Getting a Seat at the Table, Part 4: Shaping the Roadmap and Strategy Through Research

In earlier installments of this series, I discussed the progression of my UX research career—from conducting usability evaluations to establishing product requirements. This approach helped me broaden my understanding of how research can inform product development. However, I quickly realized a critical gap remained: I wanted UX research to have a seat at the strategic table, influencing not just how features are designed but also which features are prioritized and the overall areas where the product team should invest.

This article is about stepping beyond execution to become a true driver of strategy—shaping not just what gets built, but why and where your product team invests its energy. To do this, I evolved my approach by thinking beyond individual studies to identify the broader questions that guide product direction,? anticipating the needs of leadership, and connecting research insights to business goals and timelines.

Start with the Basics: Become a User Expert

As a UX researcher, I spend countless hours engaging with users, observing their behaviors, and understanding their needs. That is our job as researchers: nobody else on the product team spends nearly as much time as a researcher thinking about users, their needs, their goals, etc. My insights often shed light onto the motivations, pain points, and expectations that drive user behavior—insights critical for making informed product decisions. I become a subject matter expert for the types of users our product targets, and their behaviors and attitudes.

However, despite being a subject matter expert, my ideas were often dismissed, overridden, or ignored. I was getting frustrated when ideas that reflected a poor understanding of the users and their needs were being prioritized. I was frustrated (and still often am) when a strategy failed to adequately talk about the user value the product needs to deliver. As UXRs, our deep user expertise is a key asset in strategic conversations, but isn’t enough. To shape strategy, researchers must also connect user-centric findings to broader product development contexts.

Embrace the Compromise: Expand Beyond Users Expertise

While user needs are central to UX research, the person in charge of the product strategy has to find a sweet spot between creating products that users love with making sure the product is a sustainable business, and can be built reliably, while also reacting to the market. For instance, an ideal solution for users may be cost-prohibitive to implement or fail to align with broader company priorities like pricing models or market positioning. As I grew more mature in my research practice, I deepened my understanding of these dimensions, allowing me to anticipate how some insights may face business or technical headwinds.

To achieve this, I invested in building my business acumen—learning how to evaluate trade-offs like cost vs. impact, retention vs. adoption, or short-term gains vs. long-term scalability. Similarly, understanding technical constraints helped me anticipate challenges and tailor recommendations that balanced ambition with feasibility. To improve in those areas, I also formed tight partnerships with Product or Technical owners that allowed me to gain some early perspective on the business or technical points of views behind the scene, so that the recommendation I make later can be shaped to adapt to those situations at hand. This broader perspective allowed me to craft research insights that not only advocated for users but also aligned with the realities of product development.

Ask the Big Questions: Shift from Execution to Strategy

Have you ever felt like your research answers the questions no one asked? Becoming a strategic partner starts with asking the right questions—the big, bold ones that force your team to think differently. This involves moving beyond narrowly scoped usability or feature-validation studies to address higher-level questions like:

• What are the biggest unmet needs in our target market?
• What investments would have the greatest impact on user satisfaction and retention?
• How can we differentiate our product in a competitive landscape?

Answering these questions requires reframing the role of UX research from simply delivering data to providing actionable, decision-oriented insights. By focusing on the "why" behind product decisions and proactively identifying opportunities, researchers can position themselves as trusted advisors in strategic discussions.

Build a Point of View: Your Roadmap to Leadership-Level Thinking

Have you ever felt like your ideas where strong, but were not catching on with others?

Lately, I have relied on a simple approach to help me and my UXR peers develop a leadership mindset for the product. It relies on asking ourselves: "If it was up to us, where should the product invest resources next year / in the next 5 years?" My friend, colleague, and mentor Stephen Giff calls it building a point-of-view (POV), and has spent a lot of time thinking about how UXR need to be bolder about establishing them. If the researcher does not yet have an answer to this question, this is fine, but asking it plants the seed to start elaborating an answer.

This is the question I asked myself when I started contributing to the strategy of Google Docs, and one which allowed me to then establish hypotheses about opportunities for the product, which in turn allowed me to find ways to test those hypotheses. In 2024, I wanted to expand and I conducted a series of activities, first with UXRs, but also with key stakeholders to start those conversations in an attempt to build a shared point of view on where the product should go to address new user needs, or to improve how it addresses existing ones. The question was a great conversation starter, and as researchers and scientists, we could come out of those conversations asking ourselves:

• What are the underlying assumptions that permeate this point of view?
• Which of those assumptions might be the most risky? Which ones could have the most consequence?
• Which of those assumptions can we test and inform? Do we have existing evidence to support them? Do we need more evidence?

While leadership often navigates ambiguity, researchers bring clarity and confidence through evidence. Your ability to ground big decisions in data is your most powerful tool at the table. And to be influential, the product team has to have the point of view and the supporting evidence before they start couching down their strategy. In my current team, strategy planning is often in full swing in August / September, and so I started establishing a shared point of view with other researchers, senior product managers and designers around March / April, which gave me and the rest of the research team a few month to generate new insights and aggregate existing ones to challenge or consolidate that point of view. And we started communicating those insights early as well, so that they could be in people's minds by the time they were asked to come up with that strategy.

Shape the Narrative: Repetition and Communication are Key

Have you ever been in a situation where a point of view was well documented, but still struggled to make impact on the product? Or maybe stakeholders seemed to forget? It may be a matter of communication and timing.

Thinking about the overall strategy early is important in that it helps shape the communication strategy. There is a lot that I or any UXR can say about the users, their needs, etc. However, there is only so much stakeholders can digest and integrate in their thinking. Unlike us, they do not spend their days thinking about users, they have many other concerns to deal with like team dynamics and performance, business imperatives and results, or technical infrastructure and efficiencies.

Shaping a narrative takes time. To be most effective, I employ a specific communication strategy. First, I lay the groundwork early: Why is this opportunity critical? Then, I build momentum through repetition. For instance, week one, I share survey data proving its importance. Week two, I highlight user pain points. Week three, I show the ripple effect this opportunity could have across the ecosystem. By the time decisions need to be made, the story isn’t just compelling—it’s undeniable.

Who's the Big Dog? Understanding Decision-Making Dynamics

Convincing your immediate stakeholders is one thing, but to effectively influence strategy, those stakeholders also have to convince others, and their leadership. Every organization has its own unique decision-making dynamics. In my experience, influencing these dynamics begins with observation: Who holds the power to make key decisions? What metrics or narratives resonate most with them? What biases may they bring to the table? How are trade-offs weighed? By studying these factors, I strive to tailor my approach to align with the decision-making culture.

For instance, if decisions are driven by metrics, a researcher might prioritize quantifying user insights to demonstrate impact. Alternatively, if people value deep storytelling, crafting compelling narratives can be more effective. Understanding these nuances ensures research findings are not only relevant but also influential. Remember, being successful as a researcher is not only about having the right insights, it is even more so about being able to influence people with those insights.

To land some of those points of view, it is also important to consider how some insights that may have a deep impact on how the team sees their work may conflict with beliefs and biases of some decision makers. This is a critical perspective that may impact how the research is conducted, and how it is communicated.

Wrapping up

Getting a seat at the table isn’t a one-time event—it’s a continuous effort to connect, influence, and grow. Start by asking yourself the big questions, build a POV, and help your team make decisions they can believe in. Your expertise is your ticket to impact, and this impact can be achieved more efficiently with careful and timely storytelling.