Erin and Carol are joined by Emily Wurgler, Global Director of Experience Design at McDonald's, whose journey has had many moments of evolution and iteration. She started as an academic researcher in sociology, transitioned to innovation research at growth stage companies, and ultimately to her leading enterprise research and design teams.

Emily talks about the unique value researchers bring to design leadership, how she's had to adapt her approach, and explains how product experiences are iterated and improved at large companies with a strong design-research partnership. Emily also shares how she's preparing her team of designers for the future of UX work and the characteristics she looks for in a new hire.

Highlights

• 07:30 Essential User Understanding for Product Success
• 13:50 Identifying Users for McDonald's Enterprise Products
• 24:38 Developing Innovative Product Solutions for Shift Leadership
• 30:46 Balancing Innovation with Existing Workflow Challenges
• 34:56 Cultivating Patience and Persistence for Organizational Change
• 39:05 Ranking Four Attributes: A Favorite Interview Question

About Emily
Emily Wurgler is the Global Director, Experience Design at McDonald's. She has over a decade of research experience at places like PeaPod Labs, dscout, and Over the Shoulder. She has a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Indiana.

Resources

• UX Designer's Guide to Research
• Working in Design Research Consulting
• Design Thinking for Better Partnerships

Few companies are most closely associated with UX design right now than Figma, which not only helps designers get their work done, but serves as a bridge for others to get more involved in the process. Erin and Carol are joined by Andrew Hogan, Figma's Head of Insights, to explore  the nature of collaboration today and how the structure of that collaboration can impact our ability to effect UX change.

Andrew shares some of his team's own research on design collaboration, from how it's changed, what still needs improving, and how UX professionals can collaborate better. This includes the growing and evolving impact of AI. He also talks about what he learned during his recent parental leave—including the pervasiveness of screens—and how he's applying that learning to his own team.

Highlights

• 11:13 Design's Role in Software and Team Collaboration
• 18:01 Diverse Methods for Sharing Research Insights
• 20:46 Uncertain Future of AI: Expectations Reset
• 24:34 AI's Impact on Productivity and Team Collaboration
• 29:49 Overcoming Challenges: Standing Out in Content Saturation
• 33:05 Perceptions of Change: Exploring Role Spikiness

About Andrew
Andrew Hogan conducts research on the design industry and design practices to figure out what’s happening. He love anecdotes, anecdata and data. He also likes to write and speak about what he finds, sometimes in the form of jokes and is occasionally quoted by places like Fast Company, WSJ, Forbes, CNN, Business Insider, AdAge, CIO.com and Tech Republic. In the past he authored/co-authored 50+ Forrester reports about design, UX, CX and the design industry, and created CX certification training modules on journey mapping and data/AI + design.

Resources

• A Designer's Guide to UX Research
• Product x Research Collaboration Report
• The 2024 AI in UX Research Report

Change is an important and inevitable part of developing as a user experience professional. But what does change look like when it happens at the organizational level? That is the focus of this episode, featuring Graham Gardner, VP of UX Design Research Operations at U.S. Bank. He joins Erin and Carol to talk about change management, which is the practice and process of evolving and adapting a company's approach to something.

Graham takes us inside his strategy for this, including how team structures can affect change (and their impact on research tooling). He also unpacks just how important Research Operations (ReOps) is to planning, executing, and managing change at an organizational level. Finally, Graham looks ahead to the impacts of AI and how he believes it might help teams like CX, analytics, and marketing work together better.

If you've ever wondered about how companies grow and develop, and how these developments can impact user insights, check it out.

Highlights

• 08:16 Enhancing Collaboration through Transparent Tool Mapping
• 14:37 Harmonizing AI and Human Roles for Success
• 20:44 From Projects to Service Design: A Strategic Shift
• 23:46 Research Insights: Steering Through Complexity for Success
• 28:40 Integrating Research into Client Relationship Strategies
• 31:37 Insights from Backgrounds: Decoding Environmental Cues

About Graham
Graham Gardner, VP of UX Design Research Operations at U.S. Bank, is a researcher, designer, strategist, and maker. He brings a human-centered design lens to research ops (thanks to a long stint at IDEO and a background in inclusive education research). He works to collaboratively and iteratively understand and design research and design ecosystems that grow and evolve with the changing contexts of our beautifully messy world and the people that live in it. Conversations with Graham usually involve dad jokes, dog cameos, and snack breaks.

More Resources

• Guide to UX Research Strategy
• AI in UX Research Report
• The Importance of Research Operations

The consulting firm IDEO helped pioneer "design thinking" as a way to create products that better solve customer wants and needs, creating fans. Over 30 years later, the interplay between design and research has never been more important.

Will Notini joins to dig into that interplay—how research is at the heart of design and vice versa. In particular, he thinks the best companies are using design research principles to explore new opportunities, both what they create and how those experiences function.

Will also shares a framework for researching "fast and slow," the importance of participant recruitment, and how building trust with colleagues creates more impactful, lasting user insights.

