Academics as UX Researchers: Learning to let go.
After completing my undergraduate studies I, like many people, jumped into a Ph.D. program without fully understanding what it was or why I was doing it. Although I eventually got the degree, I knew that I didn’t want to stay in academia. Unfortunately, with a background in Design, I was not only worried that my new degree wouldn’t count for much in ‘the real world’, but feared it would actually work against me trying to land a job. While my research skills had improved, my design skills hadn’t evolved anywhere near as much as my classmates who had opted to do a Masters or to start working right after undergrad. I had all but accepted that I had wasted several years of my life until I stumbled upon the field of UX research. Now I’m fortunate to work in a role where my niche knowledge and skillset are leveraged and appreciated every day and I see the Ph.D. as a blessing rather than a curse. Of course, making this transition was difficult, and so I’m writing this article to help anyone else who might be considering or in the early stages of a switch from academia (regardless of the field) to UX research.
There are several great articles on Medium about why you might want to switch from academia to UX research (the freedom, the benefits, the impact) and how to go about it (creating a portfolio, interviewing, etc.). Rather than repeating these, I’m going to assume that you’ve already decided to make the transition and focus instead on three points that should help to prepare you for and/or reassure you in your new role. The key theme here is learning to let go.
You don’t need to be an expert in UX in order to be a good UX researcher.
UX research, in my own words, is the process of (1) understanding who your product’s users are (what they plan to use your product for and why, how they want to interact with it, their technical proficiency, their likes and dislikes, etc.) and (2) testing your product with these users to ensure it meets their needs and offers a positive experience. Academics tend to fit this role quite well, regardless of their field, thanks to their experience in quickly getting to grips with a concept, generating hypotheses, designing research studies to test these hypotheses, analysing the data and presenting the insights to non-experts.
As academics, we often feel the need to be well-informed on a topic before weighing in. However, unless you studied design, it’s unlikely that you’re an expert in UX itself. In fact, even as someone who studied design I don’t feel like an expert as I’m more familiar with physical products than digital. But this is okay, because your job is to use your research skills to become an expert on your users, not the principles of design. Sure, it helps to be knowledgeable in UX and this is something I’m working on myself (so that I can make more specific design recommendations and carry out heuristic evaluations), but this isn’t necessary, especially in the beginning. Just focus on understanding the user and communicating their needs and feedback to the product team.
Good research that’s on time is better than perfect research that’s too late.
If you’re struggling to accept the fact that you don’t need to know UX that well in order to be UX researcher, you might be tempted to reassure yourself by saying “well, at least I know how to do the research part.” You do, but you’re also going to have to accept that your ways of doing research are about to change too. You’re lucky if you work with a product team that asks for research before committing to development (e.g., validating the value of a new feature concept or testing a mock-up to ensure it’s intuitive) but they won’t wait forever. You won’t always have the time or budget to choose the best method, design the perfect study or perform the ideal analysis. Instead, chat to other researchers, find out what methods they used for similar projects, adapt as needed and commit to something that you feel will be good and quick enough. Of course you should make sure your survey questions aren’t biased and you should pilot your usability studies to ensure that you’re collecting useful information, but get comfortable with the fact that you’ll sometimes use suboptimal methods or even have to create new ones (especially when dealing with new concepts and technology like AI). That’s okay, the product team doesn’t care how you collect the data as long as the insights are trustworthy and useful.
While we’re on methods, don’t get overwhelmed by the amount of options. When I started as a UX researcher the product I was working on was so early-stage that we didn’t even have concepts to test, yet I wasted time trying to learn how to do studies and use methods that wouldn’t be needed for months. Just take it one step at a time, focusing on the methods that make sense at that moment and asking other researchers for help where needed.
Get comfortable outsourcing your work to others, even if they’re not researchers.
I’ve never met a UX researcher that said “Yeah, we have enough researchers on the team.” There’s never enough, so you have to be strategic with prioritising projects and strict with saying no to people. Even then, you’ll likely still go through phases where you have too many high priority projects to tackle by yourself and you’ll be forced to trust others to help.
If you’re lucky you’ll have enough budget to outsource some work to a third party research vendor. If you’re extra lucky, you’ll have designers, PMs or engineers around you that are willing to take on some of the research themselves. This is a great way for you to scale your efforts as you can decide on how much you need to be involved. Do they need help recruiting users? Writing the survey questions or interview guide? Deciding on features to usability test? Analysing the results? Different people will need different levels of guidance, but it will still be less work than running the whole study yourself.
Once again, the hardest part for academics may be accepting that some parts of the study may not be as ‘perfect’ or scientific as they would like, but this is okay. Product development isn’t a science. There has to be some room for interpretation and creativity in order for new ideas to emerge and new products to flourish.
Closing.
This isn’t to say that UX research isn’t thorough or as serious as academic research. In many cases it’s even more serious as it could impact tons of people that use your product or app for critical work. It’s just important to accept that things move a lot faster in industry and, once you get comfortable with this speed and start seeing the impact of your work, you may wonder if you’d ever be able to return to academia.
