My guest today is Emma Craig, UX Research Lead at Shopify. Shopify was founded in 2004 by Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake after attempting to open Snowdevil, an online store for snowboarding equipment. Today, Shopify offers online retailers a suite of services for more than 1,000,000 businesses in approximately 175 countries, with total gross merchandise volume exceeding $42 billion. Prior to joining the User Experience team at Shopify, Emma served as Manager Team Lead at Shopify and held the position of Investigative Interviewer at BackCheck. Find Emma Online: Twitter: https://twitter.com/emmaccraig LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emma-craig-5b829920/ Find Jamin Online: Email: jamin@happymr.instawp.xyz LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jaminbrazil Twitter: www.twitter.com/jaminbrazil Find Us Online: Twitter: www.twitter.com/happymrxp LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/happymarketresearch Facebook: www.facebook.com/happymrxp Website: www.happymr.com Music: “Clap Along” by Auditionauti: https://audionautix.com This Episode’s Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Lookback. Lookback provides the tools to help UX teams to interact with real users, in real time, and in real contexts. It’s Lookback’s mission to humanize technology by bridging the gap between end users and product teams. Lookback’s customers range from one man teams building web and app experiences to the world’s largest research organizations, collectively ensuring that humanity is at the core of every product decision. For more info, including demos of Lookback’s offering, please visit www.lookback.io. [00:02] Jamin: Hey, everybody. My name is Jamin, host of Happy Market Research Podcast. Emma Craig, UX Research Lead at Shopify. Shopify has experienced massive, insane growth over the last five years - it's unprecedented. Valuations are just amazing on that company. Congratulations, Emma, on all of the success there. [00:23] Emma: Thanks. I won't take credit for it, but it's exciting to be part of it.[00:28] Jamin: Yeah. No kidding, no kidding. So you've been at Shopify for a few years. What did you do before that? [00:34] Emma: So, before Shopify, I had a really interesting job, actually. I worked at a company that other companies outsourced this company to run their background checks on people that they were thinking of hiring. So, I was in the investigative interview team of that company. And I would phone people's references, and the previous employers, or educational institutions, in some cases, and interview them about these people, basically trying to suss out what type of employee they would be, and if it was the type of employee that this future employer was looking for. So, yeah, it was really interesting. I think it caught a lot of people off when you're more used to the a...
My guest today is Emma Craig, UX Research Lead at Shopify.
Shopify was founded in 2004 by Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake after attempting to open Snowdevil, an online store for snowboarding equipment. Today, Shopify offers online retailers a suite of services for more than 1,000,000 businesses in approximately 175 countries, with total gross merchandise volume exceeding $42 billion.
Prior to joining the User Experience team at Shopify, Emma served as Manager Team Lead at Shopify and held the position of Investigative Interviewer at BackCheck.
Find Emma Online:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/emmaccraig
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emma-craig-5b829920/
Find Jamin Online:
Email: jamin@happymr.instawp.xyz
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jaminbrazil
Twitter: www.twitter.com/jaminbrazil
Find Us Online:
Twitter: www.twitter.com/happymrxp
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/happymarketresearch
Facebook: www.facebook.com/happymrxp
Website: www.happymr.com
Music:
“Clap Along” by Auditionauti: https://audionautix.com
This Episode’s Sponsor:
This episode is brought to you by Lookback. Lookback provides the tools to help UX teams to interact with real users, in real time, and in real contexts. It’s Lookback’s mission to humanize technology by bridging the gap between end users and product teams. Lookback’s customers range from one man teams building web and app experiences to the world’s largest research organizations, collectively ensuring that humanity is at the core of every product decision. For more info, including demos of Lookback’s offering, please visit www.lookback.io.
[00:02]
Jamin: Hey, everybody. My name is Jamin, host of Happy Market Research Podcast. Emma Craig, UX Research Lead at Shopify. Shopify has experienced massive, insane growth over the last five years - it's unprecedented. Valuations are just amazing on that company. Congratulations, Emma, on all of the success there.
[00:23]
Emma: Thanks. I won't take credit for it, but it's exciting to be part of it.[00:28]
Jamin: Yeah. No kidding, no kidding. So you've been at Shopify for a few years. What did you do before that?
[00:34]
Emma: So, before Shopify, I had a really interesting job, actually. I worked at a company that other companies outsourced this company to run their background checks on people that they were thinking of hiring. So, I was in the investigative interview team of that company. And I would phone people's references, and the previous employers, or educational institutions, in some cases, and interview them about these people, basically trying to suss out what type of employee they would be, and if it was the type of employee that this future employer was looking for. So, yeah, it was really interesting. I think it caught a lot of people off when you're more used to the average reference interview of like, "Were they productive? Were they nice?" And we really tried to get in there because these companies were very concerned about making sure they're hiring the exact person that they're looking for.[01:26]
Jamin: So, our topic today is the art and science of a good question. It's hilarious that you started your career in really framing out questions, and asking the right one in order to get the accurate response, I guess. Not like it's leading, but you just needed to know if it's a good fit or a bad fit. And then you moved into UX Research at Spotify. How did you wind up in research?
[01:49]
Jamin: So, how did you wind up in UX Research?
[01:51]
Emma: So, that was interesting, too, actually, because I started at Shopify in the Account Management sort of team. And that was the team that was spun up when we first launched Shopify Plus, now they're called Merchant Success Managers. But, basically, your job was to work with these enterprise clients as their Account Manager and make sure that they were taken care of.