‘Research, team of one…are you ready for your table?’
This was basically the question I was asked when I joined TransferWise as their first qualitative researcher more than 18 months ago.
I was hired for the standard UX researcher role — go and sit within teams, do their research, help them integrate insights into their work, and move the product forward.
But like in so many companies today, I was hired alone. There were no concrete plans at the time to expand the UX research team — it was more of an experiment of how research would integrate into a very engineering and analytics-heavy company. And it started with me.
The plan was to have me rotate amongst teams in TransferWise, staying with them long enough to do research and get them on their way, then jump to the next team that needed help. My first project was a massive undertaking. What was supposed to be a 3 month project turned into a 6 month project. I was working 10+ hour days to get the team the research they needed, and never fast enough nor convincing enough to influence the project as much as was needed.
This wasn’t going to work. I was burnt out by the end of the project and it was very clear to me that this simply wasn’t scalable. Especially as the company was constantly hiring and only getting bigger. There would be more teams, more projects, and still, only me, UX Researcher, Team of One.
So I scrambled to action. I thought hard about what worked and didn’t work in that first project. There were many learnings — research needed to be earlier in the product cycle, results were needed faster, and insights needed to be better integrated into the team to gain traction, and on and on and on. If you’re a researcher, you’ll recognize these as the normal challenges of research within a company not traditionally design or research-based. I learned the hard way that even if a company is lean and flexible, it doesn’t mean that they are already sold on qualitative research as a function. I had to start at the beginning.
Seeing as how I was still only going to be one, I couldn’t be everywhere at once. So I scaled.
The first thing I needed to do? Convince the company that qualitative research, UX research, is valid, necessary, and important. I did this by holding monthly UX Research 101 classes where I taught people about what UX research is — what the benefits are, the limitations, the methods, how to avoid pitfalls.
The idea behind these classes was to get wider exposure on UX research, get people to understand what it is, what it can do, and why (and where) they should use it. I invited everyone in the company and people from all teams showed up just out of curiosity — our HR/People team, analysts, engineers, PMs, designers, the lot. And many were amazed at how little they knew about UX research and how much their work would be improved if they utilized it.
The second thing I did was establish me, Researcher, Team of One, as a sort of internal consultancy. Teams now realized they had research needs and would need help planning, scheduling, moderating, and analyzing their projects.
I realized I could handle multiple research projects at once and therefore help multiple teams at once, if I wasn’t doing every single thing in the studies myself. I needed the team to buy into research so much that they were interested in running it themselves, and in the process, own the data and experience as their own. Be a real part of the studies themselves so they could say firsthand that they heard a participant tell such and such story about their project.
So, much to most research purists’ dismay, I taught the basics of interview moderation and unbiased question writing. I had to. I literally could not be embedded in all teams at once. Nor run all their research or proofread all of their surveys. But nor could I let research needs be left unattended to. There was simply too much at stake.
With this, I wrote an outline of what teams needed to think about for their research study before they approached me.
Like homework before you meet with the teacher’s assistant, it forced teams to really think about the questions they were trying to answer, approximately how much time they will need to get it set up correctly, and how to set it up.
Then they’d speak to me and together we’d give the project some legs. I’d proof the plan and set in motion recruitment and logistics of where, when, how the studies would happen, and all that research jazz.
And this was fantastic. More teams are bought in than ever before and you can see the progress in the product. Engagement has shot through the roof; teams that have worked with me before now tell other teams about their experience and I get more and more teams interested in research and wanting to know how they can get the data they need.
But it’s not all roses. With this scaling of Researcher, Team of One, are some serious drawbacks. What has been established up to this point is a buy-in of UX and specifically qualitative research around the company. The engagement levels have increased immensely and only continue to grow.
The amount of research has also increased exponentially. From doing one live research study every month, we’ve now surged to doing anywhere from 5–15 remote tests every week and at least 2–3 live studies every month. On top of other types of ongoing research.
But what this doesn’t yet tackle are the larger questions we should be answering as a company. Teams have learned the basics of usability and user interviews, but have yet to get to the larger underlying questions that require more than one researcher. Also, the quality of the analysis is somewhat shallow in comparison to what it could be with more trained researchers on a project. These are things that are harder to teach and take time to develop well.
And so this is the time when finally, Researcher, Team of One, will no longer be just one. We are in the process of looking for our next talented UX researcher to continue the growth and deepen the quality of UX research at TransferWise. Being a Team of One has been an exciting journey, but I look forward to the continued evolution of UX research at TransferWise as we expand the team.
‘Yes, I am ready for my table, thank you. But can you please bring another chair? There are others coming.’
Want to join the table and be integral to the expansion of UX research at TransferWise? Apply here.
