Influencing Without Authority - with Hana Nagel, Ashby Hayes, and Reality Canty
Increasing our influence also increases the impact our work can have. This is especially important in user experience design and research… when not everyone we work with may have the same user obsession as we do, so it sometimes takes extra effort to see the impact we want. Often the UX folks are not the ultimate authority in the room, or on a project. And then add to that the fact that others’ bias can also undermine your authority - biasis about gender, race, age, disability…
I had a chance to talk about all of this with 3 other UX experts, Hana Nagel, Real Canty, and Ashby Hayes. We covered a lot of ground. And, because we recorded in front of a live audience, you’ll also get a chance to hear the very powerful Q & A session which is the last half of this longer-than usual episode. This episode was originally published in 2019, and it remains one of UX Cake’s top-downloaded episodes, episode 31. There is also an unedited video of the panel on our UX Cake YouTube channel.
Hana Nagel is UX Manager @ Deloitte Digital, Real Canty is Sr User researcher @ Google, Ashby Hayes is SVP of product & design at Potato, a digital product agency.
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FULL TRANSCRIPT
Michael Harding, Blink 00:00
convey UX. My name is Michael Harding, principal UX researcher at blink.
Michael Harding, Blink 00:06
A little wrap on blink blink is a research design for the first companies to create meaningful digital products, brands and experiences. We have studios in Austin, Boston, San Diego, San Francisco, and here in Seattle. How to Host convey UX are set seven years. So you're now and we're excited that you can make it work. Today I have the privilege of introducing Leigh Allen-Arredondo who will be presenting the topic how to influence without authority.
Michael Harding, Blink 00:31
Leigh has been a UX practitioner, evangelist and leader with over 20 years of experience in Human Centered Design Research. Many of you may know her from the UX Cake podcast, terrific resource where she interviews, UX pros and industry leaders for practical advice on building UX skills. She's also head of UX and product is for an early stage startup based here in Seattle.
Michael Harding, Blink 00:51
Leigh Allen-Arredondo and panel.
Leigh Arredondo 01:01
All right. Hello, everyone. Thank you very much for joining us. Welcome to a very special recording of the UX Cake podcast.
Leigh Arredondo 01:27
come check us out anyplace you listen to podcasts. Um, so
Leigh Arredondo 01:35
Oh, and I'm your host, Leigh Arredondo.
Leigh Arredondo 02:50
So Ashby Pfiser is the director of product and technology for the National Democratic training committee, such an apple. Okay.
Leigh Arredondo 03:21
And we also have Hanah Nagel, who is currently a service designer with element AI. And we asked Hannah, because of her focus on the quest of scaling, availability of research insights, and enabling others to act on them.
Leigh Arredondo 03:57
And we have Real Canty, who is an experienced researcher at Airbnb in San Francisco. And we asked Real to join us because he talks about the need to find integrative ways to understand different expectations and reframe problems, which is also
Leigh Arredondo 05:05
And probably even us, as well. So, with that, let's start with Hannah, because you're closest to me. So do you have a story? You can tell us about influencing without authority? And what sort of principles or techniques did you use in that situation?
Hanah Nagel 05:28
Yeah, I think I'm going to recycle a story from my presentation. So if you were there, you're gonna hear it again. And if not, I'll just share it with you. So my presentation which I now believe we should rename to influence eight, that authority was about scaling research insights at SCP, which I actually joined as an intern, and had kind of a grandiose concept for scaling up a research ops and research insight and a very large enterprise. And the way that I too long didn't read version of that case study is that I reached out to folks who were in positions of influence or authority, and I figured out what was important to them, and how I could align my goals with their output. So they were focused on
Hanah Nagel 06:12
that story and the story. The too long didn't read version of that story is that I took a user research approach. So I did user interviews, I kind of did a mixed method approach of quantitative and qualitative to see how frequently, these challenges occurred across the enterprise, and then identified who would be the key change makers in that space. So like you mentioned, as designers or researchers, we might not often have authority over the end product that may be out of scope. And for SAP, the folks who do have the most control or power over the end product are the product owners or the PMS. And so we realized that we actually needed to focus on them as the key change makers. So figuring out what was important to them, which in this case, is managing a budget, or delivering their product on time or managing code rework, and then showing how user research would actually align and help them to meet those goals, and wouldn't act as something that would slow them down. So I think your perception of user research is that it can take you of course, there's too much nitty gritty, too many little thoughts. But if I could align that output of the research insights with what they cared very deeply about, I was able to reposition that is something that was really valuable for them, and something that they really wanted to focus on, especially in the high impact areas of that cycle. So right in the beginning, that discovery phase, and then right before it was released to customer.
Leigh Arredondo 07:30
So I'm curious, at the beginning of this, when you were being asked to do some research already, right? Or are they asking you to do? Like, how did you come around to understanding that you needed to make it what was important to them? Was that different than what you had originally been asked to do?
Hanah Nagel 07:54
Yeah, fun plot twist is that they weren't asking you to do any research, which I thought was probably an initial challenge. So they understood the concept of research and have a high level of value of it. But they were working on these really big turnarounds. And it wasn't clear to them the kind of resources that they would need, what they would need to think about how to ask the right questions. So I would be sitting in on, you know, maybe their their daily stand ups, or maybe some design review meetings and realizing that there are more and more questions being surfaced, maybe not in the form of research questions, but things that I was translating into questions they needed to know high impact questions we needed to answer or validate, and then realizing I needed to reposition it to them as here's a way that I can help you test that, and work through that assumption, and deliver the findings to you in a way that are consumable that you can actually act on in two weeks, you breaking that down, and also framing it to them that it's not over that the research will give them new questions, which we will then answer in a in a turnaround kind of timeframe. So it also sets their expectations and helps them to work that into their product development cycles as well.
Hanah Nagel 09:03
Did I go off track? Not at all. Okay, perfect.
