PERSPECTIVES FROM UXERS
Advice for future UX researchers
Find out what 3 UX researchers think is important for potential researchers to know.
Do you find yourself wondering why people make the decisions they do? Do you love solving people’s problems? If so, UX research may be a great fit for you.
UX research helps gain insights, empathy, and context to the user’s journey. The research helps everyone on the team understand how and why the user is interacting with the product to help make informed decisions. To learn more about UX research, check out Leon Zhang’s article, “The ultimate beginners guide to UX research in 2022 (From Google & IDEO UX researchers)”
To help all of the future UX researchers (or anyone just curious), 3 great UX researchers at Red Hat shared their experiences. If you’re interested in the field, learn what skills are recommended and what may surprise you about the career.
Meet the researchers
Name: Amber Asaro
Title: Associate manager of research and research operations
Time in UX: 15 years
Education:
- Associates degree in general psychology
- Bachelor’s degree in E-business
- Master’s certificate in UX research and design from the University of Michigan
- Master’s certification in UX management and interactions from Nielsen Norman Group
Name: Nadav Viduchinsky
Title: Associate UX researcher
Time in UX: 1 year
Education:
- Bachelor’s degree in interactive communication
- Master’s degree in sociology and anthropology
Name: Nicholas Jayanty
Title: Principal UX researcher
Time in UX: 8 years
Education:
- Bachelor’s degree in Communications with a focus on radio, television, and film
- Bachelor’s degree in industrial design with a focus on interaction design
- Certification in Full Stack Development
Why did you choose UX research?
Amber:
“I was really interested in how people thought and processed information, but I realized I didn’t want to be a psychologist because I thought it would be very draining for me to listen to people talk about their problems and not be able to take action to solve it. I got into healthcare software, which is where I started hearing people complain about the product because it wasn’t intuitive. I thought I was interested in design, but because I had to learn about research for the design program, I realized that that is a way to connect my interest in people and psychology — listening to people talk about their problems and turn it into something transactional. It was a coming together of all of the things that are my personality. I’m curious, optimistic, and like meeting new people, comfortable with asking new questions and sounding dumb, and inquisitive. I was also frustrated by seeing really big corporate decisions made at the whim of the CEO. Once I found UX research, it was a method to the madness.”
Nadav:
“I was in an interactive communication program and it was really cool and I really liked UX design, but I was getting a little bored from designing interfaces. Then I joined the research lab at the university and started to create my research studies and became a research assistant. I just fell in love with the idea of research because you’re always working on something different. Even if you’re working on the same project, you use different methods, you’re getting new insights, and talking with lots of people. It’s a very interactive field.“
Nicholas:
“I had a career in the entertainment and independent film space previous to coming to UX. Within independent film, I served a very specific business function. As an independent producer, you’re not only focused on the creative product itself, but all the apparatus around it. So the financing, legal structure, negotiating the deals to bring the product to market. There is a lot of overlap between software product and entertainment product when you zoom out and look at it from an abstracted level. The more I worked in independent film, the more I realized that it is not necessarily an equitable game. There is a much larger group of people who want to make movies versus the people who have the resources and access to actually make them. I realized if my end user is a filmmaker with a trust fund, is that the best way for me to use my time, talent, and passion? Or is there another way that I can invest my time, talent, and passion to serve another user? I was working at an independent film nonprofit, Film Independent, and raised money for Project Involve. Through the fundraising work, I started getting exposure to user experience professionals because I was on a lot of calls with UX designers. That’s where I fell in love with user experience. You put the audience and the people first and create something they need, as opposed to creating someone’s vision.”
What is a soft skill you would recommend for anyone wanting to get into UX research to learn?
Amber:
“The ability to be comfortable with pauses and awkward silences. When you’re interviewing someone and they go quiet, we have this compulsion to fill the noise. And when they’re pausing, they’re either contemplating whether they should mention something, or trying to take something that is buried deep and trying to find a way to articulate it explicitly. And if you jump in, you stop them from doing that, and they’re about to say something possibly really revelatory that they haven’t even thought about until just now.”
Nadav:
“Communication is key because you’re always working with people, whether it’s users or stakeholders, and you need to know how to communicate your thoughts and make sure people know how to communicate their thoughts. It’s always interactive. Also, have an exploratory mindset. Always try to find what is interesting in your opinion. Even if it’s not relevant to the study, if you have an exploratory mindset, you notice new things that you won’t use in this study, but you can bring up later to suggest new research and ideas. That will help you become an active researcher.”
Nicholas:
“Practice empathy. Have as much empathy for our users as the people you work with.”
