Meet the Instructors: Alec Levin
In this series, we’re introducing instructors from our Intro to UXR course, starting with UXRTO founder Alec
This spring, UX Research TO launched our first ever course, Intro to UX Research, here in Toronto. In our Meet the Instructors article series, we’re introducing you to all of our wonderful teachers.
If you’ve been following us here at UX Research TO, you may have heard Alec Levin’s name before—he’s the founder of our meet-up who MCs just about every event we have including the UXR Conference. He’s welcoming our very first cohort of students to their very first class, speaking about the role of a UX Researcher.
Get to know Alec a little better with our conversation below.
DK: Tell me a TL;DR version of the Alec Levin Gets Into Research Story.
AL: I studied biology in university, and was really unsure of what I was going to do after school. Before I graduated I came across a company building software for biomedical researchers called Meta, and I knew I had to be a part of it.
My goal was to find a way to sneak into the company, and the way I was able to do that was by testing their product for them with graduate students and sharing what I learned with the founders. That testing lead to meaningful product changes and developing a better understanding of what scientists needed from Meta’s platform.
That experience of talking to people, learning things about them, and turning that into product changes was really empowering for me. From there I’ve just been immersing myself in the practice, learning about new ideas and methods, and getting better at being a researcher.
No big deal, but you founded UX Research TO! How did that happen?
After Meta I started a startup, called steadfast.io, that was building a product to help PMs and designers talk to users more often for UX research (think of Slack, but for talking to users in a beta program).
While running Steadfast, one of my ideas to find customers to talk to was to run a meet-up called UserTestingTO that I hoped potential customers might come out to. It didn’t quite work out that way, but running the event was a lot of fun and I was amazed at how many people wanted to learn more about UX research.
Just before shutting down my startup, I was thinking about how great it would be to have more research events and a bigger research community. So I started up a new meet-up called UX Research Toronto, and it’s been fun to watch it grow since then.
What are you most excited about when you think about the future of UXRTO?
The most exciting thing for me about the future of UXRTO is definitely the growth of the community. It’s been a privilege to see so many researchers that I didn’t know of come out to events and connect with us online.
My hope for UXRTO is that it becomes a platform for researchers to start new initiatives and share new ideas that matter to the research practice. The larger the research community becomes, the bigger the platform becomes. If we’re successful, I think UX Research Toronto will be a force driving research practice and knowledge forward in Toronto and across the world.
You’re talking to students about the role of a researcher. How do you see that role changing in the next 5 years as there are more companies hiring more researchers?
I think the biggest change we’re going to see in the UX research role over the next 5 years is the movement from a tactical or execution-focused job to one that’s more strategic. I think that’ll be a really positive change, and with it I think we’ll see UX/user research departments developing within larger companies.
It feels like we’re at a really early stage in the evolution of modern UX research, so its not surprising that a lot of managers and executives see UX researchers as glorified usability testers or survey creators. Historically, that’s been the job a lot of companies have hired for and understand. That attitude is selling short the value that research can bring to a company, and especially a product team.
But, on that point, I’d like to add a note of caution: this change of research becoming more strategic isn’t going to happen on its own. It’s something that we have to advocate for as individuals in our workplaces, and together as a community.
What’s your favourite book/article/video/song/anything really when it comes to research content you recommend for our readers (besides the UXRTO Medium blog of course)?
Well, for starters. I am a big fan of the UXRTO Medium blog so definitely check that out first!
My favourite video is Matt Gallivan’s talk from UXRConf 2018 that I think was a really inspiring vision for what research can become in big product companies, and I highly recommend watching it.
That said, for the most part, the content I’ve read or watched that’s contributed most to my abilities as a UX researcher aren’t UX research books. One of my favourite books is called Economic Facts and Fallacies by Thomas Sowell. He’s an economist and fellow at the Hoover Institution with a fascinating personal history.
In that book, he presents his take on what he thinks are the biggest misconceptions about economics in popular culture. What makes it fascinating is that he uses the same data other economists, governments, and companies use, but he draws the opposite conclusions.
It highlights the importance of always digging deep into the data, building a model of understanding you can use to attack a question, and engaging with contrary viewpoints.
As UX researchers, doing this is critical to getting to the truths we need to uncover to build great products.
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