How to Increase the Reach and Impact of Your Work as a UX Researcher
We often think of software development as a linear process. Well yes, it is linear in the sense that there is a certain sequence that must be followed before you move to the next set of tasks. However, in today’s fast-paced business reality many activities are happening simultaneously and user research in only one of them.
One of the core pieces of the research process is the analysis part; this is the time where tons of unstructured data starts to tell stories. That’s the most fascinating part for many researchers; we spend a lot of time digging into the data trying to prepare the perfect report, and sometimes even forget that the world around us is moving.
So what’s the best way to handle data analysis, prepare and consolidate findings, make them available and make sure your work has an impact in an increasingly changing environment?
Increase the impact of your work by being collaborative
- Invite the whole team into the process of analyzing and interpreting the data; that’s the most effective way to create a deep, shared understanding across the whole team, and that’s what we want!
- Identify and agree on the insights that will have the highest impact on the project and get them out the door as fast as possible. Don’t worry too much about the format. Could be even an eMail. That will give you time to work on a more polished outcome.
- If you decide that you need a more detailed deliverable, agree as a whole team what format is appropriate for the consolidated findings. Is’s ok, if you — as researcher — want to lead this effort, but make sure to also involve other team members with different perspectives so that the team co-owns the final artifact.
- Don’t overthink the format of your findings. Research is not about creating THE perfect report. It is about creating a collective understanding of the researched topic and surfacing key findings at the right time and when needed.
- Avoid calling the end deliverable “report” in your communication. That sounds too much as “hand-over”. It implies that you went out, did research, returned and are now reporting back to the team.
Increase the impact of your work by making it reusable and referenceable
- Make sure you have good notes that you can re-use later if needed. There is always interesting data that does not seem to be relevant for your current project, but might be relevant at a later point, in a different context.
- Does your new research provide fresh insights that could be combined with previous research outcomes from a related topic? Take the time and do a meta-analysis of your data. See if there are new themes that can be extracted and used as general guidance for the future.
- Increase your sphere of influence. Are there teams, outside of your core team, in other areas of your organization with touch points to your subject of research? Let them know of your project. Or even better, schedule an extra session for them and walk them through findings that might be interesting for them.
- Make sure that all your findings — whatever format you have chosen — are in an easily accessible place. I highly recommend the creation of a research repository.
- And, last but not least, advocate for the work you have done and communicate, communicate, communicate. Don’t expect that non-researchers will always have your research top of mind. Make it a habit to constantly remind teams about the research data that is available.
Conducting and documenting high quality research is only part of our job as researchers. Equally important is maximizing the reach and the impact our insights have. Our goal should be to make our work (and the voice of the end user) a permanent reference point for product teams.
To do that, we must find ways to disseminate and continually surface our findings within and across development cycles and teams. This is how we maximize the value delivered to end users and customers with our products, which is our true impact.
Thank you Mimi Leinbach for reviewing my story and giving valuable feedback.
