Your new UX superpower: Business acumen
“So, how do you decide between user needs and business needs?”
I get this question all the time. Mostly, I hear it from people who are in the process of transitioning from a post-grad program into their first UXR job at a for-profit company. It hints at an underlying tension in UXR between academia and industry: in academia, it’s seen as taboo to apply the human-centered research skills we gained through our study towards a business that sells things for profit. The question above implies a zero-sum game where someone always has to lose.
It was at the very outset of my career when I first felt the tension in UXR between academia and industry. I hadn’t even started my first job — I was in the final class of my Anthropology senior seminar. Everyone was going around the room sharing their plans for after graduation. Most of my peers were going on to graduate programs or joining non-profits. But when it was my turn, I excitedly described the job I had accepted in new product development at a big financial services company, “I’ll get to apply my research skills to help make new things, isn’t that cool?!”
To my surprise, no one returned the energy. I saw only muted expressions around the table. My professor and colleagues didn’t say congratulations or ask me any questions about my choice. Why weren’t they happy for me? Was there something wrong with my decision? I felt deflated and confused. Then after the rest of the room finished, it hit me that I was the only one who was going into business. By applying my skills to a capitalistic endeavor, I apparently had broken a norm in the academic culture of my Anthropology department.
Let’s talk capitalism
So what’s going on here? Why is there tension? I think it stems from a perceived incompatibility between the intentions of human-centered research and capitalism. In many academic circles, the most prevalent narrative of capitalism is one of exploitation. To paraphrase Jonathan Haidt, it’s a story of those in power using clever techniques to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. In that light, applying social science in the pursuit of improving the lives of our fellow humans is inherently anti-capitalistic. Why should we use our skills as researchers to perpetuate this exploitation?
But this view of capitalism is too rigid! If I learned anything from studying ethnography, it’s that there’s always an opportunity to add nuance. Along with its flaws, capitalism entices people to take big risks which in turn drives innovation. At Wealthfront, I talk to clients all the time who are not only happy to pay for our service, but actively recruit others as well. They feel like our service improves their lives.
So, are academics wrong to be critical? Absolutely not. We should rigorously scrutinize capitalism. We need to ask tough questions of a system that has so unequally distributed prosperity. But two things can be true at the same time. Capitalism can be flawed and a powerful force for good.
So, as a UX researcher, why should you care?
You should care because you occupy a powerful place in a company. You have the power to show that what’s good for users can also be good for the business.
In a recent interview, Erika Hall encouraged UX professionals to see the business model as part of their domain:
I think the mechanics of business a designer can understand, but when they think about business, they think, “Oh, I’ve got to prove the ROI of my work…”
As opposed to, “Wait a second. The people in the C-suite are fucking everything up. Chasing this weird exploiting growth engine, but I, as a designer, could redesign the system and come up with something where you create a product, a service, an entity, whatever that actually adds value to the system and doesn’t extract it.”
As a researcher, if you are able to deeply understand the human needs of your clients and the strategy of your business, you can help build a better form of capitalism — one that creates shared value.
Now, I think many UXRs who are coming into their practice from social science academic fields are more well-equipped to understand human needs than business needs. This was true for me in my career and was a big reason why I decided to get my MBA. I had a lot to learn about the business I was working for.
What is business acumen?
The definition I like to use is this: business acumen is an in-depth understanding of how a business works, how it makes money, and how its strategies and decisions impact financial, operational, and sales results. I believe that deepening your business acumen unlocks two key skills that will make you a more influential UX researcher.
Skill #1: Strategy
Strategy is a grossly misused word, but it boils down to how your company defines success and the moves it makes in order to achieve that success. As a researcher, if you are able to understand the details of this strategic context for your business, you will be able to add more value to your work.
For example, let’s say you just completed a project and are sharing the results with your team members. You’re the one closest to these insights and you’ve spent the most time internalizing them, so you’re in a great position to make connections between these insights and the higher-level company strategy. Since you also understand where your company is trying to go, you add a section to your report called “implications.” There, you lay out your commentary on the strategic implications of your new findings and BOOM, you’ve instantly leveled up your research. The ability to frame insights in the context of your company’s strategy helps your stakeholders make sense of your work and it helps answer every researcher’s favorite question: “So what?”
Skill #2: Speaking Finance
I experienced this first-hand after taking a few accounting classes in grad school. It took me a while, but once I learned the language of finance that many of my colleagues use to communicate and make decisions, I was able to better translate my ideas. It’s an important skill because for every design decision, there’s a financial tradeoff. Will it be worth it to invest more time and resources into improving the experience? Over the short term? Over the long term? Why? These are the questions every UX researcher has heard at some point in their career. And while more and more people are noticing the economic advantages of design-centric companies, these questions still come up and make researchers squirm. That’s why researchers who understand the basic financials of their companies are better prepared to advocate for their work for products that create shared value. The language of finance helps you frame the value of research in your stakeholders’ terms, and once you have that power, you can influence them to see the long term economic benefits of building equitable products.
Now what?
If you take away anything from this, I hope it’s this: there doesn’t have to be a tension between the academic and business side in UXR. The skills you gain from deepening your business acumen will not only help you be a better researcher, but they’ll also help you influence the types of decisions that lead to more equitable industry.
If you want to start honing those strategic and financial skills, here are a few actionable things you can do:
- Turn your research perspective towards your business! If you’re a researcher, you already have the skills you need to learn about business: curiosity, asking good questions, and making sense of complex things. If you research your business like you would a user, I bet you’ll be surprised by what you learn.
- Check out this great dscout article on business acumen for more thoughts on the topic and specifically for their discussion of strategic frameworks. It’s a great read.
- Read your company’s financial report or statements. I know it sounds dry, but if you can get your hands on a recent income statement or profit & loss (P&L) statement, you’ll begin to see how your company makes money. Even better, find a coworker in finance to explain it to you.
- Ask to read your company’s pitch deck they use with investors, or if you’re at a larger company, the strategy deck they present to the board of directors. Might be a long shot depending on how transparent your company is, but I think it’s worth asking.
- Practice filling out a business model canvas for your company. The labels might not fit perfectly but it’s a quick exercise that will help you grasp the main building blocks of your business.
Thanks for reading!