Leigh Arredondo 09:07
And I have lots of questions about that. And I have a feeling that we're gonna see some of these themes coming about in, in the stories. So let's move to the next story. Go ahead Real.
Real Canty 09:22
So
Real Canty 09:23
one of the things important to understand when you're working with stakeholders, when you're working with people in authority, just don't understand they are human beings. And if we understand the principles have some principles around the way that human beings think, and what their expectations are, and we can apply principles to win over some very tough challenges. So in this particular case, I was working on a product on a product team, and a product manager was fairly heavy data center. And I really knew that the only thing that they wanted to do as they wanted this series of AV testing. And my challenge, then, and I love it when these challenges are presented, because typically they're doing what they're comfortable with. And so what I did is your if you understand the way that people think so there's Charlie, who identified one of the principles is how people think and what your expectations are as being one of reciprocity. And so that's a very simple gift. It's if you give something to someone, they're likely to return something and give you something back. Right. And so, in this context, it's very similar to what you were suggesting. And it said, even in a space where they clearly identified that they were going to do this A B testing, I utilized design science, I just took the opportunity to go out and identify places where we can bring in some user insights, and then was entered that in a meeting and just turn that over, that was a gift. It was a gift that was in that I knew that later down the road and engagements that I was going to build in trust. So I was that's a way that I could find a trust. And I could keep a product manager who was primarily data driven, help them shift from being a data driven thinker over the one that he starts to evaluate the users and users.
Leigh Arredondo 11:24
And so was the outcome of that. tying this back to influence? Did you see these, these PMS coming to you or to your team, maybe more often, or with more strategic requests, as opposed to tactical, something like that.
Real Canty 11:48
So what you what you what the outcome of that, in the opinion was, and is, is now a product manager who brings user experience researchers into all the strategy meetings. Right. And so now with a central part of that the work that's taking place in that in that space?
Leigh Arredondo 12:08
Yeah, that's powerful.
Leigh Arredondo 12:11
Ashby,
Leigh Arredondo 12:14
there's,
Ashby Hayes 12:14
there's so many stories, I want to start by just saying, the reason I know anything about this is because I did it wrong. A lot of times, before I got it, right, and banged my head against the wall and made a lot of people upset with me. Because I pushed too hard, or I was too passionate about something. And you know, I very much owning my mind being loud and whatnot. And I love that about myself now. But as I went through, one of the stories that kind of sticks out to me is one from about three and a half years ago. So I was working at a large consulting firm. And every project that I was being put on was basically like, hey, we need some wireframes, here's your list of requirements, go draw that and then make it and and I, you know, was like, Well, what did the users think? And, and after, like at least one or two projects of doing that, I was like, huh, they really, you know, I kept asking him pushing for research. And they really didn't think push back. And so finally, on one project, I actually had a client who wanted to do some user research. So but they only had two weeks to do this for user research. And so it was I did like six, seven interviews back to back in one day, her in 3d other scripts, like that morning or something. And it actually worked out. And my feet hurt really bad at the end of that day. And it was really exhausting. But we were able to get the insights into that into that project. And it really helped the trajectory of the project. And so from there, along with a really talented graphic designer, we decided to develop a agile research methodology. And so we called it pulse, and we patch it, packaged it and we made a slick slide deck. And we passed it out to all of the, you know, all of the directors and the consultants who are out there selling stuff. And then all of a sudden, they started selling projects with research. And so kind of the the tactic there are the the thing is, is speaking the right language. And so it was slick. It was pretty it was it was basic research kind of methodology, but it had no the word research was not even in there anywhere. It was just hey, we're going to talk to users, and we're going to tell you what they think. And then get on board with that. And so, I think you know, and then and kind of you know, as an add on to that is learning to speak the language. And you know, we do such a great job of listening to our user and sometimes we forget to listen to our business partners or our developers. And so I swear, someday I'm gonna put this on my resume. My husband is an engineer, and I speak fluent Dev. And I really think that that's a selling point. So as, as a UX person, you, you need to speak their language and then frame what you're doing in a way that they can understand.
Leigh Arredondo 15:26
Yeah, and I think, actually, I hear tones of that from all previewer stories. And I want to point out that speak, speaking the language with your stakeholders, looks very different or sounds like it looks very different than speaking the language with your stakeholders. So that is something that we also have to take into consideration is what worked for us last time might not be the same.
Ashby Hayes 15:54
And like, now, I'm working in a political startup. And so I have to make things seem like it's a campaign, and there's polls, we're
Hanah Nagel 16:03
polling people, you know, and so it's a different, you know, approach,
Ashby Hayes 16:07
but it's putting it in, in a context that they understand
Leigh Arredondo 16:13
why one other thing that I would like to sort of put in here is, you're all talking about research. And I think probably everyone in this room is, thinks that research is a great thing. And we often don't have the time or resources. And in fact, I was thinking about this this morning, about the situation of a designer, in a company, which has recent research, but he's not in the same team as research. And because I do hear this come up quite a bit, you know, so they aren't really the ones doing the research. And it made me think about a time, long time ago when I was at Getty Images, where this was my situation. And I partnered very closely with the lead of the research team. And I think in doing that, we both extended our own influence, because design had more influence with say, the creative team, and even the dev team, or which the dev team was was very, they thought, user research, just kind of slow stuff down, and then research. But however, the research team had much more influence with the business team. And so that actually was a very strong partnership. And I'm wondering if any of you have experienced something like that similar? Yeah, on the
Hanah Nagel 17:45
topic of creating partnerships, one first step is to be like, who has the most to lose in this situation, and therefore, who can you deliver the most value to, so the project is at risk of being off budget or you know, not meeting certain deadlines, and then you can align with who's responsible for that, and show me your research, we'll put that back on track, and work on something that you said about delivering research or presenting research insights in a way that doesn't use the term research. I really like this framework called assumption slam, which is a by Julian Muth, who's a researcher at Shopify. And it's just a really easy way to get them to generate high impact hypotheses without ever using the word research. If you get them together in a room, there's nothing really to prepare, you just give them some cookies and be like, what, if what will cause your project to fail, you map it out in this two by two and you walk away with it are these really clear hypotheses, that you can rank in terms of urgency, you've never really use the term research, no one's scared. But you have a really clear path forward about what you want to deliver. And you also the key idea of who your partners might be, who was actually vocalizing what needed to happen. Who do you need to deepen relationships with in order to really push that forward?
