Welcome everybody. Good to have you all here. I'm Joe. I'm going be the supporting, supporting actor in our workshop today. We've got Taylor here from Ally, who I'll introduce introduce yourself properly in a couple minutes. But for right now, just wanna welcome everybody.

And thank you for being here and being here on time. So we're gonna just hang out for a little bit. Just a few minutes while some people join. And then we'll do a super quick intro and get into what you're here for, to hear from Taylor on a couple questions and stuff that we've prepped about her experience and her work at Ally.

And then get into some questions from you guys. So I'll walk you through all that with a quick intro in just a minute. But for right now, for the next couple minutes I got a little icebreaker question. That you can throw your answer to in the chat if you got a good one. So on our at Lyssna our Monday team meetings we always have a little icebreaker question, and this was the question from I think two weeks ago.

What was your first job ever and what did it teach you? And it was one of the. Better, more entertaining and engaging icebreaker questions that we've had. So I wanted to slightly modify it for our icebreaker today. In the chat, if you've got a good example of this, I. Share a job could be your first job, could be something you've just done previously that you've had that's maybe outside of what you do now or outside of UX research or product design.

And share one skill that you learn from that job that helps you in either in your current role or whatever you're doing as a designer, researcher, or product person. So I'll leave that up there for a minute if you've got a good one. Share it in the chat. And we'll wait for just another couple minutes for everyone to join.

Check out some answers, and then get into our q and a private investigator. Okay? That is a good one for you. That is a really good one for you. X research. Taylor, we're gonna talk about your previous, career experience quite a bit. Do you have one for this? I was trying to think. I think my first job, like Manet probably was babysitting and there's so much that you learn. But I think the thing, that I probably use most today is just following a schedule set forth by the mom of a child that's not mine. So it was important to, to be able to be organized and follow a tight schedule. Yeah. Babysitting will teach you a lot. I never babysat, but I have a toddler, so I know the importance of.

Of routines for sure. That's a good one. Let's see. Kirk said rowing coach. Team building motivation. Awesome. Camp count. I love this one. Alexa camp counselor. Managing multiple stakeholders. Yeah. Thir, whatever, 13-year-old stakeholders who wanna play kickball or some different game Life guarding. Always keep your eyes open.

Yeah. These are like more important lessons, like life skills than than project. Anthony Cold calling to raise money, learn how to build rapport. Barista, deal with clients in my team. Being patient waitress. Yeah. Food service always teach you a lot. Caitlyn Server taught me to think on my feet. I think mine would, it wasn't my first job, but my well.

I talked about this in our last workshop, but when I was interning it was my first like actual thing, not like a summer job. And I did a lot of customer support for a platform for real estate agents and brokers, and I helped 'em. Figure out how to get their listings. I'm basically on the phone with people all day, and I think the biggest thing that taught me related to UX research or product design was like maybe just eyeopening in how differently people use products and like how differently people like people's behavior is. And that's like a, such a baseline understanding if you're in UX research or product design. But I think at the time when I was seeing it every day, you are in that assumption of yeah, everyone. Uses things the same way I do, but then when you actually walk someone through it on the phone and see how frustrating it is or see like what browser they're using or what thing they're on, you're like, wow, this is completely different.

Or maybe they have a, like a hack or a workaround to do something. So I think that opens my eyes to the diverse ways that people use things and how important it's to understand that and not assume that's lesson number one. Fundamentals of UX research, product design. Absolutely. Let's see, Brian, backstage production issues.

Alright, you guys didn't disappoint with this icebreaker question. Love these. Awesome. Thank you everybody. And these are some great answers. I missed a few of them, but I'm gonna come back and check those out while you guys are writing your questions in later. But for right now, I think we got everyone here.

So let's, and get into our q and A for today. I'm Joe, I'm the design advocate here at lista. Some of you might have been on previous workshops or other. Q and as are events that we've done. And I'm basically just gonna be the guide and the host today because Taylor, who we have here, is going to be answering questions, getting into some of her experience, and really the star of the show for the next 45 minutes or so.

This series with Guest Q and Ass is something new that we're launching at Lyssna. And while it's, maybe some similar to other events or panels or webinars you've been to before. In terms of the format, the goal here is to hear from practitioners just like Taylor, people who are doing real interesting work, hearing some behind the scenes stuff, hearing about their experience, and using that as a way to.

