allWomen Interviews: Laura Martens — UX Researcher at Toyota

Laura Martens is a Senior Design Researcher at Toyota. Aiming for an outlet that allowed her to combine analysis and creativity, Laura shifted into the design research field after working as an industrial designer.

Laura started out working at a consultancy company for 4 years — which allowed her to improve her skills and work with clients across a variety of cultures and industries. It also opened the doors to immerse herself into the world of research and effectively transform research findings into valuable changes. One of the key UX methods she advocates for is Personas, which help designers predict the future, be truly inclusive and fight our biases.

Facilitate an aligned, selfless collaboration

Bias, /ˈbʌɪəs/: Inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair.

Diverse teams with members of different backgrounds represent an add-on for products’ and their development. However, without realising it, biases can manifest themselves in the organisation and processes despite the diversity of the team as we work towards a shared vision. In particular, Personas can be the right tool to approach such an issue as it helps to democratise UX and to build a framework an organisation can work with.

Laura explains that Personas can be the bridge to building a great product or improving an existing one with long-term impact. By scaling Personas up from team-level to the organisation level, it becomes easier to understand users cultural cross-borders and communicate the value the design team wants to bring and reflect upon across the rest of the teams.

“If you keep your eye on the profit, you’re going to skimp on the product. But if you focus on making really great products, then the profit will follow!” — Steve Jobs, Industrial Designer.

As important as design decisions are, companies move slowly despite timelines being short and hard — hence why making time to discuss research insights and making sure these are taken into account through the development process is often not possible, especially in Agile environments. In addition, there are other setbacks such as team hierarchies or how different product and project teams own different parts of the user journey, which demands more resources.

Don’t present, immerse

To tackle these issues, Laura shares that her process includes making non-designers at different levels within the organisation adopt personas — through the facilitation of workshops and being open to co-creating — and immersing stakeholders into Personas by providing the tools and guidance. As a result, these Personas help to scope projects in an efficient way, as well as allows for further expansion for new insights.

To tackle these issues, Laura shares that her process includes making non-designers at different levels within the organisation adopt personas and immersing stakeholders into Personas by providing the tools and guidance.

There are many approaches to immersion, yet the key point behind its success is to facilitate workshops, talk about Personas and have them in mind through the entirety of the process, and to be open to co-creating instead of presenting results and solutions without context.

In order to ensure Personas are implemented into the organisation culture, Laura highlights the importance of taking time to develop and improve them. Her approach includes:

• Introducing Personas little by little: By introducing them progressively, you’re allowing teams to learn better the details and behavioural patterns a persona would show — just as if you were getting to know a new person.
• Show where they come from: Share data and numbers to back up each persona. Don’t forget to explain more about their scenarios, intentions, etc.
• Pilot, learn and improve: There is no progress by creating by yourself. Present Personas, introduce them to the team and stakeholder, facilitate workshops, be open to co-creating — only then is it possible to learn and improve. It’s better to do than to expect to be perfect from the get-go, there’s always room for improvement as user needs are ever-changing.

As a result, these Personas and approach will open new doors for you and your organisation. By implementing Personas in the company culture, it will help to scope projects more efficiently. On top of that, immersion and collaboration help teams strengthen their abilities both as a team and on an individual level — by sharing ideas and discussing research insights, we’ll get to new findings that have been missed or discarded as obvious options.

Researchers and impact

When asked about what had made her more successful, she shared that one must not be afraid of switching direction. Question what do you want for yourself and what you’re getting at the moment — stand for what you believe.

As UX designers, and especially researchers, Laura stresses out that we stand in a powerful position to make changes both in product and in the larger ecosystem of the world.

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