Farisha Mohd — Getting psyched with UX research
Pure white lab coats, gigantic yellow-rimmed glasses, flanked by blue and red liquids in medium-sized beakers. On the side, stacks of documents hanging loosely off the edge of the desk…
This is it. This is the moment, the breakthrough of the year. It’s now or —
— Hang on a minute, something’s not right. That’s not what UX researchers look like or even do, according to senior UX researcher Farisha, better known as ‘Fairy’ in her social circles. There’s often a world of misunderstanding that plagues many UX advocates, and UX researchers shoulder the brunt of that confusion.
“When we say “UX research,” most of the time people think that we’re in a lab with test tubes and stuff like that,” Farisha said. If you’ve ever worked with a UX researcher, you would know that they don’t spend their time hanging around Bunsen burners in a lab.
For others who are not as familiar with the intricacies of UX research, like Farisha’s grandmother, simplifying it down into words can be difficult.
“My grandma will ask “What do you do?” and a lot of the time, I’ll contextualise it for her,” Farisha said. She would pick out specific examples of apps that her grandmother uses daily, like the Maybank2u app or health tracking apps, to provide greater clarity into what she does.
“I would tell her that before these apps were launched, it was confusing and difficult to use. And I just did research on how to make it better.”
When Farisha isn’t keeping pace with new anime titles, or filling her bookshelf with glorious new spines from her favourite authors like Haruki Murakami, she’s guiding her team and others around her to uncover the real value of research.
Entering the realms of UX research
In the field of UX, research bridges the gap between enhancement, satisfaction, and user delight. But the undimmed question still remains: what does the day-to-day life of a UX researcher look like? Farisha broke it down into a few different aspects.
Firstly, there’s execution, where research takes on a range of purposes and responsibilities. This includes uncovering user needs to handling evaluative research for new sets of designs, where Farisha and her team bring their expertise to the various projects.
Where attention is required, the team fills in gaps to provide data, knowledge and testing, while suggesting the right methodology that is best suited to guide the research.
Secondly, there’s collaboration. Farisha works with a suite of UX designers, content designers, and more to empower them to make better design decisions. She helps to provide details on specific key features and past data to point them in the right direction, all while being user-focused.
In her role as a senior UX researcher, Farisha also helps to mentor and facilitate the growth of those she works with. Even if one may not qualify as a researcher, the team’s doors are always open.
“We need to make sure the people we onboard to execute the research methodology — be it other researchers, designers, writers, or anyone — are clear and know how to carry out the research itself,” Farisha said.
Apart from fighting the good fight for users, Farisha also helps to set up practices and routines within the research team. Each individual gets to share their respective knowledge and experience, making every morning huddle a lot more meaningful.
“It used to only be a roll call, but now, with everyone working on different projects, we’re utilising the time in these huddles for learning and sharing,” she explained. These huddles and routines also helps everyone grow, provide health and sanity checks on one another, and serve as greater avenues for support.
As the field continues to grow wider, one might encounter a UX researcher hailing from a plethora of backgrounds, just like Farisha and her team. These backgrounds include statistics, IT and design, and many more, with each individual bringing a specific skill set to their role as they deepen their craft.
With the team’s kaleidoscopic background, Farisha believes that there are two important values when entering into the field of UX research: curiosity and resilience.
Curiosity to dive deeper, to learn more, and to uncover golden opportunities to further elevate a product’s design or use. Resilience, on the other hand, to continuously put research at the forefront and to always advocate for users.
“You’re not going to get your findings right the first time, so it can be demotivating when you’ve put in time and effort into something only to find out that they’re not representative of the research findings.”
Farisha mentioned that resilience, specifically, was integral. Just like any other learned experience, research takes time to get it right.
Advocating and building empathy
“Research costs too much money and takes up too much time.”
“Why are we testing the product on a small group of people? We won’t get anything meaningful out of it.”
“We only need to do our testing after the product has been built. That is sufficient enough.”
These are just some of the phrases that many UX researchers may come across when they pour their time and effort into the product development process. The worst part is that there are a laundry list of other phrases like these, and a majority of them are simply misconceptions about research as a whole.
In addition to her daily tasks, Farisha also detailed that advocating for research is another key aspect of her responsibilities.
“We always have to prove that research is important, and always reiterate the value of research to clients,” she said.
As a flag bearer for UX research, the constant vocal barrages of “We don’t need testing” and “We don’t need research” can be frustrating to hear time and time again. She pointed out the two most common groups of individuals who are often quick to criticise.
The first group were described as “people who don’t understand and don’t see value” in research. This group might only view the process as an afterthought, or as an unimportant part of the product development cycle.
The second set were described as people who believed that “there is a better way to do research,” even though the results may not align with the objectives that were laid out.
“We need to justify and be firm with why we’ve done the research in a certain way. There’s no right or wrong way to do it, and there’s multiple ways for you to reach your goals.”
