Scaling UX Research: Democratization 2.0, with Roberta Dombrowski.
This episode is about scaling user research - doing more research and getting more from your research resources - through democratization, or enablement, in your organization. Could this improve outcomes and increase the maturity of UX at your company?
I was joined by Roberta Dombrowski, VP of User Research at User Interviews.We talked about democratization 2.0, or research enablement, why it’s sometimes a hot button issue, the positive impact it can have when it's done well. And the drawbacks of doing it poorly or without intention. And you'll also get some ideas for how it can be done well, and if it's something that might work for you, and your team or your organization.
Roberta has had a long and winding career journey (from eLearning designer, to product manager, to UXer), and now leads the User Research team at User Interviews, where she creates scalable systems and resources for democratization. Roberta has researched and designed experiences for communities of learners, educators, and enterprise clients at companies like Year Up, edX, Pluralsight, The Predictive Index, and more.
What does Democratization mean?
“...essentially it is non researchers doing research. When I say non researchers that user interviews we call them people who do research so Like I mentioned, product managers, designers, marketers, and essentially expanding the scope of research outside of just user researchers or market researchers or people with traditional research backgrounds, definitely a hot topic like we mentioned at the beginning.
I'm an advocate for democratization… I’ve started using the term enablement more than democratization. That's what it's about is enabling people - that is the core of research. Research is a tool to get answers to questions to learn. And why should that be limited to just researchers learning is available to everybody?
I started as a learning designer and moved into research, and I've done product design and product management. So I think all of that influences my bias towards enablement.”
Coming at it with more of a growth mindset rather than fixed mindset
It's coming up with the How can I help you?
How can I help make this practice better?
“I really tried to think about what do I want my team to do and feel when it comes to research – all the different stakeholders, all the different groups – and really put together essentially a learning strategy and enablement strategy.“
What can go wrong?
Bias can go wrong. People are introducing their own bias. They're only researching something to confirm a direction that they want to go in, I see that most prevalent with product managers that are researching, they already know the roadmap they want to do.
Rigor is another thing. When I say rigor, it's a lot of the craft things. So I will sometimes talk to product managers, designers, and they're like, We need to run a card sort. We needed to run a usability test. And then you start to poke. And you're like, why? What are you looking to learn? Start with the question first.
How it can be a very impactful practice for an organization, if it's done well.
More confidence with the team,
we're seeing more people talk to customers
I'm seeing people do recruitment on their own and do analysis
We're seeing different types of methods incorporated, doing mixed methods
The company is asking for more research from my team and we’ll be growing
Resources:
Article - Scaling Research / Democratization 2.0
https://www.userinterviews.com/blog/scaling-research-through-enablement-uxr-leaders-democratization
User Interviews intro promo - get 3 free participants
TRANSCRIPTION
Leigh Arredondo 0:04
UX cake is all about developing the layers you need to be more effective in your work and to be happy and fulfilled in your career. I'm your host Leigh Allen-Arredondo and I'm a UX leader and leadership coach.
Episode 51, scaling UX research, democratization, 2.0, with Roberta Dombrowski. Hey there. Thanks for joining me on UX Cake today. I just had a great conversation with Roberta Dombroski, who's VP of user research at user interviews, we were talking all about scaling user research, that means doing more, doing more research and doing more with user research, through democratization, or enablement, as Roberta likes to call it. I think partially because the term democratization and the concept of democratization really has some baggage. So listen on and you'll find out a lot more about that. You'll find out what democratization means. Why is sometimes a hot button issue, how it can be a very impactful practice for an organization, if it's done well. And definitely some drawbacks, especially if it's not done well. And you'll also get some ideas for how it can be done well, and if it's something that might work for you, and your team or your organization. My guest, Roberta Dombroski has had a long and winding career journey from elearning, designer to product manager to UX her and now leads the user research team at user interviews where she creates scalable systems and resources for democratization or enablement of user research. Roberta has researched and designed experiences for communities of learners, educators, and enterprise clients at companies like Europe, edX, plural site, the predictive index, and more. Before we begin this episode, I just want to quickly remind you that if you appreciate this podcast, which is completely free, there are a few ways that you could show your appreciation and they are free. You could add a rating and even better yet, maybe a review as well on Apple podcast. And you could follow UX cake on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Twitter. And I really love hearing from listeners, I love your ideas. I love hearing what resonates with you and what doesn't. I've incorporated great suggestions from listeners that I think have made this a better podcast, if you have suggestions. Or if you just want to say, Thanks, or you found an episode helpful. You can drop a DM in Instagram or Twitter or a comment on LinkedIn. And don't forget to subscribe to UX cake in your favorite podcast player. So you don't miss a bite. Okay, let's jump in. Hi, Roberta, thank you so much for joining me on UX cake today.
