Awkward Silences

You’ve mastered the basics, but now it’s time to take your interviews to the next level. This week, we chatted with Therese Fessenden, Senior User Experience Specialist at NN/g about how to get even better at interviewing. She talked about how to master the basics, hone your skills, and become an A+ interviewer.

Highlights

• [3:40] You can get more out of your interviews by going in with a solid plan.
• [9:44] Mastering probing questions.
• [20:36] Common mistakes people make when they get comfortable doing research, like oversharing.
• [29:19] Staying objective as you get further into the research and learn more.
• [33:52] How do you know you're getting better at interviews?
• [35:10] Doing inclusive research. 

About our guest

Therese Fessenden is a Senior User Experience Specialist with Nielsen Norman Group, host of the NN/g UX Podcast, and manager of the 1-Hour Talk program. Her research focuses on understanding human behaviors, attitudes, and expectations in order to better orchestrate system and service design strategies.

Should everyone do research? It’s a tricky question. Yes, research is a craft that takes years to master. But on the other hand, if we want research to happen all the time, everyone needs to be able to do some of the basics on their own. Today, we talked to Jonathan Widawski, Founder and CEO of Maze about how the democratization of research is actually advancing the craft. He talked about the need for researchers to be good teachers, how research can grow in the same way data and design did, and why the future is user-centric.

Highlights

• [4:52] Ultimately, research teams need to scale to meet the rising demand. But democratization is a good way to increase an organization's learning potential and the visibility of research.
• [8:25] How do we balance good research practices with letting everyone participate?
• [14:55] Unlike disciplines like data and design, research needs to be guided by an expert at multiple points in the process.
• [19:13] The Maze team’s research process.
• [23:07] How to balance being your own user with getting out of the building. 
• [25:06] What Jonathan is excited about as research advances.

About our guest

Jonathan Widawski is the Founder and CEO at Maze. He’s a veteran Product Designer & former UX teacher. As a UX lead working with clients like McKinsey, Rocket Internet & PSG, he saw first-hand how hard it is for product teams to get the data, insights, and feedback they need to make confident design decisions. Now he’s co-founded Maze, the continuous product discovery platform for user-centric teams.

It’s our most meta episode yet. Today, we chatted with Roberta Dombrowski, VP of User Research at User Interviews, about doing user research about user researchers at a user research company. Listen in to learn about how adding a formal user research practice has benefited the UI team, the challenges of going from an IC to a leadership role, and building a research practice from the ground up.

Highlights

[2:58] What’s different about being a user researcher for a user research platform.

[11:04] Roberta's biggest wins from adding a formal researcher to the UI team.

[16:27] Tackling insight management when lots of people do research.

[22:33] Lessons from talking to lots of different researchers about their work.

[27:57] Why are so many researchers introverts?

[30:50] On making the transition from an IC researcher to a research leader.

[34:26] Our hosts reflect on what’s changed since Awkward Silences began.

Recruiting participants for user research is hard. Recruiting participants from a pool of your own customers? Somehow even harder. There’s client relationships, privacy concerns, and lots of red tape. This week on the podcast, Matthew Morrison joins Erin and JH to share what he’s learned after a year of B2B recruiting at Braze.

Highlights

• [2:04]The key problems with B2B recruiting.
• [8:22] Make your sessions as short as possible, 30-45 minutes is best.
• [12:53] How to make users feel connected to research, even if you can’t offer an incentive.
• [16:53] How to work with internal stakeholders to get better response rates from participants.
• [23:08] How Matt built a study about new Braze users with a lookalike panel of people who had never used Braze. 
• [33:09] Steering clear of over contacting participants, even with a small pool. 
• [38:09] What Matt's thinking about going into 2022.

About our guest

Matthew Morrison is a UX Research Manager at Braze. Before Braze, he worked on the research teams at Etsy and WillowTree. He’s excited by the challenge of B2B recruitment and is looking forward to continuing to improve his practice.

What’s it like to be black in UX right now? Are companies sticking by their plans for diversity and inclusion? How do researchers ensure their work is as inclusive as possible? This week on the podcast, Dr. Lisanne Norman joins Erin and JH to talk about all this and more.

Highlights

• [8:13] What to do when people try to make diversity and inclusion your job. 
• [11:12] How including Black participants created aha! moments.
• [18:01] Creating an environment of openness with participants is key to understanding their experiences.
• [23:56] How Black UX Austin came to be.
• [29:52] The challenge of communicating to companies the value candidates can bring without relying on big name schools or bootcamps.
• [33:49] How to recognize if a company is just talking the talk or if they're walking the walk when it comes to diversity.
• [38:58] Lisanne talks about what’s on the horizon for DEI in tech. 

About our guest

Dr. Lisanne Norman is the Director of the Walter J. Crain Fellowship at the Hotchkiss School (formerly UX Research Lead at Gusto). She’s also a founder of Black UX Austin. She’s an advocate for creating more inclusive environments in tech and passionate about uncovering insights and trends that translate into creating inclusive digital products that anyone can use.

