In our Season 3 finale, Erin and Carol are joined by Caroline Morchio, Head of UX at Dashlane, a credential management platform. Their conversation explores UX research best practices at a security-minded organization like Dashlane, highlighting other what teams can bring to their own work.

Caroline shares the ways she structures the UX team to support the product landscape at Dashlane, their processes for empowering colleagues to contribute to research, and why she prefers a "decentralized" model. The conversation also unpacks the core skills that Caroline emphasizes no matter the company: storytelling, actionable insights, and templates. Together, these help her team maintain rigor while scaling to meet new user experiences opportunities.

Finally, Caroline discusses how to balance the security and usability when conducting UX research, and forecasts what the future of data privacy and security might have in store, like passwordless authentication.
 
Episode Highlights

• 04:27 Implementing research in stages
• 07:22 The strategic impact of UX on a business
• 11:23 Focusing on ICP segmentation and user sophistication
• 18:06 The importance of privacy and data security
• 23:01 Decentralizing research processes
• 30:17 The importance of research in complex technology

About Our Guest
Caroline is a Design leader with experience in innovative companies transforming their industries. She has led design teams through all phases of product development and fostered a culture of open collaboration and feedback. Caroline was previously VP of Design at Handshake, Neuralink, and is now an AWS Design ambassador and Head of UX at Dashlane.

More Resources on Security in UXR

• A Researcher's Guide to Data Privacy Regulations
• NDAs and Consent Forms for UX Research
• Examining Ethical Design and Respectful UX

Erin and Carol are joined by Jo Widawski, founder and CEO of Maze, to discuss the major findings from their "Future of User Research" report, which unearthed three trends animating researchers, PMs, and founders alike: 1) the demand for research is growing, 2) research democratization empowers stronger decision making, and 3) new technology—like generative AI—allows teams to scale their research.

Erin, Carol, and Jo unpack each of these trends, flagging what they mean for both the work of researchers and the value of research more broadly. For example, these trends signal a rise in importance of the research generalist, the critical value of stakeholder influence, and the skills tomorrow's successful researcher must build today. Together, these trends and skills help create a roadmap for how researcher's can grow from a tactical resource to a strategic partner.

Episode Highlights

• 03:57 The nature of research in organizations
• 11:01 Transitioning researcher roles: from operational to educational
• 18:01 The importance of democratization in design
• 22:43 Overcoming resistance to research in design
• 30:25 AI's impact on user research trust
• 37:59 Understanding competitive landscape in building products

About Our Guest
Jo Widawksi is the Founder and CEO at Maze. He’s a veteran Product Designer & former UX teacher. As a UX lead working with clients like McKinsey, Rocket Internet & PSG, he saw first-hand how hard it is for product teams to get the data, insights, and feedback they need to make confident design decisions. Now he’s co-founded Maze, the continuous product discovery platform for user-centric teams.

More Resources

• Read the 2024 State of User Research Report (from UI)
• Read the Future of User Research Report (from Maze)
• Learn how to create stronger stakeholder relationships

Erin is joined by Auzita Irani, a research manager at AirBnB to discuss being a more efficient user experience researcher. In today's work world, resources—time, budget, headcount—always seem to be in limited supply. How can we balance these things along with other important elements of our research practices? Auzita has been thinking about "doing more with less" for a long time and shares practical strategies.

After discussing the challenges facing today's UX researcher, the conversation shifts to what Auzita has seen work for researchers, both those working in large and small companies. Erin and Auzita touch on tools (like AI), tactics (like prioritization frameworks), and collaboration approaches to work more productively with stakeholders and teammates. They also discuss burnout's effects and the ways of combatting it.

Finally, Erin and Auzita make some predictions on where UX is headed in the months and year ahead, and what these trends might mean for our work.

Episode Highlights

• 03:53: Challenges and strategies of "doing more with less"
• 11:23: Addressing time and deadline constraints
• 21:38: Failure modes and avoiding burnout
• 32:05: Balancing tactical and strategic work
• 38:21: Emphasizing your research's impact
• 44:57: Adapting to blurred work boundaries

About Our Guest
Auzita has a background in computer engineering and Human Computer Interaction. She currently leads teams dedicated to optimizing customer support experiences and developing cutting edge AI tooling solutions at Airbnb. Prior to this she led the research and annotation teams at Sprig working on streamlining the process of obtaining real-time insights for product teams.