Leigh Arredondo 18:59
So follow up question on that. When you're talking about research in that particular situation. Do you mean that you were doing research by conducting this or you were taking away? Oh, I need to go? And this is the research I'm going to go do now.
Hanah Nagel 19:16
So yes, and so sometimes I find that there's not enough time or money for research insights to be happening. And so I need to find a way to help them to ask the right questions, and then figure out how I can support them with maybe some intro methodologies that they can use to answer part of those questions, or maybe to do part of the data gathering. And then I did the analysis, so kind of sharing and breaking it down. So starting with the assumptions, not as an easy way for us as a group to align on key priorities. And then if there's something more complex, something that requires a bit more training, I'll take that on, but I'll give them some tasks to do so that we're sharing the work and they feel invested as well in the outcome.
Leigh Arredondo 19:56
That's an that's another really important piece is So bringing people along on the journey. Yeah, I have, if it's okay, I have a
Ashby Hayes 20:06
couple stories that you're just kind of reminding me of the one and it comes. So Tamar adilyn, last year at can be UX, she debuted her alignment personas book, which I think is published online. Fantastic. You know, she is like the person that goddess, and we're actually doing a totally different workshop tomorrow together. But you know, really dear friend, and she has been thinking about personas for a long time. And after doing personas forever and ever, she kind of gotten to this point where she realized that all the stakeholders needed to align on a person and a persona and, and a kind of group of qualities that that represented somebody that they were looking to target with their business. And I found I found that to be incredibly valuable. Over the past year and a half or so, you know, I sort of knew about it before it came out. And I started using it in my work. And I had, you know, a situation at Amazon a couple situations, and then I've done it now twice, at my new organization. And I've done kind of like a modified sprint workshop, where we start with an alignment, Persona and de, and we actually create our personas together. And so it's not necessarily the traditional, go out and do a whole bunch of interviews create, but it's all of the stakeholders, and many of them usually, you know, have spent spending a lot of time you know, thinking about them talking to them for you know, product owners, whatnot for a long time. And so getting everybody in a room using a bunch of sticky notes, I won't go into the details. But in my current company that worked so well, the first time I did it, they were like, Okay, we want to launch this other product, and we want to do personas. And we don't have time. You know, we don't want to spend a whole day on that on our workshop. So we'd actually like to hire someone. And here's a budget to go hire a real researcher to go do real personas. So I thought that that was like a huge success of like a one day kind of thing that then turned into here's five grand ago hire a real researcher. So I thought that was really good. So yeah, sometimes kind of baiting them with with a little bit of something that gives them that ability to have a say and then and then they'll give you more money.
Leigh Arredondo 22:21
And would this be a group that would? Do you think before you went into this process, if you had said, Okay, we're gonna take $5,000 and create personas hire this company to do personas?
Ashby Hayes 22:34
Yeah, there's no way. They're a small nonprofit, political startup, none of them knew anything about research. So there's no if I would have gone in the first day and said, Can I have five random to present as they would have been? Like, I don't?
Leigh Arredondo 22:47
Yeah, yeah, it would have been.
Real Canty 22:51
In that initial description, when you were talking about how design is separate from, from research, you think about in large organizations, sometimes you have a lot of disparate teams, and the strategies are distributed across those companies. One of the things that we find is being able to rally the troops, okay. And so sometimes when you have people who are released on a stone audits with a particular perspective, or a particular set of expectations, bringing in confederates, bringing Confederates into the room, can actually provide a way to win people over. So when you're there was a case where I knew that the value of communicating, it's one thing to articulate the value of the work and the value of the findings for a team, but you have to know what you're communicating with. And you bet and sometimes that's, that's all you need in order in order to successfully move things forward. But in other times, you have to actually use consensus, you need to bring some sort of authority. And we do a lot of times when we should be talking about that alignment, that early alignment, we're trying to identify with the key decision maker in the room, or on the project or any company that we can bring in and make them an ally. But in other cases, just having additional voices that support what it is that you're doing, walk into the room unexpectedly. So invite that you know you invite a team which in a lot of times, especially when you're leading these these kinds of design thinking many agents, you should be handpicking people who are coming into your into the assessments, right? And that's the same thing when it comes to presenting your work when you're doing a read out of any of any type. I'm very careful that prior to that read out. I've communicated this at several times with different researchers across the organization across different teams. I know where my work, how it fits within a network of other projects, and where this tangential relationships and where this is really strong. relationships and I bring those people into the room when I'm giving a meet up, so that they can show not only the value, I can demonstrate not only the value to the current project, but also the value to the company brought in the leadership, whether those opinions or not those people that then it gets grabs of attention, because that increases the likelihood of whatever they're working on, is actually going to launch. And we're actually going to move that product out.
