Askable’s Post

We see three emerging patterns in the talks and workshops at UXinsight Festival 2024. 1️⃣ The world is constantly evolving. What about us? How is the UX research community responding? Join our speakers on a journey:   💡 Surviving Research Island with The UXR Hierarchy of Needs By Aiden Hirshfield, PhD 🌈 - Media Psychologist, Research Leader, and Consultant   💡 Dispersed, not Disjointed: Sparking and Guiding the Growth of a Remote UX Research Team By Maureen Ariza Paredes - Director of Experience Research at Xello   💡 Research <3 Data: Building Stronger Alliances with Data Analytics By Ana Radonjic - Data Scientist at Vanguard & Jes Koepfler - Head of Client Experience & Digital Research, Personal Investor at Vanguard   2️⃣ One strategy we love ❤️, is to act as an explorer and actively shape the world. Don’t be afraid to change and experiment, and have some fun along the way:   💡 The Power of Music in UX Research By Diana Prokusheva - Product Research Team Lead at Semrush   💡 Using Research Skills to Take the Lead and Pitch to the CEO By Anna Messini - Senior Service Designer at Randstad & Youp van Veen - Strategic Designer at the Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Services   💡 Measuring UX – How to Enhance UX Maturity and Secure its Rightful Place in the Spotlight By Lucas Warner Lemasters - UX Research Principal at American Airlines & Paco Giurfa - DesignOps Manager at American Airlines   3️⃣ At the same time, we shouldn’t be reckless and stay mindful of those around us. By utilising our UX research skills, we can better understand the world around us and have a positive impact:   💡 Balancing Progress and Responsibility: AI in UX Research By Annegret Bönemann - Service Design Lead at foryouandyourcustomers   💡 Understanding Your International Audience for Global Growth By Chui Chui Tan - Global Customer Experience and Growth Strategist   💡  Applying UX Research Principles to Enhance Confidence for Personal Growth By Krutika Subramanian - UX Research Lead at Uber Carshare   Check out the complete program: https://lnkd.in/eF8G2RrZ See you there? #StayCurious #BeBold #UXinsightFestival #UXresearch #UserResearch

Real Impact Comes from Action, Not Just Insights. But how do you make the leap? How to transform user insights into actionable strategies: 🐣 Understand deeply: Dive deeper than ever before to understand the core needs and motivations of your users. It's about seeing the world through their eyes. 🐣 Collaborate cross-functionally: Bring together product, design, and development teams with a shared goal, driven by user insights. Unity in vision leads to unmatched innovation. 🐣 Iterate with intention: Make user feedback your roadmap. Each iteration isn’t just a step forward; it’s a leap towards creating real value for your users. The transformation from uncertainty to clarity, from fleeting ideas to tangible impact, begins with a single step: the courage to act on insights. Ready to bridge the gap between insights and action? Visit www.leefs.cx to learn how we can illuminate the path to product excellence together.

Working at the intersection of design and AI has taught me how rapidly possibilities can change and evolve, and how quickly one needs to adapt. Those who navigate ambiguity, keep asking insightful questions, and remain aligned with the purpose of a product tend to thrive. In 2023, we built a generative AI-powered assistant at Zalando, accumulating a wealth of knowledge that is invaluable. This year I want to connect and reengage with global communities to exchange ideas, and to share knowledge and practical insights. Some of the topics I have in mind: 💬 • Guiding principles for designing products powered by generative AI • Safeguarding AI-powered products against harmful scenarios • Facilitating decisions and co-creating safe and responsible products • Learning from customers in scale, when interactions between human and AI systems are unique each time. 📣 To discuss some of them, I have already scheduled two conferences: (April17-18) promptUX Conference in Berlin, Germany, diving deep into designing products powered by Gen-AI: https://lnkd.in/ejmJwvmn (August 28-30) UX Nordic Conference in Aarhus, Denmark, demonstrating a framework to create responsible AI-powered products and prevent harmful scenarios : https://lnkd.in/eewRUSGj If any of these topics caught your attention, join me in one of these events. Also, if you have ideas for topics that could be interesting to hear about or have further speaking opportunities, feel free to contact me! 

