Research - Perspectives & Practice
I believe that research is a practice of rigorous curiosity, and the role of researchers in an organization is to help the people they work with make better decisions. At scale, this means building intentional, responsible, and sustainable systems of learning with and from the people you want to serve.
I recognize that this view is not held by everyone, but thankfully that’s the joy of your own opinions — they’re yours. This is what I believe and the spirit with which I like to practice. Within this page, I’ve tried to curate a set of materials and resources that help communicate these beliefs in more detail, as well as expand on them in others’ voices and highlight what’s been influential in shaping them. I love hearing what of this — if anything — resonates with you (or doesn’t!), so don’t hesitate to reach out.
Essays
These are longer written pieces that (often) focus on a specific idea:
Talks & Interviews
I’ve been fortunate to be invited to speak and share my perspective on research — especially democratization — in a range of venues. This is a selection of webinars, interviews, and talks that I’ve done and/or contributed to:
“AI and Research: Exploring the Future with Dovetail and Maze” panel discussion in San Francisco, CA - May 2023
“Continuous Research: Challenges and Future Opportunities” at UX360 (remote) - February 2023
“Building a Research Team may cost you your Research Practice” at User Research London, London, UK - September 2022
Using Research to Impact Product Strategy webinar with Chameleon - September 2022
“Why Research Thinking Matters for Company and Product Success” at Good Research 2022, New York City, NY - June 2022
Building Organizations that Learn on The Optimal Path Podcast - April 2022
Democratizing Research in Your Organization on Product with Panash - June 2021
Bringing rigor to curiosity: Democratizing research with Behzod Sirjani on In The Loop by Maze - June 2021
How to Democratize Your User Research Practice webinar with dscout - August 2020
(Link includes a written recap and video.)UX Research MX Podcast with Darinka Buendia - August 2020
Awesome People Ep. 35 by Julia Lipton - July 2020
“You Are Not Your Research Report” at UXRConfAnywhere, Remote - June 2020.
“Democratizing Research” on Noam Segal’s UX Quests - April 2020.
“How to Be a Teacher — Not an Oracle” for dscout’s People Nerds - April 2020
Remote User Research Tips with UserInterviews.com - April 2020
“Product Research through Culture” for MAEKAN - September 2019
“Don’t Start with Data” at UXRC 2019, Toronto, CA - May 2019
Twitter Threads
Some of these ideas will make their way to blog posts, but for now, Twitter is the best place to find them. As a note, some of these links drop you in the middle of a thread — be sure to scroll up and down.
The value of researchers is the structured thought and rigor that goes into helping organizations make decisions (In response to this tweet by Sekai Farai)
Some researchers/research teams are a solution in search of a problem.
How I think about the role of Research Ops (based on my time at Slack).
Why you should safely empower non-researchers to do research.