More Resources on Research Efficiency

• Scaling yourself while combatting burnout
• Doing user research on any budget
• A blueprint for scaling UX research

It's our 150th episode! To celebrate, we brought together three thought leaders for a discussion about UX research's future. Erin and Carol are joined by Judd Antin, Dave Hora, and Christiana Lackner, who bring over 40 years of combined experience in UX research, both as practitioners and leaders.

This wide-ranging conversation combines our guests' reflections on the trends that brought UX to its current moment with an analysis of what the future holds—and how we can prepare ourselves (and our teams) for it. From strategies on creating more business value for our work to tips for creating stronger cross-functional partnerships, this conversation will equip you with practical steps to future-proof your research practice.

Episode Highlights

• 09:28 - The evolution of the UX research industry
• 15:48 - Adapting UX methods for team dynamics
• 21:56 - Balancing our focus between the business and the user
• 30:45 - The role of UX research in fostering shared understanding 
• 41:18 - Planning strategically and anticipating team needs
• 47:27 - The promise of AI for user experience professionals

About Our Guests
Judd Antin is an executive coach, consultant, advisor, writer, and teacher, leveraging his 15 years of experience as a research, design, and product executive at top companies (Meta, Airbnb) and his PhD in Social Psychology & Information Systems from UC Berkeley to help individuals and organizations achieve their goals and overcome their challenges.

Dave Hora is the founder of Dave's Research Co. where he helps product teams drive critical initiatives with the right mix of data, insight, and common sense. He began professional research work in 2011, eventually starting the practice as the first research hire at six companies, including PlanGrid and Instacart.

Christiana Lackner is a UX research leader and dot connector. She's building research maturity within organizations so that teams involve the right people, ask the right questions, and act on the answers.

More Resources on the Future of UX Research

• The role AI will play in the future of UXR
• Connecting UX research to business revenue
• The 2023 State of User Research Report

In this episode, Erin and Carol sit down with Tyler Wanlass, lead product designer at CommandBar, to explore practical strategies for conducting user research without a dedicated research team. They dig into techniques that designers and product managers can use to gather valuable insights efficiently, especially in resource-constrained environments. Tyler's approach is scrappy, flexible, and creative.

Tyler shares some of the tools that create his research toolkit, including efficient note-taking, creative approaches to participant recruitment, and mixed-methods continuous discovery methods. He explains how session recordings and account impersonation can offer deeper insights when primary research isn't possible. Tyler reinforces the value of proactive research, such as social listening and competitive analysis.

This is a useful conversation for anyone without "researcher" in their title, but who wants to increase their customer engagement, build more thoughtful products, and do so in a way that respects both budgets and timelines.

Episode Highlights

• 03:16 - The scrappy mindset: learning from real-life experiences
• 10:21 - Broadening perspective through cross-industry inspiration
• 16:12 - Proactive user research for connecting and learning
• 24:17 - Streamlining customer feedback with TL;DR summaries
• 36:51 - Tools and tactics for customer insights
• 44:09 - The importance of pricing and packaging

About Our Guest
Tyler design interfaces for software products, builds internet businesses, and occasionally writes books. In his off time he's renovating a 100 year old Victorian house in the Pacific Northwest. In a past life he designed video games.

More Resources on UX Research for Designers and PMs

• The Product Manager's Guide to UX Research
• The UX Designer's Guide to Research
• Uncomplicated Recruitment for Non-Researchers
• "People Who Do Research," a Discovery Study

In this episode, Erin and Carol tackle one form of research impact growing in importance and necessity: revenue. Their guest is Claudia Natasia, co-founder and CEO of Riley AI. Before starting Riley, Claudia grew product teams at early-stage companies and worked in the financial industry. These experiences showed her the importance of linking user research outputs to the bottom line of a business.

During their conversation, Claudia breaks down what revenue typically looks like for a company and where you can find the specific revenue goals for your company. Then she digs into the important processes of weaving those revenue goals into a research strategy from the start, offering examples from her time on product teams.

The discussion also explores the importance of triangulation, or combining multiple data types to form a more complete whole. Claudia explains that user researchers should balance conducting primary research with existing information to help clarify how UX is linked with wider business goals. She offers suggestions for teams big and small looking to make impact with the highest level decision makers and company executives.