How to track UX research impact?   Mapping the impact of UXR on product development provides insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the UXR team. What is the state of the UXR practice in the organization? Jake Burghardt shares in his article a viewpoint in which he maps the impact on product development by identifying three levels of impact*:  𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹 – providing new understanding that could shape multiple product decisions  𝗦𝘆𝗺𝗯𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗰 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 – providing data to support a decision in flight  𝗜𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗹 – providing data that leads to an improvement of a concrete product/service     All three levels have their value. Examples Jake provides to clarify:  𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹 - “After watching the overview on that customer type, I brought a different perspective to every meeting.” Or “That model and the insights behind it give us a lot to think about as we’re going into our next planning session.”    𝗦𝘆𝗺𝗯𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗰 - “This research illustrates why our current plan addresses a real customer unmet need.” Or “We were planning on updating how we track beta feedback. Post-launch research also confirmed the need to revisit our process.”    𝗜𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗹 - “Based on research insight X, we are designing and creating a plan for feature Y.” Or “We heard from customers that X was a real challenge. With feature Y, we’ve got you covered.”  How does this help?   By examining the product development cycle from foundation to validation, the UXR team can map the type of impact they have on each of the stages. Is there mainly symbolic justification at the start of a product? Or does the team impact conceptual knowledge that leads to strategic decisions?  Does validation lead to instrumental changes? Or mere symbolic justification? And what happens with the conceptual insights? Etc.   The different levels of impact can be matrixed to the basic stages of the product development process. This gives you an overview of where UX research impacts the process and where you should make adjustments to steer towards the desired situation.    Check out the full article for more details on how to map, the stages of product development, and the opportunities this can bring: https://lnkd.in/eS67gNGA   Thanks to Carol Rossi for sharing the article  #UserResearch #UXResearch #Impact #MeasuringImpact #UXR   *These categories are defined by a group of authors whose focus was on the impact of research on health policy. However, we can also apply these categories to product development. The full article contains more about the authors and links to their study. 

🚀 Evaluative research empowers teams to make tactical, user-centered decisions. 🔮 Generative research shapes the future of a product. Both types are equally valuable, and critical to a successful product. But they’re different disciplines, with different priorities, skillsets, and research methods. So why does the same research team conduct both? In a new article from Staff Researcher & Democratization Specialist, Christopher Nash, we explore another way organizations could approach generative and evaluative research. ✨ Enter: specialized research teams. Read the full article to hear Christopher’s experience, and what specialized research teams could look like in practice, the potential challenges, and the rewards. #ScalingResearch #UXResearch #UserResearch

🚀 Celebrating a small milestone: My Journey with Wardley Mapping in Glamorous Tools 🚀 After 3 trials, I’m thrilled to share a small but significant step: my first successful Wardley mapping exercise using glamorous tools! 🎉 Navigating through menus to find the code view felt like searching for a needle in a haystack. My breakthrough came after diving into posts and realizing that the code view was tucked away in the down-right corner (see image). Also, Here's a quick peek into what this map is about: 1. Aligning UX and AI: Ensure both evolve with customer needs, delivering seamless and personalized experiences. 2. Leveraging Standardization: Transition from custom to standardized solutions for efficiency and cost savings. 3. Focusing on Evolution: Understand the maturity of components to make strategic investments and resource allocations. 4. Utilizing Established Tools: Enhance design efficiency with well-established UX tools and systems. 5. Integrating Feedback: Continuously refine based on user feedback for better UX and AI. I’m excited to dive deeper into mapping, connecting dots, and fostering a holistic understanding for decision clarity, By delving into these areas, I aim to enhance design practices and contribute to the development of connected digital platforms. 🌟 Lesson Learned: Perseverance and resourcefulness can turn challenges into insights. Every small milestone is a step toward mastering complex tools and strategies. #WardleyMapping #GlamorousTools #UX #AI #ProfessionalGrowth #Milestones #ContinuousLearning #TechJourney

If you're the first research hire at a company, you have a *lot* on your plate. Here's Julian Della Mattia's discover-then-prioritize framework for #UXRs: The conversation dives into the balance between creating research systems (or operations) and actually *doing* the research. See comments for the link ⤵

Tagging Sarah Herder Lewis and Richard Matson-Daley -- another way UX can link arms with equity! Check out this example of how human-centered design & research practitioners apply their understanding of bias in order to improve solutions.

One of the things that hurts UXR the most is "The Big Reveal". Researchers running away with a request, working on it for some time in complete solitude and then coming back to present a whole lot of information nobody heard of before and nobody knows how to put into action. And then we wonder why UXR sometimes struggles. What can you do instead? Build in public. Have regular check-ins with the team, show them how the project is moving forward. Maybe share a couple notes. When crafting a report/presentation, ask for their feedback and address their questions early on. Ask for feedback in individual sessions, even if they will be present during the briefing session. This way you can gauge their expectations and finesse the delivery, plus, you're lowkey priming them with the contents of your work, so any follow up conversation can be more productive later on. Avoid the big reveal, build in public. Do you struggle when presenting your work? Share your experience! #uxr #uxresearch #research

The main argument from last year's Waves of Research Practice was that the "action" and new value for UXR is figuring out how to work in the Wave 2 arena. That means co-evolving with UX & Product activities, and it could take the next ~10 years until a sane model/coherent model appears. But we're trying to co-evolve with a moving target that doesn't have a picture of what "good" looks like — which makes it all the more frustrating and messy for everyone involved. For UXR to work well, the entire product-org system has to work well. And it's not. I'm realizing now something I couldn't put my finger on back then: product teams are having just as hard of a time with all this. Some of it due to internal team dynamics, some due to organizational pressure, and some due to our larger ecosystem of work. Right now we're surrounded by noise from methods and technology that seem to complicate and obfuscate, instead of building clarity. (NB I am coming from a consultant's sampling bias — teams working with clarity and coherence are less likely to engage outside support.)