Help all of us think about and consider some new things in our day-to-day roles, learn some good tidbits to take back, and also to just get a peek into, what our peers and people leading in the industry are doing day-to-day, outside of just, what's on their LinkedIn or the job description.

So the day-to-day work and team structure. We'll hear a little bit about that. Career journeys, lessons learned, and real stories, insights from past projects. Again, a inside look and a chance to get ask some one-on-one questions that might be applicable to the things that you're working on.

We're gonna do a, I have a couple questions prepared for Taylor that we're gonna get into first, and then we're gonna do take some questions from you guys in the chat. I'm gonna give you some time to drop those questions in the chat after Taylor's answered a few of our initial questions.

But that being said, if you have a question, just put it in the chat as we're going. If Taylor mentioned something that you want to follow up on or ask about later, just type it in. We're gonna come back to that in a little bit. Pull out some questions to answer and get to them live here. So drop your questions in as they come up and I'll screen 'em and hopefully get to most of them a little bit later.

Cool. All right, let's meet our guest. Taylor. Welcome. Thank you for being here. And I'll turn it over to you to introduce yourself. Yeah. Thanks so much Joe. I am super excited to be here. I am Taylor. I currently oversee the research function at TM Studio, which is Ally's internal concept in innovation team.

I have an academic background in brain and behavior science. Which I'll touch on. And before coming to Ally, I worked in the music and entertainment industry doing brand and marketing research. I'm super excited to be here. I love these events. I think they're so important. And just understanding different career paths and hearing from different people.

So excited to be here with you all and yeah, let's get into it. Awesome. All right. Cool. First. Taylor, let's we'll set the stage a little bit. Tell us a little bit about your background, how you got into your current role, maybe some of those things. Going back to our icebreaker question, of your previous experience and kind of journey into where you are now.

Yeah. So like many researchers, I stumbled into a career in consumer insights, and I think to fully explain my background, I really have to start from a young age and I. When I was a little girl, I drove my parents insane asking why? I'm sure there are parents on the call and you could relate to this.

But I essentially have always followed that natural curiosity and fast forward many years and I was in university, I learned of the world of academic research and I thought it was totally cool and fascinating and so I got. A job in a research lab at UNC Chapel Hill where I did my undergrad degrees.

And in those roles I was doing very traditional academic research. So think bios samples and MRIs and some qualitative interviewing but just very strict academic research. And I loved it. I loved how much it satisfied my natural. Longing for why. And I loved it so much that I decided that I was gonna be a professor and I was gonna get my PhD and I was gonna do research until the end of time and spoiler, that didn't exactly happen.

I. So fast forward, I did start a PhD in brain and behavior Science, and in my first semester I realized that I was looking for something even more from this natural curiosity I was chasing. I wanted to see the work that I was doing. Come to life. I wanted my insights to impact things and things that I could see directly in my world around me, and ultimately realized that a journal article I.

For me personally wasn't the finish line that I was dreaming of. And so through a very important mentor I learned of the possibilities of a career doing research outside of academia. And I really could talk for hours on the importance of just mentors alone. They're so critical. But this mentor in particular really helped to kickstart my career and I allowed myself a pivot and I pivoted away from that planned PhD that I was so set on and that I had just created this. Very clear path for myself, and maybe some of you have experienced similar pivots in your career. But I made the decision to get my master's degree and begin a career in consumer insights, and that's what I did.

I started, as I mentioned, my insights career at SiriusXM and Pandora. Doing brand and consumer insights specifically. And I really loved it. I loved what I was researching. I was talking to people about their favorite music artists. People were very passionate about music. It was really cool that a-list celebrities were like often joining our all hands.

Like it was just a very fascinating job. It was amazing. I would see the campaigns that I had worked on on billboards in Times Square, I. But I found myself coming to a point where I wanted to pivot again, and I wanted to see what it would be like to take that impact a step further and what it would be like to see my research impact products and net new products.

