Julie Francis sat in a Palo Alto home to uncover what drives couponing and what it means to people’s lives.
The woman she was interviewing told Julie she uses coupons to make ends meet.
Yet, in the garage was a brand new convertible Porsche. Next to it, a pair of matching Harley-Davidsons.
That same week, Julie met another woman with nearly identical survey answers – but for her, it means deciding if she can afford a birthday party for her child.
Two people. Two completely different lives. The key takeaway: Without context, survey answers can be misleading. In-person qualitative research brings critical clarity to these differences, highlighting why direct observation is essential for deriving accurate insights.
“I would have probably missed that if I hadn’t done those interviews in person in her home.”
Julie Francis, CX/UX researcher and strategist at BellaVia Research, brings decades of experience helping organisations discover actionable customer insights. Julie is also an expert contributor to the Innovation in Action book (Wiley, 2026).
Here are three insights from our conversation:
Ditch the deck, collaborate more
Many organisations treat a research deliverable as the endpoint: the report arrives, and the process ends.
Julie’s five years in-house at Meta transformed her perspective. As a consultant, clients need a result delivered on time and on budget. But as an internal researcher, delivery is just the start.
“The advantage of being an in-house researcher is the ability to work closely with internal partners and stakeholders to ensure that the right message reaches the right people at the right time.”
Whether you are in-house or a research vendor, the best way to maximize the value of your research is to get the insights out of decks and into people’s workstreams. You are far more likely to achieve this through close collaboration with team members and stakeholders than through beautiful decks.
If you are internal, leverage your relationships with stakeholders to understand how & when insights can inform their workstreams – like planning an insights immersion workshop as step 1 of a strategy offsite or roadmapping session. And if you are an external vendor, think about delivering workshop plans in addition to (or instead of) decks.
The benefit of socialising qualitative research data
Julie recalled that during a project for Walmart: after 32 in-home interviews, sticky notes covered war room windows, spilling into the hallway.
“When you looked from the parking lot up at the building, every window was covered with paper, and the sticky notes glowed like a bowl full of jelly beans.”
Any team member walking by the war room was welcomed in. The team could invite them to see the story of the Palo Alto woman with the Porsche couponing to make ends meet, and another who truly couldn’t afford a birthday party.
That contrast and human complexity is what no dataset shows. The key takeaway: When research findings are made visible and tangible, teams experience and internalise the real stories behind the data, making insights memorable and actionable.
At Spotify, work happened in an open Stockholm design studio. Product managers, engineers, data analysts, and senior leaders wandered through, seeing data clusters and themes emerge in real time. They contributed questions and became invested in the research before the findings became clear.
“It built credibility; we didn’t make these up. They’re grounded in jobs-to-be-done and solid qualitative research.”
This is the goal of the Discovering and Understanding phases of DUCTRI: building not just insight, but shared understanding. The key takeaway: Shared insight across a team becomes a strong foundation for action. If research remains hidden, its potential impact is lost.
Innovation in Action maps the tools and mindsets for both the Discovering and Understanding phases – including how to bring the right people along at every step. Pre-order your copy and unlock bonuses here.
Some kind words from an early reader:
The question that changes everything
There’s a failure mode Julie sees constantly, at the moment when someone decides what kind of research to commission.
“When stakeholders ask for a journey map, it is similar to them saying, ‘we need a document.”
Organisations have learned new vocabulary: focus groups, journey maps, usability testing. But these words only signal “we need research” – not what the research must actually accomplish.
Julie’s first question when anyone comes to her with a methodology request is always the same: What are you trying to learn?
That reframing makes procurement diagnostic. It forces stakeholders to clarify the decision
“The sooner stakeholders articulate the decisions they need to make, the better prepared you are as a researcher to determine what research to conduct in support of those decisions.”
Practitioner insights
The next time you commission research or sit in a room where research findings are being shared, bring these three questions with you.
Are you getting close enough to the real person? Data tells you what people do. Being in the room tells you why. The woman in Palo Alto and the woman who couldn’t afford her child’s birthday party answered the same survey questions identically. Only in person did the difference become visible. Wherever possible, get your team into the field, and when you can’t, find ways to bring the richness of real human stories into the room.
Does your research live on a wall or in a folder? Research made visible, walkable, tangible, and open to anyone who wanders past builds understanding before conclusions are even drawn. Ask yourself: could someone who wasn’t part of this research feel the weight of what it found? If not, the insight hasn’t landed yet.
Have you asked what the research needs to learn – before you choose a method? The request, “We need a journey map,” is not a research brief; it’s just vocabulary. Before selecting any method, clarify the actual decision your stakeholder must make. What are you trying to learn? Focusing on this question makes research actionable rather than overlooked.
Want to go deeper?
Watch my full conversation with Julie on YouTube – where we get into the Walmart war room story, Spotify personas, her experience at Meta, and her thoughts on AI.
Julie teaches journey mapping through her course Best Practices for Journey Mapping, available on both Udemy and Maven.
Julie’s generosity reinforced one crucial idea: research must be collaborative to turn insights into action.
Q: Does your research live in people’s heads, or just in a folder?