An interview about the User Week

As the Head of User Research at Cabify, I, Miguel Agustí, had the privilege of sitting down recently with two key figures who have been instrumental in shaping one of our most valuable internal initiatives: the User Week. I spoke with Tania Senestrari, our Head of Product for the Rider audience, and José Carmona, main leader of Product Design. Together, we delved into the origins, evolution, and impact of the User Week, an initiative designed to bring our teams closer to the very people we serve – our users. This blog post brings the result of our conversation, with their insightful perspectives about what the User Week means for Cabify and why it’s important.

Miguel: Hello Tania, hello Jose. It’s fantastic to have you both here to discuss about the User Week. You’ve both been involved since its early days. To kick things off, how would you describe the User Week? What does it mean to each of you?

Tania: For me, it’s primarily a moment of connection with our users. While User Research leads many of the larger, more complex user connection initiatives, it’s crucial for disciplines like Product and Design to go beyond simply reading research documentation. We need to speak with users directly, get that ‘feeling,’ see how they react to questions. Everything we do is for them, to solve their problems, so we can’t lose that connection.

Jose: I completely agree, Tania. For me, the User Week is precisely that: a dedicated week where the teams gain the opportunity to be even closer to users. It’s a quick way to validate and test new opportunities or functionalities. It also allows us to develop essential skills, like conducting interviews and speaking face-to-face with users, skills that go beyond our daily tasks. It’s incredibly enriching and, yes, challenging, but it provides us with the context needed to iterate with valuable information that would otherwise be difficult to obtain.

Miguel: Jose, you mentioned ‘opportunity’. What makes this such an opportunity?

Jose: The opportunity lies in being face-to-face with the user. Given our team structure at Cabify, Design often receives information through User Research or Data Analytics reports. The User Week, however, opens a dedicated window in our daily routine where we are the protagonists, meeting users directly. Otherwise, we’d constantly be interrupting the workflow of teams like User Research to get that direct contact.

Miguel: So, it provides an even deeper level of closeness. What is that extra layer of insight you gain?

Jose: That extra comes from meeting users ‘from the street,’ as we say. While we’re fortunate at Cabify to test our own products, our perspective, and that of our 300 colleagues, can be biased or contaminated by internal information and limitations. The User Week allows us to speak with users from Spain, Chile, Peru, and it’s truly a magical moment that puts your feet on the ground. You realize that reality can be very different due to context, limitations, or even things like slower (or none) internet connection, or fluctuating currency. You quickly see the very detailed problems they face, which would be hard to grasp otherwise. For example, in some markets, security is paramount, much more so than we take for granted in Spain. I also recall interviews where users didn’t know that our app’s main menu even existed, but were still able to use the application. As a designer, I remember realizing it was possible to order a trip without using the menu I worked on!

Tania: Exactly. It goes beyond just reading reports because there’s a subjective element in interpretation, even in the most objective report. It’s not the same to hear that users complain as it is to talk to them yourself and empathize with what they’re telling you. That word, ‘empathize,’ is where the real difference lies. While the theoretical goal of the initiative might be to create a space for research, the real objective, for me, is the direct contact and the empathy it generates. It’s also something that, when I participate, brings me back to reality. When you sit down with a user, or a driver, you realize that technology isn’t infallible, and data doesn’t tell the whole story. What you do might not be valued or focused on in the way you expect.

Miguel:That direct contact and empathy certainly sound powerful. Let’s talk about the origins. How did this whole initiative begin? What were the motivations and expectations?

Tania: I remember it with great affection. When I transitioned to a Product Manager role, I was very shy, even with internal people. But my manager insisted we had to go out and talk to users, to a Tim Hortons coffee near the office if necessary, because we needed to understand them. He was the one who, with the Design team at the time, really started this concept of Product and Design leading these more informal conversations with users to maintain that feeling. The initiative then froze a bit, but the three of us somewhat ‘refounded’ it when Jose and I were leading Rider. We had very fond memories of the initial process, perhaps around 2018, and wanted to revive it and give it more structure. Back then, it was done with little supervision from User Research, but now it’s much more professionalized.

