Awkward Silences

Roberta Dombrowski, VP of UX Research at User Interviews, is back for the second instalment of Tacos and Tide Pods with Erin and JH. In this episode, they discuss the importance of an effective personal productivity process, overestimated expectations, and the (very Tide Pod-y) state of the global economy.

In this episode:

• Creating a research repository at User Interviews
• Setting up an effective personal productivity process
• Overestimated expectations
• Meetings vs asynchronous collab

Most people—including product people—don't think of their career as a product. And even the best researchers often neglect to do the research to identify suitable roles and opportunities. The result? They stay in roles for too long, or accept one that simply doesn't align with their career goals, interest, or values. They burn out and feel stuck. 

Sarah Doody, Founder and CEO of Career Strategy Lab, joins us to share why you should start thinking of your User Research career as a product and how you can start doing so today.

In this episode:

• How to treat your UX career like a product
• How to build (and follow) your career roadmap
• Managing the UX role application process

Highlights

• [1:05] What does it mean to treat something like a product?
• [3:59] How to start treating your own career like a product
• [10:02] Understanding the UX market
• [17:44] Uncovering UX hiring processes and principles
• [24:05] Do UXers still need resumes?
• [29:29] Tailoring your application to the role
• [36:06] The “career value criteria document”
• [39:01] Asking the right questions
• [44:32] “There's a time to earn, and there's a time to learn”
• [45:56] Are there any downsides to treating your UX career like a product?
• [49:02] How to take ownership of your education

🏆 Looking for more ways to learn and connect? Follow these Top UX Research Leaders on Linkedin.

Sources mentioned in the episode

• Recruit qualified participants fast (User Interviews)
• Career Strategy Lab's UX workshops, courses, and trainings (UX Portfolio Formula)
• How to ask someone to review your UX portfolio or resume (UX Portfolio Formula)
• How to find a UX mentor (Sarah Doody)
• UX Recruiter & Hiring Manager Interviews (Sarah Doody)

About our guest

Sarah Doody is the Founder and CEO of Career Strategy Lab, a job search accelerator and UX recruiting agency for UX and Product professionals. In 2017, she founded The UX Portfolio Formula, a UX career accelerator that helps UX professionals create, cultivate, and achieve their career goals. 

In the world of product design, wordsmiths go by many names—UX writers, content strategists, product writers, and so on. But whatever you call them, these folks play an important role in developing seamless user experiences.

Yuval Keshtcher is the Founder of the UX Writing Hub, an online education platform helping hundreds of people perfect their UX writing. He joins us to explain the difference between UX writing and content design, how the discipline is growing, and his favorite writing resources.

In this episode:

• Creative ways to do research for UX writing
• How the UX writing process works in theory and practice
• What makes a great UX write

Highlights

[2:00] Are UX Writing and Content Design the same?

[6:27] Where do UX writers sit in an organization?

[8:40] To be a great UX writer, you need to master research.

[11:05] How to use conversation mining to communicate better with users.

[17:23] How many emojis can we really use in UX copy?

[25:04] How easy is it to change product copy later?

[28:37] If you don't have a UX writer, start with a content design system.

Sources mentioned in the episode

​​Top 16 Content Style Guides 2022 (and How to Use Them)

Words Matter: Testing Copy With Shakespeare

About our guest

Yuval Keshtcher is the founder of the UX Writing Hub. UX Writing Hub is an online education platform for all things UX writing. The UX Writing Hub has helped hundreds of professionals transition into UX writing and content design. He also hosts the Writers in Tech podcast.

We’re changing things up a bit! Introducing a brand new series: Tacos and Tide Pods! Every month or so, Erin and JH will chat with User Interviews’s VP of Research, Roberta Dombrowski. They’ll talk about what’s going on behind the scenes at User Interviews, reflect on recent lessons learned, share their thoughts on the UXR space right now, and discuss what they're hoping to see more of in the future.

Context acts as the bridge between an abstract idea (’a comfortable user experience’) and a tangible design (‘cushioned, breathable running shoes’). Although gaining context through remote research can be tricky, our UXR friends with an anthropological background know the solution: Digital ethnography.

This week, we’re joined by Megan McLean, User Researcher at Spotify. Megan shared the who-what-and-how of digital ethnography, what she’s learned about mapping the digital landscape, and how she ensures her ethnography projects succeed.

Highlights

[03:55] The core tenets of ethnography

[06:50] Spend more time with your data throughout your study to get the most out of it.

[10:01] What is digital ethnography anyway?

[14:09] How Megan gets her participants to go deep on the subjects she wants to learn about

[16:05] Pros and cons of the pandemic’s effect on research

[19:28] How Megan recreates more real life context in her interviews

[23:20] How does the audio first platform of Spotify change the way you look at things?

[27:17] Who is digital ethnography a good fit for?

[30:28] How Megan makes things simpler for her participants

[36:36] The difference between writing analysis for usability studies and for ethnographies

[39:14] What Megan’s learned about people and technology through her work

About our guest

Megan McLean is a User Research Manager at Spotify. Before Spotify, Megan received a Masters in Anthropology, worked in academia, and on UX research teams at places like Ipsos. 