Creating a video game requires more than just development time and coding—to make sure the experience is enjoyable, you have to test it. In this episode, User Researcher Steve Bromley joins us to discuss the nuances of conducting user research in the video game industry.

He describes integrating user feedback with the developer's creative vision, recruitment for games research, and the evolution of the gaming industry since he first started.

Steve talks about…

• How to integrate user feedback with the developer’s creative vision.
• What playtesting is (and isn't).
• The surprising challenges of recruiting video game testers.

Highlights

• [00:01:16] So what exactly is “games user research?”
• [00:03:15] What do you mean by “playtesting?”
• [00:16:51] How do you navigate something as broad as “making a game fun?”
• [00:27:48] Steve talks about what it’s like to be on the bleeding edge of games research.
• [00:38:17] How the field has changed since Steve first started out.

About our guest

Steve Bromley specializes in establishing new user research teams and in user research for video games. He wrote Building User Research Teams and How to Be A Game User Researcher. He works with mobile studios, indie teams, AAA teams and VR studios to help them run playtests and integrate user research into the production process. Prior to this, he was a lead user researcher for the PlayStation VR headset.

How do you build a long lasting research practice? Aim for a healthy one. Gregg Bernstein you how. 

This week on the podcast, Gregg talked to us about how to contribute to a healthy research practice every day and what a healthy practice even means.

Highlights

• [3:26] Can you have a healthy research function without dedicated researchers?
• [14:20] Sharing contextualized insights with relevant teams can help you build value as you work.
• [24:40] What's an unhealthy research culture?
• [33:13] Contributing to a healthy research culture every day.
• [36:41] UXR Hot Topics: Democratization and research culture.
• [40:03] UXR Hot Topics: Burnout and research culture.

About our guest

Gregg Bernstein is the Director of User Research at Hearst Magazines (formerly UX Research lead at Condé Nast, and wrote the book "Research Practice: Perspectives from UX researchers in a changing field." He spends his days advocating for and practicing user-centered product development. Previously he managed innovative research practices at Vox Media and Mailchimp.

Doing research with users from different cultures is (very, very) important. It can also be complicated. In this episode, we are joined by Norah Abokhodair, Senior Program Manager at Microsoft, who spoke about conducting research in Arab cultures.

She explained some of the nuances of Arabic and Arab cultures, how to recruit diverse participants, and how to adjust your research style depending on the context.

Highlights

• [2:11] If you want to build products for everyone, include a more diverse audience in your research.
• [6:44] Diversely designed experiences are our right—overcoming a cultural hesitancy to critique “Western” products.
• [12:57] Context matters—adjusting your research style to different cultural expectations.
• [18:07] Norah's top recruiting tip for recruiting participants from Arabic cultures.
• [20:02] How to remain sensitive when doing research in a culture that is not your own.
• [31:56] Balancing confusing research logistics with recruiting a diverse population.

About our guest

Norah Abokhodair is a product manager and UX leader focused on global, ethical, and inclusive tech. At the time of our interview, Norah was a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft where she led UX research planning and strategy for Microsoft Learning Innovation Studio including projects focused on machine learning, personalization, and AI fairness. Prior to Microsoft, Norah received her PhD at the University of Washington, where her research focused on social media in Arabic cultures. 

What is participatory research? And how do you include it in your UXR practice? Alexis McNutt Unis, Lead UX Researcher, Homeowner Experience at Better is here to explain.

Alexis shared how she involves stakeholders in engaging workshops, co-creates with participants, and takes research readouts to the next level to drive a participatory research practice that works for everyone.

Highlights

• [1:29] What is participatory research anyway?
• [4:58] How Alexis does participatory research.
• [11:54] The five Es—Entice, Enter, Engage, Exit, Extend.
• [23:09] How do you decide when to involve which people in participatory research?
• [32:35] Participatory research strategies for beginners.
• [37:20] How Alexis sets expectations for participatory sessions.

We learned so much in this week’s episode of Awkward Silences. Samuel Proulx, Accessibility Evangelist at Fable, joined us to talk to us about accessibility and why it (really, really) matters.

He taught us about the assistive technologies that many people with disabilities use to navigate the digital world, why accessibility is more important now than ever, and how designing for accessibility makes everyone’s user experience better.

Highlights

• [2:09] What an Accessibility Evangelist does.
• [7:39] ​​How to start doing research with people with disabilities.
• [15:59] Start your accessibility journey by making sure accessibility feedback has somewhere to go. 
• [17:21] How to find users with disabilities without collecting HIPPA-protected information.
• [19:19] People who use assistive technology are a skilled pool of participants and should be compensated accordingly.
• [25:52] Why online research is often more accessible for people with disabilities.
• [34:56] A few things researchers can do to make participants with disabilities feel more comfortable during research.
• [44:11] Think of accessibility as a way to improve user experience, not as a checklist you have to comply with.