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Get a seat at the table and build the design career you want. This podcast is for designers looking to break in, level up, and take control of their careers—whether you're freelancing, climbing the corporate ladder, or just trying to get noticed. Every two weeks, we dive into career fundamentals, design best practices, and the hottest topics in the design community.
So in previous episode, we talked about being the solo designer or being at an enterprise that doesn't have that kind of mature design influence. How does one maybe more specifically to maybe juniors, how do they push that idea of, like, implementing research as a part of their process when there was none before? Any quick tips around that?
Sara:Yeah. I mean, I think there's a few things you can do, which is one, find your And
Tyler:you're officially live.
Nick:And CEO of OutWhitly, and we're going to talk about user research, UX research, and opportunities that you have as a junior designer. Sarah has a few hot takes there that we're going to discuss, so it's gonna be a very interesting episode. Sarah, welcome.
Sara:Thank you so much for having me.
Nick:Mhmm. You're very welcome. This is first guest on this show. So it's It's such an honor. He's going to take away from you and the first ever guest.
Nick:So that's going to be great. You know, Tyler and I have been discussing recently a lot about stakeholder management, user research. I myself don't really know what to believe anymore. Looking at social media, some people say that, you know, AI, for example, not useful at all. Some say it's the next big big thing for research in particular.
Nick:And then also I see people who do not do research at all. They're all talking about taste and craft and visual design and animation. So the op there are very strong opposites. What should you believe? What should I believe?
Sara:Yeah. Yeah. It's yeah. It's a great question. Yeah.
Sara:And I think for so I am an advocate of research, But, you know, in my career, I've done both, like the design and the research. I've been a part of teams that didn't do a lot of research, and mainly, maybe that was coming down from a lower maturity organization where it's really product heavy, engineering heavy, and you're, like, the sole designer there trying to be like, we should talk to some users. But they're like, you know, don't don't talk about that. Just get to work on these features. Right?
Sara:And and then I've been, you know, on projects and especially at Whitley on the consulting side, we do a lot more of this, like, end to end kind of strategic discovery research and going into then, you know, validation, user testing, and stuff like that. And, you know, I think research is always important. I think what's coming up now with AI is, as you said, can AI just replace the research? You know? Can it speed it up?
Sara:Can it do it itself? Can product owners you know, there's talk of, like, things like synthetic personas. And, you know, we talk to a lot of design leaders, and they're trying to figure out how do I get ahead and have a perspective on AI and how AI should be used before the product owners come and, like, just start using it with their own devices and kind of deciding how it should be used and asking it. Like, if you were, you know, a person of said age using this, what would you think of this? Right?
Sara:We don't want that kind of use of AI. So I think all of the questions and thoughts that everybody is having right now is totally valid. And I think for the the folks that are, you know, junior coming into the field or intermediate, I think it's really about looking at building your influence within the organization and looking at your soft skills and how you can, you know, differentiate yourself as not just someone who even when you're talking about usability testing, like, that is something that where AI probably will, you know, take that piece itself if it's not already doing it faster than, let's say, discovery and design research, which is more complex. And so knowing that AI is is there, it's going to get better. It won't replace research altogether, I don't believe, but I think it will get better at analyzing data.
Sara:You can use it for your research plans and all of these different aspects of your workflow. But I think it's about looking at you as the as the designer or the researcher and and asking yourself, like, what are the skills that you're bringing to the table outside of the hard skills of this is how you do the methods? And how are you getting inciting action from the research results? You know, how do you inspire your stakeholders to want to talk to your users and learn from them? How do you get them, once you've done the research, to actually take the action?
Sara:All of these things are sort of you need to be really empathetic and, you know, emotionally intelligent. You need be to strategic about how you think about this research in terms of adding business value. So I I would say, you know, that is an area that maybe people don't think about enough, but as AI becomes more prominent, will be more important.