At that. And so that sort of led from my pivot from brand and marketing research, even within the, research industry to product and innovation research. And so about a year ago, I joined TM Studio, which I mentioned is our concepting and innovation studio to oversee. The research that happens here and it's been wonderful and so much fun and that natural curiosity is still just completely and totally satisfied, which is wonderful.

Awesome. Yeah. I don't know if anyone in the chat wants to chime in, but I feel like I. A lot of I felt like this, you just said it, Taylor, like a lot of us in research and product have had, from whatever backgrounds we've come from, we've had that drive to see the end result of see it actually.

Even from your earlier career something up in Times Square, but with research like a product, see it actually come to fruition, I feel like that's often the common thread in, the backstory of someone making career switches to research, product design, stuff like that.

And I definitely also think that's curiosity at a young age. Totally. Maybe I'm relating it to myself too, but I've I've seen it. My, my son, my chat GPT history is like writing emails and stuff and then it's like, why are alligators, why are alligators green? Are there white alligators stuff?

Maybe there's something there too where, I don't know, all of us here got into it from, had that path set out to us from a very young age. Awesome. So let's get into my next question here. Also a bit about what you're working on now with Ally, your team, your process, little look inside the stuff that you guys are working on.

Every deck I. Yes, totally. So I guess I should first start with who my team is. We're a really small group. There are only five core team members. And we all have completely different roles. So under our director, we have a strategist, we have a facilitator we have a UX designer, and we have. Me as the researcher and day to day our team is solving business challenges using human-centered design and design thinking.

And without turning this into a lecture on design thinking we essentially tackle business challenges by moving through the steps of this process. And we start with empathizing. With the consumer, so listening to the consumer and what their true needs are, and we do this through qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys primarily, and something that's unique about the team is that we take a really democratized approach to research, meaning that under my oversight, everyone is conducting research no matter what their traditional role might be, and I think there's something really magical about that and that it really helps people to empathize directly for themselves with the consumer.

When you're talking one-on-one, our designers are interfacing directly with consumers about maybe a prototype that they built. There's just something magical there that wouldn't exist if I was just as the researcher conducting all of the interviews and the team was listening in, and so then we.

Synthesize that research to understand and define unmet consumer needs with which we then bring those forward into an ideation session. I. And I'll tell you this part of the process I just absolutely love because we get to take the insights that step further and we get to come up with creative solutions to address them.

And so we do this, for those of you who aren't familiar with an ideation session, it's a large cross-functional session where we're bringing in people from. All around the company, all different types of roles close to maybe the challenge we're solving, but also maybe not close to the challenge that we're solving.

We brief them on those key insights that we've learned, and then we all put our brains together and come up with as many possible ideas that we can to solve those unmet. Consumer problems. And so coming out of an ideation session, we have hundreds of ideas that then we, as an innovation team worked to build out further and begin to test to see which might hold water.

And we do that through, it It could be something as simple as testing a storyboard or a wireframe or a concept card. Just something that we can. Quickly get in the hands of consumers to get their feedback to help drive our process and help us determine where to put our energy. And then towards the end of the project, we may start to develop lower medium fidelity prototypes that we're then testing as well.

And the process essentially continues until we have reached a place where we have the outcome might be a couple of landing pages, or it could be a more fleshed out product or feature. Or it could be a really rich body of insights that we then hand off to the business and our key stakeholders.

Awesome. I was, I noticed that when we first did our pre-interview and, he talks about, I always assume you're coming from a large company and it's like you still have this small team that is. Lean and flexible and like busy, like a bunch of designers and researchers put, pull in their resources to, to get stuff done.

And I think that's interesting. I don't know if you have any thoughts on this, but in terms of democratizing, I totally agree. When you have everyone, like at least involved to some degree in the research and you have systems for that, or guidelines for how, and it's. It's running that makes, that's such a difference than needing to like translate, catch people up on things. The level of empathy, just the context of what our users need is good. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that 'cause it's a trade off between. More people, more stuff that can get done. But I think there is an advantage to that small team where everyone is involved in some way to keep things on track.

Yeah. I would say the size of the team being really small is just really critical. We chart our own paths and it allows us to, just move quickly, pivot. We can, maybe start a discussion guide in the morning and then that later that day be in interviews. And I think it's in part the size of the team.