Roberta Dombrowski. 3:30
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
Leigh Arredondo 3:32
I'm really excited to talk to you about the article that you've wrote and your what you're doing at user interviews for scaling, UX research and democratization. To dot o democratization in UX, it's been a topic of controversy, I would say, a little bit of 30 years, I was just talking with a friend of mine who's been in user experience as long as I have. And we're like, yeah, 30 years ago, we were having these we were having arguments about democratization. My point today is actually not to have an argument debate.
But to have a conversation about it, and to help others who are listening in learn from what you're doing. And we might get to some of the controversy that surrounds it. And when we talk about what can go wrong.
Yeah, so I came about meeting you. So this all happened because I read an article that you wrote for user interview, the company where you are the VP of research first, before we jump into the conversation, if you could just tell us a little bit about the company user interviews, so we kind of have an understanding of where you're coming from.
Roberta Dombrowski. 4:55
user interviews is our research company software company. We have
two products that we offer. One is our recruit product. So if you're actually doing user research with any type of participants, you can tap into our panel, we have over a million people in our panel. So research can no longer be used as an excuse that you can't find people, there is over a million people you can talk to. We also have research hub, which handles like all the horrible painstaking things from research, informed consent scheduling, we handle all of that, to really make recruitment just easier for anyone who wants to do research, whether you're a designer, researcher, or whatever it might be. I currently work. I'm building the research team there. So I'm researching researchers all the time, and learning a lot about the practice. And just so much seeing a lot of meta trends in the industry and my role.
Leigh Arredondo 5:50
Yeah, I'll bet that sounds so fascinating. As much as I love research. I also love so much working with researchers. So it sounds like a perfect job. Let's talk a little bit about how you came to write this article, I guess, you know, you wrote in the article, you wrote that you came in as a research li leader. And instead of having to spend your time evangelizing the importance of research, which takes up a lot of a lot of time, often right, you are able to spend your time enabling research through systems, infrastructure and tooling. So that sounds super exciting. And can you unpack that for us a little bit? What does that mean?
Roberta Dombrowski. 6:36
Yeah, for sure. So when I decided to join the user interviews, Team research was already happening. We are a research company. And our company was really founded, the founders understood the value of research the impact that it could bring, because they had already failed that you want it to happen. So when they started their interviews, they were like, we need to do research to build a product that actually resonates with our market. And so research had already been going on by product managers, designers, marketers, everyone across the team. And I realized really quickly that the role would be so much different than other teams. So I joined in previous roles, I was a research leader for the first time and really had to like builds advocate from the ground up about why research is important, did not have to do that at all, luckily, and so it was really coming in and trying to like immediately, I was like, I don't want to stop research from happening. I want it to keep happening. But I want to make the way that it happens more efficient, more effective, really amplify the work that the team is already doing. I did a lot of discovery when I came on just to understand what was working well, what wasn't working well. What methods were the team was the team using what was their maturity around research to help guide the strategy. And within my first probably month and a half, I was like I need to build a research ops research practice. So what that means is really focusing on the infrastructure, the scale, the tools, the processes that enables research to happen. My team definitely still runs research. We do strategic projects. We're a centralized team, we are researching the future of the business, but a core pillar of our team. And the value that we're providing is research ops and creating infrastructure and research. I often call service research ops service design. That's what it is. You're doing service design for your team.