Leigh Arredondo 25:26
Yeah, so that consensus building, before, you know, the similar sort of idea, printing the pre meeting, before you go to the meeting, and whether it's really important to you, you're with someone who has much more authority than you, and you really don't have authority in that situation. But what that reminds me of is that there's, there's this need for quick, you know, sometimes you don't have a lot of time. So in your situation, it sounds like you had time previously to build relationships with other people that you did have some influence with. And you utilize that possibly, to bring influence in a situation where maybe these are people that you didn't have time to build that relationship with. And I wonder if that could probably also work when my question here is about shortcuts, other ways that you have found, like, you don't have a lot of time for the relationship building maybe. And you in this case, perhaps it's more than theories of persuasion. But you need people to see that you know, what you're talking about and and believe that you have valid answers, ideas, opinions,
Real Canty 26:57
you know, your domain, it's important to know your domain. So whatever, whatever it is that you're working on. Most of the time, not united Ireland. And what you're doing is probably something that's been done, comparable, some comparable work has been done outside of maybe your company, and so leveraging the efforts of other leaders, or the leadership entities inside, inside of the industry, so it might be another company and you know, as you present your work, if the if that's the best practice, and it's probably something that's been done by somebody else, and somebody else is using that same approach, and they love it, you know, some of these people love it when it's like, okay, well, you know, Company X is also done this company, as long as it doesn't add, and guess what it's done for them. And that can help sway the tie in terms of negotiation. And speaking of money for people over winning over.
Ashby Hayes 27:58
Yeah, I found spamming people with articles, you know, can help them so that you're not the one. So as a woman walking into any sort of leadership situation, you don't often have the luxury of someone, you know, trusting that you know what you're talking about. That happens a lot. And so what I tend to do is try to use other voices to be the subject matter experts, so that I'm not saying, Hey, I have 20 years of experience, and I know what I'm talking about, that usually doesn't go over well. Instead, I say, hey, you know, I was reading these 18 articles not relating, but, you know, here's a couple articles that address, you know, that we're these XYZ companies have had similar challenges to ours. And this is how they solve them. And what do you think about trying one of these, and that usually will go over way better than me just sitting in a meeting and saying this is wrong, and don't do it that way.
Hanah Nagel 29:02
Right. I wanted to pick up on something that you said about being members of underrepresented areas of tech. So I think for people of color and woman were folks, of which I am all three, it can be more challenging to assert your authority in these spaces. And I do want to encourage folks to find that balance between finding your own voice and raising up your own position of authority with bringing in other voices. You know, don't be afraid to to stand your ground, and to share your position of authority based on your experience or your education. But also don't be afraid to pull on other voices because we are not islands. We're all standing on the shoulders of giants. And something that I also like to do in this situation is to find really long articles. So I'll call it like HD theses and be like if you tend to read these 400 pages, you too can have this level of expertise, but then I just get back to being like or I could tell you right now
Leigh Arredondo 30:00
i Which reminds me of another tactic. And we talked about this quite a bit in our pre panel conversation, which is the tactic, the technique of asking questions. Because I have found that as a woman in tech, in particular, the our authority, it does kind of end up sounding like we have to constantly, like either you're always saying, Here's the reason why you should listen to me, because I've been working for 20 years. Well, while we did this law, back when I was at Amazon, that is real popular. So
Ashby Hayes 30:48
it was really not that cool.
Leigh Arredondo 30:54
But this idea of questions, and I think people, many people seem to think that asking questions maybe puts you in a in a position of less authority. But I have found, in my experience, working with a lot of executives, that when you ask them, you know, you can there are great ways of asking questions that make you sound smart. Right? So you are coming across as someone who knows what you're talking about, you're asking them about something that's very important to them, possibly mirroring their language of asking questions can be a really powerful, powerful tool for just bringing authority without having to you know, show your resume. Any thoughts?
Ashby Hayes 31:51
Yeah, tons. Sorry, to me, though. So the questions, I actually, I think that questions can make you sound really smart, you know, really good, thoughtful questions. And the key to a really great question that your VP or SVP or your CEO is gonna love is a question that makes him sound smart. Or her or her I just call myself unconscious bias. Hashtag. Um, so yeah. Yeah, so I think the question where you kind of feed them the answer, but then they get to own, you know, Oh, yeah. You know, I think this would be a really great idea. And you're like, oh, yeah, I think that would be a really great idea. And so the curiosity and reality brought that up really brilliantly in our in our early conversation, is that an authentic curiosity? Right, because you really do want to know what's important to them. That, you know, that's really critical. You want to UX, you, you want to UX, your,
Leigh Arredondo 32:59
you know,
Ashby Hayes 33:01
value that you're adding to the organization. I love how earlier you you said, Did I get off track? Right, right there you were like trying to still keep you know, your comments in in a thread that went where, you know, Lee was looking for it, which I thought was lovely.
Hanah Nagel 33:21
Think as researchers asking the right questions, as always are in. So either helping others to elicit the right questions, or using questions as a form of engagement, trust building, and then be able to echo back and give ownership, like erasing is a really great way to create that rapport or to create partnerships. I always try to get a when possible, sometimes views are back to back, but always try and get some kind of pre pre questions that I can go into the meeting with, so that I can demonstrate my familiarity with at least one point that's really important to them and show how will add value by saying if this than that and show where we're going?
Real Canty 34:03
No, I think about sources of inspiration. Right? I think we should always be reaching outside of our comfort zone for sources of inspiration. And when I when I listen to this question asked comedians, like timing, right, timing and delivery are key. And I hear that in. Absolutely. Comedians, so comedians is not anyone just think that point. But anyone can ask a question. But it's about the timing and the delivery. And so just sitting here, as I'm learning while I'm sitting in the seat, I'm thinking about sources of inspiration, and why you know why learning from someone like comedians could be valuable to our our work. Does anyone here do any improv? Has anyone done any improv work? Right. Okay, so we've already had rights. I can say you don't have to be funny, you don't have to be funny. But some some of the great and Bob's Second City, right. So some of those places are great. And it's really about timing. It's really about opening up. But I'm just thinking in terms of other sources of inspiration that you can use some. So when you identify a strategy, don't ever forget about the timing and the delivery. Because if you don't ask that question, right, it could go forward.
Leigh Arredondo 35:29
I want to make sure that we have time for questions from you all. Because coming into this, I we can think about the the situations that have come up for us in the past. But I would really like to hear situations that any of you maybe or someone you know, has gone through, maybe this going through is would anyone be willing to share a situation in which maybe we could? Awesome, okay.
