N=1

Paula Desmond
Sep 5, 2018 · 2 min read

What do you do when you’re the sole researcher working on a problem area for your company? I have been in this situation multiple times in my career. There are two actions that you can take to be a successful sole researcher.

  1. Ruthless prioritization is essential and this requires open dialog with your stakeholders. As researchers we have a duty to help stakeholders prioritize the problems to work on. Simply saying “no, I’m not working on x” isn’t helpful to your team and precludes building positive relationships between you and your stakeholders. You will ultimately be perceived as “the blocker.” Instead, work with your stakeholders to build a framework for prioritizing problems.
  2. Scale yourself through high quality research. If you are conducting high quality research then I can guarantee that your work will be noticed by your company, and you will land yourself in the wonderful position of no longer being an N of 1. This happened to me at a company where my research resulted in leadership staffing up a new team to build on the work that I had started. Your end goal should not be to remain an N of 1. As a mature researcher you should strive to be a catalyst for seeing team growth. There will always be more work than research resources to go around.

Written by

User researcher. Ex UXR at Nuro, Uber, Facebook & Instagram, MobileIron, Citrix and Dell. Former tenured professor in human factors engineering.

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