Interview with Marco D'Emilla, Lead Designer at Trint

We interviewed Marco D’Emilla to ask about his invention of Mince Pie Testing, his learning method, his new job at Trint, and tips to present research findings effectively! He also gave us a job hunting tip for junior UX Designers! Enjoy 🤓

Marco D'Emilla

1. Marco, on your LinkedIn profile you state “Inventor of the Mince Pie Testing, the most powerful research technique that no one is talking about! ” what is mince pie testing?

I wanted to add something that would stand out, make recruiters and people curious and push them to spark a conversation with me.

That is actually just a joke dating back to my time at uSwitch! Essentially, when trying to work on internal guerrilla testing at Zoopla we found that using mince pies would attract more people. The reason why is also on my CV is that I wanted to add something that would stand out, make recruiters and people curious and push them to spark a conversation with me. I guess it worked for you because the fact you mentioned Mince Pie testing is why I responded to your message!

'Mince Pie Testing' sparks curiosity and invites questions

2. I know you identify as an eternal learner. Could you tell us about how you learn?

I like to do in order to learn.

I’m from a completely different era to you, for example. Sometimes it’s hard to progress your career and you find yourself stuck out at senior level with kids that are like 22 or 25 years old. I’m really curious and a lot of the kids nowadays are like: “I know everything. I don’t have to learn anything”. For me, everything is a source of knowledge. From books to medium articles to meetups.

I don’t love going to meetups but I like to create meetups. For example, I wanted to do workshops and it was impossible inside my company. So I start doing workshops outside at Meetups etc. I created myself a safe space to make sure that actually I can learn. It’s also really good to network with previous colleagues. Everyone has different opinions in terms of design. But they also have a different experience in terms of the industry where they worked. Like you, I’m a researcher inside and I’m quite empathetic. I want to learn more about other industries. I ask a lot of questions.

I like to do in order to learn. For example, I launch my own products. More than one. Sometimes I wanted to do some experimentation. I created a couple of products. When I was younger, we didn’t have the Internet and when we did it was so slow. It feels like I’m a really old person but I’m thirty seven.

And when I was younger, the internet was coming up. So we were used to having really big books that cost so much that I couldn’t afford them. So my only way of doing things was trying things out. It’s the same for me now. I need to try things out in order to actually learn more. Otherwise, I read a lot of books: any sort from business to design to try anything in psychology.

I wanted to read more in lockdown actually but I spent most of time building Onbordo — an onboarding tool for companies.

'Learn through Doing' - a motto for Marco.

3. That’s a very interesting approach to learning — launching new projects. And also very brave. I don’t think everyone could do it! Have you ever failed?

But everything is a really good experience to learn new things and meet new people..

Yes absolutely. I fail all the time.

Sometimes people say “build it and they will come”. That’s not true. For example, Onbordo itself, I started that project with another friend.

Like everyone, we believed we needed developers from the beginning. But actually there are tools that don’t require any lines of code. For example, yesterday during a lunch meeting, I put together a recipe app because I’ve got recipes all over the place and some notes. And there is a tool called Glide. Through a spreadsheet, you can combine things and I created my own recipe app.

For Onbordo itself, for example. I started really big and then I realized actually I needed to focus more on the problem itself. And then there are problems that we were not aware of when we were building things. So I needed to take a step back and I realized that actually there are other problems. Plus the competition. Plus I learned that some companies don’t want to work with you if you’re too small.

So it’s always a learning experience. I came across this really cool book: Testing Business Ideas. This book talks about how to build a business and how to experiment with it. With that being said, basically at Onbordo, I failed completely.

I also put together something recently called Fund it Now that was nothing more than a Kickstarter for small startups and bootstrapped startups. I failed and I’m not surprised to say it. And probably for different reasons. Sometimes you need more time to try more things. And at the end of the day, I have a full-time job. So it’s really hard to do all that type of stuff. But everything is a really good experience to learn new things and meet new people, because I met loads of other founders. I would suggest everyone try something out.

4. From my experience, I sometimes find it difficult to conduct primary research as it is considered time-consuming and not effective. Any tips for junior Designers who are passionate about data-informed design to get support from their managers?

Sometimes the most important thing you can do personally is to show things.

Of course, it depends from company to company.

There are times when the whole situation is bigger than you.

At bigger corporations in order to convince the leadership I’ve needed to convince my manager who then convinced their manager who then convinced the other manager. Sometimes the most important thing you can do personally is to show things. For example, if you really want to push for a bit of digital research then one thing that could be really easy to do is usability testing.

If you want to do this without spending money to try to convince someone to create the case, you could definitely do quick chats with some of your friends and show prototypes and then, for example, put together snippets of videos.

Unfortunately, not all businesses are based on pure research. And the designers and researchers have to do the best that they can with what they have.

