How to Maximize the Impact of UX Research in Tech Teams?
Here are some suggestions that might be useful
Recent research by UXstudio highlights a significant gap in the business world. Only 56% of executives recognize the importance of UX design, and a mere 51% of product managers use user insights to shape their product roadmaps. These figures raise a crucial question: if awareness among executives and PMs is this limited, what does that tell about the understanding of the impact of UX research on other team members?
The value of a dedicated UX researcher can be easily overlooked. This happens not only when a culture sees research as too time-consuming or expensive. It also occurs if team members don’t know how to engage with UX researchers or understand how to use their expertise effectively. Thus, we face a pivotal question: How can we enhance the impact and recognition of UX research within tech teams? Fundamentally, the aim is to ensure it becomes an integral and well-understood part of the team’s culture.
The Current State of UX Research in Tech Teams
At its core, UX maturity evaluates an organization’s willingness and capacity to effectively implement designs that prioritize the user experience. This concept, as explained in Nielsen Norman Group’s analysis, involves assessing the robustness and regularity of research and design methodologies. In addition, it also involves the availability of resources, tools, and the efficiency of operations. Moreover, it reflects on how an organization’s leadership, team dynamics, and cultural values influence the ongoing support and enhancement of UX practices.
Recognizing this maturity context sets the fundamentals for a deeper exploration of how team members perceive UX research and the researcher. Teams are slowly shifting their focus towards integrating user insights into their product development processes. Yet there is still a knowledge gap in understanding the value of it and the role and integration of the UX researcher.
Additionally, the understanding of what a UX researcher does might differ among different roles. For example, developers might lean towards technical aspects of product development. Therefore, they might not fully grasp how a researcher can influence user interface and functionality. On the other hand, product managers and executives, responsible for overseeing project completion and business goals, tend to view the researcher differently. They may think of them as a means only to measure customer satisfaction without understanding clearly how they impact design decisions.
This might lead team members to have some common perceptions such as:
- They already know what type of problems users might be having leading them to have a feature-focused approach.
- UX research is a time consuming process that slows down product and development timelines. Especially when the deadline is tight.
Also there are some misconceptions:
- UXR is a one time activity, meaning that research is a one time deliverable and something to get done. More often than not, team members might not understand that UX research is an ongoing process.
- UX research is a one person job, meaning it’s solely the researcher’s responsibility.
As Jared Spool says:
“If only your researcher is doing the research, you are doing it wrong”.
With these perceptions and misconceptions, a mix of cultural and structural barriers begin to intervene, negatively impacting the adoption and integration of the UX researcher in the project. Consequently, it causes practical implications such as allocation of resources. This mindset can lead the UX researcher to be sidelined for favoring more immediate development tasks, providing faster and tangible outcomes on the surface. UX researchers might often find themselves advocating their role, allocating efforts to prove their value, and step into the product development lifecycle — making tasks more challenging and time-consuming.
Strategies for UX Research Engagement and Integration
Clarify Roles and Responsibilities
Understand the team norm: The first tip is to understand team norms and how things get done throughout the product development lifecycle. Explore if there are any gaps.
Define the UX Researcher’s Role: Then, we can start by defining a UX researcher’s roles and responsibilities. Even though this might seem obvious to us, there tend to be blind spots or differences on other team members’ understanding. Defining this area and making sure the document is accessible to all team members might create a clearer ground base.
Research Expectations: Discuss or even document (if needed) the types of research methodologies the team can expect. Explaining their purpose, how/when these methodologies are employed and how they contribute to various stages of product development can provide a guideline.
Introducing UX Frameworks:
To enhance UX maturity within tech teams, it’s important to provide a level of understanding across all team members about key UX frameworks. It might also help to picture where the UX Researcher stands in the entire development process.
Choosing the right framework might depend on the project’s specific needs. However, communicating these needs, and offering the best use cases can help to select the most effective one for the project and the team.
Creating a UX Research Repository:
In a dynamic company environment, the research work that has been done may either go unnoticed by a wide audience or get lost over time. Creating a centralized UX Research repository where all research sources and outcomes are kept together can serve as a single source of truth. This allows anyone to refer back to the data.
This not only makes research more visible across different teams but also encourages frequent use by making it accessible to everyone. This increases the likelihood of incorporating research findings into the everyday decision-making process.
Establishing a User Feedback Channel:
One of the ways that teams might benefit from is having a dedicated user feedback channel. If it is applicable to your project, you can integrate a slack channel with your app’s Play Store/App Store where you can get real time user feedback. If you are gathering feedback through a third party tool, you might as well integrate a slack channel for it.
By having this channel, it will also allow democratization of user insights. So rather than having the UX researcher as the gatekeeper for user feedback and insights, team members can have more autonomy to interpret what the users are talking about. This exposure might lead to deeper understanding and empathy for the users within the team, encourage a user-centric mindset. Therefore allow more space for the UX researcher within the product lifecycle.
Make Research Studies Accessible
Hands-On Experience:
One of the effective ways to foster an understanding of UX Research in a tech team is to involve team members as an observer in research sessions. This hands-on experience and exposure to the users might help to bridge the gap between the team and the research findings. This may lead them to develop a more empathetic perspective and a deeper understanding of user needs.
Regular Presentations:
In occasions where inviting team members as an observer to sessions is not feasible, organizing “launch and learn” sessions might be helpful. Here, the recordings of the sessions can be showcased, highlighting key findings, and discussing learnings from that. This not only may encourage team-wide engagement with UX research findings, but also can serve as an opportunity to demonstrate the impact of UX research.
Video Clips:
Last but not least, remember the user feedback Slack channel we discussed? It might be a good opportunity to use it as a platform to share user interview clips, exposing team members in their day-to-day work.
So, what happens next?
Well, all points shared in here are small but proactive steps toward an important goal. Fostering a team culture and environment that adopts and embraces UXR takes time and consistency.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic.
You can reach out to me on Linkedin.
