Discussing the Reckoning
A few weeks ago I posted an article, hoping to start a conversation about the state of UX Research, and I haven’t been disappointed. Many of you have had a lot to say, and its been gold.
Overall, the general thesis seemed to ring true to many people. From across the spectrum of company, industry (in and out of tech), role, job title, and seniority, you said so. I was expecting more vitriol or trolling. Just because, you know, the internet. Instead it’s been an ongoing stream of thoughtful commentary and questions.
So I thought I’d share some quick analysis. I took a look at all the public comments I can see, across all the places the article has been posted and reposted. I’ve extracted some key reactions and themes, which I will try to faithfully sum up. There’s no way I got them all, so please let me know what I’ve missed.
Key Themes
Capitalism is bankrupt. Beginning in perhaps the most foundational place — some folks objected to the core idea of focusing research on profit. They argued that doing so necessarily subjugates us to a bankrupt capitalist system. Instead, we should fight it, maintain our focus on users and communities, and seek other approaches.
There is no reckoning. Other commenters questioned the basic premise of the article — that recent layoffs are evidence that a reckoning is upon us. They noted that many disciplines suffered from layoffs over the last year. In the context of a broader market correction, some research teams might just have over-hired. Outside of tech, they noted, layoffs are less common at the moment.
Research leaders’ responsibility. Speaking of research leadership, there was some casting of blame there in particular. Incentivized to empire-build, some thought UX leaders (especially at a few larger companies) were disproportionately responsible for over-hiring and creating the market we are in.
Some would also like to see research leaders (including me) do more to own up to their responsibility. If UX Research has not delivered enough value, it’s largely because of leaders who have misled their teams, and sold everyone on a failed vision of UX Research. Now mostly ICs pay the price.
Narrow perspective. Quite a few folks argued that my article represented a unique Silicon Valley-focused perspective. At companies and in industries outside tech the landscape looks different, they said. Even within tech. Specifically some suggested that middle-range research remains highly impactful at startups and in companies that have lower UX maturity.
Bad communication. Getting closer to the practice of research, quite a few folks suggested the root of the problem is the one we’ve been talking about all along — researchers are bad at advocating for their own research. We’re not well trained, well equipped, or well positioned to market our insights. If researchers would keep doing the same projects, but more effectively communicate the ROI, no one would question our impact.
Stuck. Some who weighed in also said they felt hamstrung. How, they asked, can researchers make changes like doing less middle-range work when they aren’t empowered to say no? Structure and organizational politics put many researchers in a position where they feel “damned if they do, damned if they don’t.”
Commentary
I learned so much just reading through the experiences and thoughts of so many folks. I feel truly grateful for the discussion. And I have a few thoughts. :)
💗 Capitalism
First, is operating from the belief that profit > users, at least in the eyes of the business, a one-way path to corruption? I think not. Thankfully, between blissfully ignorant, laser-narrow focus on users and unbridled soul-suckling capitalism is a huge amount of middle ground.
Acknowledging that businesses have to make money, and that we as a field had better get in on that, is not somehow inherently bankrupt (ha!). Products and companies are more or less extractive in their approach to capitalism, and I think we just need to vote for the better ones with our feet.
Research Siloes Are Stupid
Secondly, I learned an awful lot about the huge variety of titles, flavors, and siloes of research. A wide array of disciplines chimed in, many suggesting that UX Research just needs to do what {other research discipline} has done all along. Or that UX Research is turning into {other research discipline}.
In particular many folks laid claim to macro-research. And while I don’t doubt the power of the work or the wisdom of the many people who have done it, no discipline owns the practice of strategic, high-level research. None have the foolproof playbook for it. Clearly there’s much to learn by breaking down the ridiculous siloes of the research diaspora. We should be creating more opportunities for us all to learn from each others’ experience without yucking each others’ yums.
Communication Isn’t the (Only) Solution
I preached the need to improve research communication for many years. Still do. I agree with those who say we can better market our insights. But I maintain that won’t solve the problem as long as we’re doing the wrong work. We need to pick questions which are directly tied to short and long-term business outcomes, and then get comfortable confidently stating concrete insights. Those insights shouldn’t just influence and guide, but make specific value and priority arguments. It’s risky — what if we’re wrong? Yep.
Is Micro-Research Peasant Work?
While some folks agreed with my assessment that there’s business value in micro-research, others felt just the opposite. Some have found little ROI in focusing on usability and see it as a solved problem. Some are pretty sure AI is going to take those jobs next week.
And still others are truly determined to cast micro-research work as low skill task-work anyone can do.
I define micro-research as focused on the details of product, design, interaction. Certainly eye tracking, technical usability, pixel polishing, and product validation fall there. But so does all the detailed research we do with wireframes and prototypes. So do the rewarding collaborations with data science to effectively instrument success and do more than guess at the user behavior behind metric movements. And much more.
This work is difficult. It requires structure, foresight, context, and relationships to sell it into any given product. You can’t effectively outsource it, to contractors, to interns, or to ChatGPT. Translating micro-research into business value is different every time, even if the principles repeat.
I suspect the people claiming micro-research is easily outsourced peasant work are also folks who haven’t done much of it inside tech companies lately.
And doing micro-research effectively drives the bottom line — I’ve seen that personally. As several commenters pointed out, it can be difficult to demonstrate the ROI of detailed micro-work. But I’ve done it, at least to a degree, and I believe that’s a problem worth working on as a discipline.
What Now?
The reckoning and the conversation are ongoing, but it’s not too soon to start moving. Here are some things I think we can start doing now.
Rethink research careers. Some commenters rightly pointed out that researchers are just delivering to what their managers have incentivized them to do. Researchers turning down work that their partners AND their managers are asking them for isn’t many people’s idea of a solid career move. So it’s time for research leaders to make a shift by pushing their teams to do different work. Then we need to back that up by rewriting career ladders accordingly. Micro-research isn’t just for the peons, and strategy isn’t just a word you get to use to sound fancy after a few promotions.
Learn to say no. We need to say no. A lot, at first. And doing it with explicit support from research leaders. But saying no is a skill we need to learn and teach. Saying no is almost never — stop, go away. It’s redirection. Or saying no to the project but yes to the need. Turning a week of research into an hour of synthesis, and then delivering. Honestly saying to a partner — look, we don’t need to do that. It doesn’t matter because X, or we know the answer already because Y — earns so much legitimacy. Now you’re making things go faster and delivering immediate insight.
Build best practices. What mix of research has maximum business impact depending on the industry, size, or UX maturity of a particular company? Not what research feels good or fulfills our design-industry obsession with performative user-centeredness. What research can we genuinely not make critical-path decisions without? How can we best demonstrate the business ROI for that research? We can build flexible templates to guide the next iterations of research practice.
Siloes, meet sledgehammers. We need more forums for research disciplines to be talking to each other, and for tech research to talk to non-tech research. Although my perspective is unavoidably tech-centric, I’m pretty sure the plague of too much middle-range research has spread widely. If only because so many folks from different industries have told me so. We need to stop gatekeeping and start unabashedly shopping in each others’ closets.
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