How do you tailor your research for new or improved products and services? How can you gauge whether your products and services are meeting the needs and expectations of your customers, or even reaching your intended users? What preparations are necessary for introducing your users to new products and services? These are the questions that will be discussed and explored in this session.

The aim of this session is to offer R2O conference attendees insights into various facets of user engagement. This includes: building and maintaining relationships with users, understanding users' needs and their impacts, preparing users through education and support, and enhancing the customer experience.

We welcome discussions on all aspects, challenges, and examples of user engagement. We are particularly interested in exploring how groups incorporate user needs information to inform decisions on product and service development and improvement. The talks will showcase examples of how user needs information forms a vital part of the value chain, with proven success stories in transitioning user needs to use-inspired science, and from there, to the development of operational products and their delivery to the user.

Moreover, this session invites dialogue between the R2O community and the User Engagement community on how to improve the usefulness of users' needs and information collected for NOAA's research and operational community."
Conveners: Martin Yapur, Renata Lana, Thanh Vo – NOAA/NESDIS