A design researcher’s journey from agency to in-house
Is the grass greener on the client’s side?
As someone who used to assume my career would only involve agencies or freelancing, it feels weird to say that I now work client-side at a tech company. But what’s weirder is how much I actually enjoy it.
Like many design researchers, I’ve gone through a non-traditional path to get this non-traditional job. My career started out in independent agencies, but as I did more consulting work with senior clients, I grew increasingly curious about life on their side of the fence.
This is the tale of how I moved from agency to in-house, and what I’ve learned so far.
Once upon a timesheet
I started out in graphic design, and was always interested in demonstrating the business value of creativity. But back in the early 2010s, I observed a lack of meaningful customer advocacy and concept testing in the traditional design process. Sadly, this wasn’t just the case at my agency, but most of the industry at the time.
Designers were rarely held accountable for the effectiveness and return on investment of their work. How did we know if the design decisions we slaved over made a difference to end users? Could we, as an agency, prove which of our specific contributions affected the campaign’s success? Whose job was it to track and report these things, anyway?
Don’t get me wrong. There were certainly benefits to starting my career in small-to-medium sized agencies. It was helpful to understand how traditional agencies ran, what people’s roles were (or could turn into), and the importance of submitting your timesheets! There were no lanyards or training modules, your boss knew your name from day one, and the Christmas parties were pretty epic too.
Switching sides
After leaving agency-land for some freelance research and UX design gigs, I landed a job at Xero in 2019 as a product designer. At this point, I had never worked in a company bigger than 50 people before (Xero now has 3600 employees). My first few months were spent ‘drinking from the firehose’ — discovering new processes, departments and projects every day that impacted my job. It wasn’t easy, but I definitely enjoyed the challenge.
While I knew I wanted to move into UX research eventually, I was happy to work as a product designer until the right opportunity came along. After all, there was plenty to do. I worked closely with engineers, marketers and product managers on new features, consulted with the design system team on scalable interaction patterns, and crafted language for new screens with our content specialists.
As a product designer, I also had the opportunity to learn more about the design research process at Xero. I assisted researchers with usability tests so we could get feedback from real customers on our products and features. Not only did this give me an insight into what ‘a day in the life of a design researcher’ looked like, but it brought me closer to external customers, which improved my designs.
I was at Xero for around a year when a vacancy came up in the design research team. By then, my design director and I had already talked about my aspirations, and this seemed like the opportunity we’d been waiting for. After a seven-week secondment (which functioned like a working trial that kept my old design job safe), I was offered a permanent role as a design researcher.
The perks of working in-house
The way this internal move happened so seamlessly is an example of how career progression can work at a bigger company. The design and research leadership team helped me think through my options and then choose the one that best suited me. A full-time internal secondment allowed me to run a research project at Xero (under the mentorship of researchers) while still receiving my normal salary.
In other words, I got paid to learn. Looking back on this opportunity, I realise how fortunate I was to have leaders who committed actual time and money towards supporting my ambitions.
Working in-house can also expose you to more intentional forms of professional development and people management. ‘Mentoring’ isn’t something that should happen by osmosis. Both you and your manager should have dedicated time for professional development in your calendars. Personalised feedback, team health checks, and weekly one-on-ones are things I’ve come to see as essential for my growth (along with budget for conferences and courses).
Aside from professional development, I’d say the main advantage of working client-side is that there’s usually more time to work on the real problems at hand. Free from the pressures of invoicing cycles and the constant possibility of losing your key client, in-house designers and researchers can interrogate the brief we’ve been given before moving into problem-solving mode. With this kind of culture, you end up with more rigour and depth throughout the whole process.
Things I didn’t expect to learn
Since I started at Xero, I’ve had to revisit what I thought I knew about working client-side. Although I knew there’d be a learning curve, I assumed that I had already mastered the basics, like how to foster good relationships, be a team player, and make good decisions. A fast-growing global tech company is just like an agency, but bigger — right? Well, not quite.
1. Literally everyone is a stakeholder
When I started working client-side, I assumed I could safely retire my account management skills. But it didn’t take long to realise that everyone I met in the company is somehow capable of speeding up or slowing down my work. Moral of the story: it pays to play nicely from the start!
