Dovetail helps Canva empower the world to design, one customer insight at a time

Canva's adoption of Dovetail was driven by the need for a central research repository, which Becky was among the first to set up. Researchers and product team members now use Dovetail to store moderated research recordings and transcripts, enabling quick transcriptions, tagging of data, identification of emerging themes, and data analysis. This repository allows both new and existing Canvanauts to easily access previous projects or topics of interest by re-watching full research sessions or searching for specific terms.

With Dovetail, product managers can review user quotes on topics like creativity and collaboration, while new designers can watch usability sessions to identify user struggles with existing flows. Content designers also benefit by quickly understanding user sentiment around messaging and copy. This accessibility allows Canvanauts to conduct research independently, which is essential for a global, fast-paced team.

Becky and her team are excited to nurture a research culture at Canva, but they can’t conduct all the research themselves since they’re still a small team. So, part of a researcher’s role at Canva is empowering other people to conduct quality research. They hold office hours, have created templates and guides, and conduct training on research best practices. Whenever designers and product managers conduct interviews, the research team recommends using Dovetail to transcribe and store sessions. They are then able to tag quotes, analyze data, and identify prominent themes before reporting.

Whenever designers and product managers conduct research, the researchers recommend using Dovetail to transcribe their sessions and analyze findings. Breaking quotes and observations down into this level of granularity, then re-combining them to identify themes is often something non-researchers haven’t done before.