#UXRConf Recap: Michael Massimi and Christina Janzer on building up UX Research at Slack
Michael and Christina share their research journey at Slack and some epic words of research wisdom
Dr. Michael Massimi is a Staff Researcher at Slack working on the Messaging team. His areas of expertise include human-computer interaction, computer-supported collaborative work, and social support.
Christina Janzer is the Director of Research & Analytics at Slack, responsible for leading all global research and product analytics efforts that provide insights about people and work.
In their UXRConf talk, Michael and Christina share how they built up the research team at Slack and how they created a unified roadmap.
Check out the key points below 👇
🔍 Research your stakeholders and company
- Always start with internal research — interview your stakeholders and learn about the company, business, and product.
- This step is all about understanding the company and the culture in which you are going to be doing your job.
“Talk to as many people as possible.” — Christina Janzer
👂 Don’t be limited by what you hear
- Gather stakeholder questions, but remember: you don’t have to do everything you are asked to do. As a researcher, it’s your job to dig deep and understand what stakeholders are really asking.
🕵️♀️ Plan for strategic research
- Make sure not to get too bogged down by helping your team with day to day research. It’s important work, but UXRs also need the space to scout ahead and engage in longer projects to make sure their teams are heading in the right direction
✍️ Work broadly
- UXRs usually work with designers and PMs, but we can’t forget about other departments. Don’t leave behind communications, sales, customer experience, business development, and others. Research work is important for everyone.
⏳ Take the time to properly roadmap
- Take the time, upfront, to properly roadmap — it’ll take some time but it’ll pay off later.
“People will always ask you what’s on their mind today but as a UXR you must scout ahead and ask the questions your team hasn’t asked yet.” — Christina Janzer
To put theory into practice, Michael and Christina shared a case study on the way they used research to prepare for Slack’s launch in Japan. Check out the key lessons they learned along the way:
📁 Step 1: Gather your team and questions
- Get your team together and send them off to gather stakeholder questions
- When you gather the questions, think about whether they’re solid research questions. If they aren’t — rework them.
😌 Calm down and slow down
- Resist the urge to start executing on these research questions right away. You can’t roadmap alone and you need to plan out your resource allocation first.
“Remember the difference between a research request and a research question — you see a lot of requests but not too many research questions. Find the theme among these requests.” — Michael Massimi
🔍 Identify the obvious methods
- Ignore the reality of what you’ll be able to execute for now. Stay creative!
❓ Map questions to existing (or new) methods
- Sort your research questions into research methods. Will several of these questions require a usability test? Will a handful of others require customer interviews? Group those together and keep a running methods list.
🔢 Order methods
- Think about the order you want to execute your research in: which methods will take a long time and which can be combined?
🤔 Consider the logistics
- Think about the timelines and resources necessary for each research study. How can you maximize your resources?
👌 Stakeholder sign-off
- Share your entire road map with your company. Inform them of the proposed studies and timelines and ask for input. Establish a verbal contract on the game plan.
🏃♀ Get rolling
- Keep your stakeholders engaged! Let them know how research is going — Slack is a great place to post research updates
