Sydney ResearchOps Kicks Off
The night begins
What happens when you gather a bunch of design research enthusiasts into the one room…?
So. Much. Chat.
On the night of 23rd July 2018, 22 brainiacs from the public and private sector, and from all different backgrounds, sat together in the collaboration space at the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) and got chatting.
We started off making sure everyone was on the same page about where the ResearchOps movement was up to — that it was early days, and their contributions on the night would help the global community define who we are and what we’re doing. We then sped through the workshop activities, brainstorming and collaborating at speed, only stopping to catch our breaths and devour some (delicious) dinner.
The workshop focussed on exploring three main topics:
- Defining “ResearchOps”
- The wins and struggles of operationalising research
- What the future might look like for our community
A shared understanding
The concept of ResearchOps was fairly consistent across the variety of industries and team sizes. There was a shared understanding of the activities and resources involved in research (eg. tools, methodologies, analysis and curation of research), the issues surrounding research (such as ethics), and as the name suggests, the larger operational challenges posed in performing research in different settings (such as support from CSuite or communicating benefits of research to others).
Different and similar challenges
Having people from a diverse set of workplaces led to some fascinating discussions, with some of the top concerns for individuals being vastly different, despite many of the challenges and wins being the same. The idea that different parts of an organisation might simultaneously claim they ‘own’ a customer made a number of people within the room really stop and consider how their organisation’s relationship to their customer or users really works.
The future
The ideas for the future ranged from practical everyday activities like sharing research more broadly, to blue sky concepts (anyone want to run a ResearchOps conference?!) and really captured the desire for a hands on, get-in-there-and-work-it-out approach.
A sense of community
By the end of the night we cleaned up with a new, strong sense of community. We were blown away by the feeling of comradery that was present from the minute the first person walked through the door. We had attracted a group of energetic, enthusiastic, and passionate people, who wanted to both learn from but also contribute to the success of others, and it was an absolute pleasure to see the night unfold with such a positive atmosphere.
The biggest win for us was seeing people from different workplaces swapping numbers and teeing up time to meet and work through specific problems together. If that’s not a measure of success when beginning a new community, we don’t know what is…!
So what happens next?
We’re currently working on the Sydney, Australian, and international analysis, and trying to determine how best to make sure the Sydney ResearchOps crew can get what they want and need out of the community. We’re toying with the idea of a regular pizza and beer brainstrust night, where we meet and nut out each other’s problems together… but we will reach out to those who were at the event, or would like to be involved in the future, to try and determine what would work best.
For now, we’re diving into the data, coordinating the analysis with the 31 other cities from around the world (mental!!) and will keep everyone posted via Medium. If you want to learn about how we’re doing the analysis, check out Kate Towsey’s article.
You can be involved too!
If you have an idea you want to share, would like to run a ResearchOps themed event yourself, or want to help where you can, please feel free to reach out to any of us on Twitter or via the ResearchOps slack channel. Read about your options for joining the ResearchOps online community here.
We’re looking forward to continuing this ResearchOps journey with you all :)
Sandy Ho (Slack: @sandy; Twitter: @sandyho87)
Lily Ainsworth (Slack: @lilyainsworth; Twitter: @LilyAinsworth)
Kristina Lund Hansen (Slack: @Kristina Lund Hansen; Twitter: @KristinaBalina)
Michelle Pickrell (Slack: @michelle; Twitter: @UXmich)