We're a lot, we're all working on one sort of thing but we're not bound to the typical processes so much. Yeah, that, most. Research teams. And even in my past life, I had to deal with, we have the ability, we actually work in a separate space, even from our corporate office.

But it's a space that's creative and it allows us to chart our own paths. And to fail quickly too. We're not afraid of failing or pivoting. And it just helps us to be, nimble and to move with speed, which is so important especially when it comes to innovation work.

Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. So if anyone here a lot of times we spend on workshops and all this other stuff talking about like limited resources for. Research, but I guess this is the other side of it, which is like the benefits of maybe limited resources, but a tight team that's involved.

So if anyone's watching here or has questions about that, or you're working on a team and feel like, hey, we always need more resources, more people for research I guess one you can think. About some of the positives, but drop a question and I'm already seeing some good ones. If you have anything that applies to what you're working on or maybe a small for lack of a better term, scrappy team that needs to do a lot of stuff and move quickly I'm sure Teller have some good insights on that.

Awesome. All right you guys use Lyssna. Tell me a little bit about how you use Lyssna for your research and maybe how it. Helps with covering some of those resources with a small team. Yeah, absolutely. I'll start by just saying we love Lista. Lista is a tool in our suite of research tools.

So as I mentioned, we are using quantitative and qualitative methodologies every single week. We use quant. To help us understand the breadth of the challenge that we're trying to solve. And then we use Qual to help us understand the depth of the problem. And so we use list now when we need, which is often really quick survey results.

We love that it's easy to use and in a democratized research environment that is super critical, having UX that everyone can easily follow and easily use. And so it really does help us to get really quick survey feedback that the entire team can get in and, get, pull their sleeves up and dig into the data and make sense of it themselves in a really easy way.

Awesome. Yeah, and I'm obviously biased 'cause I work at Lyssna, but I used Lyssna a lot before, before I worked here and I think that was always my, my the biggest thing that stood out to me was res when you think about starting a research initiative, even just like the planning or the getting the buy-in for it, it feels like a major under a, at least Maria, a scary large undertaking of like how and this endless journey that we're gonna go on.

And when I started using listen and what I hear, from you, from so many other people is. Was eye-opening of Hey, there, there are still needs for those longer in-depth complex studies, but there's, and listening can do stuff with that. But there are also a lot of things that you can learn.

Without a, three month research plan or a massive budget, like things that I've seen other Lyssna customers work into their process that are pretty lightweight, but really effective. Like things that you can get off the ground quickly, get out there and start getting some good feedback, and I guess with your team sharing it as well and the importance of being able to.

Have an eye on that or let people see what's coming back and distribute that. Yeah, absolutely. You hit on something key there. I think part of being a smart and savvy researcher is knowing when the challenge really requires something with rigorous, quant, whether that's running conjoints or max steps or segmentations or things like that.

Or when you really need to take the time to. Do a ton of really fleshed out interviews or when it's okay to have bias to action and let's just put something out there and we're gonna get that validity through volume. If it comes back and we're, not really sure, not really confident, let's run something else.

Let's get it right the second. Yep. The third time. And so important there as a researcher to. Know which challenges need which which methodologies and what time is required. Totally. And it takes a lot of I guess trial and error to get there. But I talked to lots of part of my role is talking to new enterprise customers with Lyssna and basically helping them get up and running.

And a lot of times I find my a. My advice or guidance for them is cut it down a little bit. Start small with something like this. Teams will come to me with great research plans, great initiatives but they're big. And then it adds to that what's it called? Oh my gosh. Analysis paralysis, right?

Of is this perfect? Should we get it out? And I guess I haven't, thought about it till now, but really a lot of that feedback is hey, this, here are a couple tweaks. This looks good. Put that out there, see what comes back. Dedicate, a quarter of the time to that and then you can reevaluate and save it for, save that longer study or something for a bigger initiative that you have.

Interesting. Cool. Let's get to our last question here and I see we got some great questions in the chat. Taylor share, do you have any interesting stories, insights, examples, highlights, low lights, lessons learned? I don't know, from some past projects that you've worked on. We'd be here all day.