Leigh Arredondo 8:38
Oh, interesting. I'm not sure I've heard that approach before. Like, I mean, service design being used as a in that way.
Roberta Dombrowski. 8:47
Yeah, yeah. It's definitely a lot of service design. And your customers are your internal stakeholders. It's all the team members in there. So we do a lot of like Design Thinking practices for our research ops, like we do internal interviews, we do usability testing. We're looking at different channels and tools that we use and how we reach out to customers. It's it's very strategic. A lot of people think about research ops as being tactical, but it's a lot of strategic work as well.
Leigh Arredondo 9:19
I want to kind of pull out something that you said early or about how when you got there research was being done by marketers, product managers, designers, business, folks, and you didn't mention researchers.
Roberta Dombrowski. 9:36
Yeah, was the first researcher. Yeah.
Leigh Arredondo 9:39
So I think this is probably a good segue into talking about what does democratization mean, actually,
Roberta Dombrowski. 9:48
yeah. When you talk about research, democratization, and essentially it is non researchers doing research. When I say non researchers that user interviews we call them people who do research so Like I mentioned, product managers, designers, marketers, and essentially expanding the scope of research outside of just user researchers or market researchers or people with traditional research backgrounds, definitely a hot topic like we mentioned at the beginning. I'm a I'm an advocate for democratization. And I view it more as I've started using the term enablement more than democratization. That's what it's about is enabling people that is the core of research research is a tool to get answers to questions to learn. And why should that be limited to just researchers learning is available to everybody? My background is also I started as a learning designer and moved into research, and I've done product design and product management. So I think all of that influences my bias towards enablement.
Leigh Arredondo 10:52
Yeah. And I think in a little bit, we can get into, like how this could go wrong, and why, you know, people, why there are people who, you know, like cringe at the term, but I think you kind of hit the nail on the head when you said, the research is happening, right. And the purpose of the research is to make more user centered business decisions, and product decisions. And so so that is the purpose for like getting more people to do research, if there are no researchers there, and and that sort of goes to the whole, you know, the whole discussion about, you know, is this keeping researchers from getting jobs. But the thing is, this is happening. And so what I'm hearing you say is that you're coming in and saying, How can we make sure that it's better? Right? How can we make? Well, I don't want to put words in your mouth. But how I'm viewing it is what type of rigor could we add? What type of, you know, what do people need to know to avoid? being biased? Yeah, exam? Yeah, or interpreting data, kind of with a purpose in mind, you know, with an intent in mind, and instead of, you know, actually listening to what it's actually saying. So, tell me a little bit more about your view on that.
Roberta Dombrowski. 12:16
Yeah, it's definitely coming at it with more of a growth mindset rather than shift with enablement. It's coming up with the How can I help you? How can I help make this practice better? Rather than the No, I don't want to, I don't want to make this better. And so a lot of my work with my team, yes, we do strategic research project. And so because we do enablement, the researchers on my team do really rigorous studies, we're doing studies that need a lot of triangulation, multiple phase studies, different data sources, we're working with the data analytics, Team product marketing sales, to really tell a holistic picture, for more high risk decision making for a lot of the lower risk decisions, studies that are one method like a usability test, a preference test, we're training our designers, our product managers to leave those sort of conversations. And it doesn't mean they're going out. And they're doing everything under the sun. There's guardrails and their structures and they're at place. Often they might facilitate a study, but I helped advise them consulted on the interview guide, the goals and methods, I'm sitting in the session, I'm note taking for them, and then I give them feedback immediately after, or I might even interject sometimes in a call to get it back on track. And they're learning from that they were watching it, they watch my team do sessions too. And they have an appreciation for the skill and craft of what we're doing. So it's a lot of it's not just handing over the keys to the kingdom. But there's a lot of training and education and enablement that goes into it as well.
