Main Takeaways from my Latest Research Conference
I attended a research conference, ReCon ’17, this past spring where a bunch of talented and insightful researchers shared their experiences and learnings. It was a jam packed day, with back-to-back talks, but the variety of topics and energetic speakers held my attention.
I came out of the conference with copious notes, but I wanted to distill them down and determine the overarching themes and main takeaways I could implement in my own daily work. I came up with the following five principles.
- Do thorough background preparation and memorize your research script, but don’t use it during the research session.
Mike Welsh, the Chief Creative Officer at Mobiquity, argues that using a research script puts up a barrier between you and the participant. By ditching the script, you can move from an interrogation session to a casual conversation. You want the participant to forget you’re a researcher interviewing her, instead establishing yourself as an equal. Only then will you get the participant to feel more comfortable and begin to open up and share her genuine thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Memorize your key questions and research goals, but then go with the flow of the conversation. You will end up having a much more organic and insightful discussion. And finally, if you’re head down in your script and taking notes, you will miss out on subtle non-verbal cues such as facial expressions and body language.
→ I wonder if going scriptless is ideal for exploratory work, but not as necessary for usability testing? Maybe I should try to avoid using a script and rely more on recordings.
2. Storytelling is huge
As humans, we’re wired to enjoy stories. Engaging narratives can be powerful and convincing tools, drawing us in, getting us emotionally invested, and helping us remember their content. As Mike Welsh notes, “readouts are storytelling events, not deliverable talks”. Instead of simply dumping a big pile of data on your stakeholders, a good researcher must extract the key points and craft a compelling narrative that inspires action.
→ How can I incorporate storytelling more in my work to make it more convincing and memorable? Might it be better geared for exploratory work?
3. Research and analysis is only part of your job as a UX researcher — you have to actively follow up on your insights and recommendations to make sure they have impact.
It’s easy to immerse yourself in designing and executing your research study, compiling your report, presenting your findings to stakeholders, and calling it a wrap. It’s not so easy to continuously follow up with stakeholders to see which of your recommendations, if any, they’ve acted upon, and tirelessly advocate for those insights that remain untouched. But in order to have genuine impact, you must follow up on your work. As a researcher, you must be a determined advocate for the user. You spoke with them, interacted with them, and observed them, and you must be their voice at the negotiation table. If your insights and recommendations are pushed aside, ignored, or put on the back burner, what good was your hard work?
In order to better facilitate follow up, you might conduct interviews with stakeholders following a research engagement. What did they take from the research? How are they using it? How could it be improved? By involving them in the process and asking for their feedback, you can increase their buy-in and improve your own techniques and methods along the way.
→ How should we follow up on insights if I’m not embedded in the product team? How should we elicit feedback from our stakeholders? How often should we elicit feedback?
4. Workshops are a powerful way to get stakeholders engaged and involved
As Val Pucilowski, a UX Researcher at Etsy, noted, researchers ask their stakeholders to internalize findings and incorporate insights into future work, but rarely provide a venue for stakeholders to engage with the insights, and then accept and apply them. Workshops allow for co-creation opportunities, where researchers, product owners, designers, and developers can grapple with the research insights and figure out how best to apply them to the problem(s) at hand. Getting a diverse group of people involved in the research process will provide assorted viewpoints and increase buy-in and likelihood of success.
→ How frequently can/should we realistically run workshops? How can we use workshops to increase the impact of our work? Could we run workshops with leadership to increase buy in for research?
5. Work to codify your research processes — this can increase internal consistency, collaboration, and communication.
Create templates and resources that anyone can follow. Ideally you and your team can keep these resources in a centralized location and update them periodically. Researchers can share methods with each other, establish best practices, and develop a common research language. Once you establish consistency within your team, you can start to disseminate and evangelize your processes to outside teams. By introducing others to research methods and inviting them to collaborate on research projects, you can tear down internal silos and increase outside buy-in and investment in research. Jessica Zhang, a User Researcher at Audible Amazon, suggests that by involving people with diverse backgrounds, viewpoints, and skill sets, you will end up with higher quality UX overall.
→ How could we further delegate research and involve other teams? What should the roll-out timeline look like? How should we incrementally increase outside participation and agency?
Overall, it was a great conference. It was nice to hear from UX professionals in a variety of industries and organizations and learn their viewpoints and approaches. I’ve already put some of their recommendations into practice, such as making much more of an effort to follow up on my research, and working to codify processes and disseminate them to other teams to increase buy-in and investment in research. I’m very appreciative of the inviting and insightful UXR community in NYC, and I’m excited to continue learning.