But how does one know when or where research has made an impact? It was simple, Farisha explained: “When the team values research comparatively to when I had first joined, and when the team continues to leverage research methodologies and are able to carry out user testing on their own. That shows to me how valuable research has become to the team and to the project.”
Before her heydays as a UX researcher, Farisha pursued a bachelor’s degree in psychology at the University of Reading Malaysia. Today, she credits her foundations in psychology as one of her many strengths in the role.
“Psychology is a good foundation for UX research as it has everything to do with human behaviours, attitude, and carrying out different qualitative and quantitative research methods,” she said.
Throughout her learnings, Farisha also gained a higher level of empathy for how people think the way that they do. In addition to helping ease her transition into UX, the act of building empathy in and of itself is another key skill required of a UX researcher too.
The element of empathy resides throughout the entire process of UX product design, and Farisha was able to bring that — along with her studies in psychology — to build empathy in the right way.
“We even had one class that was all about being politically correct. It was not part of the course, but we discussed how we should refer to people. For instance, we learnt that people with autism should not be called autistic as it implies their identity is based entirely on their disability,” Farisha explained.
Farisha suggests that budding UX researchers should explore case studies to better understand how “the impact of a certain feature or product has changed lives” for the better. Not only does it serve as an inspiration for what works and what doesn’t, but it also helps individuals pick apart how a product can best serve the right user.
Singular love for languages
While pursuing her bachelor’s degree in psychology, Farisha also developed a love for a different type of psychology. Specifically, languages within cognitive psychology. “But why languages?” You might ask.
To her, “language and culture go hand-in-hand.” Farisha further explained that different languages may not have the same word translated literally.
Farisha gave the word ‘manja’ in Malay as an example, which loosely represents affectionate or wanting to be pampered in English, depending on how the word is used. However, there is no literal translation equivalent. “And when there is no word that can accurately capture that feeling of the word in your language, you can’t fully experience this emotion because it doesn’t exist,” she said.
For Farisha, her love for language exists beyond trying to understand different languages, but also in how being bilingual affects the spoken language too. The differences between enunciation, clarity, and pitch as one person changes their language has always fascinated her.
With half a decade’s worth of experience as a UX researcher under her belt, one thing stayed constant: her love for languages never wavered.
“Just for my own fulfilment, I do want to go back and pursue it, especially if there’s a master’s degree in psychological research methods in bilingualism or in multilingualism. I would definitely go for it.”
Despite having no regrets stepping into the shoes of UX research, Farisha also spoke about her undiluted passion for writing. She can be seen venturing along in the borderless space, penning scripts for various videos on a myriad of projects, and has even lent her vocal talent to some of them as well.
“Writing has always been my passion,” Farisha said, recounting her younger years of how she used to write fiction inspired by her favourite shows, like Avatar the Last Airbender. Her plan was to major in psychology while also pursue a minor in writing. However, when her older brother started his journey towards a master’s degree in English Literature, she had to scrap her plans.
Still, that didn’t stop Farisha from continuing her love for languages or writing, and continued to explore her number one love: anime.
When describing what drew her in to the world of Japanese animated shows and films, she pointed out one of her favourite titles: Attack On Titan.
Farisha said that it was “all about how we question what we see or what we believe.”
“You come into that anime (Attack On Titan) thinking it’s about one thing, but later, you find out that it’s about the morals and justifications of war, and so much more. I kind of like that — mind-bendy things like that — and finding out why we, as an audience, side with one group over another,” she explained further.
Farisha recommends anime to anyone looking to pick up something to watch with their friends and loved ones. Not only will it fuel your brain as you pick apart symbols and metaphors between each methodically animated frame, but you’ll also get to enjoy a few entertaining bursts of quality storytelling too.
The everglow fairy
In her impressive journey thus far, Farisha has never forgotten about the people that paved the road to help her get to where she is now. As such, she would like to pass on a golden nugget of advice for all UX advocates, a tip she believes can help others amplify their research skills as well.
“You should always know what your objective is,” Farisha said it simply. “When you have your objective in mind, and the input you need from the research, you’ll know exactly the next step you need to take.” This includes understanding the research methodology required to knowing how many participants you need for your research.
Farisha also shared that whenever you feel like you’re in doubt, you can always reach out to your research team for guidance.
“No research task is ever completed alone, so if you’re ever shy, you can bounce ideas off with someone in the research team,” she said. Even verbalising ideas with your own teammate could point you in the direction you need to take your research forward.
These days, Farisha also curates her reading list with Medium to catch up on all the latest trends in UX research and design, and spends uninterrupted quality time with her loved ones.
And when she’s not doing either of the above, she’s constructing a kick-ass case for why research is indispensable, where it’s deeply woven into the fabric of excellent user experiences.
Special thanks to Farisha Mohd for sharing her story, and to Evangelyn Stephen and Don Ng for interviewing, editing, and proofreading the feature.