Leigh Arredondo 14:04
It sounds like a lot of time, oh, you for your team. And in the article, which if for anyone who's interested in learning more about this, I really suggest that any anyone listening goes and reads that article, which will be linked in our show notes page. And it's on the user interview blog site, you list out all the things that you and your team are doing as part of this enablement. Yeah. And it's quite a lot. So first, maybe you could sort of give a an overview of what you and your team are doing. And let's start there.
Roberta Dombrowski. 14:43
Yeah, when I joined user interviews I mentioned I kind of rated our maturity and where we were as a practice from there I really put together a strategy and my background is in learning design. I'm a trained instructional designer I that's what I did my masters per Cramond. And so I really tried to think about what do I want my team to know do and feel when it comes to research all the different stakeholders, all the different groups and really put together essentially a learning strategy and enablement strategy. And so we have a few things for conceptual understanding around research, I want people to understand the value of research what it is, I do Fireside Chats once a month, where I actually interview a customer ally, I call it my Oprah moment for the business because it's very much I'm asking customers about their experience, I even will turn it to our team at the end that they can ask the customer a question. And then I type up notes and share my key takeaways with the team. It's very fun to do. I also designed a four part workshop series around I called it research one on one broke out learning goals that really go through the different phases of research. Here's what research is, here's how you plan. Here's how you recruit. Here's how you do analysis and you tie everything together. So people could understand conceptually, what goes into research. We also have a centralized playbooks site. It's on a confluence page, where we have tools, templates, resources. So anybody who is conducting research, they can go there, use a template, see examples of studies as well. But then for people that are actually like doing research, like in the moment of need, they have questions, they need something figured out or results, I do consulting, I do office hours twice a month for my team. Great. And then we also have like a research hotline, which is on Slack. So anytime someone has a question, it's like they post in Slack channel, and someone from our team will get back to them immediately. So there's a number of different solutions that we have, depending upon what is needed from the team. It is a lot of time Absolutely. My role right now is spent 100% In enablement and coaching. And that is of my researchers on my team, as well as people who do research. And then my team also does coaching as well. So one of my user, researchers, coaches, product managers and designers as part of her role a percentage of her time.
Leigh Arredondo 17:15
So I am thinking about where I have seen this done in other organizations. And often it is because well, I mean, I guess it's similar in that other people want to do research, there's product managers, maybe or designers who are actually doing user interviews, and I've witnessed some of those that are highly biased, you know, because they haven't had any kind of training and they haven't, they don't have any feedback loops, for doing it better. So there's, there's that argument for look, this is happening, let's try to make it better. But then there's a lot of time being spent doing that almost probably at least a full head worth of time, you know, a full full time person. And so kind of maybe we could talk about the trade off there for how is this better than hiring more researchers.
Roberta Dombrowski. 18:14
One thing that I always tell teams when I talk to them about whether to make the decision to democratize or enable. It's always context specific. It's always dependent on the culture of the company, the maturity, do you have headcount climbing, there's so much to consider. It is definitely a lot of time and I go back and forth. Even when I was writing the article, you can you can see where I'm, I'm like, I had an identity crisis. At the beginning. I was like, if I'm training people, what do I do? What am I working on? But I still do research in some way. I think the biggest thing that I hear from people about why they don't want to do it is we're doing this because companies are trying to dance around trying to hire more researchers. They don't want to put up the budget. And so let's stretch people as long as possible. There's a lot of there's no rigor, there's no guardrails, I understand that. But it's also part of why we do it too is we're just growing the impact. We're making better decisions. We're learning at the speed of the business and what they need right now. I don't have the time to research everything inside of our business. I'm one person and there's 120 other people in my business, I can only get as much information as possible that I can studies that I can do when I'm training someone else. That's now we have 12 people, product managers, designers, everything moment that I spend with them is moment that they're learning it and they can now apply it and so my impact is now amplified for them. Is it perfect 100% of the time No. Is every study that I've done 100% of the time perfect? Absolutely not. So it's really trying to weigh the positives, the pros, the cons as you're standing up for your own practice. So, right now we're doing this model I am headcount for another researcher later this year, will probably continue to grow researchers. So we may see the coaching start to go down as we get more head. It's it's very much a system that is a amorphous and will change over time.
