Search Engine SMB Advertiser Maturity Journey
Executed 4 foundational UX research studies over 6 months for a search engine’s internal UX learning ecosystem.
Senior UX Researcher | 8 Weeks | Qualitative Research | 2025
The Business Needs
The client needed to create an evergreen user-journey asset that reflected the experiences (e.g., touch points, maturity journey, influences, drivers of business growth) of their small- to medium-sized business advertisers. This high-visibility asset was intended for use by internal decision-makers. The client team wished to better support small business owners (including business owners of color) by identifying and unblocking friction within their advertising platform, accelerating growth, and scaling success.
My Research Process
1. Lead Research Activities for IDIs: Worked within a team of an interaction designer, research director, and project manager to schedule and complete 25 in-depth interviews for one hour each across 3 pre-defined user groups (segmented by ad spend and product usage).
2. Analyze Data and Produce Final Report: Synthesized interview notes into a Topline Insights Report one day after the conclusion of sessions. Continued synthesizing insights into a final report, including user group summary slides, video highlight clips, strategic insights, and recommendations.
3. Collaborate with the Interaction Designer to Create Maturity Journey Map: Expanded the four user groupings into one cyclical maturity journey map, highlighting key journey phases, actions, emotions, triggers impacting movement from one phase to another, and recommendations per phase.
Impact and Outcomes
Key Finding: The journey was not linear - it was cyclical. People moved back and forth between segments depending on life circumstances, business performance, sales, and especially bandwidth (many small business owners were sole proprietors).
Other Emergent Themes: Small business owners struggled with complex advertising tools, had negative experiences when outsourcing work to agencies, and required trial and error when running effective ads.
Outcome: I delivered a final report and collaborated with an interaction designer to visualize the journey and create artifacts. We delivered a high-polish, printable, evergreen journey map, persona cards, and a deck for the team to use as a source of truth.
Reflections
This research project pushed me get creative when collaborating with designers and researchers. I not only continued to advocate for the user, but I was tasked with translating their motivations and needs into a visual artefact. Seeing their journeys as cyclical, not linear, opened new doorways for better communicating their struggles as users traversed through phases. My team and I learned how to speak the same language and tell the right story through meticulous design and accurate research.