What is a hard skill you would recommend for anyone wanting to get into UX research to learn?
Amber:
“Really understanding how the way you observe something can impact what you learn. If you ask direct questions or make people think about something, sometimes you get back information that isn’t as authentic. It’s the Hawthorne effect: everything you observe you impact. By measuring and observing it, you change its behavior inherently. By understanding that, you must figure out the right mechanism to not introduce noise. What’s a way I can get the closest to true information without introducing the possibility of bias? What type of tool should I use?”
Nadav:
“Quantitative and qualitative research methods. Learn about them and try to be a mixed UX researcher and don’t only stick to one method.”
Nicholas:
“If you come from a really heavy academic background with skill sets tailored toward really strong quantitative work and your focus is to publish new knowledge, design a project. Get your hands dirty, sketch, do the testing and iterations yourself so that you can understand the design process and product development process. For me, the only way to empathize is to actually do it. Make to learn. Learn how to create something with your hands, put it in front of somebody and have them reject it. It is a great empathy building tool to understand what our counterparts go through. There are people who create and there are people who critique. If you come from a background of critique, learn how to create. If you come from a background of create, learn how to critique. There is a duality. It’s about building empathy for the people you have to work with. From people coming from a design background into UX research, I invite you to learn how to code. Even if you aren’t going to be a full time engineer, understanding the materials and the things you will be manufacturing. By getting hands on and actually developing, you’ll learn so much about the people you are researching.”
What is something that surprised you about UX research?
Amber:
“How undervalued it is so far. I assumed that when I completed my certification, that I would go to my CEO and he would be super excited and see the value immediately, but he didn’t. I really had to fight to justify it in the first place. The fact that you have to explain it so much. I also didn’t realize how hard it would be to explain at cocktail parties or meeting people what my job is”
Nadav:
“The ability to learn anything. Let’s say you study the basics, you can still have a conversation and learn about things as you do the interviews and research. At university, you learn about a subject before you go to study it. Here (at Red Hat) you don’t have time to constantly be learning about everything, so you need to learn as you go. I can ask people to explain concepts to me. You can study from participants how they perceive things, even if you didn’t know about it. You can keep learning, even after the research is started. Try to learn as much as you can, but don’t be afraid to go out into the field and learn.”
Nicholas:
“How hard it is to actually find users. Your userbase is pretty tiny. You’re finding needles in haystacks. Even finding those people is one challenge, and then recruitment itself is one of the most underinvested areas to really enable people to do UX design and research.”
Any general advice?
Amber:
“Don’t try to talk about and pitch the concept of research. Just start doing it and start small and practical. Don’t expect people to just get it the way you did. Show them and tie it directly to something that they will care about. Don’t allow it to be a “us vs them”. A lot of people think researchers are the people who find the negative things. Involve everyone who works on that product as much as possible, from designers, engineers, subject matter experts, to the people who sell it. Take them along the journey as much as possible because then they will have more confidence in what you learn from it and realize you are working with them instead of against them.”
Nadav:
“Participate in a research lab during your study. This is what made me excited about research. The difference between UX research and academic research is that academic research can be slower. It’s a good thing because it gives you a lot of opportunities to learn and you can make all the mistakes and learn as you go. Trust yourself to learn from the process. Then you can come into the industry when you’re educated and have already made mistakes in university.”
Nicholas:
“It is important to think about user research as a mechanism to collect user data. I think it is important to be intimately familiar with the different types of user data you get back depending on the research collect method you use. If I asked a user how to drive a car, they’d probably give me a list of explicit steps that you would need to do. If I rode shotgun with them, I would learn so much more about what they knew about driving. I could observe that when they approach a busy intersection, they immediately check their rearview mirror to see if they are about to be rear ended. That wouldn’t have been in the list of steps they told me. If I asked them to draw and co-create a car with me, then I would learn about their vision for what driving and transportation should actually be. I would learn deep, unspoken things they weren’t even aware that they knew. So as a UX researcher collecting user data, think about the different types of data you’re collecting, think about what information is most useful to your stakeholders, and think about which method is most useful to collect what type of data you want to collect.”
Thank you so much to Amber, Nadav, and Nicholas for their time and advice! If you’re interested in UX research and want to learn more, don’t hesitate to reach out or leave a comment. If research isn’t the right fit for you, but you want to get into UX, check out our other articles in the advice to UX series:
- Being a UX developer without a traditional degree
- Advice for future UX designers
- Advice to future content designers
Next time you see a researcher looking for participants, please help them out and sign up.
Have a story of your own? Write with us! Our community thrives on diverse voices — let’s hear yours.
