Building better relationships with UX Research stakeholders
How to work better together—even when apart.
Imagine this: Your research kickoff just ended, and you get the acute sense that there’s already misalignment. A key stakeholder joined 10 minutes late, and the one who requested the study even seemed a bit… absent.
If this sounds in any way familiar, fret not: this situation is—in many cases — avoidable.
At IBM, I conduct user experience (UX) research for a variety of product teams. This requires me to earn the trust of new stakeholders every few months, agency-style. Product managers, marketers, digital strategists—some are more familiar with UX, some are less—but one thing we all have in common is that we’re working from home.
Read on for 6 strategies for building meaningful relationships with your stakeholders—no matter the distance!
1) Don’t leave anyone out.
In every research study, you have limited time to take stakeholders on a journey—a journey both through your research process, and into the minds of their end users. To avoid wasting precious time, make sure everyone relevant is on board and buckled up before you take off.
- Create a shared document with key stakeholder info such as names, roles, department, headshot, and preferred level of involvement. Circulate this around to find out if anyone is missing.
- If possible, include a few best-guesses of who might want to be involved, e.g. if your study is sponsored by Product Management and Marketing, include a few names from Sales and/or Development.
- Find out if anyone plans to roll off the team soon. Depending on the answer, you might want to postpone the study altogether, or there might be a replacement you can loop in now.
- If you’re meeting people for the first time, keep the stakeholder document open during all meetings so you can keep track of who’s who.
2) Make it personal.
You don’t want your “research kickoff” invitation to be the first time a stakeholder hears about it. Send those who are less familiar with the initiative a personalized note before sending the invite. Spending that extra 20 minutes will make your invitation feel less transactional, and allows you to start building rapport on an individual basis.
Short on time? Create a template that you can easily customize. Not sure what to say? Get creative! Check their LinkedIn, find out what city they’re based in, look up their recent publications.
3) Get organized.
You might wonder how getting organized contributes to earning your stakeholders’ trust. Well, the less organized you are, the less reliable you seem. The less reliable you seem, the less credible your research seems.
- Create a folder structure in Dropbox (or whichever cloud storage tool you use) so that your files are organized from the get-go—and bookmark it! If you need to quickly reference something to answer a stakeholder’s question, impress them with your lightning speed.
- Develop a system for keeping track of all conversations related to your study. We use Slack at IBM—so I’m able to create sections for each project, then drag and drop every conversation related to that project within it.
- If possible, create a communication channel dedicated to your study, and invite all stakeholders to it. Make sure the channel’s name is descriptive but short, and include a channel description. Be sure to let folks know what type of communication they can expect, e.g. important updates and urgent questions only.
4) Communicate smartly.
- Draft all communications before sending to stakeholders. Check for broken URLs and formatting or spelling issues.
- Keep your tone professional and your copy concise—but don’t be afraid to show your human side! I use emojis occasionally to add visual interest or useful context.
- Prevent misunderstandings during one-on-one interviews or group discussions by repeating back what you understood, in the same way you would during a user interview.
- Be empathetic in how you present your findings. Sometimes, the issues that emerge from evaluative research are directly tied to the day-to-day work of a stakeholder. Be cognizant of this. The goal isn’t to point fingers, but rather to inform. If a finding is particularly damning, consider reaching out to discuss in private before your playback.
5) Make it easy (and enjoyable!) for stakeholders to participate.
- Before every meeting, send a reminder at least 30 minutes, and no more than 2 hours ahead of time. I typically include the meeting purpose, and something to peak their interest.
- While you wait for everyone to join, take a minute to chat with your stakeholders. Ask them how their week is going. Nobody wants to work with a robot!
- After you’ve spent a minute catching up, create a sense of focus by reminding stakeholders what the purpose of the meeting is, and what the expected outcomes are.
- Give credit to your stakeholders whenever you can—after all, you couldn’t do your work without them. Acknowledge ideas or questions that they contributed, specifically calling them out by name. I often add reminders in my speaker notes during research playbacks.
- End your meetings on a high note by building in time at the end to discuss next steps and resolve lingering questions. Avoid beginning and ending your meetings abruptly.
6) Help them help you help them.
The easier it is for stakeholders to find your research, the more likely they are to act on it. The more they act on your research, the better the product or service will be.
- Share your research report and playback recording with stakeholders as soon as possible, ideally via multiple channels. I typically share both a PDF and the version with speaker notes.
- If your research uncovered UX issues, create a centralized repository of your findings and associated recommendations, and give all stakeholders access. You could do this in Github, Trello, Excel — whichever tool your stakeholders use to track their work.
- To prevent the team from being overwhelmed, help them prioritize all of the issues. Which ones should be addressed now, and which can be addressed later? (article on this coming soon!)
- Schedule regular sync-ups with key stakeholders to check in on progress. Keep these meetings short and structured, scheduling one-off meetings as needed to address blockers.
In closing
When it comes to stakeholder relationships—as with all relationships—you really do get out what you put in. You won’t always have the bandwidth to do all of these things all of the time—but I challenge you to experiment with a few of them during your next study (and let me know how it goes!).
Nicole Keyes is a UX & CX Researcher for IBM Software based in Austin, Texas. This article does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