Tyler:Nice. I think it'd be great if we can kind of dive into, like, what research looks like today, and then maybe we can kind of pivot over to, like, what that might look like in the future. So in previous episode, we talked about being the solo designer or being at an enterprise that doesn't have that kind of mature design influence. How does one maybe more specifically to maybe juniors, how do they get push that idea of, like, implementing research as, like, part of their process when there was none before? Any quick tips around that?
Sara:Yeah. I mean, I think there's a few things you can do, which is one, find your champion because there's usually always gonna be someone there who believes in you and believes in the value of design, even if they don't fully understand it. And I talk about design as the higher level umbrella that contains research. So because research is done for the purpose of design and to improve, you know, some experience. Right?
Sara:But there's usually a stakeholder who has some influence within the organization, who is there. They you have good conversations with them. They seem amenable to kind of what it is that you're talking about. So one is find who your champions are because they're gonna be the ones that are gonna push it up to the top for you, and they're gonna bring you into other conversations that you weren't in before. So don't just be really, like, narrow in terms of your viewfinder of teammates and collaborators.
Sara:Look across departments and yeah. And then I think, you know, the other thing is in terms of influencing stakeholders, the work with small wins and maybe asking forgiveness instead of permission.
Tyler:Love it.
Sara:Sometimes you can get away with doing, you know, some side research. It's a little informal. Maybe it's not the perfect user, but you build up, like, a little bit of momentum because you get some great insights. And then and then they're like, oh, you did that? And you're like, I know.
Sara:Sorry. I I just kinda squeezed it in in the time that I had, but look at these great insights. Right? So that's always worked really well for me. And just like, yeah, it's just like taking the initiative.
Sara:Right? And then the other part of it is once you do this, let's say you you do get a small group of users you're able to interview or something, don't waste or squander the opportunity. Like, make that the best freaking thing you've ever done, the best insights. You know? Bring the stakeholders in.
Sara:Show them quotes. Show them videos. Like, get them excited and show them a vision of how it could change the product or the service or, you know, the business. Like, hard metrics, we'll talk about that a lot right now, like, related to design and research. Like, you know, we need UX metrics and stuff.
Sara:But I think not enough people are talking about the fact that you need to sell a vision with your research insights. It's part of the design storytelling piece. So, yeah, that was a long ramble, but I feel like all of those things are important.
Nick:I have long rambles as well. Maybe it's a designer thing to have long rambles. Yeah. But I I can relate to most of them. It makes me think about all the, you know, different projects.
Nick:You know, back in the day, I've been the solo designer at, you know, at companies many times, and there always was someone who was, you know, not a designer per se, but, you know, designer friendly. Yeah. As a junior myself back in the day, I was like, well, well, but I am a designer. You're not. You know?
Nick:But then I should have been a little bit more open to them, like, see if I can you know, I was a a smaller piece on the chessboard, you know, just a junior designer in a Mhmm. Not a design mature company. You know, I should have used that bigger piece, you know, or to my advantage. So I think that's that's you know, very good advice. I've also had a interesting moment where the company told me, like, well, what you're working on is for our employees.
Nick:It's not client facing, so we're not going to do research. Mhmm. Our employees aren't important is Mhmm. How I perceive that that message.
Tyler:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Nick:The the asking for forgiveness bit what you just said, I think that would apply there. Right? Yeah. Just see if you can do something anyway, I think.
Sara:Yeah. Just yeah. And you don't have to frame it as, like, a big sixteen week research project. It's just side conversations, office hours that you can set up with some of the employees. Like, think of creative ways to frame it to stakeholders so that they're not usually, the pushback on research isn't that they well, for the most part, it's not that they don't wanna hear the feedback.
Sara:Sometimes you can get stakeholders who are afraid that the customers are gonna say something horrible that then reflects on the customer that reflects on that stakeholder. Sorry. But in the case of, you know, employees or something like that, that's usually they just don't wanna waste the time and therefore, in their minds, money on that. Yep. And so finding creative ways to frame it so that you can kinda get away with just doing a few, even if it's a few conversations over lunch, if it's office hours Mhmm.
