Designersđ¤alk #42 with Anshul Agarwal ( Senior User Experience Researcher at LinkedIn)| PHASE 4]
Date: 11th Dec 2021
Anshul is working at LinkedIn as a UX Researcher. She also worked at Flipkart, Microsoft, Google. In this talk, she has shared her opinions regarding:
1ď¸âŁ UX Research Approach;
2ď¸âŁ Journey as a UX Researcher;
3ď¸âŁ UX Research Deliverables &, etc;
Q1. Hi Anshul, nice to meet you. Letâs start with a short background story. How did you get started in design?
I used to work as a Data Analyst before I became a UX Researcher. I worked in Data Analytics for 5 years before realizing that I didnât care about any data or the analytics around it. There was always a subtle undercurrent, but an interview brought my disinterest to the surface. [Related article here].
Data analytics wasnât making me happy. I had to find what makes me happy?
I asked myself some questions. âWhat projects have I enjoyed working on? Working on which project, did I feel most fulfilled?â
Answer: My User Experience projects.
I had an inclination towards understanding user behavior. During my MS from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, I had opted for some psychology courses. And I had worked on a few design projects as part of my curriculum, embedded in user psychology. Those were the projects I had most enjoyed working on.
Thatâs how I found my interest in design.
In my late 20s, I took the risk to switch my career. I decided Iâm not going to waste nine hours of my day working on something I donât like.
I started by doing self projects. I was active on Quora- I created a project around what troubled me about Quora and explored a new research methodology [Related article here]. I published these self projects on Medium. I also worked with a few startups. I redid my past projects with a lens of user experience. I built a portfolio. And got a UX job in Microsoft.
Q2: What is User Research? Why itâs an important part of any project to make it successful?
User research offers a reality check. It tells you:
- What happens when people use your product?
- How easy is it for users to accomplish the goals they are trying to achieve via your product?
- How quickly can they do what they want to do?
- How is the overall experience for them?
Itâs important to understand how users behave so you donât end up building a product that your users find challenging to use or canât use.
Q3: How do you approach UX research?
The world has changed pretty quick over the last one year. As COVID happened, companies had to rethink their products because the user behavior changed suddenly. Not that it changed once, it kept changing as people settled into the new normal.
I feel todayâs products must deliver immediate value to users with ever-changing behaviors. So I approach UX research with an agile lens.
I believe rapid testing of products while they are in their formative stage helps the most in business decisions.
To adapt current products to COVID times- especially the dynamic products which are trying to keep up, I recommend setting up a formative biweekly rapid testing model.
Work with your PM and design counterparts to create an ongoing, iterative research process to answer key business questions.
I did this recently and it helped my product team immensely to pivot quickly and iterate. [My related talk from UXDX]
Q4: What advice do you have for someone who wants to start their journey as a UX Researcher?
After looking at my Linkedin profile and reading my Quora answers, a lot of people reach out to me to know how they can become a UX researcher. Here is my advice for them:
Donât follow others because thatâs where you will fail.
I was in a field called data analytics earlier. It is a very trending career option these days with many people going after it. So I also choose it. But what happened? I couldnât survive. I had to quit. I realised too late that this is not where my true strength lies.
My advice is: Find your passion and pursue it.
Even before I became a UX Researcher, I was intensely involved in understanding how good or bad design improves or deteriorates the quality of human life.
I had done many self-projects. I was working with startups (for free). I was reading writings by the experts in the field. I was reaching out to thought-leaders to seek opinions.
I was exploring new, creative research methodologies on my own. I didnât choose research as a career because I saw someone successful and I wanted to become like them; I choose it as a career because I was already doing it. And I wasnât doing it to make money- I was making none. Nor was I doing it to make a career- I didnât even know what career path opens up with this undertaking. I just used to feel âon purposeâ in my life when I was doing the things that one does as a researcher. UX research as a career option just fit perfectly with what I liked doing.
The way to identify your career field is not to pick one field and then pursue it, it is to do what you like and the path automatically reveals itself to you. Thatâs what I did.
Q5: How to build a UX Research Portfolio?
The most important thing for a UX research portfolio is to:
- Demonstrate how you organise a seemingly unorganised process;
- How you manage your stakeholders;
- How you scope out the research questions;
- How you collaborate with designers;
- How you seek inputs from PMs on questions/hypothesis/assumptions;
- What methodologies you use;
- How do you seek their participation in sessions;
- How you make sense of insights, and how you socialise the insights.
You may have used a spreadsheet to kickoff the research with stakeholders which has columns indicating research questions, secondary probes, priority, hypotheses, what decisions will be made. I suggest showing such artefacts, that you create over a research project journey in the portfolio.
Q6: What are the UX research deliverables?
If I had to put it in one word: Actionable insights.
I recommend researchers to clearly mention the âtop decisions that need to be madeâ in their research brief. This helps distilling insights to direct business questions. It also helps stakeholders to focus on specific learnings they want to get out of the research. These decisions could be around usability or around a hypothesis or assumption.
Q7: Would you want to share a few tips with folks out there who want to join as interns or UX researcher at LinkedIn?
Iâd suggest they continue building their design profiles, and start getting embedded in user-centricity.
User research requires a good deal of design understanding and a certain maturity to be empathetic towards users.
Once they feel they are ready, they can make the switch to research roles.
Q8: Designers Talk: Wrap Up round(One word or Choice-based)
- Design in one word: Simple
- A product that inspires you: Quora
- Favorite design blog/publication: nngroup
- Favorite gadget: My iPhone (Iâm not really a gadgety person)
- Dribbble or Behance: Either
- Linkedin/Twitter/Instagram: LinkedIn (Of course!)
- DesignersTalk in one word: Consistency
- Favorite Design Series/Video/Movie: Her (movie)
- First Choice(Website/App): App
- Favorite Design System: Google Material design
- Android or iOS: iOS
- XD/Figma/Sketch/Invision Studio or any other tool: Figma
- Taking Design Inspiration From: User stories
- Go-To Tool for you as a researcher: Paper-pen
- Research Hero: Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures)
Thank you đ AnshulđâŁâŁâŁ for giving your precious time
HOSTED BY: designer.akash
The motto for this DesignersTalk is to âBridge the gap between Experienced Designers and New Designersâ.
Why text-based? Because itâs precise, to-the-point opinions and it also gives freedom to those designers who want to share but not comfortable in front of the camera and who donât want to give their too much time but still wanted to contribute.
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