36:07
Hello, thank you. So this has a tie in to your talk that we just left about? Design, thinking maturity. So I'm going to ask you a question. If long winded I'm sorry, can I help my organization in the future?
Leigh Arredondo 36:23
You don't have to say your organization is gonna be broadcast later, just FYI.
36:30
So the scenario that I'm going to describe, we've talked a lot today about how the value of research can in itself, be the influencing factor that maybe pushes the problem to a more productive conclusion. The scenario I deal with a lot is when research is rejected. So I'm wondering, if you guys have any experiences, you could speak about that?
Leigh Arredondo 36:57
Yeah, real, real, you want to come back up? And we'll do let's do a little mini mentoring. We're gonna do a little mini mini mentoring. So the question is, when you're in, in an organization where the UX maturity is maybe is low, so you're saying it in and you're you do research, and it's rejected?
Hanah Nagel 37:29
By object Did you meet someone looked at it, and they were like, I don't like it, I'm not going to use it, or they just didn't even engage with it.
37:35
I would say, both. So there is research we do in house that we share. There's also and maybe it's more common, when we just we we tap into industry knowledge and industry research. So like those those articles, and, you know, just the email blast, and here's all these things that backup our position. And then those are dismissed.
Leigh Arredondo 37:59
I'm curious about the relationship between the team that's presenting the research and the team that is receiving the research.
38:11
So we have a whatever the opposite of a distributed UX monoliths are validated, consolidated UX team, research is partner with us, but we consult in house to hundreds of development teams.
Leigh Arredondo 38:28
So they're viewing you as consultants, perhaps. Okay. So
Hanah Nagel 38:33
I've experienced that a couple of times, and I'm going to share my assertive answer to that. I've had a couple of times, right, present research insights, and folks say, I don't think so. They'll read through, and they'll just be like, I don't think so. And I say all all feelings are valid. But we're making decisions here that are data informed. So if you have new data that challenges the data that I just presented to you, I welcome it, because that will give us more information to make a decision on. But if you're walking into this, and you're saying that you have some emotional reactions to it, and that's no reason for you to ignore this data, then that's not something that we're going to move forward with. And I find that just presenting it in that somewhat a sort of framework, put them in a position where they have to say, Yeah, let's let's either ignore it and do an uninformed decision, or let's move forward with something that we've all researched and made a decision about. It's usually successful, I wouldn't say it's 100% success rate. I would also say there's some social niggling to do in there, because it does put someone on the spot. So you do have to be prepared to deal with the repercussions of putting that person on the spot. But I'm going to be honest to say sometimes folks need to be put on the spot. They're going to challenge your authority or your insight that you're providing. Perhaps sometimes there's an appropriate time to push back within the constraints and the boundaries of that relationship in order to move that project forward for the benefit of everyone because your goal as a researcher is not to slow things down. Under keep things up budget you're doing, you're only delivering insights that you think will push that product out to the market or deliver a better experience. And at the end of the day, we're all most of us probably are working in some sort of capitalist enterprise. And so our goal is to make money somehow. So we're only delivering insights that will feed that bottom line in some way. And so we are all aligned on that common goal. So when we can bring it back to that I find it's more oftentimes successful.
Leigh Arredondo 40:27
So you're talking about perhaps putting it in their language. So relevance, which you're saying perhaps if data is important to them, saying, This is the data?
Hanah Nagel 40:45
Yeah, and I find that sometimes I'll translate the findings into who needs to act on it. So PMS are engineers, they love a good graph. They love numbers. So sometimes I'll take even if it's a qualitative insight, we'll just put it in graph form and love Wallah, I think magically in their language. And sometimes it means doing the opposite. You're writing out a sentence or making it into a story, translating it to the most consumable form for them. I think we touched on this at the beginning of it thinking of your internal colleagues eyes, your your users. So who are they? What are their needs and goals? And how can you deliver your product, which is those insights in a way that is, is really meeting their needs,
Leigh Arredondo 41:24
any other techniques that might be helpful in a situation?
Real Canty 41:30
From a research standpoint, it also helps to bring people into the top researchers design studies. Okay, so there's design research, and then there's also research design. And part of research design is walking through trying to understand the problem. And you should include your stakeholders, bring them into that design process, so that you're not just showing up with some results, actually take them in formulate hypotheses with design testing, right. And if they're not comfortable with a particular methodology, then bring in, you know, bring leverage the knowledge of people around you, for example, the only quality or if you only quantity, right, bring those people in, but start from the beginning is the same thing that we do when we're trying to design an experiment, it's we're trying to design some benefits. We talked about bringing the stakeholders in, but actually research that processes. We're also designing research. And I include them on everything, we have a meeting, when I set up, when I have a read my research plan together, I hold a meeting for that research plan. And we walk through that and I tell them what this what each one of these different tests, what each type of observation affords, in terms of understanding of problems, if there's an issue around that, then we lay that out now, but I could commitment up front, I want you to get commitment up front. And pretty much you've got to buy in that you need. And so after that, and we get to the point of Okay, so now we've got evidence or evidence, evidence centered evidence driven design, or are we just shooting from them? And so no, except the challenge, a lot of times I've worked with, I've worked with designers who.
Leigh Arredondo 43:11
Okay, remember, we're talking about this scenario. That's another.
Real Canty 43:22
So, you know, a lot of times when we're talking about maturation, okay, and so, when designers are young, sometimes they don't really understand the value and the opportunity that's in front of them to actually create multiple ideas. And I worked with us designers, and I said, Okay, when you they had me something, and they said, we need some feedback on this. Is this before you came up with this is, did you have any other ideas that popped into your head? What were those ideas, just get those out, give me two or three things that you thought maybe they may be a good solution.