Episode Highlights
06:07 - Strategic frameworks for company growth and revenue
12:05 - Leveraging competitive analysis for market success
22:06 - Creating meaningful insights for your business
30:05 - Tracking research impact: Setting expectations and routine updates
37:13 - Elevating projects: Moving from junior to senior stakeholders
44:39 - Triangulating data: Connecting research to company success

About Our Guest
Claudia is a leader with 10+ years experience leading product, strategy, and data teams across the enterprise and financial technology space. Her work has directly influenced companywide strategies, leading to a $5B total valuation, a successful international acquisition, and multi-million dollar growth fundraising rounds.  She advises and angel invests in early stage startups, in North America and Southeast Asia. Her areas of focus are enterprise, finance, and consumer AI-generated content.

Resources on Research Impact and Revenue

• A guide to showing the value of user research
• Claudia's textbook of choice for learning about revenue
• The three aspects of high-impact UX research
• The Business of Research Slack Community

Erin and Carol explore the complexities of healthcare research with Nadyne Richmond, a healthcare design advisor with a background in big tech who pivoted to healthcare research a decade ago to tackle the pressing issues she saw in the system.

Nadyne underscores the nuances of conducting user experience (UX) research within healthcare settings, unpacking the intersections of patients' lives, their health, financial well-being, and spiritual factors that can come with many diagnoses. She emphasizes the importance of being well-prepared to manage deep conversations, maintain objectivity while being viewed as human, and handle the delicacy of information with privacy and sensitivity.

Nadyne shares practical advice on approaching sensitive research topics, providing control to participants, giving space for the research team, and even using diary studies for a more comprehensive understanding of patient experiences. Additionally, she talks about the intricacies involved when working with healthcare players, from insurance providers to medical staff, and how their differing incentives shape patient care.

Episode Highlights

• 03:56 - Transitioning from tech to healthcare research
• 13:56 - Challenges when researching with medical professionals
• 21:32 - Navigating Sensitive Topics when recruiting patients
• 28:45 - Planning for legal requirements in user testing
• 35:24 - Data protection in healthcare research
• 41:11 - The unique rewards of healthcare research

About Our Guest
Nadyne Richmond is a user researcher and experience design leader with a track record spanning two decades. She has worked and led teams at places like IBM, Microsoft, Included Health, and Babylon. She started her career as an engineer, giving her a unique window in the challenges of creating products and services that are excel technically and meet the demands of customers and the business alike.

Resources From Nadyne

• Crucial Conversations book
• An Arm and a Leg Podcast
• Interviewing Users book

More Healthcare Research Resources

• A researcher's guide to data privacy guidelines
• Designing experiences for healthcare companies
• UX research strategies for building healthcare apps

Erin and special co-host Ben Wiedmaier are joined by Julian Della Mattia of the180 for a deep dive into being UX team-of-one. Julian has been the first user researcher at a number of companies and shares his top to-dos, milestones, and things to consider before accepting such a role.

The episode digs into the ways a solo UXR can start making an impact, but in a strategic, sustainable way. Julian identifies questions to ask stakeholder teams, processes to consider standing up, and the tools to consider investing in from the start. We also discuss the dual hat-wearing of UXR and Ops on smaller teams/teams-of-one. Julian shares how he balances his time between executing on business-critical work and organizing research workflows so that other teams can start connecting with customers.

Even if you're not a solo UXR or a team-of-one, Julian's experience building bridges between/across departments and his suggestions for aligning user research to core business goals from the start will help you and your team be more impactful.

Episode Highlights

• 03:49 - Strategies for success as the first researcher in an organization
• 12:52 - Strategies for building bridges as a researcher in a new organization
• 19:16 - Building essential processes for small research teams
• 27:59 - Comparing research repositories and insights hubs
• 30:47 - Triangulating insights from different teams
• 35:11 - Strategies for scaling your research capacity

About Our Guest
Julian is a UX Researcher specialized in Research Operations (ReOps), founder of the180 and based in Barcelona, Spain. Whether in-house or working with clients, he repeatedly found myself building Research teams from scratch as the first Researcher in the team. This experience helped him develop a real knack for infrastructure, so he decided to fully specialize myself in ReOps. He likes to talk about this as his switch "from Finder to Builder".

More Resources for Building UX Research Teams

• Use this checklist to organize and build your UX team
• The steps to build and lead an impactful UX team
• How to scale yourself while avoiding burnout

In this episode, Erin chats with Victoria Sakal, Head of Growth at Wonder, all about desk (or secondary) research—think web searches, checking internal resource libraries (like repositories), or interviewing colleagues. Desk research is a critical step when starting a new project.

