User Interviews Made Easy | Ribbon

The Challenge of User-Centric Development

Many organizations aspire to create products and companies focused on the user, but the practical implementation of this goal can be difficult. Achieving genuine user-centricity requires actively talking to and listening to users – a process that Axel Thomson, formerly of Gousto, identifies as often being inefficient and complex to organize.

Introducing Ribbon: Streamlining User Research

Thomson’s new venture, Ribbon, aims to simplify the process of recruiting and interviewing users for product teams. The platform is intended to facilitate “continuous testing and validation of hypotheses,” ultimately leading to improved product offerings. This concept originated from challenges Thomson encountered while leading a user experience team at Gousto.

He explains, “Initially at Gousto, my work in the growth team involved running product and marketing experiments to enhance user experience and boost retention. Later, I transitioned to the product team to focus on a more comprehensive improvement of the user experience.”

“Across both teams, we consistently faced the need to prioritize features and experiments. We quickly learned that, despite our assumptions, the most reliable way to understand user needs was through direct conversations and concept testing. This realization highlighted the difficulty of consistently making well-informed decisions about which products and features to pursue.”

The Disconnect Between Theory and Practice

Thomson points out that the importance of user-centricity is widely acknowledged in management theory. The idea that products should address users’ “real problems” is commonplace, but determining what users truly think or desire can be elusive. Furthermore, consistent user research and interviews are often incredibly time-intensive.

Product teams frequently dedicate significant time to scheduling interviews, which creates a delayed feedback cycle that hinders product development and experimentation. Alternatively, teams may rely on quantitative data from analytics platforms like Amplitude and Mixpanel, but this data only reflects user behavior after a product has been launched.

Ribbon's Solution: Rapid User Interviews

Ribbon offers a solution, allowing companies to initiate user interviews in approximately the same timeframe as ordering a ride-sharing service. Product teams can integrate the Ribbon widget into their website to recruit participants and conduct video interviews at any stage of the user journey.

“Our objective is to empower product teams to conduct user interviews rapidly and continuously, and to facilitate any form of qualitative user research, without compromising speed, result reliability, or research frequency,” Thomson clarifies.

Broadening the Scope of User Research

Ribbon is designed for product managers, designers, and user researchers, all of whom can benefit from validating their ideas through user conversations. However, Thomson emphasizes that the advantages of user research extend beyond these specific roles. He notes a growing trend of companies encouraging wider participation in and dissemination of research findings.

“As a user research platform, we aim to enable our users to champion research within their organizations by making it easy to conduct high-quality research and share insights with their teams,” he states.

Recent Developments and Funding

Ribbon launched its Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to the Product Hunt community in late October of the previous year. The London-based startup has been self-funded until recently, but today announced a £200,000 pre-seed funding round led by MMC Ventures, RLC Ventures, and a group of angel investors based in London.

This funding will allow Ribbon to further develop its platform and expand its reach to more product teams.