There's so much, but I think I'll start with my favorite methodology. And I think that sort of leads into some of the projects, but my favorite methodology and maybe I. Some of you also feel this way is ethnography. I was thinking back to when I was first exposed to me to this methodology, and I'm pretty sure it was my first year of university.

And I was in a class and we were learning about this particular scholar who was interested in the work life balance between employees who work in a slaughterhouse. And so this particular academic actually went to a small town in North Carolina applied for a job at the Slaughterhouse, was hired and spent a year working alongside the people that you know, she was interested in learning about.

And I just remember feeling so inspired. By that how. Better of a way to empathize with a population that you're wanting to learn about other than, being part of the population for some time. And so that just piqued my interest in this methodology that has never gone away.

I got to. To take part in some ethnographies. While I was in university, I was able to attend some home visits for a project that we were working on, and I absolutely loved it. And then I also had the chance to, do some ethno ethnographic work at SiriusXM. When we were trying to understand audio use broadly with children, we got to actually go to homes and, get in the car and see how these devices were all interacting.

Just things that you can't get if you even tried in A-I-D-I-A focus group, a survey. Certainly not. So I just think that methodology is just one of my all time favorites. And then I guess. In terms of past projects, I can't share too much of what I've worked on at Ally so far. But I can share an interesting story about a project that the innovation team worked on before I joined.

I think it. Touches on the power of insights and how when you truly listen to what consumers need, you just might find yourself delighted by the outcome. And so this particular project the business had come to the innovation team and they wanted help solving the problem of attracting and retaining customers to our savings.

Products outside of paying the top interest rate. And keeping in mind that interest rates are costly for the bank to have to pay pay consumers. And so the team stepped back and took a really broad approach to just understand savings behaviors more broadly and. Some interest.

Lots of interesting things came out. But one of the interesting things was that people were like frankensteining their savings accounts. They may have one account at one bank that was for their emergency savings, and then they may open another account at another bank that was for their wedding.

Or even within a singular bank having multiple different savings accounts for these different things that they were working towards. And I. If this was, multiple weeks, but what ended up coming out of this was this feature that allowed people to, within one account, bucket their savings.

And so you could create the typical things like a pet. Fund or an emergency fund or wedding or car. But you could also create anything custom that you imagine. So maybe you wanna go to a Beyonce concert and you want to create a bucket for that and start saving, A nd so the innovation team, through the design thinking process and through really listening to consumers unmet needs came up with this this tool that has been wildly successful.

It actually, I. When I was interviewing the team was for this job the team was telling me of, that feature came from this team. And that's actually the reason that I was an ally customer anyways to start with. So I was totally fangirling. But what came from that tool is that people were more attached to their savings account.

And it created a stickier and more engaged customer. Whereas, if we fluctuate. Their rate a little bit, they're less likely to leave because how could they leave their Beyonce ticket bucket behind, yeah. If they were to leave, it'd all be bucketed into one thing. So I think that story is just such a fascinating example of how first, when you go broad, you cast your net even wider and you really listen to your consumer and get close to them.

You might be surprised at what you uncover. It's been wildly successful for Ally, so I just love that story. Buckets. Love it. So when, Taylor, for everyone here, when Taylor and I Taylor review of that story when we did a little pre-call a couple weeks ago, I loved it. I was like, you definitely have to share that on the, on the q and a because especially 'cause it's just called buckets, which is maybe I'm relating too much, but I'm like, that's how I I am the person who does the frankensteining of stuff and accounts and like savings.

But I. I thought it was also a really good example, especially for a financial product. 'cause a lot of times it's so easy to get, even as a researcher, a product person, to get lost in the sauce of like internal stuff and business goals and like all the things, the ways that you view a product, which like when you're in it every day is different than how people outside.

But for it to, for you to really do that research and break it down into something that. I think is real. It's relatable to me. Maybe some other people here, but also just something as like fundamentalist calling it like buckets and having these different accounts. It's so the opposite of internal jargon and goals and made up things that people might want.

It's like dead simple. It's something that's in demand. I'm sure it wasn't simple to, the. Implementation and all this stuff around it, but like the it really is listening. Not a weird messed up version of what people want, but actually just like hearing them and. The things that they're saving for and turning that into something useful.

