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I asked my current PM what her opinion on democratisation of research was. Her brilliant answer: 'who's got time for that?!' The reason why no other industry in the world democratises research and instead has dedicated specialists is because GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT - if you build a product on bad insight, you build the wrong thing "But Nick, we're not doing mission critical work, such as saving a life, putting someone on the moon or developing pharmaceuticals" THIS IS SUCH A FALLACY! DO NOT FALL VICTIM TO THIS MORONITY!! When the board or VP or GM assigns budget to a PM, they aren't giving away free money. They expect a RETURN ON INCOME, i.e. they want that money to be an investment and to see positive returns on that investment It doesn't matter whether that budget is ￡10k or ￡10m, ROI matters In order to drive ROI, you need VALID, RELIABLE INSIGHT So when you're given a budget as a PM, and you save money by doing DIY research because 'it's not mission critical', you're directly threatening the ROI of your product When the ROI is low or negative, redundancies happen. This is a basic truth of the commercial world that we never speak about. These are the financial mechanics that directly affect your career and personal financial success Every single other industry in the world knows this and has dedicated specialist researchers. It is only IT and Digital, specifically Product Management where we naively think that anyone can do research, the outputs are easy to attain, ROI is irrelevant with zero accountability I genuinely thought that it would be the UX/UI people that wanted to acquire research skills. It would make more sense than a PM! If UX/UI people acquired research skills, we could start to create full stack designers - i.e. how things used to be, a way that worked and produced gold. PMs doing DIY research is a distraction from the Product work and destroys insight confidence Those people supporting democratisation of user research are either clueless/naive or profiting from it. It isn't the right thing to do, it doesn't deliver and is a massive mistake We have to stop repeating stupid because it's 'on trend'. The Digital herd is getting dumber and dumber because today's world is about joining the social herd and conforming to social norms. IT DOESN'T WORK IN THE COMMERCIAL WORLD. It might work for cute TikTok dances or life hacks or pranks, it doesn't work when you need to build good products by understand the users and world around you Stand out from the PM crowd. Enable your researcher. Listen to them and learn from them. Focus on ROI through valid insight. Make validity a north star and seek confidence in insight constantly. If you're not sure, extend and repeat until you are. Stop 'validating assumptions' and start hypothesis testing. Drive towards validity, not running away from it. This is what will make us all happy and successful, irrespective of experience or perspective. This is what is needed.
I think with the right mindset and mentorship nearly anyone can grow into being a strong researcher. Maybe my career path is different than most as I’ve been fortunate enough to always have worked in places with dedicated and well trained researchers. I’ve worked with PMs who just go out and talk to people, but overall the vast majority of them appreciate the difference between what a specialist does and what they do. I’ve found that more often it’s designers that took a class on usability or are self taught that pushed for democratization when a researcher wasn’t available. Have you experienced that too, or is it primarily PMs?
Absolutely agree—skipping on proper research may seem like a shortcut, but it’s a costly mistake. Reliable, dedicated insights aren’t a luxury; they’re essential for driving ROI and building great products.
Well, when this is still an ongoing belief, no wonder product development is in trouble: https://medium.com/career-programming/steve-jobs-hated-user-research-heres-why-i-agree-with-him-981aa5a181f2
With the increasing rate of entropy we're seeing in the market, a lack of research or futures & foresight practice, is going to lose the long game. I get the sense product regularly dismisses the socio-technical aspect because they're not incentivised to look beyond narrow goals. This is a recipe for sanctioning: 1. vast gaps in the brand promise which inclusive design principles address 2. exploitation of people & natural resources for profit is ok 3. leading to a 'tragedy of the commons' & conveniently high tech debt, to keep everyone in business. Design maturity & emotional intelligence enables a organisation to recognise that balance across extrinsic & intrinsic values matter in 2024 .. It helps if this is agreed up front & aligned with leadership otherwise you could be stuck in a c0ck fight ?? on the lower decks.
Spot on as usual, Dr Nick Fine! Personally, I think democratization of research is a good thing, but I have a very different definition of that term! What I have found to be successful is to have a strong UXR function that, in addition to performing the more complex and/or organization-wide research, coaches and mentors designers and product managers to ensure that they have the requisite skills and use proper protocols. This actually BUILDS appreciation and support for properly executed research.
I’m so happy to read this. I’m endlessly fascinated and annoyed by how researchers can be devalued in the process; democratization of research shows how little people understand our expert skills, the effort needed to understand a scope and get the right questions asked, and ultimately bring valuable learnings back to a team to guide. Thanks for highlighting this.
Learn from other industries: there are have always been phases where FMCGs for example decided to go DIY on their research (I’m talking about qual here). They have always come back to rely on their own experts and professionals in the agency and freelance context. I’m sure they have always had good reasons (?? maybe ROI is one?). Plus, as a consumer of digital stuff, I beg you to do better research! As someone who can remember the introduction of e-mail at work ?? I fail to understand how little progress is being made in providing relevant and usable products and services. Talk to a researcher about it!
If only lives depended on what we do. This notion implies an awareness of consequences for poor execution. But expectations for returns on intra-company budget allocations? What is that to me?
The fundamental building blocks of strategy are "what can we profitably offer, which customers need, and which competitors will find hard to copy." Do you really want to leave the task of answering that question, which founds the core of all your other business questions, to a PM without any background or qualifications in research? (The PM, of course, decides what to do with that information.) Without a really deep understanding of their customers' needs and behaviours, absolutely everything they do is doomed to failure. Beans up the nose, as they say. It's hard, when you work for a company (any company) but you have to get used to saying "no, we can't get the bathroom done this year, because Jerry wants to stick beans up his nose and we will probably all be out of work by Christmas." https://medium.com/uie-brain-sparks/beans-and-noses-21c16ac5cade
Sr.Manager UX Design at OfBusiness
7 个月Completely agree