Janelle Estes’ path has come full circle.
After graduating from Bentley University, she worked at Nielsen Norman Group and UserTesting. Over her career, Janelle observed something:
Research teams faced an uphill battle to communicate their value to an organization.
Janelle decided to do something about it and give back to budding UX practitioners. Currently, she serves as Platform Director for Bentley University’s Experience Design program. She shares her real-world experience with the next generation of thinkers.
She stopped by to reflect on how the landscape has changed during her career. Janelle shared tips for researchers on how to adapt to evolving business requirements and looked ahead to how they hugely impact a business’s success.
Watch the conversation with Janelle.
The Dramatic Evolution of UX
Janelle saw the UX industry’s metamorphosis firsthand. She couldn’t find any UX roles on the market when she graduated.
Why?
Roles didn’t exist. Companies didn’t know what UX was.
They were looking for people who could conduct research, design, AND code. Talk about “Jack of all trades, master of none.” It’s difficult, nigh impossible, to master these different skills.
Over time, companies woke up to the importance of practicing user research. Janelle witnessed an explosion of user experience and research adoption.
Specializing in a set of skills brought many long-term benefits. New roles emerged—ones that are commonplace today: UX Researcher, Interaction Designer, and Product Manager, to name a few.
As Chief Insights Officer of UserTesting, Janelle spent her time in the field. She sought to understand how the brightest companies were practicing UX research.
WARNING: this next bit is very meta.
It was a researcher’s dream — Janelle researched how research teams do research.
The landscape was changing.
New UX Technologies
Technological innovation forever changed the UX workflow.
Traditionally, researchers performed all the groundwork themselves. Studies took weeks to prepare and execute. Three weeks of planning followed by two in the lab and six weeks spent analyzing data—a laborious and time-intensive process.
Not anymore.
AI and other new technologies have introduced incredible efficiency to the research process. New tech aids researchers in their work and substitutes human fieldwork. Usability testing previously required candidates to be flown in for studies. With remote testing, companies save time and money.
Researchers spend less time on administrative tasks by integrating technology and automating processes. They concentrate on adding value and driving the business strategy. It represents a unique situation.
“We have an opportunity to think of our value differently,” Janelle said.
Future Research Roles
AI and new tech free up a researcher’s time for more analysis. However, a researcher’s biggest challenge is getting people to pay attention to what they’re delivering.
They must establish an organization-wide, shared understanding of the customer. It falls on them to focus more on coordination and inform different organizational departments. Consequently, Janelle sees researchers taking on a different mantle in the future:
Collector. Curator. Sensemaker. Communicator. Storyteller.
So what does this entail?
Don’t Overdo the Data Crunching
Janelle encourages researchers to spend less time collecting and analyzing data.
The industry has over-indexed on data crunching.
“What do you do with it? Does it sit on a shelf? If so, it’s not doing anything of value,” Janelle said.
She referenced a former colleague’s work from her time at Nielsen. Tamara Adlin wrote books about the Persona Life Cycle. In the book, she addresses overdoing the data processing when creating user personas.
“How many sets of personas can a single company have?” Janelle asked (rhetorically).
Companies must pivot from abundant data collection and focus on aligning teams with a shared understanding of the customer. Make no mistake about it—as customer touch points increase, data collection will only grow. What researchers do with the data must be more meaningful.
Cultivate Partnerships
Janelle’s education taught her why creating experiences for people is important. Internally, teams must understand who they’re marketing or selling to. Company strategy requires everyone to pull in the same direction.
UX Researchers must also have access to all the organization’s data. The onus is on them to create partnerships across a company.
“If we want to have a broader impact, move beyond (partnering with) product (team). Partner with other teams,” Janelle said. She recommends starting small. Build relationships with your company’s sales, customer support, and marketing teams.
Rise above the internal competition for the greater good.
“There’s always been turf wars. I don’t really care about the definitions. What I do care about is teams that are mature enough to take all of that goodness,” she said.
Janelle used to examine a client’s conversion funnels on a quarterly basis. Today, she can access this information in real-time.
Regularly integrate new findings into the company’s knowledge bank. Keep your finger on the pulse of your customer base.
“Find ways to build a broader narrative for your company,” Janelle said.
Looking for a place to store, organize, and analyze your data? Learn about using Marvin as your research repository.
Create Human Experiences
Janelle has seen too many companies who claim they “put customers first.” She sees a disconnect between their claims and how they practice user-centricity.
“They understand its importance (research). Many times, they don’t know how to actually put it into practice,” she said.
That’s where researchers come in.
“Researchers are innovators and iterators who fall in love with the problem,” Janelle said.
They deliver an understanding of users that goes beyond the product experience. Analyzing qualitative and quantitative information helps teams align themselves with target demographics. A better understanding of customers helps them deliver products that delight users.
“We’re great storytellers. We like to bring our customers to life one at a time,” she said.
