Four milestones of my user research journey of discovery

In his five-year Zalando career, Fabian Kimmich has experienced the User Researcher role from all angles. We look back on the journey that led him to becoming Zalando’s first ever Principal User Researcher.

Every successful career is a journey of discovery. Passion and curiosity call us to adventure. Challenge and mentorship lead us to insight and transformation. And the clarity we gain from it all brings us to evaluate our direction, until, knapsacked with new wisdom, we restart the learning cycle.

For User Researchers, the discovery is twofold. As they explore new paths to the customer, growing at every corner, their journey of discovery is both outer and inner. At Zalando, this journey might take you — as it did Fabian — back and forth between individual contribution and management tracks.

Fabian’s Zalando career began in 2017 with his dream assignment. Once he had been welcomed into the “small team of very open-minded, warmhearted, and knowledgeable individuals” as a User Researcher, he was tasked with leading a complex project that would lay the groundwork for the customer-centric approach that has come to define Zalando. Fabian was promoted to Senior User Researcher, then User Research Manager, before becoming the first person to take on our Principal User Researcher role in late 2021. The pages of Fabian’s Zalando epic have been turned by his openness to try new things, the flexibility to create his own narrative, and a fantastic lead who has nurtured his growth since the beginning.

Curious to find out how you can progress as a User Researcher at Zalando? We asked Fabian to reflect on the personal development milestones that advanced his career.

User Researcher

Meeting the Mentor

Who is the Zalando customer? This is the big question that Fabian was tasked with answering only four months after joining as a User Researcher. “We developed the idea of creating customer archetypes. I felt so honored when my lead, Rob Manzano, put me in charge of that massive project. I learned so much. It was just amazing. It was the dream of any researcher to be able to do ethnographic research: traveling around, interviewing people in their homes, and looking into their wardrobes. After that, we developed a survey and validated our findings quantitatively, designing the customer archetypes, which we named Zalando Portraits. They are still used today, and are relevant and omnipresent in the work of many Product Designers and Product Managers. This project, and the trust my lead and my team gave to me, really enabled me to grow a lot in that year.”

Senior User Researcher

The Road of Trials

In 2019, Fabian was promoted to Senior User Researcher. As the team was growing rapidly, he soon started taking on people-leadership responsibilities. “Each team member had a lead who took care of their personal development and was there for them as a sounding board. It all happened at my own pace; I took on one direct report, then two, then three. It was really nice for me because I didn’t have any prior people-leadership experience.”

Another growth opportunity came in the form of a six-day leadership training. “I will never forget those days because they were super intense and exciting. The quality was so good, and it was so engaging and interactive that it really stuck with me. For example, we did little role-plays where there was a ‘conflict’ between two of the directs and we had to solve it. Of course, in the beginning, when you go through these exercises, you make a lot of mistakes and totally fail. You learn so much by doing that in a safe environment. We also received a lot of material to practice afterwards. I was very thankful for having gotten this opportunity.”

Fabian put these skills into practice as the leader of a confidential project that revolved around field work. “Once we had aligned on our research goals and questions, I had to bring the entire team up to speed on running in-home interviews. I really love this training part because people are usually very excited and engaged in their first experience of qualitative user research. It’s much more direct and unfiltered than what many people with a business background are used to. The project was super exciting. Together with colleagues from the corporate development team, we traveled, ran lots of interviews, and developed a survey in the meantime.”

User Research Manager

The Revelation

In 2020, the user research team merged with the Voice of Customers team, which until then, had presided mainly over net promoter score (NPS) and customer satisfaction measurement. The expanding teams required an additional team lead. “I was offered to become the manager of the user research team. I had already been promoted to User Research Manager, but I never expected to be given the opportunity to lead a whole team of twelve people. Initially, I wasn’t sure what to answer because it felt like a huge responsibility, and I was concerned that I would be further from the hands-on research I am passionate about. What I really value about my lead is that he’s a very experimental person. He said that we could just try it out and see how it worked. I said yes because I thought it was a great opportunity, not only to try something new, but to help the team improve.”

Together with the other line managers, Fabian worked to define certain processes more clearly, such as project intake and prioritization. Since the onset of the pandemic had been a stressful time for everybody, he focused a great deal on improving the mental wellbeing of the team and managing their workload. That meant leveraging trust and facilitating open discussions, while also being transparent to stakeholders about the team’s capacity. In the meantime, Fabian onboarded new colleagues who took over the leadership of different sub-teams. “It was a great time because I got more support regarding management tasks, and we learned a lot from each other.”

The User Research Manager role took Fabian outside of his comfort zone. “In addition to managing processes and project prioritization, I was, in many cases, the first point of contact for everyone inside and outside of the team — from design operations to product management. I really enjoyed the people-leadership aspect: helping individuals develop their skills and confidence, and seeing them grow. However, I no longer had the capacity to do user research. I realized I missed being closer to the customer and the insights, closer to the craft.” After Fabian raised these feelings with his lead, he suggested laterally transitioning to Principal User Researcher, a new role in both Zalando and the industry. “My hope was that becoming an individual contributor would enable me to cut the noise a little bit, and really focus on the things that create broader impact and excite me personally.”

Principal User Researcher

Master of Two Worlds

The Principal User Researcher role is all about mastering your craft, while raising the bar for others, and strategically forwarding the business goals of the company. “What’s cool about the role is, as a really experienced researcher, you learn about very confidential projects, and you get to work with people from completely different disciplines.”

One of the projects to which Fabian has brought his methodological expertise is the ‘Jobs to be Done’ framework. “It’s a strategic research approach that helps us to understand, in great detail, what the customer wants to achieve when using our product. We are developing this tool for Zalando, which will provide a unified language for Product Managers, Product Designers, and User Researchers to refer to the customer problems we are trying to solve.” The project is a great example of what Principals tend to work on: building scalable tools, guidelines, or templates that impact the entire business unit or organization.

Fabian stresses that leadership is fundamental to the role. “As a Principal, people will come to you for advice, and will probably also look at you as a role model. It’s not management, it’s thought leadership, and leading by example. You still have to lead people. I try to raise the bar when I am consulting my team members on how they plan their research studies and what methodologies they select. I also foster knowledge sharing and create a safe space where people can ask for feedback.”

As someone who has experienced both impact tracks, what is Fabian’s advice to those who are torn between the Principal User Researcher and User Research Manager positions? “At Zalando, you have the freedom to change roles at nearly any point. I know managers who have become Principals, or vice versa, and then returned to their original role in a different team or in a different focus. Each track allows you to grow, so it’s great to have the option to explore.”

Interested in finding out more about user research at Zalando? Next, read about a Senior User Researcher and a Principal Product Designer’s collaborative mission to turn around a high-priority brief in just three weeks.