Building shared operations across hidden research silos

In recent years, there’s been growing discussion around democratization and People Who Do Research (PWDR) — there’s even a conference for it! There are also research-adjacent quantitative roles who could benefit from triangulating findings with qualitative insights. Ideally a UX research function would collaborate with these disciplines, sharing not just data but best practices, tools, and evangelism efforts.

As a research operations specialist, how do you go about finding people in these types of roles? How do you engage with them and get buy-in for collaboration?

The answers will vary from company to company, but below I outline some approaches you can take to expand your research function and help not only evangelize UX research, but also solidify findings and further push customer-centricity across your organization.

People Who Do Research (PWDR)

Coined by Kate Towsey, PWDR are members of an organization that are not UX researchers by title but still engage in the practice. Engaging with PWDR at your company is an important step operationally because working in isolation could potentially mean:

• No alignment on training, so biased data is collected
• No centralized recruitment platform, so users get overwhelmed with participation invitations
• No centralized repository, so information isn’t being shared and resources are wasted tracking down information or worse — redoing work

How to find PWDR

Identify the recruitment source

Some people recruit through personal contacts, but others need the support of a customer list. If you can find who owns the list, you can learn who’s accessing the list.

Think about who at your company has access to customer emails. Potential list owners include:

• Data analysts
• Account managers
• Marketing

Reach out to people in these areas and find out if there are other roles reaching out to them for recruitment. Then follow the trail to those roles.

Investigate job descriptions

Another approach is to identify roles by looking at job descriptions that include a variation of research related terms like methodology names and types of UX research. Start with job postings at your own company, and then expand out to job postings in general. Filter out common titles you already know to uncover the less obvious ones.

Look at your org chart

Many companies have a corporate map of roles / hierarchy. If you have one, take a look at the departments and sub-departments and think about which could benefit from UX research. They may already be doing it. This approach is also good because if they’re not, you have the opportunity to evangelize the practice and potentially expand it into a new domain.

How to approach PWDR

Like trying to find common ground with anyone who does the same thing as you but differently, it’s important to approach PWDR with an open mind and a learning spirit. Think about it from the other side — imagine someone you’ve never heard of reaching out to you and requesting that you stop going rogue and follow all their processes. You wouldn’t want to work with them.

Come up with a list of benefits to collaboration with you that make sense given your company culture, such as shared access to tools and contacts. Then reach out to the PWDR to connect and present your case.

If you’re able to garner interest, the next step is to learn about their processes and materials. This is where the research operations function really kicks in. Focus on learning not just what they do, but why and how they do it. They’ll probably want to learn about your side of things as well.

The ideal is that you find a single process that works for everyone and you’re able to merge the UX research function and the PWDR into a single loosely-connected but cohesive unit.

In reality, there are probably reasons they do things differently from you and a single shared process may not be viable. In this case, go for as much partial alignment as you can, such as enabling resource sharing and perhaps making slight adjustments to both of your processes.

How to find research-adjacent quantitative roles

Identify who cares

People who know they can benefit from qualitative insights may already be accessing information you share. Keep an eye out for people outside of immediate stakeholders who request access to research and who engage with research outcomes, such as commenting on a presentation.

Look for quantitative data sources

Think about quantitative data that could be useful to you as a researcher, such as customer complaints, corporate website analytics, and data around documentation use. Who owns those? Those people probably have access to analytics and could benefit from the support of qualitative insights (and vice versa). In addition, there may be people on these teams with a passion for usability and therefore may be interested in a more direct partnership.

Find analytics-focused roles

Similar to finding PWDR, look at department maps and job role descriptions that include analytics. Quantitative analytics paired with qualitative insights form a strong argument.

How to approach research-adjacent quantitative roles

Unlike PWDR, there is less concern about coming off as telling people how to do things. The focus should be more on finding ways to directly support insights and share data. Just as with PWDR, build a case for collaboration, this time based on the benefits of qualitative and quantitative interplay, and present that case to research-adjacent roles.

If there’s interest, the ideal is to adjust your processes so there are allocated steps dedicated to collaboration. If that’s not possible, at least make data access and project visibility across departments easier, such as inviting each other to presentations.

Summary

The aim of this article was to help you and your department expand and improve UX research collaboration and user-centricity across your enterprise.

If you’re still not sure where to start, try looking into roles related to:

• Project management
• Design
• Data analytics
• Strategic / Business intelligence
• Insights management
• Customer success

Let’s break down those silos!