Sara:To gather some data, some feedback, and even if not done with perfect rigor is better than nothing.
Nick:I feel like it's all it's also something that happens at the lunch table. You know, when you have your stakeholders there and you you're just listening to them complain about the issues in their project. And then you can at a later moment, you can swoop in and say something like, hey. I heard you speak about this in this challenge. I think design can really help you solve that challenge, and here's how.
Nick:And then Yeah. Something really specific. It doesn't have to be a formal presentation. Like, here's 50 slides on how Yeah. UX research is super awesome.
Nick:You know, they're not going to going to have time for that.
Sara:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I think the the part of being a really good researcher or designer is that listening.
Sara:You know, we talk about active listening and being a good listener and stuff and maybe listening more than you speak and stuff so you can hear the conversations that are going around, hear from the stakeholders about, okay. Yes. They're complaining about some business processes. They're complaining about some feature stuff. And design is an amazing thing.
Sara:Like, it can solve so many problems. Right? You use design thinking for business problems. You use it for service design. You use it for UX related, you know, apps and and things.
Sara:And but most people have such a narrow view of what design is. And so if you can really open your ears and listen to what's going on around you and also listen to what's going on from a business perspective of, like, what are the pressures that they're under so you can have more empathy for your stakeholders because that's how you build trust. And then they want to bring you into more stuff because they know you get it. Right? And you're not just gonna be proposing something that is gonna cost them a lot of money but not bring them ROI.
Nick:Yeah. ROI, Tyler. That's your thing. Right?
Tyler:Big ROI guy.
Nick:Yeah. Yeah. The ROI guy.
Sara:It's important.
Tyler:I'm curious, like so research can look, like, different depending on, like, where you are in the project. So research can look like an initiative. Like, you're looking to kinda discover more about a specific use case that you wanna kind of delve into. And then other cases, it could be tied directly to a to a project. Are there different approaches to each one?
Tyler:How do you kind of look at, like, strategically getting onto a research project, what to be mindful of?
Sara:Yeah. So, I mean, there's there's kind of the the idea of, like, the exploratory research, which is where not much is known. And so but it might have a big strategic value or impact for the company. So in those cases, you maybe would wanna pitch, like, a bigger research initiative. Right?
Sara:So and that's usually, like, they have to have the budget for that, and that there has to be time built in. So that can sometimes mean you're looking at a bigger bigger company. Mhmm. But also you consider risk and, like, the company should consider risk. Right?
Sara:So if they're launching something completely new and they don't know how it's gonna do in the market, but it's risky for them if it fails or very costly, like, that's another area where you wanna do some research, at least validation research. But let's maybe if we go back to the exploratory side where there's there's something they wanna understand, maybe it it's a mystery in terms of the customer journey. People are dropping off. There's not there's a lot of churn, but they're not sure why, like, the data is showing from an analytics standpoint. Something's up with our customers, or they've done a marketing survey, really, a really broad marketing survey, and they're getting a low net promoter score or something like that, they're they don't have, like, the qualitative data, that's a great place to go and do some of this discovery or design research, right, which is, like, in-depth interviews or some observations could be useful if you're looking at trying to understand a process or a system, a service, or a really complex app, let's say.
Sara:Like, we've we do a lot of research with, let's say, doctors. Right? So they're using, like, complicated electronic health records. And they're not gonna remember in an interview all the pain points that they have with that really unintuitive tool. So you actually need to go and, like, watch them use it so you can catch all these, you know, latent needs and things that they're maybe not able to articulate.
Sara:So yeah. So I think in terms of deciding what what research methods you use, it's really, you know, how much is known about it, how risky is it to the business, what's this potential strategic impact, how complicate is the subject matter, how, yeah, how mature is, let's say, even