Researcher & educator
Author of Research Practice
A work in progress
Changing my mind about research practices
I keep changing my mind about research practices. Sometimes I believe that our role as researchers is to democratize the practice—to make everyone a researcher and teach best practices. That’s how we instill a culture of research and demystify the act of understanding users and product context. But then sometimes I think democratization is a great way to minimize the...
Publishing Research Practice
I launched my book Research Practice in January of this year. What I expected to write was a pithy translation of a conference talk I’d presented a few times about scaling research practices. Instead I wrote, published, and distributed a rather lengthy anthology of original essays and findings about how to enter and thrive in a user research role. Here...
Why I love UX research
I love user research. I love that every project is different—that we as user researchers incorporate numerous methodologies, work with a variety of colleagues, study a spectrum of individuals and topics, and produce wildly interesting findings that influence people, products, and organizations. I love user research because the community of user researchers is as interesting as the work we produce....
What research looks like now
For dscout's People Nerds
I think a People Nerds profile means I’ve finally arrived in UX research. It’s one of my favorite publications for learning about other researchers and picking up different ways of working. I’m honored to be included. I help people make smarter decisions. And, to me, that’s the value of user research—having an expert who can help you make better decisions,...
Why organizations hire user researchers
An excerpt from Research Practice
I was hired into my last two roles because designers and product managers had more questions than time to answer them. The products became complex, the number of users grew, the risk of making the wrong decisions increased, and the list of work to be done never seemed to diminish. Something had to give, and I was hired to provide...