Leigh Arredondo 43:59
So this is you're giving an example of how to bring someone in on your research
Real Canty 44:05
into things, bringing people in on research, and also helping them grow. Right, so that they understand the value of using alternative, alternative prototypes for testing, right, because then when you do that, they're never gonna move, because now you have a number of different models that are out there testing, and then you can actually start to identify some of the features and characteristics of each one of the models that might go into a final prototype. Right? And so once they understand that it's the same thing we do in research as researchers, we looked at tests, we try to use variants, we use variability, we use differentiation, and then we try to look for patterns and all of that stuff. Whether it's qualitative or quantitative. We're looking for those for those for that builds patterns. And give me a number of give me an opportunity to find patterns. It's difficult to find patterns and and only testing one thing, and that's not the way to go. We really want to mature and grow as an organization.
Leigh Arredondo 45:01
So I'm curious about this scenario specifically. We've we've heard about bringing them along, trying to talk in their language. Do any of these asking the question ask her? Do it? Do any of these sound like something that would work in your situation? Yeah, I
45:26
think especially the the first response about assertiveness will be effective or hopefully effective for us. But of course, I'm willing to try.
Leigh Arredondo 45:39
Did you have any other thoughts on this?
Ashby Hayes 45:41
I do, actually. So one thing that we didn't mention, and I know that this is not necessarily comfortable for everyone, but a lot of times if you present a sketch, or a visualization that actually illustrates one a change or an opportunity that your research can add, sometimes for some people seeing it can be really magical. And especially even for an engineer, if it's something simple, they're like, oh, yeah, I could code that in a in a week or two. Whereas sometimes they're in their brain, there's like, oh, then it'll have to go back to Design. And it'll take forever, and blah, blah, you know what I mean, if you can make it shorter or ease more easily digestible for them, that can often go a long way. And then I mean, just kind of back to what Rio said, like, you want to make sure that you are buying before you do like some big research study, and make sure that they you're solving problems that they are actually aware of, right. And then I feel like the other little tip, using emotion, in addition to data is bringing in the highlight reel, you know, I found that to be incredibly powerful, especially with senior stakeholders, you show four or five users stumbling over something, or saying a similar thing about a product, you'll almost always get buy in, if you take the time to do the highlight reel.
Leigh Arredondo 47:08
And looking at secondary research, I think it can be helpful to point out where what the outcome was for someone else is for 15, and this technically ends at 415. But we don't actually have to leave the room. So we could do another one of these little scenarios. And it looks like we have a volunteer right here. So I you have a follow up question. Okay.
47:41
So it's for you to mention, I work for a company where there's more qualitative research and you read this book about like, graphs and things like that. Could you elaborate a little bit?
Leigh Arredondo 47:58
Oh, sure. Yes. And so the question was, how do you how do you make sure that your stakeholders or PMS give the same importance to qualitative research that you give to quantitative? Okay, so this is just tying this back to influence without authority. In many companies, qualitative data, just has it has authority because there's lots of it. And quantitative doesn't, because it's kind of touchy feely. And there's, there's not as much data. So yeah,
Hanah Nagel 48:33
yeah, that's such a good question. I used to work at SAP, which is an engineering organization, I work at element AI, which is a machine learning organization. So both have a large focus on data and its validity. And something so there's a, there's two parts to how I approach that. One is, through the research planning phase, I'll generally get questions around how many people I'll be interacting with. And I'll explain I'll do a little bit of education at that point and say what we're going for as both depth and breadth. So really, we're depth of those stories, you want to understand all the nuances and the differences between these stories, that's going to help us understand the similarities and the differences and what's important and why. And then we want to look for frequency, and that's the correct area. So when I'm delivering if I need to translate that into something that's quantitative, I might not have enough numbers for that to be quantitative initially, maybe I'll do seven interviews, and that's not really interviews. But what I'll start from there is to say okay, we identify these similarities and differences in their in their narratives and their experiences. And now I'm going to move to the quantitative phase because they want to get you know, statistically valid sample so I can show you its occurrence across and even if that number is low, you know, we've talked a bit in some other sessions about placing priority on what used to be called edge cases and what we're now starting to consider right or to design for. And again, going into depth and breadth there and saying if it only occurs on 1% of the population, but it's extremely impactful, we're not just looking at numbers. And so I would say it's like, offline and online, if I can use a differentiation, like there's some person to person conversations there and explaining and building rapport with them as to why I'm interested in this very small but deep sample set. And then when I'm delivering reports, I don't tend to write reports, per se, I tend to just deliver like, three slides because no one's reading past that. But I'll put, you know, one graph on there, and I'll link it to something else to show them why it's important.
Leigh Arredondo 50:39
Does that sound like something that would work? Yes, yeah.
Real Canty 50:45
On this, Randy, you have an understanding of data, and information, right. And a lot of times people think about data as just being symbolic in numbers, right? The information that we get it, whether it's through an interview, or it's to survey given to a large sample, a lot of that is still just information, it's raw data. And it's meaningless until you actually extract something for from it and form it. And I think a lot of people are misinformed about what data are. And you know, just in business, there is this is a privilege is given to symbolic numbers and quantitative information. And it doesn't matter. So if, if we're talking about distance, and I say, I'm going to meet you halfway there, right about, well, I got stuck on the road halfway, it's too much, versus I got stuck on the road point five units before I arrived. It's the very two very different things. And it was saying the exact same thing. But for some reason, when people struggle to learn something like math, it makes them feel that that somehow has more power than a qualitative approach, and it doesn't. And so the understanding enables you to communicate the value of your work. So even with small samples, you might want to do things, small samples, you might think about picking up other quantitative metrics. So the methods have nonparametric, even Bayesian approaches, large samples, when people just start pulling out large samples at you, and he starts showing the statistical test basket, what was the distribution, but there's a distribution look like, go back, show me what the distribution look like, looks like. Because in our field, most of the time, those aren't normal distributions. And the statistics that they're using, has to play by the game with a normal distribution. So there's a lot of lack of awareness. But if you're a qualitative researcher, and you can demonstrate that I do qualitative research, because I know the value of qualitative research in this particular situation, and it lets them know that you know what they're talking about, they feel a little more comfortable. And now you've kind of exposed them the ignorance and now we can have an honest conversation.