Highlights

• 04:11 Uncovering Unbiased Insights Through Exploratory Design
• 12:20 Finding Participants Who Truly Care and Invest
• 19:43 Building Trust for Collaborative Design Discussions
• 24:54 Interdisciplinary Collaboration and Expertise-Sharing at IDEO
• 30:37 Simulated Research: Addressing Urgency and Resource Challenges
• 34:10 Iterative Learning: Updating Assumptions and Approaches

About Will
Will Notini is a Senior Design Research Lead at IDEO, where he is a generalist —drawing on his training in social science research to execute design and innovation work for clients in a range of industries. In his role, he manages multi-disciplinary teams and leads the research.

His background is in anthropology and did mixed methods market research in the restaurant industry before transitioning to design research and has been at IDEO since. He has also recently picked up an MBA and a potentially unhealthy (unrelated) obsession with tennis.

Resources

• The Designer's Guide to User Research
• How to Recruit Participants for Research
• Storytelling Basics for UX Researchers

The craft of UX research is at an all-time high. How research leaders structure, staff, and scale their teams is more important than ever. Erin and Carol are joined by Brad Orego, Head of Research at Webflow, to talk all about the ways we can build better research teams.

Brad shares their three-step process for creating a research practice that's ready to deliver for the business, including the questions you must ask stakeholders. Using examples from Webflow, Brad also talks about tactical considerations such as managing cross-team research requests, the importance of Operations, and how they think AI will help with democratization.

This is must-listen for anyone building a research team, looking for ways to expand their influence or impact, and even early career folks who want a look inside an innovate team.

Highlights

• 03:14 Building Relationships and Networks for Long-Term Success
• 16:18 Monitoring Customer Trends for Strategic Insights
• 22:26 Optimizing Best Practices and Research Insights Activation
• 29:37 Enhancing Efficiency and Reducing Risk Through Automation
• 36:22 Four Key Questions to Guide Your Research
• 40:41 Strategic Evolution and Research Maturity at Webflow

About Brad
Brad (they/them) is a UX Leader, User Researcher, Coach, and Dancer who's been helping companies from early-stage startup to Fortune 500 develop engaging, fulfilling experiences and build top-tier Research & Design practices since 2009. They have helped launch dozens of products, touched hundreds of millions of users, managed budgets ranging from $0 to $10M+, and coached hundreds of Researchers.

Resources

• Building a UX Research Team From Scratch
• Create Lasting UX Impact With Stakeholders
• The Three Facets of High-Impact Research

In our Season 3 finale, Erin and Carol are joined by Caroline Morchio, Head of UX at Dashlane, a credential management platform. Their conversation explores UX research best practices at a security-minded organization like Dashlane, highlighting other what teams can bring to their own work.

Caroline shares the ways she structures the UX team to support the product landscape at Dashlane, their processes for empowering colleagues to contribute to research, and why she prefers a "decentralized" model. The conversation also unpacks the core skills that Caroline emphasizes no matter the company: storytelling, actionable insights, and templates. Together, these help her team maintain rigor while scaling to meet new user experiences opportunities.

Finally, Caroline discusses how to balance the security and usability when conducting UX research, and forecasts what the future of data privacy and security might have in store, like passwordless authentication.
 
Episode Highlights

• 04:27 Implementing research in stages
• 07:22 The strategic impact of UX on a business
• 11:23 Focusing on ICP segmentation and user sophistication
• 18:06 The importance of privacy and data security
• 23:01 Decentralizing research processes
• 30:17 The importance of research in complex technology

About Our Guest
Caroline is a Design leader with experience in innovative companies transforming their industries. She has led design teams through all phases of product development and fostered a culture of open collaboration and feedback. Caroline was previously VP of Design at Handshake, Neuralink, and is now an AWS Design ambassador and Head of UX at Dashlane.

More Resources on Security in UXR

• A Researcher's Guide to Data Privacy Regulations
• NDAs and Consent Forms for UX Research
• Examining Ethical Design and Respectful UX

Erin and Carol are joined by Jo Widawski, founder and CEO of Maze, to discuss the major findings from their "Future of User Research" report, which unearthed three trends animating researchers, PMs, and founders alike: 1) the demand for research is growing, 2) research democratization empowers stronger decision making, and 3) new technology—like generative AI—allows teams to scale their research.

Erin, Carol, and Jo unpack each of these trends, flagging what they mean for both the work of researchers and the value of research more broadly. For example, these trends signal a rise in importance of the research generalist, the critical value of stakeholder influence, and the skills tomorrow's successful researcher must build today. Together, these trends and skills help create a roadmap for how researcher's can grow from a tactical resource to a strategic partner.

Episode Highlights

• 03:57 The nature of research in organizations
• 11:01 Transitioning researcher roles: from operational to educational
• 18:01 The importance of democratization in design
• 22:43 Overcoming resistance to research in design
• 30:25 AI's impact on user research trust
• 37:59 Understanding competitive landscape in building products

About Our Guest
Jo Widawksi 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.

