10 lessons I’ve learned from my first 6 month as a solo UX Researcher
6 months ago, I became the first UX Designer ( well, UX Researcher … ) within Crème de la Crème by creating my own position inside the company. Today, Antoine and I are in the process of creating a strong product & design team to face our next big challenges : shifting the company towards a real user-centric and product-centric mindset, as well as providing freelancers with the best possible ecosystem there is.
All in all, I would consider this experience as a solo UX Researcher to be rather successful. Within 6 months, UX became a central topic within the company, and we’re now recruiting several profiles for roles that previously didn’t exist in the company (Product Manager, UX Researcher, …). Which also means, my Cast Away era is soon to come to an end :)
These first 6 months were not short of challenges, and thinking back on it, here are 10 lessons I’ve learnt that might help you if you’re facing the same challenges as a “UX Team of One” in your company.
1 —Set yourself up for success
Rome wasn’t built in a day.
- French adage
It takes time to create something great. It also requires solid foundations.
As a solo UX Practitioner, you’re fully responsible for creating the right environment for UX and Research to be successful. For instance, it starts by setting appropriate objectives for your position. Those objectives should be challenging enough that they push you to give your very best, but also reachable enough that you won’t feel frustrated and overwhelmed if you don’t meet 100% of them.
The same way, you might want to temper stakeholders’ expectations. Research won’t be a panacea, and being a solo UX practitioner, you will only be able to achieve so much [More on this on part 5]. In this regard, educating your coworkers goes a long way. What is qualitative research? Why is it different from quantitative research?Why and when would you use qual over quant? What are the limits of both methodologies? What will you be able to learn, vs. what won’t you be able to uncover? Why is that (methodology/time/budget )?
This is also key if you’re not a solo UX practitioner yet, but you’re trying to convince your company that they need one, and that you’re up for the task.
To give you a quick idea, I spent 2–3 months perfecting my pitch, highlighting the problems UX would solve inside the company, and showing with precise examples how we could solve them precisely. But also, by explaining that some aspects are fundamental, yet they might take quite a bit of time to get up and running inside the company.
Solid foundations will help you build up your UX practices successfully inside the company. Don’t rush it.
2 — Read a lot [and keep reading once you get the job ! ]
While perfecting my pitch, I was reading tons of books and articles. I’ve learnt a lot, and it’s a great way to build up both my knowledge and my confidence. It’s also great to stay up-to-date with the best-practices and to see how the best designers do it, and how you could improve.
The biggest challenge was probably to keep on reading and learning as much as I did prior to taking my functions. That’s why I decided that I would allocate at least 30min-1h to reading EVERYDAY. I know that not every employer would understand this, but if you can’t do this at work, try to find time in your spare time for it. It’s worth it.
Among the best resources I found, here are a few that helped me becoming a better designer overall :
First, take a look at this comprehensive list of UX Books by the great Simon Pan. It’s your endless source of inspiration when you’re done with what you’re currently reading. It’s also very humbling, because it kind of shows you that you still have to learn a lot :D
In particular, I recommend reading the fantastic Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. Yes, I know, everybody does. But really, do yourself a favor and read it. Like for real. Any summary won’t make up for reading it by yourself and taking notes.
I also recommend you read The User Experience Team of One: A Research and Design Survival Guide by Leah. Soon enough, you’ll realize this is your Wilson in the form of a book :)
In terms of great design resources, Invision have been providing top-notch content via it’s DesignBetter website.
It proved to be an invaluable resource for me to better understand the current challenges and the various ways to experience design inside top companies.
Finally, don’t focus uniquely on UX or Research. The more your learn and your understand about design (or cognition, etc …) as a whole, the better you’ll become.
Especially, I recommend the following podcast :
Hidden brain
Invisibilia
99% Invisible
3 — Meet a lot of People (UX or not)
Meeting people has been critical for me. It helped me get a clearer idea about what I wanted to do, and what I had to aim at. It helped me discover new concepts, and new ways of seeing my everyday job. And most of all, it made me meet fantastic individuals that I can now call my friends. Seriously, just meet one new person each week. Whether it be for a coffee, for lunch, at a networking event, or even via videoconference. Whatever works.
The general idea is for you to ask your questions, to share your experience, and frankly just to have a good time too. You’ll be shocked to see how many people you’re closely (or remotely) connected to share (or shared) the same problems or challenges, and are willing to help you if you open to them. Also, it’s always super interesting to meet people outside your specific field as they do have a very different way of approaching certain things you are struggling with or that you took for granted.