Victoria shares her framework for thinking about the differences between primary and secondary research, suggesting that instead of distinct categories, they exist on a continuum. She argues that primary research is sharper, more impactful, and has better ROI when it's supported by secondary research.

In addition to sharing best practices for desk research, Victoria walks through research her team conducted on how organizations approach research, offering strategies to maximize your efforts based on specific company growth stages and product demands. The episode closes by exploring how desk research is changing in light of emergent technologies such as large-language models and the benefits of reading widely.

Episode Highlights

• 06:39 - Integrating desk research into your research strategy
• 12:30 - Desk research techniques and best practices
• 17:41 - Unpacking trends in the kinds of questions asked during desk research
• 23:31 - How desk research is evolving alongside AI technology
• 25:14 - The role of curiosity in desk research and innovation
• 34:20 - How research repositories and agile methods impact desk research

About Our Guest
With a passion for turning complex inputs (data, research, behaviors) on customers, market dynamics, and competitors into smart strategies that drive growth, Victoria has spent the last decade helping companies ask better questions to get better data, source more powerful insights, and stay on top of important dynamics that matter. Previously at Morning Consult and Kantar, Victoria now focuses on all things demand gen, product marketing, market research, and growth strategies to deliver more value for Wonder users.

More Resources on Desk Research

• How to conduct (and write) a research literature review
• UX research is better with market research collaborations
• This database showcases AI-powered desk research tools

In this episode, Carol and Erin dive into all things research sample sizes with Lauren Stern. No matter your experience with user research, you'll need to recruit folks, making this an evergreen topic. Lauren has coached both new-to-research and junior UXRs on this critical topic and she shares some of her best advice.

Lauren shares importance considerations and nuances around different types of studies and even analysis approaches. She also unpacks her approach for international samples, the impact of drop-off rates, and participant compensation strategies.

Going beyond sample sizes, we conclude with a discussion of how to better engage with stakeholders when advocating sample sizes, making these conversations about "how many to recruit" more informed. She also shares resources to use when making the case to stakeholders.

Episode Highlights

• 05:41 - Crafting research goals and parameters: a collaborative journey
• 13:48 - Flexible research design: navigating sample sizes and methodologies
• 19:57 - Tailoring sample sizes to research objectives: finding the right fit 
• 26:30 - Qualitative confidence and stakeholder expectations
• 34:11 - Diverse methodologies in quantitative research: beyond surveys
• 43:05 - Departing research wisdom on sample sizes generally

About Our Guest
Lauren Stern is a mixed-methods research leader focused on creating the most human-centered technology possible. Over the last ten years her work has explored how perception and social cognition shape our experiences with automated systems from military zones to living rooms. Whether exploring individual experiences in the field or looking at large-scale data collections, she loves the puzzle of study design and coaching new researchers through the process.

Resources on Sample Sizes

• This free calculator gives sample ranges based on your study needs.
• Need some research-backed sample size help? Bookmark this today.
• You must pay participants. This calculator helps ensure an fair amount.

Carol and Erin welcome George Whitfield, an expert in applying AI to the analysis of qualitative data. George discusses the intricate challenges of leveraging language models to interpret expansive open-ended data (like interview transcripts), emphasizing the importance of context and not just keyword or topic identification.

They'll dig into the crucial role of human oversight in AI, what preliminary analysis might look like using AI, how to check and refine the work of an AI assistant without derailing your project delivery date, and recommendations for etiquette regarding the reporting of AI-informed results.

The episode closes with an exploration of the limits of AI and where user experience researchers can play a larger role in its development. George believes AI can (and should) inspire new directions of research, but not dictate them.

Episode Highlights

• 03:48 - Innovating consumer insights using AI
• 12:21 - Importance of human involvement in AI tools
• 20:04 - Enhance discussion sections with  AI tools
• 26:50 - AI-inspired insights provide inspiration, not guidance
• 34:12 - Interpretation beyond analyzing transcripts
• 36:46 - Applying engineering rigor to the process of building a business

About Our Guest
George Whitfield is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and CEO at FindOurView. As CEO of his most recent company FindOurView, he launched a Gen AI product to help user researchers synthesize insights faster from high volumes of customer interviews. George holds 4 patents and has 3 degrees from MIT including a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a Masters and Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering.

Resources on Qual Data and AI

• Our AI in UX Report shares findings from a survey of over 1,000 researchers
• What does it mean to "code" qualitative data? This breakdown explains it all.
• Interested in trying an AI tool for your analysis? Here are 20 worth considering.