Sit down and speak up — the UX researcher’s real job on a team
There’s waaaay more to UX research than just checking if the product sucks.
“Could you just check if this works?”
I can’t count how many times I’ve started a meeting with someone on my product team asking me to “just check” a particular feature.
There’s a lot more to user experience research than just stamping updates as “usable”.
Usability is just refers to how easy it is to use a specific interface or product. User Experience more broadly describes a person’s interactions with a company and its products or services.
User Experience research is the investigation of the user, their goals and requirements. The information that research produces informs designs and validates decisionmaking. UX research is the only thing standing between you and shrugging and saying “well, I hope the kids love it.”
Many companies are too small to have their own user experience researcher, so these tasks might fall on the CEO or designer. The user experience researcher’s role, above all, is to act as the voice of the user — advising the design, checking impact with data, and helping your user achieve their goals.
If you only take one thing away from this article, I hope it is this:
The UX researcher’s job is to SIT DOWN with everybody from the user to the boss and figure out what the fuck is going on. Then their job is to SPEAK UP for the user from the earliest brainstorm through launch decisions.
Just sit down. And speak up.
Understand
You can’t speak for someone till you’ve met them. The first job of a researcher is to understand the user, their needs, motivations and hesitations.
I never assume I’m the first to ask any question. Before I dive into conducting open-ended research on a user type, I check to see if there is any literature or data available either within the company, or publicly.
UNDERSTAND THE USER
- Read past research within company, talk to other researchers — Some companies invest in marketing research or surveys that could be helpful. Sometimes a designer or product manager previously put together a demographic report on expected customers. Ask around and see what you can get your hands on.
- Read industry research or related academic material — Google Scholar is your friend. Search across a lot of different terms: user experience terms are notoriously inconsistent. Be sure to check on the methodology and sample sizes of the information you use and communicate it to your team. A card sort run with just 10 people isn’t strong enough to support product decisionmaking, but it could inspire product ideas.
- Read the data — examine any data you can get on the product’s use. What are the demographic profiles of users? Are there any points of noticeable activity or dropoff? Are there any trends in customer support calls or among positive/negative reviews online?
UNDERSTAND THE PRODUCT
- Use it yourself — try to embed the product into your life just like the company expects its users will. What is good/bad/delightful about the experience? How does it compare to other ways of doing the same thing? At Facebook, researchers often use a variety of social apps to understand comparative benefits.
- Talk to your co-workers — meet people from across the company to understand why specific decisions are made. What information or signals were people operating upon? How do they check/know that those decisions were the right ones? Keep track of potential assumptions to check later on with research.
- Talk to the user — this will take up the bulk of your time as a researcher. The best way to understand your user is to talk to them about their needs. Before introducing the proposed solution, I like to explore the good/bad sides of their current means of solving the problem. Research skills like task analysis or sketching can help people talk about their experience.
Define what is Known/Unknown
Done right, UX research should be like medicine. Team members shouldn’t be required come in and order what they think they need. Instead, a UX researcher must proactively work with their team to document and share what is known, and diagnose what is unknown.
A decision made with confidence doesn’t necessarily lead to good product. Just because everyone on the product team agreed on the best way forward, any decision that was made without solid backing data or evidence is worth checking in on.
Since you could technically ask any question, the order depends on what kinds of decisions the company is making at this point in time. It can be helpful to start by working with product managers and leadership to determine whether they need to gut-check the whole concept, or fine tune an element of the UI. Your first research efforts can support that decision with data as a priority.
- Identify stage — what decisions are being made in the near future? What questions need to be answered next? Are they still not sure who they should sell to? Already launched and puzzled about weird performance?
- Identify assumptions — what decisions don’t have clear data backing them? A few quick rounds of user experience research can check if those were the right decisions.
- Identify anomalies — ask customer support where people mess up or need extra time. do your own heuristic analysis to see where people ‘should’ mess up. think of edge cases (older, limited language).
- Identify opportunities — as you conduct research, keep an eye out for insights about the user or task that could inspire new product ideas. What are their barriers to or motivations for liking the product? What do they find delightful? What types of interactions are frequently problematic for this demographic? Communicate these insights back to the team, or insert them into design sprints or brainstorms.
Help the team make good decisions
You could perform world class research, but it won’t make a difference if your colleagues never absorb it. Part of the user experience researchers job is to transfer their findings in engaging and functional ways.
A little creativity helps catch stakeholder attention and stick in the memory. But the most effective way to advocate for the user is to show up at meetings, brainstorms, design sprints and design critiques to share your knowledge and engage your team in conversation about the user’s needs and preferences.
Providing context and data doesn’t mean the researcher is jumping in as the facilitator — more providing a little color at a strategic moment in the decision-making process. For every growth manager that promises that this design update will triple growth, there needs to be a researcher in the room explaining that most new subscribers did not realize they’d purchased anything.
- Teach team about user— conduct and spread ‘foundational’ research that helps your team understand user, problem space, the real-world tasks involved in the product or service.
- Advocate for the user — Help focus the design on users by bringing in research insights as prompts or jumping off places for brainstorms and design sprints. Show up at design critiques or work with designers to flag potential usability issues or edge cases early. Flag and follow-up on your concerns or assumptions you see. Speak up in decision-making meetings.
Have any tips on maximizing the impact of UX research? Any hacks for describing the role? Please share in the comments below!