And obviously it's, something you like and something that's been great for Ally. Absolutely respect. You've gotta get yourself, yeah, you gotta get yourself an ally account. Joe, I out to the innovation team that worked on that. Like I said, that was before I joined, but it's just such a fascinating fascinating story.

I love that one. Give the people what they want. Buckets for their Beyonce savings. Great. Thank you Teller. All right I'm gonna open it up for some questions from you guys. We have a, I'm gonna do a super quick wrap up at the end, one minute. So we'll take the rest of the time to answer some questions.

So we have some great questions in the chat so far that I put over on the q and a tab. So Taylor, if you want to check those out and see if any stand out to you. But other than that, let me give everyone just a minute or two to drop some questions in. Anything you have for Taylor follow up questions on anything that Taylor mentioned.

I'll be quiet for a minute. Let you drop those in and then we can tackle a couple of these.

Also while you guys are writing those in this is, I forgot to mention this at the beginning, but the webinar is all recorded. So you guys will get the recording right after this. I do have a link to the slides. I could put in the chat. I don't, you might not need the slides, but I can include those in the email after.

But this is all recorded. You guys, since you're here, signed up for it. You should get that out in an email after, let's see, customer acquisition.

Cool. So feel free to keep jotting this down. And Taylor if you see any here, I'll pull it up on the screen. We got Alexa, grant Galil, please tell me if I'm pronouncing anyone, if I'm pronouncing your name incorrectly. And I'll get it right and Anna. Yeah, I could go ahead and start as people are thinking about other things.

And I'll just start with the first one from Alexa. Does the team tend to work on your projects together as a group? Do people work on, in independent projects as well? This I love this question because it was something that was completely different to me when I joined Ally compared to my past role and compared even to academia. So the entire innovation team is working on one project, the same project at a time. So we're all tackling the same business challenge and it really helps us to. Stay focused. I'm sure. Some of you on the call can relate it when you're in maybe a more traditional research role.

You have, a stakeholder may tap you for a number to pull and you have to do some analysis there. And then you may get pulled in this direction and oh, by the way, you have a readout this afternoon. But having the team all work on one project at a time helps us from, and protects us from that context.

Switching that typically happens which ultimately helps us to just move with speed. We can be so much faster and more efficient. And then to the second part, do people work on independent projects as well? I'd say in terms of like business imperative projects, we're all working on one project together, but there are certainly development things we all are.

Involved in different aspects of the business taking part in different things, but primarily all focused on, on tackling one project at a time together, which was certainly an adjustment, but I think it's it's really important for us to be able to be scrappy into move quickly. Yeah, totally. Is that something that you, I feel like a lot of people here might relate to be in, like you said, pulled in different directions. That sounds really nice to all be like, it sounds like really the only way that you're able to get as much done as you can as a small team is that some is, has it been there as mean? I know you haven't been at.

At Ally forever. But is that something like, you came into in the job and that was already kind of part of the culture of your team or the company? Yeah. And that's always been the case with this team. When the studio was founded, it was intentionally put at a place offsite, away from the corporate center.

So that this team could be protected from that. Tapping shoulder, Hey, I need this. Hey, can you do this? Hey, can you do that? Yeah. And so it's, always been a part of the way this team works and really central to, I think one of the things that makes the team so successful.

Awesome. We got, let me, I'm gonna check the chat, but Taylor, let me know if you see any others. Yeah. So how do you organize and prioritize UX R insights? Yeah. What tools do we use? So we use. There's a whiteboard behind me. We have a ton of whiteboards in this space, so it's not uncommon that we just like open expo marker and start like pulling up the side a board and writing out our thoughts.

I'd say we also use MURAL a lot as well to help with note taking and interviews. And then also, synthesis that way. Sticky notes. We are super creative even in the way that we are analyzing and synthesizing research. So I'd say whiteboards, old fashioned whiteboards and mural are our two tools that we're using most for research synthesis.

I would also spreadsheet for some survey stuff too. Spreadsheet. Yeah. Yeah. I'd also imagine that just like going back to the focused aspect, like synthesis can be really hard and time consuming, but one of the biggest factors in that is like how focused the goal of your research is. If you're running some.