So, go outside your comfort zone, and contact a few people you’d like to talk to. It’s actually way easier than it seems nowadays. Both Shapr and Linkedin have proved very effective on this regard.
Also, find a mentor. I mean it, just ask people you admire and who inspire you if they’d like to answer a couple of questions or to give you feedback on your work. Worst case scenario, they’ll say no :)
4 — Be as transparent as possible
Transparency and honesty go a long way in building trust inside your company. Especially, it’s all about explaining what you can or cannot do at a specific point in time. Explaining what you’ll be able to learn or not using the methodologies you chose, and why you chose to proceed like this in the first place.
Also, it’s all about giving honest feedback about what went OK, and what you struggled with during the specific project you’re working on. Obviously, while explaining how you’re going to make up for this next time.
In my opinion, this is a solid proof that you know what you’re doing, that you’ll be able to keep on progressing and that in case of problem you’ll know how to arrange things out.
No one expects you to be perfect from day one, but people want to know they can trust you in any situation. As a solo UX Practitioner, you’re kind of the captain of a pirate ship. The crew should feel like they put the right person at the helm. Which relates directly to my next point !
5 — Learn to say no
This might not be very straightforward at first, but bear with me. Nobody will ever trust you if you keep on saying yes to projects that make no sense, or if you end up taking too many projects that you won’t be able to give full attention to.
It’s a critical skill, especially when you’re a “UX Team of One” to learn to say no when you think it’s for the greater good. For instance, your coworkers might want to have you research/test a lot of things (qual or quant). It’s your responsibility to say no, if you think that given the time, the budget, or context it won’t yield any significant result.
Trust me on this, you’ll always prefer to work with someone who warns you that your might waste your time, budget and resources, than working with a “Yes-Man” who fails to deliver.
Don’t be too directional about it though, always keep a conversational approach, weigh the pros and cons with the stakeholders, and if possible provide alternate options that might allow you to uncover part of the insights for instance.
Same exact thing if you’re already working on too many projects and it might be at a detriment for both your ongoing projects and the project you’re given the opportunity to work on. UX/Research takes time if you want to do it properly. You need to prepare for it, recruit, test, analyze, think about solutions, and report. That’s a lot to think about, and a lot to do.
Overlooking some of these critical aspects can have dire consequences on the overall quality of your work and your feedback. Once again, it’s your responsibility to warn the stakeholders about these particular issues.
6 — Plan 2 steps ahead
Ok, now that you’re a solo Researcher, ask yourself : where do I see myself in 1 year? in 2 years? in 10 years?
Now write down your objectives, and start working on them step by step! A method that seems to work great is to break down these objectives. By decomposing them in small manageable wins, this will help you build your way up to these grand goals.
For instance, If you want to become a manager. You obviously need to start building a small team. Before this, you probably need to first prove that you’re up for the job you were given. So firstly, you should focus on delivering quality work. Once you’ve got this covered, you then need to become essential enough that you get more and more projects. [So talk to people about what you’re doing, discuss how you could help them, …]. And so on.
By breaking up these objectives in smaller task, you can now identify what can be done to reach each step.
In my opinion, it’s always a great thing to have a plan, whether it be for the short term or the long term. Indeed, this will help you keep your motivation when things don’t go as planned, or when work becomes less exciting. Cause we all know this happens sometimes :)
7 — Get as many people on board as possible
As I mentioned before, it’s extremely important to educate your coworkers about UX/Research. While you can definitely explain what you’re doing, how and why. There is another very effective way of doing so : Getting them to participate.
So, you’re organizing a focus group? Well, ask your coworkers if they’d like to attend. You don’t have enough room to fit everybody? Why don’t you film and broadcast it in another room for your coworkers to see? If you manage to get the stakeholders to come to your focus groups and user testing sessions, you’ve already done pretty well! Give yourself a round of applause. It means you basically managed to convince them this was super interesting and full of insights. Which is definitely true.
You want to go a step further? It’s time to include them in your design process.
A great example can be found in Sprint by Jake Knapp @ Google Ventures. You Might have heard about the Google Design Sprints. Well, basically the whole idea is to be able to understand better your users, to ideate like crazy, to prototype the idea that seems to solve the user problem the best, and to test it. All of this within a week ! And by a week, I mean a business week. You heard me right, 5 days.
One thing I got by reading this book is that, you won’t manage to do this on your own. The idea behind it, is to constitute your multidisciplinary A-Team, composed of designers, engineers, and basically the stakeholders. And this, to benefit from fresh ways to frame the problem(s), to generate tons of creative ideas, to vote on the ones that you’re going to pursue, etc ..