That could be, for instance, historical research or some poll data which can be used to create a presentation with all the insights you found out. And the manager could then start becoming more curious.

But if it’s a huge corporation, you need buy-in from the top. It’s a bit harder — you usually need changes among the top management.

I realize that I didn’t give you good insights on these, but it’s hard when the company doesn’t believe in research.

5. You mentioned presenting research, how do you present your research data?

I always try to combine qualitative and quantitative data.

It depends on company to company. Trint is smaller so the designers are all embedded inside the teams. So, we are presenting stuff to the team every week. What we say is “share small but often” and it is actually true.

So you share whenever you want to do something and you share whenever you have insights.

'Share small but often'

But then we also have bigger company presentations where usually you put together something like:

1. Outlining the problem

2. Why do this study

3. Goal of the research

4. Who you interviewed

5. Methodologies applied

Then for me, I always try to combine qualitative and quantitative data. I learned this from someone really cool who was working with me at Tesco.

She was putting together bits and pieces of quotes and stuff like that from the users. Then she would back up these quotes by showing that they were reflected on the quantitative side as well. For example, demonstrating quantitatively that people are confused and dropping off of this particular page.

Once you’ve uncovered something in the data, you always will have someone who will push back and say ‘this only applies to five people’. To make a stronger case. This is where you need the quantitative evidence too. This is really powerful in workshops too.

Video snippets are also powerful. For example, I’ve been asked to create a feature before that the research team quickly realised in user testing was a big turn-off to customers. We persuaded the stakeholders to move away from the feature by showing video snippets of users saying “if there is this feature, I will never use the app”.

A quick outline of a presentation:

1. What was the problem?

2. What was the methodology and the outcome?

3. What are the next steps?

6. What made you join Trint?

I was fortunate enough to have a few really amazing opportunities, to be honest with you. And also because our CEO, Jeff is just unbelievably amazing! And the tool that we are creating is inspiring. The team is really cool and there is an opportunity to create something big here. This is a market that has got some other players, but definitely we can improve things. Plus I get to use Trint for free 😉

7. What is your main focus at Trint?

I can’t go into too much detail! But the designers at Trint have been doing a great job so the focus is to make the flows slightly better and improve UX as we go.

For instance, the initial parts of the journey: onboarding and uploading files something that is really important because 100% of users who signed up will be uploading files so we have to get it right.

8. If there were not any restrictions, what research methods would you like to conduct to improve Trint’s user experience? and Why?

One thing that we’d love to do more of is ‘Shadowing.’

We really do have everything that we want to do, to be honest with you. We have no restriction of money and we have no restriction of time. And that is a really good thing, because we can use whatever methodology we want.

One thing that we’d love to do more of is ‘Shadowing.’

Most of our clients are in the USA. And so I would love to actually sit down with a journalist and ask them to show me how they use Trint, because I’ve never done anything in the industry. That’s probably something that we’d like to do more of at the moment.

Conducting Shadowing remotely is hard but probably it’d be like asking the participants to share their screens while using Trint. Maybe we can sit down with them and asking them to tell me what they did in this recording. That will help us to understand more. It takes time and willingness from the users to decide to actually record and participate in this kind of research, so it’s really hard.

9. Suggestions for UX juniors

My biggest suggestion would be to put together fake case studies for companies.

Well it’s a very hard situation right now. There are a lot of applications for every junior role. My biggest suggestion would be to put together fake case studies for companies. Get some user interviews. It’s hard work, but with the mentees I’ve worked with it’s been really effective.

* Marco has made an insightful YouTube video about how to become a UX/Product Designer! Check it out 😉

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Interviewed by Misato Ehara

Edited by Misato Ehara and Marco D’Emilla

Illustrations by Misato Ehara

Transcribed with Trint

Edited with Google docs

Published on 2 Sep 2020

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Interviewee: Marco is a Data-Informed designer for B2C and B2B products with over 19 years of experience in the industry. He is specialised in leading and building high performing and collaborative Design and Research teams, and he helped companies like Trint, Habito, uSwitch, Shell Ventures, Warner Bros, Heinz, 2K Games and more, launching and creating digital products.

He loves giving back to the design community, mentoring more junior designers at The Intrapreneurs Club and providing free consultancy to startup founders at WeWork Labs.

In his spare time, Marco loves keeping himself busy and he has recently launched Onbordo a lean onboarding tool for companies and quartz.gallery a place where to find great original art at a small price. Marco is also the founder of two successful meetup groups in London.

Find him on his Twitter (@Marco_DEmilia) and Instagram (@marc0demilia)

Interviewer:Misato Ehara is founder of The UX Review, former design Strategist at Gensler. Currently completing a Masters in Curating Contemporary Design. Open to UX research roles starting in October 2020.