Jose: Tania’s right, I can’t pinpoint the exact start date, but I remember a strong motivation from the Design team. A colleague from User Research even gave us a training session on how to interview. That initial training, perhaps around 2019, was crucial. The motivation was to be closer to users on more tactical, agile projects, and to help lighten the load on the User Research team for smaller hypotheses that didn’t warrant a full-blown research project. Our expectation was to validate tactical issues and iterate quickly with the feedback. I recall a User Week where we learned we needed to change the price’s position and that the time wasn’t understood. It allowed us to stop designing purely by intuition and have a solid information base for decisions. Crucially, it wasn’t just a Design initiative; we had the support and motivation from Product Management. That was key to its success and why it continues to be done four times a year. Design alone couldn’t push it because we don’t control the roadmaps, so having PMs as allies was vital. It’s an initiative that’s now truly included in the roadmap.

Miguel: That’s a fantastic evolution, especially how it allows us to embed learnings in the roadmaps. How do you feel about how well those initial expectations and motivations have been met, and what are the challenges you’ve found in your experience with the initiative?

Jose: While I don’t have tangible metrics, my strong feeling is that it has surpassed all expectations. The most tangible proof is how it has expanded: it started in one Rider squad, then all Rider squads, then jumped to Marketplace, and has even become a well established ritual in Driver. If something isn’t working, you don’t export it to other parts of the company. This expansion is highly significant. Also, as a team, we’ve gained new skills, like confronting users, which looks easy from the outside but pushes you out of your comfort zone. So, both at a company level, in how it’s spread, and at a personal level, in how it’s developed our skills, it’s been very satisfactory. Personally, seeing an idea born from scratch, initially a bit all over the place, then consolidated into a formal process has been very satisfying. It’s one of those small ideas that prospers and yields good results. On an individual level, the skills gained – guiding interviews, participating in analysis, clustering information – are invaluable. They allow you to get a great vision of what’s happening on the street and help you improve initiatives and generate new backlog ideas. On the other hand, gaining these skills by exposing yourself face-to-face with the user is a challenge itself. When you see the User Research team doing it, it looks straightforward, but when you’re actually doing the interview, you have to be very attentive, listen carefully, and formulate follow-up questions on the fly. It’s an art in itself. Even after doing User Week many times, I still feel a bit of embarrassment, uncertainty, and fear before a new session. But once you do one, your body asks for the next! Breaking that barrier isn’t as simple as just saying, ‘I’ll do an interview’. It’s a real technical challenge to be an effective interviewer.

Tania: I agree that it has helped us understand the value of talking to users and the insights we gain. Building on that, added to the technical complexity that Jose points out, there’s a big challenge around time management and priorities. It requires a significant effort: organizing the sessions, being attentive during the interview hour, taking notes, then having time for analysis and drawing conclusions. All this happens while your daily roadmap and commitments continue. As Product Managers, nothing else stops, so we’re essentially adding another task without truly prioritizing it within our existing workload. For me now, that’s the main issue.

I also feel that not everyone prioritizes it equally in their daily work. Some profiles are clearly more engaged, even doing multiple User Weeks per quarter, driven by their own curiosity. But others, perhaps due to workload or simply comfort, might prefer to just read the research reports. So, while the value is understood, the execution isn’t always prioritized by everyone.

Miguel: Looking ahead, how do you see the future of User Week? And what areas do you think could be improved?

Tania: From my side,regarding your previous question about areas of improvement, the process itself is quite good. My main improvement would be to enhance the importance given to this week. As I said, it’s a priority issue. To change that, we need to give it more weight, understand its value even more, and ensure that if one week out of 12 in a quarter is dedicated to this, it’s because it truly has value and is planned and respected within our roadmaps. There also needs to be continued commitment from the rotating leaders of User Week. Aspirationally, we should re-evaluate who participates. Perhaps profiles like Data Analytics, Engineering, and Growth should be included more often. If more people understand the value, it could open up a broader debate on its importance.

Jose: My biggest improvement would be to enhance the ‘evangelization’ aspect. User Week started to evangelize the importance of user contact within the company. While Design and User Research inherently internalize the user, an Engineer might not be as aware of why a particular decision is made. I’d like User Week to evolve so that Engineers, other Product Managers, Data people, and others feel and understand why certain decisions are being made – not just because we say so, but because we’ve conducted interviews, performed analysis, and obtained results. This adds significant value to the teams developing solutions and to engineering, knowing they’re building something based on robust user research. This part of evangelization is something we haven’t fully achieved yet; although it has improved and now many other roles participate in the initiative, it is still a bit focused on Design, Product Managers, and User Research.

Miguel: Those are truly insightful points from both of you and we’ll discuss further to improve them. Jose, Tania, thank you so much for your time and for sharing your perspectives.

Tania: No, I’m just happy that this is being done, and that Driver and Marketplace have also adopted it. I believe we all see the value, even if it’s challenging to manage.