Senior User Researcher @ Crunchyroll
Culver City, CA

As a Senior User Researcher at Crunchyroll, I conducted research that revealed and communicated who anime fans are, what they want and need from Crunchyroll, and how Crunchyroll can give them the best anime experience. My stakeholders included Crunchyroll's Product, Marketing, and Business teams, and you can see a few of the projects I did and my research process at Crunchyroll below.

My Projects at Crunchyroll

Product Research

 Marketing and Business Research
Shuffle Anime Feature 
Anime Release Calendar 
iOS Widgets ​
Crunchyroll Expo 2022 Focus Groups 
Non-Streaming Business Awareness
Customer Lifetime Value​

1. Establishing Context

Product Research

Product Designers and Product Managers requested research to inform the development of products and assets at different stages of development, including:
  • Clickable navigational and informational prototypes
  • Proof-of-concept video demonstrations
  • Product concepts with no visual assets
  • Redesigns of existing features with or without new visual assets
Market/Business Research

Business and Marketing stakeholders requested research to inform business strategy and marketing. Some of the topics requested by these stakeholders include:
  • Pricing and features for new products
  • User segmentation and demographic information
  • IP affinity
  • Past purchasing and engagement behaviors
Regardless of the type of research requested, I evaluated the following to develop the research questions and methodology:
  • What existing knowledge we have about the request and how reliable it is (where it came from, how old it is, others' perceptions of it)
  • What hypotheses the stakeholder or organization have to be tested
  • What decisions the stakeholders are trying to make
  • When those decisions have to be made
  • What teams or individuals will be impacted by the decisions
  • What other teams or individuals may benefit from the same research
  • What tools I had access to and the barriers I would have to overcome to use those tools
  • What the legal and PR risks of the requested research are

2. Designing Research

From the research questions and other context generated in the Establishing Context phase, I selected a methodology and design a study that could answer or provide support to aid in the stakeholders' decision making.
Methodology Considerations
  • Research questions/hypotheses
  • Available tools
  • Timeline
  • Available assets
  • Stakeholder affinity for different types of data
Methodologies Applied at Crunchyroll
  • Usability Testing
  • User Interviews
  • Focus Groups
  • Product Surveys
  • Marketing/Business Surveys
Best Practices
For creating the research plan and data points, I used the following practices to ensure a consistently high quality of research:
  • Providing participants opportunities to answer research questions
  • Avoiding bias (e.g., not emphasizing some answer choices over others, disguising the true aims of questions when appropriate)
  • Allowing participants to provide context or unexpected answers (e.g., allowing participants to provide more detail)
  • Including stakeholders in study development based on their interest and availability
  • Meeting with stakeholders regularly, reviewing research materials before data collection, and aligning on topics, timeline, methodology, and delivery
  • Including data quality checks to exclude low-quality data points during analysis
  • Pre-planning analyses to structure data collection and setting criteria for supporting or rejecting hypotheses
  • Avoiding legal and PR issues
  • Making the experience of providing data as positive as possible

3. Collecting and Analyzing Data

After the research plan was created, reviewed by stakeholders, and approved, participants were recruited to collect data from and that data was analyzed to produce insights to guide stakeholders' decisions and understanding of users. In general, some of my best practices are listed below:
  • Including stakeholders in sessions or early insights to help them understand the findings more gradually and deeply
  • Allowing participants to provide unexpected answers and the context around those answers
  • Setting up note-taking ahead of time
  • Resolving logistics and research operations (recruitment, screening, scheduling, compensation, survey/online test distribution)
  • Formatting data collection to avoid errors and delays in analysis
  • Data Cleaning involved removing invalid responses, setting up calculated/coding variables for analysis, resolving missing data

4. Delivering Research

Typically, my research reporting includes the main research findings, recommendations based on those findings and the company's goals, and an explanation of how the findings and recommendations connect. Unlike other organizations I worked at, however, Crunchyroll's Research team was directed to not provide recommendations, so my focus shifted to providing data and findings that could benefit multiple organizations around the company (i.e., various product verticals or marketing teams). Original research findings were often paired with additional studies, previous findings, or data from other sources (e.g., customer service insights) to form a cohesive understanding of users.

Research deliverables most commonly took form as a slide deck and readout, but also took form as word documents and video highly reels. The format and content of these reports were adjusted based on the timeline, data/findings format, and stakeholder needs.