It’s a great way to get people onboard, because they will learn by doing. They will feel like a part of what you’re doing, and that they’re contributing to the creation of something.
Of course, organizing this kind of Design Sprint might be out of reach for some companies (at least in the short term). Though, there are tons of different workshops you can organize to get people to participate.
Really it just requires a white board. Just throw some ideas on there, display some of your sketches, have people contribute and ideate. You’ll see that people love to give their ideas !
8 — A little research is better than no-research at all
When in doubt or frustrated that you cannot do as much as you’d like to, remember that a little research is better than no research at all. Both for the users and for the company. I know it sounds cliché, but I mean it. Remember that whatever you’re doing as a solo UX Researcher/Designer is already a nice step towards something greater in the foreseeable future. Don’t you feel better already? 🤩
Also, if you’re in a company that understood the importance of hiring someone working on UX, chances are they understand the value of the insights you’re going to feed them.
Therefore, I’ll add a small sub-lesson to this. But given what I just wrote, you should definitely spread the word. That’s to say, you should inform your coworkers as much as you can [and give them as much as they’re willing to read 😃].
Tell them what you’ve done this week, what your research confirmed or debunked. Insights only become great if they change something inside the company. Whether it be the way people see things, or the way the company operates.
Therefore, don’t let your best insights fall into oblivion, and share them. It’s actually the best proof you have. And before I forget, always include some context and the next steps when you communicate the results of user testing/research.
Bonus point if you explain clearly why the insights are interesting!
9 — Seek constructive criticism
A good designer gets married to the users’ problems. A bad designer gets married to his own solutions.
Tarun Kohli in Good Designer, Bad Designer
👆Well, I really wish I wrote this one because it’s true on so many levels.
Finding solutions is pretty easy, everybody finds solutions [ to a certain extent].
What’s harder is making sure you‘ve understood exactly what the real problem is. Basically reframing a problem — seeing it in a new light — allows you to see a whole new solution space. That’s to say, a whole new cluster of solutions that will solve this particular problem. If you never reframe the problem, chances are you’ll never think about some of these solutions [ explained perfectly in this article by Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg]. All in all, don’t be too focused on your solutions, but rather on becoming a better designer overall.
One great way to do this, is the following : always seek constructive criticism.
The worst thing someone can tell you is “Great job”. Because “Great Job” won’t push you to make something better next time.
I’m not going to lie, it feels good to hear people are happy with your work. Though, in the long run, I really appreciate more when people pushed me to go beyond my limits and to see things in a different light I never really imagined. If you want to keep progressing, you should probably seek the same !
Always try to improve your execution, your methodology, your eye and your ear. Seek a new light to look at the problems people face, show your solutions to other designers to see what you could have done differently or better.
This is the key to getting better everyday and reaching your goals. Though, I must warn you, actually constructive feedback is difficult to get.
It’s up to you to create an environment in which people will feel at ease with giving and receiving feedback. You won’t regret it !
10 — There’s no cookie-cutter solution
This is the last lesson/piece of advice for today: Remember there is no cookie-cutter solution.
By this, I really just mean that each project is very specific. We all have our very own comfort zone in terms of methodologies, or skills. However, don’t fall in the trap of only working in a direction that feels comfortable.
There are tons of methods to get to know more about your users on a very specific subject, tons of methods to ideate, and tons of methods to test your prototypes. Feel free to explore them and to try new things out if you think it can shed more light on something specific.
From my point of view, this is what makes UX so thrilling on an everyday basis. I feel like I’m learning tons of new things, and that I have lots of “tools” I can use depending on the situations.
So I’d say, just be smart about it. The best method for a project can be the absolute worst for another. Just think about it in terms of qual vs quant, and you’ll get exactly what I mean by this :)
Another way to look at this is to realize that somehow, you’re introducing a small quantity of bias at each step of using a particular method. Who are you recruiting? What is your discussion guide like? How are you going to show and test the assets?
There are an infinite number of possibilities that each have a particular advantage, drawback or flavor. Now, just try to find the one that will work best given the circumstances.
Bonus : Find what works best for you :)
I based all of this advice on what worked best for me. Though, you might not work in the same type of company, your job might focus on various aspects, we might just be very different types of people overall.
Therefore my last piece of advice is the following : explore, experiment, and simply find what works best for you.
Once you’ve found out, please make sure to share your thoughts :)
