?? User Research vs. Vision

?? Humans of User Research with Yagmur Erten

Hey Yagmur, tell us a little about yourself.

Hello! I am a user researcher with a background in behavioral psychology and business management. I love working at the intersection of data and storytelling and enjoy discovering insights and discovering the obvious. After graduating from college and struggling to find my passion, I ran into the field of UX Research through a project I participated in while working at UberEATS. I then attended the HCID master’s program at the University of Washington, where I learned how to blend knowledge of human behavior with my creative passion to help create influential, meaningful, and beautiful products for all users.

I currently work at BuzzFeed as a Sr UX Researcher. When I am not UX-ing, I love spending time with my dog Bimini and discovering new restaurants and speakeasies.

What’s your favorite thing about your current job?

My favorite thing about my current position at BuzzFeed is also the thing that makes me feel the most scared. When I first joined, they did not have a dedicated UX Researcher for a while, so I was a team of one. I needed to build the user research practice from almost scratch and introduce UX Research to all the product teams, all by myself. While that brought so much freedom to my work, where I got to set up the frameworks as I found the fit, it also put great weight on my shoulders to carry inspiring research and deliver compelling stories. I needed to make sure the product teams understood UX Research's value and were willing to incorporate research insights into their product decisions –which to my luck the teams were mostly aware of UX Research’s value and pretty excited to learn more through user research.

What does your family think of your work?

It is funny because it is not just my parents who get confused about my job. I bet even some of my friends think I am doing "design stuff." I sometimes let them interpret their own understandings, but this is how I usually explain my work to someone:

"Think about an app you use often. You know how it gets updated with improvements from time to time? I talk with you and other users of that app and bring those talks back to my company to recommend what kind of improvements and changes need to be made. So you and others can use it better." This explanation has been pretty successful in getting people to understand my role better. However, I am pretty sure whenever my parents want to explain my job to someone else, they still say "design stuff."

How can people find you?

You can find me on?LinkedIn?- I am always excited to connect with more people from the industry.Also, I recently started sharing my thoughts and experiences on?Medium?(at UX Collective and Bootcamp) and would love to hear more people’s thoughts on them!

Thank you, Yagmur!

?? Highlights.

Research vs vision: the origin story of Sony Walkman, Mini Cooper, and the iphone. This article is going over Sony and the creation of the Walkman player, BMC and the creation of the Mini Cooper and last but not least, Apple and the creation of the iPhone. These iconic products may seem too different, but they share many exciting insights into how and why they were born, and what role user research played. Taras Savytskyi 09/22

Keeping up with users’ increasingly dynamic needs. Companies need to accept their customers as ever-changing, complex people deeply impacted by unpredictable external forces — an approach the authors call life centricity.?Life-centric businesses are deeply attuned to the forces that most profoundly affect their customers’ lives, such as technology, health, and culture. They achieve relevance by bridging the interplay between these life forces and their customers’ everyday decisions. David Droga & Baiju Shah 09/27

How to thrive as a UX research manager. Close your eyes, and think about the best manager you ever had. Can you picture this person? Again, it could be your current manager. It could be a manager from years ago. What made you think of them? Why were they the best?. Janelle Ward 09/21

Need better survey participants? (Sponsor) Get fast access to a pool of more than 1.7+ million quality participants to reach nearly any audience. Recruit faster and get matched sooner. Reach target niches and filter out noise with rich consumer and professional participant data.?Try for free

?? Best practices.

How one UX research team helped develop England's COVID-19 vaccine program. Conducting UX research on a tight turnaround is challenge enough—doing so for populations at high risk of COVID-19 is another level.?Natasha Den Dekker 09/26

Why I used Notion to document my UX research case study. Not only is Notion a great note taking tool, but a great way to structure case studies, databases and embedded information. Take a look for an overview of the case study.?Steffan Morris Hernandez 09/22

Best practices for UX research participant recruitment. The challenge of finding and recruiting the right people arises in every organization. A few changes to how you approach recruiting can go a long way towards improving the experience for everyone.?Jane Davis 09/22

???Events in October

UX Research Meetups & Events in October (Sponsored). Check out this October's virtual talks, meetups, networking events, and conferences around UX Research. All events can be joined online from anywhere, are held in English, and are either free or comparatively low-cost to join.?View all events

?? Video of the Week.

Atomic UX research best practices talk. Daniel Pidcock, inventor of Atomic Research and founder of Glean.ly talks about the process and discusses best practices at User Research London Conference in 2022.?YouTube 09/25

?? Audio of the Week.

Ethical design and respectful UX research with Kat Zhou of epidemic sound. How do you show respect and consideration for your users? Kat Zhou explains the urgent need for ethical practices in design and research.?Spotify?Apple 09/22

Happy Researching, ?? Jan