Lisanne Norman  entered the tech field as a UX researcher in 2015 and quickly advanced to lead researcher at Dell, then Visa. She founded Black UX Austin and was the UX lead researcher at Gusto. 

And then she left in 2022. Because she had had enough. And because she wanted to make a difference. She is now co-director of DEI at the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut.

In today’s interview, Lisanne shares her career journey and the tools she acquired in various positions along the way. We get a glimpse of what it’s like to be a Black woman in tech. We also get a hint at what it might take to keep a Black woman (or other individuals from marginalized groups) in the space. We hear of the microaggressions that can and do occur in the workplace, and Lisanne helps us imagine the exhaustion of functioning in such an environment day after day. She has worked in established, entrenched cultures and in young, seemingly flexible startups, and she found that both environments are lacking in their efforts to bring marginalized people groups to the table.     

Lisanne will be sharing more at Advancing Research 2023, March 27-29. Her talk is “Why I Left Research.” 

[00:15] Introduction of Lisanne

[01:38] Lisanne explains how she stumbled upon research as a possible career and found herself working for Dell

[05:19] Lisanne’s time working directly with Dell as part of their design team and her later transition to Visa 

[12:40] Lisanne explains the frustrations she endured at Visa and her switch to a young e-commerce company 

[19:13] Feeling weighed down by microaggressions, keeping notes, and educating those who should know better

[21:13] Covid, taking a break, Black UX Austin, Gusto, and George Floyd 

[27:55] BREAK: Books recently published by Rosenfeld Media  

[30:08] On what it would take for Lisanne to get back into UX research

[35:01] On the potential of learning from past modules of successful “adding” 

[37:41] Lisanne’s gift to our listeners: POCIT (People of Color in Tech) 

POCIT (People of Color in Tech) 

Changemakers: How Leaders Can Inspire Change in an Insanely Complex World by Maria Giudice and Christopher Ireland 

Closing the Loop: Systems Thinking for Designers by Sheryl Cababa 

Strategic Content Design: Tools and Research Techniques for Better UX by Erica Jorgensen

Advancing Research 2023

“If we design for the most marginalized, everybody benefits.” 

“It’s one thing to talk about it, and it’s another thing to actually do it.” 

“Are we confronting our own privilege and biases before we even start to think about creating a product?” 

“This is the world we live in, but this is the world that we can change.” 

“Do you have a porous enough culture and you’re thinking of people as culture adds and not culture fit?” 

“We all know the research. A company is just more productive and better when there is a diverse group of folks working there at the table and making decisions.”

Jill has been listening to customers and clients for over 20 years. She has worked for organizations like Etsy and Blue Apron, and has since started Field Notes Consulting, a research and strategic planning practice serving both public and private sectors. She is method-agnostic, harnesses full-stack research, and interrogates all data to get to the real data or the root cause.

While hard data and numbers are important, data alone does not equal insight. Making sense of the data often requires listening to customers, human-scale frameworks of things like journeys and experience mapping, and, of course, minimizing researchers’ biases.  It’s often the outside-in perspective that brings it all together to give us insight that will highlight consequences and implications. 

Jill is a champion of what she calls “interventions” and doing interventions across silos. She shares an example from her time at Blue Apron that beautifully illustrates how one research silo can lose direction without insight from other silos. Some interventions  Jill recommends include:

Jill will be leading a session, “Inconvenient Insights: The Researcher’s Role is to Stay Curious,” and a workshop, “Holistic Insights: Collapsing Functional Silos for Maximum Impact” at the Advancing Research Conference March 27-29, 2023.

[00:00] Introduction of Jill

[01:50] Jill’s role at Advancing Research Conference March 27-29th, 2023

[02:27] Jill’s love-hate relationship with data

[07:25] How we get insights from data

[09:36] Lessons from Blue Apron 

[14:13] How to perform or support interventions

[21:54] On interventions outside your area of expertise and considering the interconnectivity of the entire organization

[30:43] Looking back on information and library science school 

[34:52] Jill’s book recommendation

[36:49] Jill’s session and workshop at the upcoming Advancing Research Conference in March 

Jane Jacobs

The Power Broker by Robert Moses

FieldNotes Consulting

Advancing Research Conference 2023

“As researchers, we have to be hunters and gatherers.”

“I think I got into research because I’m not good at arguing and confrontation. How do we get to the truth without arguing?” 

“An insight truly frames the problem. The data is supporting evidence.”

“I don’t believe there are separate lanes. I think there are separate technical competencies and hard skills and whatnot, but I do think it’s one goal.” 

“We get to the truth by questioning, combining, joining, being wrong in order to figure out how to be right.”

