before when in-person testing was the primary option.

Capital One teams readily embraced remote research through UserTesting as a valid—even preferred—way to collect user feedback.

At a time when many projects face unexpected delays and challenges, Capital One’s UX research has emerged as a dependable bright spot that empowers teams across the company to continue generating important and actionable insights for their UX work, despite challenging market dynamics during the pandemic.