The UX Life Chose Me Newsletter #47
September 2024
I don’t know if it feels this way to you, but I am feeling very ‘back to school’ this week.
Although I’ve tried to include less articles about AI in this one (anyone else bored of it now?) I couldn’t help but write about it in my Editors Keyboard piece.
And do try and make it to the end as I think you’ll find my ‘and finally’ inspiring.
I hope you enjoy reading the newsletter this month.
Penny
From the Editors Keyboard
In one of my recent newsletters I wrote about a survey I was working on.
The results are in and I’m happy to say they were interesting and mostly useful. However I was really surprised how many answers were obviously written by AI.
When the question is ‘tell us about a good experience you’ve had…’ and the answer comes back to say ‘it is generally well known that you’ll get a good experience here, here and here’, and you get very similar answers several times across the survey results you can’t help but wonder.
Then I saw something on LinkedIn from someone saying they had had a participant who was obviously getting AI to answer the question for them and reading the answer out in a live interview!
I can sort of understand it in a survey, but a live interview?!?! I was shocked. Although I have had people attend sessions who obviously had no idea about the product we were talking about.
Talking to a colleague we agreed that it’s just going to become more prevalent, to the point where it might not be worth running surveys any more.
So what can we do?
It’s pretty clear people are doing this because of the incentives we offer, but I don’t think we can just stop offering incentives without shooting ourselves in the foot.
Or we could all get back into the lab, as I assume it would be harder to use an AI to answer my questions if I’m sitting right next to you (although not impossible). But that comes with a cost and issues talking to people in other locations etc.
Which leaves us with improving our screener questions. A tricky job at the best of times.
What do you do to make sure you’re speaking to the people you actually want to speak to?
How do you write good screener questions which are hard to cheat?
Interesting Stuff
The State Of User Research 2024 Report
User Interviews, 15 min read
As always a super interesting report. I wouldn’t say there was anything that surprising in it, but it did confirm things like having a research ops person on your team makes the team more productive, but companies aren’t hiring them now. Just watch out for the really annoying page movements as you scroll.
Research Findings vs Insights vs Actionable Suggestions
Debbie Levitt, July 2024, 9 min read
As Debbie says we’ve probably heard about the above, and might even use them interchangeably, but they are different. Debbie gives us some very clear examples of what the differences are.
Tracking Research Impact
ResearchOps Community, January 2024, 56 min watch
If you’re anything like me, the holy grail is finding a way to really track the impact of your research. This video from the re+Ops community might help you along as they talk through how various teams have made it work for them.
Sustainable UX: The Importance Of UX Researchers In Sustainable UX Practice
Victor Yocco, PhD, July 2024, 6 min read
While I agree with what Victor says in this piece, I think we need to go further than this. We need to think about whether growth is really the best metric to measure how well our businesses are doing.
Use This Process To Source High-Quality Research Participants
Amy Clarke, 5 min read
In answer to my question above, this is a good starting point for recruiting ‘real’ people. It’s a fine balance between finding the ‘right’ people and excluding people due to our biases.
Let’s Talk About Respecting Assumptions
Tamara Adlin, October 2023, 3 min read
I really like this piece by Tamara. She makes the very good point that you can’t change peoples assumptions if you don’t know what they are first.
Everything I Know About UX Research I First Learnt From Lt. Columbo
Slava Shestopalov, October 2023, 13 min read
This isn’t the first piece to suggest UX Research is like detective work, but it did make me laugh and I do think it’s pretty spot on.
Book of the Month
This month Kate Towsey’s new book Research That Scales comes out. If you are into re+ops this is the book for you, especially if you are trying to set it up in your company. I might have already had a sneak peak so I can tell you that it covers everything you can possibly think of about research operations with very actionable advice.
Events
Behind The Bias — Dissecting Human Shortcuts For Better Research And Design
UX Research & Strategy, 17 September 2024
This event with Lauren Schaefer looks like it’ll be fascinating. Looking at how bias can influence our research and what we can do about it.
DISCO Conf 2024
Maze, 17 October 2024
Billed as the global research and discovery conference this virtual event looks like it has a a great range of speakers from around the world.
And Finally
Love this idea seen on LinkedIn. Dr Hayley T. suggests taking prerecorded unedited usability tests and sharing with your stakeholders. Everyone in the room together with popcorn and usability bingo! I’m in!
Seen something out in the wild you think other UX Researchers would be interested in or a new research related book perhaps? Send me the link and maybe I’ll include it in my next newsletter.
