Want to invest in UX research? First, ensure your company is insights-ready
If you’re contemplating an investment in a UX research practice, you’ve bought into the following message: You need research insights in order to deeply understand your users or customers. There is no magic bullet to sustained business success, but research-generated insights will dramatically increase confidence in your decision-making and give you a competitive advantage.
Let’s say the moment finally comes. It’s time to professionalize a UX research function. You take the plunge. Perhaps you begin by hiring a couple contract researchers to work on projects you find exceptionally important. Or, you decide to bring on a mid-level researcher to get things started. Let them prove the value of research to your organization, you think. Once that person is on board, research insights will filter through the organization, and you’ll start to see the magic.
Wrong.
The first thing you need to ask yourself: Is your company insights-ready? I’ve built research teams in B2B and B2C organizations just starting out with UX research. I’ve seen first-hand how these teams struggled to integrate. There are a few reasons why they will also struggle in your company:
One: Your company lacks a shared understanding of who your users or customers are. For example:
Your founder initially spent loads of time becoming an expert on user needs, but as the company scaled, like in a game of telephone this knowledge has become distorted
With growth comes siloed teams, and you have employees that hold expertise in one segment of your user base but not others
Your product and your market have evolved, leaving existing user/customer insights feeling outdated
Two: There is no general agreement on what “research” is, or the function UX research will hold, once it comes on board. Examples:
Some employees think UX research is synonymous with “talking to customers”
Some think UX research is only about validating existing ideas through usability testing
Some think UX research is solely part of the design process, while others see it as a service function for individual product managers
No one thinks about how UX research will integrate with other customer-facing roles, like marketing or customer support
Others want research to help innovate by diving deep into potential new areas
Three: Your company has established ways of making decisions. Your company has a history, and therefore an existing organizational culture. You’ve established processes that do not formally take into account insights from UX research. For example:
Some employees have working relationships with market researchers or data scientists, and currently integrate user/customer insights into decision-making
Others rely on the intuition of their superiors when it comes to making a choice
Others struggle with existing power dynamics in decision-making processes, and haven’t considered how to shift this balance to incorporate user insights
Bringing in a solo researcher and expecting them to establish a UX research practice, advocate for a company-wide understanding of users, and change your company’s decision-making processes is setting that researcher up for failure…or at least sending them down a long, difficult path to eventual adoption.
What should you do instead?
Let’s revisit my initial question: Is your company insights-ready? You can get there by taking a hard look at your company‘s insights mindset.
What is an insights mindset?
An insights mindset is your organization’s set of beliefs, values, and attitudes about user insights. An insights mindset impacts how you, your colleagues, and your leadership team define, conduct, and integrate research insights in order to make better business decisions.
To guarantee that UX research is the investment you expect it to be, you need to ensure that your company has an insights-ready mindset.
Here are some examples of how a company that isn’t insights-ready can get in the way of an effective UX research practice:
UX researchers are relegated to a validation function, where they are only called on to “prove” the value of existing ideas. The company loses out on one of UX researchers' greatest attributes: their ability to identify crucial opportunities for innovation.
One team embraces unexpected research insights and alters their roadmap, while another refuses to take this new information into account - leaving normally collaborative product teams in a standoff. Rather than using insights to arrive at speedier, more accurate solutions, this friction slows expected output from product development.
UX researchers prepare a solid project roadmap for the coming quarter but can’t get access to user/customer data because existing owners don’t want to share. UX researchers are hindered from doing their work, but worse, there is no collaboration with other user-facing functions that could allow these insights to create a huge, company-wide impact.
These examples all show: Powerful insights-driven decision-making stems from the insights-readiness of the company, not just from having UX researchers.
The costs of starting a UX research practice before these issues are addressed are great. There is the cost of researchers unable to deliver their full potential. The cost of projects happening in parallel without ideal collaboration. Worst of all, the costs that result from a company still unable to capitalize on an insights-ready mindset. Failure to be insights-ready means the loss of an invaluable competitive advantage. It means moving away from the success that comes with finding a solution that solves the customer’s most pressing problem.
My expert advice? Focus on your insights mindset first: Get insights-ready, then you can start taking the necessary steps to hire a talented UX research team and build a user insights practice that will help your company thrive.
Read more about how I can help you get started with a one-day workshop to assess and advance your company’s insights-readiness.
