Fresh Views: September 2024 Edition
User Interviews
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Inside this issue
Thanks for reading!
Nick
Content & Community @ User Interviews
The Fresh List ??
DATA & REPORTS
How do those ~other~ researchers view the industry?
“As a product designer, I feel like my design superiors expect me to "just know" how to do UX research, and to make it an integral part of every project."
Is this sentiment above, shared by one of our non-Researcher survey respondents, the exception or the rule at organizations today?
We've spent the past several years unpacking the data on UXR and ReOps professionals, but what about the people work and who do research alongside them?
Check out our very first State of Research for Non-Researchers, an analysis of how Designers, Product Managers, and other non-researchers do and view the function at their organizations.
VIRTUAL EVENTS
The UX Hotline ?? is back open — join us on Oct. 2
For our upcoming edition of the UX Hotline series, we opened the lines up for Chief Research Officer Tom Satwicz of BlinkUX to talk about research in the consulting industry, his learnings from 15+ years of experience, and what he thinks the future holds for UXRs.
The details: Join us on Oct. 2 at 1 PM ET/10 AM PT for Tom's insights and stay for a chance to discuss and network with your peers.
ON THE BLOG
Aligning UXR goals to company ROI: Tips from an expert (+video)
Connecting the value of UX Research and Design work to your organization's larger business goals is the key to the role's survival, says Devin Harold—a design and UX leader whose career has included roles at companies such as Capital One and Verizon.
Devin sat down with UI's Morgan Mullen to share advice for leaders and practitioners on ways he’s found success, creating influence and sustained impact in the process.
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SPECIAL FEATURES
What's Minimum Viable Research?
No one said that doing good research was easy, but there are a few critical pieces that need to be in place in order for it to be done effectively.
Enter the concept of Minimum Viable Research (MVR), which we drill down into four steps:
You can read more on our blog or use the link below to skip ahead and see the full guide.
ICYMI
Even more from this past month
Subscriber Exclusives ??
QUICK POLL RESULTS
Feelings about professional development via mentors
Our 2024 State of User Research Report found that 45% of UX researchers continue their professional development with the help of a coach or mentor. So we took to LinkedIn to poll our audience of both Researchers and non-Researchers to see if they'd consider the same.
Here's how nearly 100 of them responded:
?? You can read more about this topic on our blog
SOUR '24
Heard on the survey: The State of User Research '24
We had nearly 1,000 respondents to our 2024 State of User Research survey, so inevitably there were more than a few comments that didn't make the final report.
Below, your first look at a selection of (anonymized) takes from your peers that took part in our survey.
1. Views on the future of the UXR industry
Its difficult to remain positive with all of the commentary happening on LinkedIn. I think all of that has to be taken with a grain of salt, but at the same time I do think a market correction is happening and I don't think this industry can be supported in the same way that it was previously by tech. I think researchers are going to need to find other ways to incorporate research into other roles that are perceived as more needed than just research alone. For this reason I don't see myself still doing research solely in 10 years' time from now.
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I'm having an existential crisis about the longevity of UXR in SaaS businesses. Transferring DEEP empathy is incredibly difficult to do, and the truth is, PMs are always incredibly busy. By offloading research to UXRs, YES we get excellent research methods and execution, but we also enable PMs to make customer empathy "someone else's job". We can fight this, but you just do have less engaged PMs when someone else is running the research. I think the best model (whether we want to believe it or not) is to have the person making the product calls (the PM) the person who is also running research. It's likely that the path UXR should take is for them to become PMs. I think about this a lot. It makes me sad, but it also feels efficient and a reality that would probably drive better business outcomes for organizations.
2. Challenges related to supporting non-researchers
It's very frustrating how UX Designers, Product Designers, PMs, don't educate themselves about research and how to do it. So we keep exhausting ourselves to repeat the same points from the previous studies.
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Experienced researchers aren't willing to or don't have time to mentor others. My role is expanding into areas I don't understand and I'm losing knowledge about core research practice and don't have time to do it well or upskill as I go so I feel my research will always lack quality and rigour that is supposed to set us apart from other people doing our job. Design and UR teams aren't always aligned on how they should work together.
3. Views on AI
I do not feel that AI will take over our jobs because it's better or as good as we are, but because stakeholders who are not proficient in our profession will think that it does, and will rather hire no/less UX researchers and try to make up for it with using biased AI models, or AI models whose training is not allowing to make decisions for their specific products.
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AI gives the impression that research is "easy." I do feel it's dangerous, as a trained researcher will know the markers to pick the trustworthy from the dubious. Quantitative research will be replaced by AI or at least significantly altered; whereas, I feel like qualitative research will become more important as it depends on nuances of languages (body and otherwise). However, eventually technology will always catch up...how we evolve to make a place for us will ultimately depend on us.
?? Our full State of User Research analysis is available on our website
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