Book Sips #54 — “It’s our research” by Tomer Sharon
I
n this new professional adventure, I’m facing one of the most challenging yet exciting tasks to complete: creating a user research team. There’s no right way of doing so and that’s why I think is tantamount to understand the different approaches from a wide range of professionals. I started a while back with the book Building User Research Teams and this was another attempt to complete a unique way, mine, in how to succeed in a product research team.
The subtitle ‘Getting Stakeholders Buy-in for User Experience Research Projects’ is not exhaustive enough to cover the whole spectrum of topics covered by Tomer Sharon in his It’s our research. In this practical guide, one can find, indeed, how to involve the right people in the right moment, but it’s not just that! Of course, again, I do not agree 100% with Tomer’s approaches in certain stages (e.g. reporting). Finally, this book was written back in 2012 and it’s impressive to experience how much has changed since then. In a word, this book is an invaluable resource as a reference book for conducting research. A sip:
“Many people look for sound bites or punch lines, for the winning argument they can use with stakeholders that will fully persuade them to act upon research findings or to even invest in research at all. The UX community is known for sharing knowledge and experience in many different ways and channels. […] I don’t like that approach. I don’t think you can persuade people by using one-liners. It’s just trying to show them (and yourself maybe) you’re smarter than them and that you argue well. I believe in legwork, hard work, and profound collaboration. When you work with stakeholders, not on them, everyone stands to gain.”
👉 Research in isolation is like nasty detective work, it will hardly be known or even trusted!
#joshdixit
It’s Our Research
by Tomer Sharon
Why read?
Understand what research is all about –a collaborative discipline at its core– while getting insight on how to conduct best-in-class research at each of the steps.
294 pages, Morgan Kaufmann, 2012
Get this book here on Amazon!