Prayag Narula is the founder and CEO of Marvin, a tool for qualitative researchers. Prayag will also be a speaker at the Advancing Research Conference where he’ll share the stage with Rida Qadri, a research scientist at Google.  

Humans have been doing quantitative research for thousands of years – well, for as long as math has been around. Qualitative research, on the other hand, is fairly new to human history, emerging only in the 20th Century. And qualitative research has taken a backseat to what Prayag calls “the tyranny of math,” the prevailing attitude that if research is not math-based, it’s not valid. But that doesn’t diminish the importance of qualitative data. Decisions at all levels are made based on qualitative data every day. 

Here are some characteristics of qualitative research:

It’s time for qualitative research to be given its due. Enter Marvin.  

Software not only gives validity and legitimacy to qualitative research, it makes it more useful. Marvin uses AI to add context to the conversation and to help with analysis. The tool is free for individuals and teams of two researchers.

Prayag is excited about the use of open AI and ChatGBT. He’s not worried about these tools replacing researchers, but they do give researchers another data point, that is, what AI can glean from the data. AI can help us find patterns that we didn’t see before or might give an interpretation of the data or ask a question that hadn’t been previously considered. With tools like Marvin, it’s an exciting time to be in research. 

[00:00] Introduction of Prayag

[01:07] Upcoming talk at Advancing Research March 27-29, 2023

[01:29] Prayag gives a history of his entrepreneurial experience

[05:15] Prayag explains why he felt driven to provide a centralized place for data

[08:53] Does having software to support qualitative research contribute to its perceived legitimacy?

[11:00] On the nature of qualitative research being highly variable and semi-structured and what that means when it comes to writing software

[16:12] Break: Rosenfeld Media Communities

[18:16] Prayag describes the Marvin tool, available for free for individual researchers and teams of two 

[0:19:52] The role of AI in research software

[0:25:04] On AI’s ability to synthesize data across various sectors of an organization

[0:29:08] More details Prayag’s upcoming talk with Rida Qadri at Advancing Research in March 

[0:32:33] Prayag’s gift to the audience

HeyMarvin.com

Advancing Research 2023

A Tale of Two Cultures: Qualitative and Quantitative Research in Social Sciences by Gary Goertz and James Mahoney

Session details for  “HCI 2.0: Humanity Deserves the Attention that UX Research has to Offer”

“Research and qualitative research – whether we call it qualitative research or not – is one of the primary drivers of decision making for all organizations.” 

“I wanted to change the thinking that qualitative research is anecdotal, or qualitative research is not scientific, or not a base for making decisions.”

“Having a software stack that prioritizes qualitative research is extremely important in making it valid.” 

“These technologies have this huge potential both for doing good in the world but also for doing bad in the world. We believe the research community’s role is central to making sure that these technologies are built in an ethical way, they are being built with the communities, and they are being rolled out in a way that is net positive to the communities.”

Sheryl is the author of the soon-to-be-released Closing the Loop: Systems Thinking for Designers. With a background in journalism and political science, and having worked at or with Adaptive Path, Substantial, Frog, Ikea, Microsoft, and the Gates Foundation, Sheryl has an interest in the big picture of systems thinking and how it applies to designers.

Working on projects of enormous scale that could directly or indirectly affect thousands or millions of people can put researchers and designers in a state of paralysis as they realize the potential consequences of their work. Systems thinking can help move us out of that state of paralysis and into one of thought, collaboration, and action.  

Sheryl explains how systems thinking fills the gaps that design thinking alone can leave behind.

An approach like the above will feel slower – at least initially. If you have impatient supervisors and engineers, gain alignment with them by getting them involved in the process.

[00:00] Introduction

[01:44] Ways to overcome decision paralysis

[04:55] Navigating the complexities of the world through systems thinking

[06:45] The problem with formalized systems thinking

[08:24] Design thinking vs. systems thinking

[13:22] The kinds of interventions that drive successful innovation

[15:42] How long-term thinking helps overcome compliance issues

[17:38] The difference between Cloud Space and Clock Space

[22:10] How designers can tell their superiors to slow down

[25:22] An easy way to gain alignment with your decision-makers

[30:38] Sheryl’s gift to the audience

[32:05] Parting thoughts

The Book of Delights by Ross Gay

Closing the Loop: Systems Thinking for Designers by Sheryl Cababa

“Find different points of intervention that can lead to innovation.”

“That allows you to use your design capabilities to help facilitate other people’s knowledge.”

“It might be frustrating to do analysis upfront, but it’s necessary even if you can’t do anything about it.”

“Those maps are a good form of analysis, but they’re not a great form of communication.”

“’Broaden the lens’ means gaining alignment so that there can be actionable decision making not just through your activities and what you’re equipped to do but that others can enact as well.”