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Where should UX Research live?
Finding a home for a wandering UXR department.
I started out my UX research career in a somewhat ubiquitous role, on an undefined team, in a newly organized department — to say that I was trying to manage responsibilities through ambiguity is putting it lightly. A few years later, I’ve lived through some different organizational changes that placed our UX Research department under different group hierarchies. Each came with a set of pros that set us up for success, and shed light on a few opportunities to improve our processes for the future.
After doing some preliminary industry research, I decided to take a step back and openly explore each possible “home” for UXR.
UXR at a high level
User Experience Research is part behavioral observation, part business strategy, part psychology, part data analysis, part design, part team facilitation–depending on the company structure and need for the role. UXR can come in different flavors and therefore can move about departments industry wide. I’ve seen teams roll up to design divisions, some to marketing, and some to product management, depending on the size and type of company. My own team has rolled up to each of the departments below, at some point during my tenure.
So… is there one department that equips UXR more successfully for impact? That’s what I would like to find out.
Should UXR departments live…
…On the design team?
Pros:
- Research + Design are entwined: User Experience Research has become entwined in the job description of a lot of UX designers, and UXR at its core informs design. Research guides interaction, and is embedded within the design process to begin with. By having an ingrained department dedicated to research within the design team, it makes for a powerful union. Having the broader design group develop the overarching UX strategy makes the research and design processes more unified. Designers too, tend to have great ideas about how to improve experiences, and are…
