Getting a Seat at the Table Part 3: Building on Each Other

In Part 1 of "Getting a Seat at the Table," I shared how my career evolved from evaluating product designs through usability testing to establishing and grounding product requirements. In Part 2, I explored the environmental factors that affect a researcher’s ability to influence deep product decisions. In Part 3, I want to focus on another shift in my approach: transitioning from being solely a producer of research to becoming a curator, synthesizer, and amplifier of insights from various sources. I embraced the mindset of an insights librarian, a shift that transformed how I drove influence and collaboration in my work.

From Individual Contributor to Insight Curator

The role of an insights librarian goes beyond conducting studies. It involves pulling together insights from your own work, your colleagues’ findings, cross-functional partners, and even external competitors. By prioritizing collective knowledge over personal recognition, researchers can ensure decisions are guided by the best available insights—regardless of their source.

This approach cultivated credibility with cross-functional stakeholders, who care less about who conducted the research and more about the reliability and relevance of the insights. It also strengthened relationships within my research team by fostering trust and mutual respect. By recognizing and elevating each other’s contributions, I created a collaborative environment where researchers worked together to refine ideas and shape stronger research projects.

One of my favorite moments in this role is engaging with peers to bring an ill-formed idea to the table. Together, we validate its potential, brainstorm ways to refine it, and challenge each other to make it better. These collaborations have consistently resulted in some of the most impactful work I’ve done. They’ve also helped me feel more confident in my approach, especially when embarking on exploratory projects with uncertain outcomes.

Tackling Complex Problems Through Collaboration

This culture of trust and openness has been critical for solving more ambitious research challenges—ones that require diverse perspectives, specialized expertise, or coordinated effort across multiple researchers. Breaking down silos within the team and across the organization allowed us to pool our strengths and tackle problems we couldn’t address individually.

For example, I’ve recently had the privilege of working closely with Siyan Zhao , a mixed-methods researcher with exceptional quantitative skills. Over the past year, we’ve collaborated on a project to establish and consolidate a taxonomy of Google Docs use cases—a daunting task given the tool’s wide-ranging applications. By alternating between interviews, surveys, logs analysis, and other methods, we built on each other’s work to create a comprehensive and actionable taxonomy.

This iterative partnership allowed us to quickly move from defining the taxonomy to quantifying it, generating grounded and durable insights that have fundamentally changed how the product team thinks about Google Docs. These insights are now shaping strategies to enhance user productivity and deliver greater value.

Elevating Research as a Shared Task

Ultimately, adopting the mindset of an insights librarian not only benefits the team but also elevates your personal impact. By focusing on the quality of decisions rather than personal recognition, you position yourself as a leader who values collaboration and shared success. This shift fosters a virtuous cycle of collaboration, where researchers turn to one another for support, inspiration, and expertise when facing tough challenges.

When research thrives as a collective task, the entire team can take on bigger challenges, deliver deeper insights, and create stronger, more user-centered products. The role of an insights librarian is about more than just gathering and sharing knowledge—it’s about building a culture of trust, collaboration, and lasting impact. And in doing so, we amplify not just the work, but the influence and legacy of research as a whole.

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