More Resources

• Read the 2024 State of User Research Report (from UI)
• Read the Future of User Research Report (from Maze)
• Learn how to create stronger stakeholder relationships

Erin is joined by Auzita Irani, a research manager at AirBnB to discuss being a more efficient user experience researcher. In today's work world, resources—time, budget, headcount—always seem to be in limited supply. How can we balance these things along with other important elements of our research practices? Auzita has been thinking about "doing more with less" for a long time and shares practical strategies.

After discussing the challenges facing today's UX researcher, the conversation shifts to what Auzita has seen work for researchers, both those working in large and small companies. Erin and Auzita touch on tools (like AI), tactics (like prioritization frameworks), and collaboration approaches to work more productively with stakeholders and teammates. They also discuss burnout's effects and the ways of combatting it.

Finally, Erin and Auzita make some predictions on where UX is headed in the months and year ahead, and what these trends might mean for our work.

Episode Highlights

• 03:53: Challenges and strategies of "doing more with less"
• 11:23: Addressing time and deadline constraints
• 21:38: Failure modes and avoiding burnout
• 32:05: Balancing tactical and strategic work
• 38:21: Emphasizing your research's impact
• 44:57: Adapting to blurred work boundaries

About Our Guest
Auzita has a background in computer engineering and Human Computer Interaction. She currently leads teams dedicated to optimizing customer support experiences and developing cutting edge AI tooling solutions at Airbnb. Prior to this she led the research and annotation teams at Sprig working on streamlining the process of obtaining real-time insights for product teams.

More Resources on Research Efficiency

• Scaling yourself while combatting burnout
• Doing user research on any budget
• A blueprint for scaling UX research

It's our 150th episode! To celebrate, we brought together three thought leaders for a discussion about UX research's future. Erin and Carol are joined by Judd Antin, Dave Hora, and Christiana Lackner, who bring over 40 years of combined experience in UX research, both as practitioners and leaders.

This wide-ranging conversation combines our guests' reflections on the trends that brought UX to its current moment with an analysis of what the future holds—and how we can prepare ourselves (and our teams) for it. From strategies on creating more business value for our work to tips for creating stronger cross-functional partnerships, this conversation will equip you with practical steps to future-proof your research practice.

Episode Highlights

• 09:28 - The evolution of the UX research industry
• 15:48 - Adapting UX methods for team dynamics
• 21:56 - Balancing our focus between the business and the user
• 30:45 - The role of UX research in fostering shared understanding 
• 41:18 - Planning strategically and anticipating team needs
• 47:27 - The promise of AI for user experience professionals

About Our Guests
Judd Antin is an executive coach, consultant, advisor, writer, and teacher, leveraging his 15 years of experience as a research, design, and product executive at top companies (Meta, Airbnb) and his PhD in Social Psychology & Information Systems from UC Berkeley to help individuals and organizations achieve their goals and overcome their challenges.

Dave Hora is the founder of Dave's Research Co. where he helps product teams drive critical initiatives with the right mix of data, insight, and common sense. He began professional research work in 2011, eventually starting the practice as the first research hire at six companies, including PlanGrid and Instacart.

Christiana Lackner is a UX research leader and dot connector. She's building research maturity within organizations so that teams involve the right people, ask the right questions, and act on the answers.

More Resources on the Future of UX Research

• The role AI will play in the future of UXR
• Connecting UX research to business revenue
• The 2023 State of User Research Report

In this episode, Erin and Carol sit down with Tyler Wanlass, lead product designer at CommandBar, to explore practical strategies for conducting user research without a dedicated research team. They dig into techniques that designers and product managers can use to gather valuable insights efficiently, especially in resource-constrained environments. Tyler's approach is scrappy, flexible, and creative.

Tyler shares some of the tools that create his research toolkit, including efficient note-taking, creative approaches to participant recruitment, and mixed-methods continuous discovery methods. He explains how session recordings and account impersonation can offer deeper insights when primary research isn't possible. Tyler reinforces the value of proactive research, such as social listening and competitive analysis.

This is a useful conversation for anyone without "researcher" in their title, but who wants to increase their customer engagement, build more thoughtful products, and do so in a way that respects both budgets and timelines.

Episode Highlights

• 03:16 - The scrappy mindset: learning from real-life experiences
• 10:21 - Broadening perspective through cross-industry inspiration
• 16:12 - Proactive user research for connecting and learning
• 24:17 - Streamlining customer feedback with TL;DR summaries
• 36:51 - Tools and tactics for customer insights
• 44:09 - The importance of pricing and packaging

About Our Guest
Tyler design interfaces for software products, builds internet businesses, and occasionally writes books. In his off time he's renovating a 100 year old Victorian house in the Pacific Northwest. In a past life he designed video games.

More Resources on UX Research for Designers and PMs

• The Product Manager's Guide to UX Research
• The UX Designer's Guide to Research
• Uncomplicated Recruitment for Non-Researchers
• "People Who Do Research," a Discovery Study