The 10 Soft Skills Every UX Researcher Needs
When I first started out in UX research some years ago, my main focus was on conducting quality research that was free of bias. I thought that if I mastered facilitation techniques, spent days analysing and coding data until I was absolutely certain of the results, repeated experiments until the number of participants seemed impressive enough and then documented it all in an in-depth report, people would start to listen to me and actually implement my recommendations. That, of course, never happened.
I quickly discovered that it’s the soft skills that really matter. There’s no point in spending all your time doing great research if nobody takes action on it!
Here’s my list of top 10 soft skills I believe are crucial for a successful career in UX research.
1. ‘Big picture’ thinking
UX researchers need to understand the bigger picture. At FanDuel, our UX and Design team is made up of Product Designers, who are detail-oriented and go deep, and UX Researchers and UX Writers who work at a broader level and go wide. This partnership works really well and helps us cover all bases, sharing our knowledge and understanding with each other. It really takes the pressure off trying to do everything at once, which I used to struggle with as a UX generalist.
2. Empathy
There’s no shortage of articles out there that tell you the importance of having empathy as a UX researcher. But what does it actually mean in practice? For me, it’s meant changing the way I think. Shifting from making conclusions or assumptions about the behaviours I see, and understanding that there’s a greater context that I don’t know about yet that will shed more light on why someone is doing something.
Extend this mindset to your colleagues too. If you can put yourself in their shoes, understand what’s important to them and what they’ve got going on, you’ll be able to communicate better with them. This will help you shape the way you share your research findings with different stakeholders at your company.
3. Collaboration
Being a UX researcher can sometimes be a lonely job. Typically, we work individually in a multi-disciplinary team, sometimes across multiple teams, sometimes working on discovery research many sprints ahead of the rest of the team.
Finding ways to collaborate with others and share the research workload with your team helps mitigate this issue. Show your colleagues how to plan, conduct and analyse research so they can get involved. Seek out people from other teams you may not work with on a regular basis — chances are, research is being done at your company that you’re not utilising yet. Triangulate your user research with social media, customer service logs, satisfaction surveys, market research, web analytics etc. to work together towards a shared goal.
4. Active listening
We should talk less and listen more. This goes without saying in terms of our user interviews. The less we talk, the more we get to hear from users, and the less opportunity we have to bias the session.
However, it’s also important to apply active listening to the rest of our job (and life!). Becoming a better listener results in strengthened relationships with your colleagues, builds trust, and allows you to give more helpful and informed feedback. Building trust is especially important as a UX researcher, as sometimes we have to deliver the bad news as well as the good (like your product owner’s pet project was met with far less enthusiasm from the users!).
5. Communication
User researcher’s fallacy: “My job is to learn about users”. Truth: “My job is to help my team learn about users”. — Caroline Jarrett
As UX researchers, we spend a lot of time perfecting our craft, reducing our biases and ensuring we conduct reliable research. But none of that matters if you drop your findings into a report that gathers dust on your company’s intranet. You need to communicate those findings far and wide, in a way that will excite your colleagues and make them listen.
This can seem daunting to somebody who is an introvert. It certainly was for me. However, I’ve found that you can learn to love giving presentations. I now see it as an opportunity to talk, uninterrupted, for 20 minutes or more about a subject that I’m passionate about — and I actually enjoy it! The more at ease I am, the smoother my communication becomes, and the more engaged my audience are. It does take a lot of practice and putting yourself outside of your comfort zone, but it’s definitely worth it.
6. Persuasion
Similar to communicating your research findings, it’s important to take it one step forward and ensure your learnings are actually put into action. Videos of real users talking and using your product helps. Using concrete examples to illustrate your point also helps. Speak your colleagues’ language, find out what they care about and what their concerns are, show them that you understand what’s on their plate, but tantalise them with the exciting opportunities there could be if they put your research into action.
7. Curiosity
The key to job satisfaction in a UX researcher role is to stay curious. A never-ending curiosity of the world and more specifically, the people who inhabit it, is necessary for this role. I’m always learning about human psychology in some form and continue to be fascinated by how our brains work.
Allow your curiosity to leak into your conversations with colleagues too. Don’t be afraid to reach out to people and ask them questions. When I join a new company I always worry that people will be annoyed if I bug them with lots of questions, but I’ve rarely found it to be the case. In fact, when I consider new people who have joined and have asked me lots of questions, I actually enjoy sharing what I know with them and never find it to be a burden.
8. Creativity
UX research is not always considered to be a creative role, but just like designers, we’re also solving a problem using ‘outside of the box’ thinking. Coming up with ways to answer a research question without biasing users, stitching together the perfect mix of methodologies, trying out new ways of communicating your findings to your team so they ‘stick’… The UX research field still hasn’t matured and there’s no definitive guidebook that tells you what to do in any given situation. The researchers who have inspired me throughout my career have always been the creative ones who are constantly trying out new things and never becoming complacent about their UX research experience
9. Confidence
As a researcher, you have to strike a balance between being accessible and helpful, encouraging your colleagues to come to you with questions about users, but also being assertive enough to lead the research approach and challenge decisions that are made at the expense of user needs.
I’ve seen newer researchers struggle with the latter part, not wanting to dampen their colleagues’ enthusiasm for user research in any way. However, what I’ve found is that your colleagues will respect you more if you have the confidence to be honest with them. Everyone in your team is working towards the same goal in the end: to create a successful product or service.
10. Perspective
Accept that you won’t win every battle. You can be the most diligent researcher, the most persuasive communicator in history, and yet, sometimes your recommendations won’t be implemented. That’s life, and it’s not the end of the world!
At FanDuel, one of our core company values is “Challenge, then commit”. We need to speak up and challenge decisions being made if we have any concerns, but then commit to achieving the best outcome once we’ve collectively agreed on a decision.
Realistically, not everything we ship will be free of usability issues and met with enthusiasm by users. Other factors will be put first sometimes. However, it’s important to remember that the release is not the end!
Do more research once the feature is out there, even if nobody asks you to. Gather ‘real world’ data about how it’s being used. Reignite interest within your team. You can use every setback as a learning opportunity for how you can approach things differently next time.
FanDuel are hiring! If you’re a Product Designer, UX Researcher or UX Writer and you’re looking for a new challenge, get in touch! You can find out more about our awesome UX and Design team at FanDuel.design.
