UX Team of One: A flexible strategy for a new startup practice
So you’ve made the decision to leave your team and join an early stage startup as their first researcher: You’re now a team of one.
The benefits are clear: You pave your own path as a new research leader and you will see the direct impacts of research on a new product.
There are risks to consider, too. As a team of one, it can be lonely. Especially when there are parts of UX research work that are obvious to you, but not to your stakeholders.
From Doer to Change-Maker
By nature, a start up is likely to have an early UX maturity. There is pressure to move fast. You might feel the need to deliver something right now. Resist the urge. Focus on shifting from a doer to a change-maker.
The first 30 days are the ideal time to build stakeholder relationships. Dedicate at least 40% your time to learn about your teammates and their needs. Long term, this ensures you can set clear expectations about what research can offer them.
Along with building relationships, begin evaluating your UX practice requirements…
Your practice:
- How can a research strategy elevate my practice?
- What is my research vision? Why do I need it?
- What are some of the reasons I chose to lead a team of one?
You and your team:
- What makes me unique as a researcher, and what can I offer the best?
- What are the challenges and team tensions that stakeholders have?
- How do I qualify the level of UX maturity in my company?
The Flexible UX Strategy Framework
The following framework is intended to be used with the Research Ops Framework by Kate Towsey and Scaling Research with Pace Layers by Brigette Metzler.
The Flexible UX Strategy Framework is about the “why and when” of your practice.
There are four key parts to balance between your practice building needs (the “strategy”) and stakeholder needs for research execution (the “doing”). It’s also adaptable when team composition and business objectives change.
Let’s look at each of the four parts in detail.
Strategy: Develop your leadership skills
UX Vision: A chance to think big
What are your personal values, strengths and goals for choosing a solo UX path? A solid vision statement will help you inform your decision making, and help you to remain resilient on your toughest days.
💡Try it: Write your vision statement. Start by brainstorming your personal values and strengths. Who will you serve the most in your practice? Where do you want to take the research practice in the company as it scales?
Try to see if you can simplify your statement to two most essential words. For my current company, I chose “Shared language.” You can then expand your statement for others who want to learn more.
Practice Pillars: Values that You Can Test and Measure
Your Practice Pillars are longer-term outcomes, and where you can apply safe-to-try experiments to affect the biggest change in the startup. These Pillars inform your UX practice needs. You will want to start with hypotheses of how you can best influence the startup’s UX maturity, and your measures of progress. (Hint: Referencing the ReOps & Pace Layers framework is helpful here.)
💡 Try it: What goals will make your practice stronger? What ideas or approaches seem best to grow stakeholders’ user-centric skills? How will you know if you are successful?
In one of my Practice Pillars, I chose to focus on qualitative research and research roadmaps, so that we could plan research initiatives, rather than taking short term requests.
To test this proposal, I planned two small experiments. The first experiment included Design team members. We collaborated on a UX roadmap to estimate two quarters of research and design projects.
Following that, I shared our UX roadmap with the Director of Product. This sparked further conversation about UX roadmapping. Eventually, the product team unified their roadmap to sequence research, design and product initiatives.
Doing: Stakeholder needs for project execution
Quarterly Goals: Creating OKRs & research projects
In the U.S., many companies use Objectives & Key Results (OKRs). OKRs are an approach for teams to set goals within a 30- to 90-day timeframe. This is only one of many ways that companies may align teams on business goals. The key takeaway is to ensure that your research projects fit into the cadence of regular team norms.
In a shorter time frame, your focus is to achieve visible results that are valuable to stakeholders; and ensure that you stay pro-active. You can use your OKRs (or quarterly goals) to inform three- to six-month research roadmaps.
💡Try it: Think about how you can tie research projects to business OKRs. If your company does not use OKRs, commit to working regularly with stakeholders to assess their business priorities and needs.
Rituals & Reflections: Set recurring to-dos and celebrate weekly wins
Rituals are small, recurring commitments to set momentum for your practice. You can also use them to protect your personal time. Reflections are a type of ritual you can use to track what’s going well and where to improve.
💡Try it: Choose the weekly rituals that work for you. Record all wins from small to big, and celebrate your wins!
At my current company, we meet on Mondays to share our priorities and we track accomplishments on Fridays. Every quarter, we share research recaps with the team.
As for reflections, I record my personal wins in a personal journal. We also share cross-functional wins in Slack.
You’re never alone
The truth is you are never alone in practice-building work. Requiring startup researchers to work without partners is not sustainable for business.
As you develop the framework for your practice, listen to your stakeholders and ask them about their interests, business goals, and challenges.
About ReOps Slack community
At any point in your journey as a solo UX researcher, join us in the ReOps community Slack and add the #team-of-one channel. The Team of One ReOps community hosts Lean Coffee meets about once a month. Not a member of ResearchOps Community Slack? Learn more here
About Clara Kuo
Clara Kuo is a UX research leader with 10+ years of research experience. She is currently one year into her startup journey at Vivian Health. Clara also holds a MBA from the Middlebury Institute of Internal Studies in Monterey, CA, U.S.A.
Additional Credits: Many people supported this effort. Huge thanks to the ResearchOps Community editors (Jonathan Richardson, Olivia Chakraborty, Robert Imbrie and Vivian Navele).
Rohan Irvine and George Zhang for early conversations about defining research vision and strategy. Colin Mulholland at The Ready for sharing the OS Canvas, which I could compare to the ReOps Framework. Also thanks to Brigette Metzler, who introduced me to Pace Layers.
