We've all heard "work smarter, not harder." Maybe you see it every day on a poster hanging in the break room or in an email signature. Cliche though it may be, small teams take this mantra to heart. With fewer resources at their disposal, they have to be more efficient and effective in how they work.

Lindsey Redinger leads user research and design operations at InVision. Her team is small and has an additional wrinkle: "InVision is fully remote, with our product team spanning 10 countries right now," Lindsey says. "You can imagine how much there is to keep up with!"

To help them manage it all, Lindsey uses app automation tool Zapier. "With Zapier, we’ve been able to automate a lot of the more repetitive tasks," she explains. "It’s still a work-in-progress as our team grows and learns, but now so much of our operational tasks happen automagically."

Lindsey takes her Zapier use beyond powerful automated workflows, too. She uses Shared Folders in Zapier for Teams, which gives anyone with access the ability to create, edit, and collaborate on Zaps—a bridge between two or more apps. "Having shared Zaps allows [everyone] to see some of the processes we have in place, and empowers anyone to make changes they see fit," she says.

Lindsey has seen her team's time spent on project management and information consolidation drop by 25%. With the amount of user research they conduct, that 25% means more customers interviewed and projects completed.

Manage User Research Meetings and Interviews Automatically

When you interview as many users as Lindsey and her team, you could spend multiple hours every day scheduling interviews, sending surveys, and reminding yourself of meetings. Or, you could work smarter and automate all of that.

That's what Lindsey does. "As part of a very small user research team, I use Zapier to help automate the scheduling process," she explains. "This includes maintaining a record of every user talked to, notifications on Slack when events are scheduled or canceled, and adding a Zoom link to the invite for me. I even have reminders set up so I never forget to follow up with a thank-you note on busy days!"

Key to Lindsey's workflows are scheduling app Calendly, spreadsheet and database platform Airtable, and team chat tool Slack.

When a customer selects a time to chat with the user research team in Calendly, Zapier springs into action, searching Airtable for a matching customer. If a matching customer isn't found, Zapier creates one in Airtable. This gives InVision a complete database of interviewed users and, with Calendly's built-in questions, pre-interview data.

Make Any Meeting a Video Meeting

The next step in Lindsey's interview process brings in video conferencing app Zoom. "I could easily get myself into a productivity black hole trying to remember to add Zoom links," Lindsey says. "It would often interrupt whatever I was working on, because I had to make sure my events were set up for the week!"

Now, Zapier adds Zoom links to Lindsey's interviews automatically. When the invitee is created in Calendly, Zapier creates a corresponding Zoom meeting. To make sure Lindsey and the customer both have the link to the Zoom meeting, Zapier finds the event on Google Calendar and adds the link.

"I’m human and I make mistakes, and I forget things sometimes when I’m distracted. Zapier remembers those things for me and hasn’t made a mistake yet."

Remind Yourself About Meetings

Checking your email inbox throughout the workday is like wading into quicksand: easy to get trapped, less easy to get out. So if you have meetings scheduled automatically, how are you going to keep track?

Lindsey's favorite Zap keeps her in the know about new meetings. "I have Slack alert me when new events [in Calendly] are scheduled so I’m not surprised by a calendar notification that I’m about to talk to a customer in 10 minutes," she explains.

With this Zap, you'll always be notified of newly scheduled meetings so nothing sneaks up on you.

Smart work beats hard work every time, especially when you have Zapier and Shared Folders at your disposal. "Zapier has affected [my] group’s productivity most by keeping us in sync," Lindsey says. "We’ve built a flexible system with Zapier that allows our design team to easily discover opportunities, prioritize feature developments, and advocate for enhancements to the product."

"Back in the day it might have taken me a day to "get around to" reviewing and sharing customer insights and feedback. That happens now every five to 15 minutes with a Zap, so it has reduced the turnaround time for exposing insights to designers and product managers by up to 99%."

All images courtesy of InVision.