Mind the gap — important UX research skills that are absent from bootcamps

Cherry by Maria Shukshina

I have been a mentor at a UX bootcamp since early 2018. While it has been fabulous to see students acquire hard skills, such as wireframing and usability testing, I also have been worried about how they might limit themselves by focusing only on the tangible skills that can be taught more easily in those programs. They may be unaware of some critical intangible skills that would help them break into the industry and advance their careers.

I would like to share three critical skills for UX researchers that eventually will be needed at work, but are hard to learn in academic programs or bootcamps.

1. Project scoping

At the beginning of your career, projects often are well-defined and then handed to you. However, later in your career, you will need to scope the project yourself. Project scoping includes, but is not limited to:

• Define the right problems to solve and the right questions to ask: The problems that product teams came to you with might not always be the best problems to solve. Make sure you take a step back to understand the underlying goal. Essentially, you want to be sure that answering this question is the best way to unblock the team.
• Determine how much effort is needed: Is this going to be a big project or a quick one? Is the scope and time frame reasonable and practical? What will be out of scope? Is the potential impact worth the effort and resources?
• Determine how you will do it: Is this something only you can do, or there are existing findings or projects to leverage? What research method will give you the best result? How much involvement would be needed from the team?

Good project scoping requires being adaptive and flexible, as stakeholders’ needs might change. You also need to deal with ambiguity, especially since people who asked you to conduct the project might not have all the answers or know what they want.

2. Project roadmapping and prioritizing

At work, it’s common that you receive multiple tasks and get pulled into different projects. It’s important to learn how to prioritize those requests and focus your energy on the most impactful projects for the company and for your personal growth.

Most companies develop plans every quarter. During the planning period, being aware of what your team will be working on and designing your project roadmap accordingly will help you set expectations and realistic timelines with your stakeholders.

To do this, you will need:

• The ability to reach alignment with stakeholders (usually product managers): Most people will think his or her request is the most important and urgent. Understanding the goals and potential impacts of each project will help you prioritize. So does being creative on leveraging existing resources or combining research requests.
• Know what to prioritize and deprioritize: In general, we want to prioritize research projects that have high business impacts and are most likely to be acted upon. With limited resources, we want to deprioritize research that only will be used to validate ideas the team already is working on, and has little room for changes. Some good questions to ask in this case would be: “What actions will be taken after we have the findings?” or “ How will the findings affect what you do?”
• Know how to say no: Saying no is not sheer rejection. To be a collaborative partner, we need to provide reasons why we can’t support the project, and offer alternative ways to get the information the requester needs. Knowing when research is needed, and what other resources (such as support tickets, online forums, market research, satisfaction trackers, etc.) to leverage in its absence would be helpful here.

3. Collaborate with and influence stakeholders

Collaboration and influence are probably the hardest things to teach at bootcamps or schools, as they are soft skills that are developed over time, with hands-on experience.

However, in job interviews, you still might be asked for examples of how you collaborated with others, and how you influenced the team’s decisions with your research findings.

To be a good collaborator and influencer, you will need to:

• Identify the opportunities: Pay close attention to the debates, questions, or assumptions people have in projects, meetings, or any communication channels. You might find opportunities to conduct research or to share insights that you found before, and push for action.
• Identify the best way to influence: Know your audience and choose the best way to deliver your message. For example, engineers might be interested in findings that are more tangible and actionable. Busy executives might only want to know the high-level summary and what actions have been taken based on the research findings. View it as user-centered design — you will be more effective when tailoring the approaches to your audience.
• Involve key stakeholders in your process: Researchers should never work in silos. You need to know when to involve your stakeholders, and when they might want to get an update from you, as well as how much half-baked information you should share. Motivating them to be involved in research on top of their other daily tasks is an art. For example, some might host a “watch party” inviting stakeholders to watch key interview sessions over snacks broadcast from the country where the research is taking place.

“How can I gain those skills before having a real job experience?” you might ask. There is no silver bullet, but there are a few things you can do at a minimum:

1. Be aware of these additional skills you will need to acquire in addition to technical research skills: We can not improve upon what we don’t know. Therefore, awareness is the first step.
2. Think critically about the projects you were given at schools or bootcamps: Is this the best problem to solve? Is what you were told to do the best path forward? I really appreciate when my students ask if they could take a different approach or work on a slightly different problem when they felt the task assigned is not the most critical problem to solve for users. Even if you ended up following the instructions, thinking through the tasks that are given is still a good practice for project scoping and prioritizing.
3. Look for opportunities to collaborate with people in other roles: People in the same program usually aspire to similar roles (UX designers or researchers, in this case). This means you are more likely to be working with other designers or researchers on school projects. At work, the stakeholders you will be working closely with are product managers, engineers, data scientists, marketing, sales, etc. They think differently from UXers. Having experience working with people other than UX practitioners will help you feel more prepared in collaborating with and influencing others.

Here are some additional resources regarding reflections and experiences coming out from UX bootcamps:

• Is a UX bootcamp worth it? Honest feedback from a bootcamp survivor turned industry professional — by Samuel Harper
• From UX bootcamp to full-time UX designer: things I wish I’d known three years ago — by Ruohan Chen
• Your UX Boot Camp Will NOT Get You A Job: Unless You Do These Critically Important Steps — by Samuel Harper

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