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The ability to do DIY user research is becoming a more valuable skill
User Research is starting to get outsourced. You still need in-house research
I was surprised to find myself one of the few designers advocating for user research at a startup.
For me, user research was a crucial part of any design process, and I was trained extensively in its methods.
When I entered the world of startups, though, people would look at me oddly when I mentioned it. Either they thought I was making an unreasonable request, or they’d nod and ignore me.
This is part of a trend I've noticed with how startups and newer organizations organize their teams. A lot of the time, companies are now outsourcing their user research, and it's a weird and worrying trend.
Here's what you should know and do about it.
Startup life, product designers, and the scarcity of UX resources
"Fail fast and break things."
That's a motto of Silicon Valley that you've probably heard before, and it’s a mentality UX is well-suited to. Newer companies today often understand the value of UX very highly, but the way their product teams are arranged shows where their priorities lie.
According to Teresa Torres, author of Continuous Discovery Habits, there is a "Product Trio" at the heart of every team:
- The Product Owner who defines the business problem as best as possible
- The Product Designer who understands users and designs solutions to fit their needs
- The Engineer who is responsible for back-end technical stuff and implementation of the design
These three are the core of any product and how business problems get addressed to suit user and business needs.
However, here's where things become slightly odd: where does user research fit into this? According to Tony Jing, author of Hacking Product Design, UX Researchers are part of the 'support' team.
They're often grouped with Data Scientists and Business Analysts to support the core team and their actions. However, they're often…