Leigh Arredondo 53:07
It can also help to talk about, you know, how these things, they talk about how it is we came in our field to decide that or to, to believe that data shows that by users, seven users would have your is enough to see the patterns. I want to make sure that we get any other questions.
Hanah Nagel 53:32
Can I kind of guess, and great, really quick to guess and my own answer. There's also that concept of like, oh, five to seven users is enough. And they try and steer people away from that also, because again, part of our role is to ask the right questions. And so if you're looking at five to seven people, when do you identify what those important patterns are, instead of saying, Oh, we got five interviews. And now let's make a product decision based on it. So sometimes, the way I'll reframe it quantitatively is to be like to pay you all this information, seven users. Awesome. Is that enough, give you enough confidence to make a $2 million investment in this product. You know, Scrum teams outrage, tempers in Scrum teams about million dollars a year minimum. So if you put them to work for two weeks, six months, you know, roughly calculate that and be like, Is that enough for you to invest that money right now? It's probably not. So let's go back and refine it a bit.
Leigh Arredondo 54:20
Yeah, sometimes it's just the start to show us where we need. Okay.
54:27
Hi there. The theme of influence of own authority made me think of peers and influencing peers. So I'm in a situation where as a woman and a Person of Color in Tech, I can be in companies where I have peers that I don't know as well. And the focus is on delivering value to stakeholders very quickly. And so I wanted to ask about how do you kind of influence peers to Give space and not assume, right that the expertise is or is not there because of how you, you know, look. And, you know, just really give space to have organic conversations and get to know each other so that so everyone knows where the expertise is in how you can collaborate.
Leigh Arredondo 55:23
That and I'm not going to answer this, but it just reminds me of one of the theories of sileni, which is likability, and you people you're influenced people more for its, you're more influential with people who like you. But just like reminded me, like, as you were looking at building, but like, you're more when you're more like them. So it's sort of like a weird. And that is the problem. So you said, people like you and you're more likely. Often people are more comfortable. If you're more like them. So I can rephrase your
Hanah Nagel 56:05
question. I think what you were very gently asking about is navigating bias. Okay. I love this topic. Before, but I found these really mixed. So my mom is white and Jewish, my dad is black. I'm queer, and a woman. I don't have diabetes type one, which technically is a disability because it affects my like, every hour. So there's never anyone in the room like me, you know, there might be other women, there's probably another black woman, there's probably there'll be another black, queer woman who's also disabled, I'm always going to be the only one in the space that I'm in. And so I find that I have to navigate between, I would say, gentleness and assertiveness. Because one pro of having so many facets, is that I do have a lot of similarities with a lot of different people. Although we're losing the way my name is spelt, actually Hebrew name, but it's also like an Ethiopian named a Korean name. And even though I'm not obviously I was admitted, these people will be like, Ooh, did you know? And I'm like, Yes, I'm not of your culture without. And so I do vacillate between finding that common ground, and finding that one way that I am like them, and when it is less agreeable, when they're when I do find that there's pushback, because I am not like them. And then I do find that, that I do, I've learned to being more assertive in my own expertise, and to not doubt how I got to be where I am and why I'm speaking to where they hold to being very humble and very comfortable, saying, I don't know, and then reaching out to folks who do know, because LinkedIn is a range of expertise. And I found that those people are really welcoming when I reach out to them with questions. But I feel like I'm not exactly answering your question. But I'm acknowledging the challenges of navigating that space, while also encouraging folks to not be afraid to be assertive in the ways that other folks are assertive. You know, I've noticed that I usually noticed this, and I'm noticing where often now that some folks who are in the majority of tech,
58:19
they are very comfortable with just being
Hanah Nagel 58:21
like, I don't I don't like this thing. I disagree, because I think, you know, based on literally nothing. I just don't think so. And I feel like as a as a woman of color, you know, who's queer, I don't have that space, I can't roll into these spaces and just be wrong, I have to be speaking from a place of authority. And so I'm very cautious when I see something, I am extremely certain of how great it is. And when I have pushed back against that, I've learned to both take a breath and then be like, actually, you're wrong. And I use that language. I'm saying what you're saying is incorrect. And what I'm saying is correct, because and so generally standing by it is that phrase, but I can't think of a better thing off the top of my head, generally standing where I am, and asserting my expertise in a way that sometimes might be challenging to the other person, something that I found impactful. But again, did I go off track? So I feel like he went on my own?
59:15
No, I think you addressed it, I was focused on the timing of it. So in the instance of I'm here, and I have to maybe co coach, I'm actually digital transformation. I'm an Agile coach, but I may have to co coach with peers. Hey, I just met you today. Let's go in and let's coach together and it's like, Hey, okay, great. I'll take lead. Don't you worry about it, like that sort of thing where I have to build relationships very quickly and establish that expertise very quickly.
Hanah Nagel 59:50
Oh, yeah, I think I'm understanding where you were going with this. I tried to give to balance giving space we're saying okay, I'll take this section. And if they're, if they're Jumping in ahead and maybe dominating part of that, then I'll try and inter interrupt and say actually confirming that I will now speak and I'm not, you know, I'm not seeing the floor or whatever. I guess being generally assertive is my main takeaway here.