Long spread out qualitative study that's hitting on a bunch of different things. No matter what tools you're using, it's gonna be hard to synthesize or un unclear on how to synthesize it if you are if you've opened up, too much or if taken on too much at once. So I guess outside of tools, maybe it.

It helps with how much research you're pulling in and what the focus is. I'm sure that contributes to how efficient you're able to do that and turn it around into something. Absolutely. Yeah. And when you have all of us, all our brains together, it helps to talk through things and work out the kinks.

Okay. Let me see some of the other questions. Take a couple more. Okay. How many, okay. How many people is too many with those sessions? I imagine? I think that came in when I was talking about the ideation sessions and. I would say, and I am not a subject matter expert in facilitation but I'd say we typically like to be somewhere around the 20 ish mark enough that we can have small groups and just rapid, separating ourselves into pods and rapidly innovating but not too much that it gets overwhelming to share your concept. So it's a fine balance of having enough people that you're generating a ton of ideas but not getting too much. And then I'd also say that more than the number, I think it is important who's in the room.

And I think that's part of. Of the magic with those sessions is when you have people from all different, lines of business and roles and levels and it's not just the innovation team working in our own little echo chamber or really getting perspectives of maybe someone who works in legal or maybe someone who is serving as an actual financial.

Advisor at Ally. And so it, it really just helps to make that brainstorm, if you will cross-functional and generating a ton of ideas as well. Awesome. I I'll share this out with everyone, but we hosted I hosted a workshop a couple weeks ago on democratizing research. And, one of the big things, whether it's research or a design session or something like that, is yes, the number of people definitely matters, right?

If you got like a hundred people in there, it's gonna and who's there matters but also like the guidelines and structure around it. If you have a really if you just say, all right, everyone come in and. Sketch or be a part of research or do it, then that's, that can get hairy quickly no matter how many, how few people or how many.

But I'll share that with you guys here when I send out the recording as well to the democratization even though it's not exactly what you're talking about with a sketching section, a lot of similar ideas to build some structure around doing that that I'm sure you guys have at Ally where it's not only under control, but.

Productive and actually, gonna lead to something. Yeah. Can I do one more question, Taylor? Yeah, I was just gonna say before that you hit on a great point. Having a subject matter expert in that room, which we have two on our team who are just experts in facilitation, really helps that session to be the most productive.

So having that, those point people that can help guide. Awesome. Yeah, I can touch on one more. These, there are some big ones. I'm trying to think of what I can do. I can address the, how do you prioritize activities of each member on your team? I think that comes down to just the culture of the team being really positive and having a can-do attitude.

We don't typically have to, assign people things. I think we all come to work and we come to the team ready to jump in and help and we're really proactive in seeing what needs to get done. And so I think when you have fostered a team that has that sort of can do mindset.

The prioritization just happens. And then of course, we all have our, areas of expertise, mind being research designer, we have a strategist. And so we naturally will lean into to those areas. But it's so important when you're working in a really cross-functional team for everyone to just wear whatever hat is needing to be worn, but also realize what hat needs to be picked up and put on proactively versus having to be told it's not a reactive situation. And going back to that focus and like kind of one project at a time, the way that you guys move, like I would imagine that helps so much with the prioritization.

It's like everyone's on the same page. We know what need, what needs to happen. It's not as much, competing initiatives and stuff like that. So that probably lends itself. Absolutely. Your team running like a well-oiled machine at Ally it sounds sounds like Taylor. We're proud of it.

Awesome. Let me wrap it up there. I know we're a minute over here, but I'm gonna share this link with everybody here. I can actually just drop this in the chat. This is a quick feedback form takes about. Two minutes just leaving some feedback on the workshop here today. Also, there's some space in there to fill out other topics, things you guys wanna learn about in future workshops q and as.

Stuff we're gonna do a lot more of. So check that out if you get a second, and drop some feedback in there. I'll include that when I send out the recording as well. First and foremost, Taylor. Thank you so much for doing this, and I have a lot of follow up questions too, so I wish we could keep going, but thank you so much for sharing all this and for the concise but very helpful detailed answers to some of these questions.

And for everyone here, thank you so much. Thanks for joining for the great questions. I hope you enjoyed this. We're gonna do. Some more q and as going forward. So hopefully, keep an eye out for the, for those and you'll join us here again.