Researchers ensure companies are customer-driven. They answer the million-dollar question:
Who are you building experiences for?
Structure Research Operations
Researchers are perpetually inundated with work.
“Have you ever met a research team that’s looking for things to do? No. They’re under-resourced and overloaded,” Janelle said.
This means they must prioritize studies. Prioritize high value initiatives that help the business make decisions. Finally, they must consider how studies ultimately affect the consumer base.
So, how do they place themselves in the organization to serve its stakeholders best?
Janelle suggested two ways to structure the research function:
- Centralized. Research acts as a service center to the rest of the company.
- Embedded. Researchers only support teams in which they work.
Each approach has its own pros and cons.
With a centralized approach, researchers get various types of exposure. They gain a broad understanding of the user experience. As embedded resources, researchers gain more context. They are a better partner to the departments they work in. However, they don’t have an overarching view of the business.
It all boils down to what approach works better for a company and its users.
Evangelizing Research
Researchers occupy a unique position—they understand user and business requirements. Their findings inform business strategy and decision-making and, eventually, end users. So, how do they communicate their importance to the rest of the organization?
They must evangelize the importance of conducting studies. Where does research fit into workflows? How can it influence decision-making?
Researchers have a key responsibility to tear down walls. They break information silos and keep an organization routinely informed about users. Partner with teams that have a platform to broadcast their work across the organization.
This helps them fly the research flag. They must communicate with different departments:
How does research fit in with the company’s broader narrative?
Tying Research to Value
Businesses have two or three overarching goals. Researchers are responsible for linking their work to these organizational goals. How does their work impact the business?
“Tie your research to something that the business cares about, what matters. That’s the key to success and showing value. That’s the key to getting more momentum and influence,” Janelle said.
To illustrate this concept, Janelle walked us through an experience she had as a researcher.
Over time, Janelle gathered feedback from customers. They repeatedly asked for a particular feature. This back-and-forth went on for years—so much so that she couldn’t stand to hear it anymore. Janelle noticed that customers were switching to competitors because they offered said feature.
It needed addressing.
Janelle and the customer success team went through customer lists and attached revenue values to each customer. Businesses rely on existing customers for a steady revenue stream. How important are they to our business?
They examined the retention rate and how much revenue was at risk if they didn’t add the new feature. Fast forward a couple of months, and voila! Their product now offers the said feature.
A great example of how researchers use storytelling to communicate something valuable to a business.
Speak the Language of Business
“Everyone has goals. How can you make them be successful?” she said. “It’s important to get inside the mind of what’s important to (business) leaders.”
Find a way to learn what the marketing head cares about. What is the product measured on?
“It’s not always the fun part, but it’s a really important part (of the process),” according to Janelle.
Does that mean researchers must have an education in business management?
Janelle doesn’t think so. According to her, it’s important to identify where a business needs to focus on to drive value. This requires an understanding of two things:
- Basic Principles of running a business. Janelle recommends consuming information in new ways, such as reading a company’s filings. Being able to read and make sense of annual reports is an invaluable skill.
- Metrics that businesses care about. Qualitative metrics can be harder to measure. Janelle recommended the Heart Metric Framework, one that provides a customer health score. Key metrics include:
- CSAT
- Monthly Avg. Users
- Last Logged In
- Retention Rate
- Growth Rate
“Learn the language of who you work with,” Janelle said.
We’ve had many guest speakers who preached the importance of speaking the language of C-Suite executives:
Shaping Future Researchers
In her role at Bentley, Janelle gives back by teaching the next generation of UX researchers and designers. At Nielsen, she learned the practice of good design and how to conduct effective research, which she passed on to her students.
In her career, Janelle dived into fieldwork, applying research to a context and demonstrating its value. But what does this mean for future researchers working in the field?
There’s still a time and place for field work, according to Janelle. She still sees its value. She even teaches field work in her courses at Bentley. For example, they make students follow people and observe people shop for groceries. It produces unique artifacts.
“It’s very much relevant and something you need to have as a skill set,” she said.
However, she urges researchers to leverage technology to augment the research process. Tech provides researchers shortcuts to understanding the context and environment. Whether you go into the field depends on:
- the importance of the initiative
- how it translates into the business’ focus
“Are you trying to break into a new market? Then go into the field. Are you trying to optimize a feature? You probably don’t need to go into the field for that,” she said.
Using technology, Janelle wants future researchers to be very intentional in their work. Elevate your skillset and adapt to changing expectations.
Janelle thinks researchers must grow as curators, communicators, and storytellers. So, what will we call UX researchers 10 or 15 years from now?
“The practices and activities we do today are mission critical. They will be part of the companies that are performing well. Whether we’re called UX researchers, I don’t have a crystal ball on that. I just don’t know what the alternative is,” she said.
Chief Insights Officer, perhaps?
“Maybe I started a trend,” Janelle laughed. We think she did.
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