Undemocratising User Research

@SaswatiSM’s argument against democratised research.

Love this definition of a researcher ❤️

A researcher is a dynamic thinker who has to adapt their methods and questions based on who is in front of them, how much they have already learnt and what new areas could be probed on.

Saswati makes some great observations about analysis paralysis.

More data is not equal to better data.

… the ambitious were burnt out and the less ambitious, lowered the quality of their output or just gave up. None of these are outcomes you would want in your organisation on a regular basis.

Actual outcomes.

So what we really got was not a new pool of researchers but an access to some skill sets which we would normally not have got if we went via the typical prioritization route for their time and skills.

Goals for strategic researchers.

As a UX Research Lead, I would like 80% of my team’s time to go towards discovering the right opportunities. This will require UX Researchers to enhance certain skills — do more literature reviews, get better at identifying and tracking trends over time, improve one’s story-telling and quantitative market sizing skills to be able to own the full narrative around an opportunity.