Leigh Arredondo 1:00:17
That workspace I don't, I don't have the exact situation. But it does remind me of a situation that I had, which was co coaching with someone, it was a guy, and who and didn't seem to want to give Lee or space or anything. And what worked for me in that situation was asking questions, and say, Okay, can I ask you a question? And then ended up and just keep asking the question. I'm not sure that would necessarily work in that situation. But asking questions has been really powerful to me. For me, so yeah,
Ashby Hayes 1:00:59
having been a consultant, I'll just throw this in here. The more time you can kind of spend with people in social situations right up front, within the first few days can often really help break down some of those barriers, humanize people, and allow you that time and space to really communicate who you are, and what you know, assets and knowledge you bring to the table. So you know, going out to dinner really early on in the project and like making sure you have kind of that social space can can actually help with that. Not always, but sometimes.
Leigh Arredondo 1:01:36
Well, it's 430. And we've already kept you an extra 15 minutes. So we can hang out here for more questions. Oh, was there one more question real quick?
1:01:48
Yeah. I don't know, we're talking about bias about, you know, like, I kind of feel that to an Asian woman. So it would seem like it's compliant, or I shouldn't have like, evil. But also I want to talk about, like, even age bias and how you got navigated that when you're younger, and like, you know, I can send as many articles as I want, but like, you know, people kind of like don't want to, like, listen to me, because they're like, Oh, I got I've gotten comments before. It's like, oh, you're young, like you'll learn like, what I'm like, what can you teach me now. And
Leigh Arredondo 1:02:22
that is a really good point. Thank you. Because I did want us to think about the things that were helpful for us early, early in our career.
Ashby Hayes 1:02:33
I'll take that a little bit, because I did it the wrong way. So I was a, I was given a, I was an associate creative director when I was 25. And so I was very young, I cut all my hair off and started wearing really hideous suits, to try to, like, look more mature and be, you know, taken seriously, I don't know that that really helped, or worked. But what did help and work was was building relationships with my peers who were a little older, and really helped me to, to understand their perspective. And also to connect with them. And so that that helped them to see me as, as a leader, and someone who can think strategically. And I think just bringing your ideas to the table, and making them happen, making them real, you know, and showing the rest of the team, how you can bring something that that is really strategically important. And that will help build that, you know, that recognition and that trust,
Leigh Arredondo 1:03:39
I don't know why finding a way to tell tell a story in a in a way that everyone can see. Like I I just I know this from someone that I worked with. And it was amazing. She worked with someone else on the team just on the side. And they created this video that was like a whiteboard video that explained something that had to do with our something I don't remember now. It's just something that our what our team was doing. And it was amazing. And it gave everybody this like new perspective of her she was young, early 20s. And not only did it showcase some other talent that she had, but it also showcase to her, like, real knowledge of the subject. So I thought that was pretty cool.
Real Canty 1:04:33
Don't forget to keep an open mind about the possibilities. Don't so never, never, never lose value in yourself. Okay, that people aren't obligated to give you that right and create outside of that space. So there's the go to work thing every day. That's important for paying the bills, but it also helps people know that you do what you do, because you love it. Like I do it for the money. I do it without the money I'm going to do it, if I can't do it here, I'm going to do it somewhere else, and go out and demonstrate that in the wild, your expertise, it can't be, it can't be denied, because you're doing it. And it's not about just that. And that that's important, I've had to do that. I've always felt that I knew where I come from, and to some of the, you know, to even, you know, no matter where I move, a lot of times the space is different, you know, span different time I walked into, and I'm going to talk different, I do a lot of things is different even among, you know, the black males that have been inside of the field or any professional field. But I value I come from a value that says it's enriching, and you know, age is the same thing. It's, it's being able to move into a space, we deal with knowledge, wisdom, understanding expertise, that's what we deal with. And if you have the knowledge, and once you die from that knowledge, and just execute on whatever it is that you want to execute on, if they won't let you do it at your job, go out and do it somewhere else. And I tell this to people who are trying to get into the industry, they always come out of school, and or you're in school, and you're walking around trying to get a job, find a mentor, and go out. And there's plenty of that plenty of places on this planet, right around you, that need could use our help and our skills. And I believe that there's nothing that we can't help, we can help grocery stores, right, we can help. We can help swimming pools, we can help the YMCA there's our services can be applied everywhere. And so go out there and start building, building up your repertoire in your portfolio. Don't let the job dictate your identity, that identity is certain. I think I was saying that earlier that I came to a point where I identified as a design researcher. But my job titles have been UX researchers, senior UX research experience researcher, I don't care what you call me, I don't care about you know, what kind of what the problem is, I've got a body of knowledge. And I've been in places where they say, you can't use those kinds of analysis, because that's not what we do. That's not us. I'm not here to do. So I'm here to solve problems, right in your limitations won't be my limitations. And so what you do is you go out and provide a solution to demonstrate it. And then people all of a sudden, when they see how powerful that that work is, they have to step back, they can't deny what you do. And if so then you just keep it moving, you build up your portfolio, and then you go to the next place that will allow you to do what you do. And it's always a partnership, everything you do, even if it's an employer, whatever you work for somebody, it should always be thought of as a partnership. And that's how they should be respected.
Leigh Arredondo 1:07:51
Thank you guys so much. It is for 35. And as much as I would love to just keep going we do have to bring it to a close. So again, I want to thank you all so so very much for joining us today. I hope that you found some valuable content. There. We'll be here for more questions. If you have you can connect with us k at UX kake.co also Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, we love to get questions from folks who are looking for answers and real quickly can you guys say like how people can connect with you online?
Hanah Nagel 1:08:39
We turn this off on iPhone. Like my Twitter handle is Miss underscore Hani H A N IE or my email address which is nagl.hannah@gmail.com.
Real Canty 1:08:51
LinkedIn reality candy, Twitter is Doc ducks D wax.
Ashby Hayes 1:08:58
I am Ashley Pfizer on pretty much all media so Twitter if I speak or Yes, yeah. Yes, Instagram Ashby Pfizer, Twitter asked me Pfizer. Yeah. Like LinkedIn, LinkedIn, CSV, Pfizer. Just follow all of those and I actually heiser@gmail.com
1:09:21
All right, can we all please give our panel a round of applause