Public libraries have been using insights repositories for decades—and it’s time user research teams catch up. This week, we’re joined by Nada Alnakeeb, Head of Design and Research Operations at DoorDash, and Joanna Perez, Sr. Taxonomy Strategist/Digital Archivist, Studio Production at Netflix.

Nada and Joanna shared learnings from their experience building the insights repository at Meta, using familiar organizational patterns to reduce mental load, tips for effective taxonomies, and more.

Highlights

• [00:01:34] Their experience building the repository at Meta
• [00:05:54] How to archive fleeting or one-off insights
• [00:07:59] Tools and teams required to build a minimum viable repository
• [00:09:10] Building a low-budget repository
• [00:11:20] What is an ‘insight’?
• [00:13:23] Using familiar organizational patterns to reduce mental load
• [00:24:53] Buying vs. building in-house
• [00:33:29] Considerations for scale
• [00:36:52] Measuring success and value  

What is design psychology? Thomas Watkins of 3Leaf compares it to ergonomics—both fields aim to make products feel as comfortable as possible for their users. Where ergonomics is concerned with things like the shape of your office chair’s back or the height of its armrests, design psychology is all about making software experiences more intuitive and reducing cognitive load.

This week on the podcast, Thomas chatted with Erin and JH about the similarities and differences between design psychology and UX research, risks and need-to-knows for psychologists transitioning into business research, the power of mental models, and more.

Highlights

• [01:08] What is design psychology?
• [05:44] Similarities and differences between design psychology and UX research
• [08:32] Practical examples: Superiority effect, perpetual intermediates, mental loads
• [13:59] What psychologists need to learn to thrive in business research
• [18:26] Risks of applying design psychology in UX
• [26:03] Why Thomas likes bringing his expertise to UX research
• [26:59] The power of mental models like JTBD

About our guest 

Thomas Watkins is UX architect and Principal and Founder of 3Leaf. He is a life-long learner who has a passion for bringing greater clarity to the world.  Thomas has made it his career’s focus to combine technology with design psychology in order to drive business success. He specializes in helping his business partners bring their own brilliant ideas to life, by translating complexity into simplicity. The scope of his work has included interface design for mobile, SaaS system architecture, usability research, and data visualization.

The State of User Research 2022 Report unpacks the data from our international survey of UX researchers and people who do research as part of their jobs. 

This week, we met with Roberta Dombrowski, VP of User Research at User Interviews and one of the creators of the report, to talk about how it was made and what she thinks of the insights. She talked about the rise of buy-in and demand for research, what democratization means for professional researchers, and her predictions for the future of user research.

Doing user research in an agency setting comes with its own set of challenges—from context switching to stubborn clients to less-than-optimal tool stacks.

Karen VanHouten, Director of Product Strategy at Philosophie by InfoBeans, spent most of her career in enterprise B2B before transitioning to agency life. In this podcast episode, Karen shared some great advice on setting expectations, fostering ongoing client relationships, and why she thinks more researchers should be involved in the sales cycle.

Episode highlights

• [00:01:29] Transitioning from enterprise B2B to agency life
• [00:03:05] The value of getting involved in the sales cycle as a researcher
• [00:06:04] Which clients does Karen not want to work with?
• [00:13:00] Setting clear client expectations
• [00:20:10] Why her team only uses essential tools
• [00:24:35] Building trust by saying “no”  
• [00:27:59] Finding your champion
• [00:33:14] Recruiting for client projects
• [00:37:54] Should you make the move to an agency?

Resources mentioned in this episode

• Kim Goodwin on stakeholder research
• Essential tools: Google Sheets, MURAL, Miro
• Just Enough Research, Erika Hall

About our guest

Karen VanHouten has over 20 years of experience as a UX professional and strategist, with a focus on B2B & SaaS. She uses human-centered design principles to build useful & accessible digital products and healthy and impactful product teams. Karen is currently the UX Practice Lead at TMG.

The democratization of research continues to grow—and with it, the complexities of research operations. This week, we chatted with Garrett Tsukada, Head of Customer Connect UX Research Operations at Intuit about how research ops supports democratization at scale. He talked about how Intuit approaches research democratization for a 14,000+ team, guardrails and processes to ensure research quality, advice for starting and scaling a research operations function, and more.

Highlights

• [04:39] How Intuit approaches research democratization at scale
• [11:53] The compounding value of research education
• [13:28] Guardrails and processes to ensure research quality
• [24:02] Keeping up with the growing demand for democratization
• [27:37] Balancing the 6 pillars of research operations
• [32:18] Advice for starting and scaling a research operations function

About our guest

Garett Tsukada is Head of Customer Connect UX Research Operations at Intuit. He leads a global Research Ops team to amplify the value and impact of connecting with customers at scale, drive operational impact, and foster a culture of innovation and customer obsession.