While we mostly have internal ‘clients’, different agendas between departments are inevitable — which means it helps to have experience in persuasion, negotiation, and managing the holy trinity of resources (people, time and money). These were valuable skills I brought over from my former life as an agency strategist.
There’s also a never-ending backlog of internal initiatives, project requests and process improvements when you work in-house. So you need to be quite disciplined and organised in order to manage your time and work effectively, without burning out (particularly if you’re working from home, either by choice or due to COVID-19).
2. Designing product is a team sport
Working in-house demands seasoned communication and collaboration skills. You work with people who are essentially paid to think in ways that are totally different to you, and you’re often asked to deliver short-term gains and long-term value at the same time.
One example of this is the way research teams report their findings after a round of usability testing. Product teams shouldn’t have to wait for researchers to craft a report before they learn what needs to be fixed. But if we take short-cuts on accuracy and nuance during reporting, what will that mean for our organisation going forward?
We need to consider how we might help designers get up to speed when they first start at Xero, while also helping research leads build on existing knowledge when several researchers are working in that space at the same time. Thoughtfully addressing both the macro and micro issues simultaneously isn’t easy. It takes a team effort to come up with a solution that’s good enough for now and safe enough to try.
I’ve also discovered that delivering well-designed products means the product lives within a large, dynamic web of opinions and expertise. Customers, product managers, engineers, marketers (and others!) all have something valuable to contribute.
In-house researchers and designers need to be comfortable with healthy compromise in order to keep the momentum going. Instead of seeing those outside the design bubble as blockers, we must commit to moving forward with optimism and trust — especially since this is how we expect to be treated by stakeholders.
3. Balance doesn’t mean neutrality or mediocrity
When I was in agency land, I thought that working in-house meant super slow decision-making, where everyone is afraid to say what they really think. When we’re faced with tough choices, it’s easy to compromise on quality by playing it safe and taking a conventional path that doesn’t upset anyone. In other words, staying neutral and becoming mediocre.
I suppose being in-house forces you into these situations more than if you were at an agency, because agencies tend to default to whatever the client wants (rightly or wrongly). But now I know there’s a way to be both pragmatic and authentic. Innovation doesn’t happen without risk, but we need to mitigate those risks with due diligence without losing our competitive advantage.
I’ve found the ‘strong opinions weakly held’ approach to be helpful for dealing with different stakeholders while staying true to my convictions. This mindset gives us permission to follow our intuition passionately. But it comes with the duty to lay those gut feelings aside and pivot as soon as a better idea (or clear evidence) emerges.
Although this approach is certainly not unique to tech companies, I believe it only works if relevant data is regularly surfaced — which is more likely to happen when you have in-house researchers, data analysts, and dedicated product managers.
The verdict(s)
Although I’ve only worked in-house for less than two years, I can confidently say this is the type of place that lets me do my best work. I’m grateful to have settled in a company that:
- gives me the right balance of challenge and support
- allows me to work with real customers on complex problems
- lets me interrogate problems and solutions with deep rigour
- encourages me to learn from a variety of specialists
- gives me an opportunity to continuously test, learn, and refine my work
That being said, it’s important to acknowledge that working in-house isn’t for everyone. Some people thrive on variety — and there’s nothing wrong with that. It also might not be the right choice for every season in your life. What you wanted in your early twenties usually isn’t what you want when your life stage and circumstances change in the years that follow.
And let’s not forget that independent agencies are small businesses — which are the backbone of most economies. It takes guts to leave the safety net of employment and start your own business. In fact, that’s how most product companies start out: as independent start-ups. Without people like that in the world, we wouldn’t have big tech companies.
Looking back, I’m grateful for my time in agency-land. I gained a number of valuable skills, and clarity on what I really want (and don’t want) in a career. My journey into client-side has been an unconventional one, but leaving behind a culture of timesheets and last-minute pitches has been worth all the ups, downs, and weirdness in between.
If you’re thinking about working in-house and looking for a product design or design research role in a fast-growing global tech company, let the team know you’re interested!