Leigh Arredondo 20:33
Yeah, I mean, there are teams can hire an outside research coach to come in as well. I mean, that's something that I have done nationally with teams that I that I offer, but which is not the point of this podcast. But it is something that I do. Let's talk a little bit more about that. What can go wrong?
Roberta Dombrowski. 20:59
Yeah, I mean, the first thing is like bias can go wrong. People are introducing their own bias. They're only researching something to confirm a direction that they want to go in, I see that most prevalent with product managers that are researching, they already know the roadmap they want to do. Let's talk to people, the moment they say it, confirmation bias up, we're gonna go do it. Rigor is another thing. When I say rigor, it's a lot of the craft things. So I will sometimes talk to product managers, designers, and they're like, We need to run a card sorter. We needed to run a usability test, we needed to do this. And then you start to poke them. And you're like, why? What are you looking to learn? Start with the question first, pick them. And that's all things that trained researchers we, we have picked up along the way we know. And it's like a bias that people will start to interject into the work that they're doing without knowing one another thing we've been doing around craft lately, when I started, the team was very much doing like generative work. So a lot of one on one interviews, starting to roll out things like usability testing, very different ways of facilitating session, Oh, tell me more. Generative is very open ended, right? It's dancing in the conversation with someone something comes up, you explore it a little you explore something else, there's might be a script if it's semi scripted. But you're typically in the moment, it's free flowing. Usability testing is the exact opposite. It is task based, there is a flow, you're usually going to have pass fail, you might have metrics sprinkled in. And so it's like two months ago, I'm sitting on a call product managers facilitating a usability test. And she started to go generative and questions and I was like, Oh, no. And so we did a debrief after like, I was taking notes, did a debrief, and then gave her the feedback, I was like, stick to the script, do not go off, until you use this muscle a little bit more than you can stretch it. And so I'll often tell my team that is, stick with the basic when you get more experienced is when you can start to experiment, just like an artist, you need to know the tool, you need to have the brush, you need to practice the technique a little bit more. Before you can do what you're seeing the researchers do with novices, a lot of the time I see people will try to replicate or copy the actions that a researcher does without knowing the reason why. And that's where the danger is, I think with enablement is, I did that as a practitioner for a very specific reason, in this one instance. And if that's not explained to someone, and they try to replicate it, it can get can get dangerous.
Leigh Arredondo 23:59
So for example, when someone is doing a usability study, and you're you're trying to get very specific answers to very specific questions, the danger of going into generative questions like, well, you know, how do you feel about that? Or what do you what are some other ways that you do that? So tell me a little bit more about, you know, like going into the generative and yeah, you
Roberta Dombrowski. 24:27
can definitely I'm not saying never do generative, you can definitely still do those. If I'm doing like a moderated usability test. I'll often start off with generative questions to get people comfortable. Like Tell me about your day. What's the biggest challenge of your work day to learn a little bit more about their day to day to get the meta view when we get into the actual flow? QA commonly people might ask, I think this I think I might click this and might do this. What do you think? That's when you're like flip it back as a facilitator? What do you think? Tell me, go ahead and click if that's what you want to click. Go ahead.
Leigh Arredondo 25:04
Is that what you would be inclined to do?
Roberta Dombrowski. 25:07
Yeah, definitely, you're gonna do and then usually like a pass fail rating, right, get that task done. And you can ask follow up questions after the quality of questions after to get more context. Yeah, problem was
Leigh Arredondo 25:23
in the pacing and where the question when the where the the generative questions were inserted was like during a task, which then takes the person off task. Oh, yeah. Got ya. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So back to the idea that this takes a lot of your time and your researchers time, it also takes a lot of time for the people who are now learning. Right. And that they may be would be for have just, you know, us, you know, gotten set up a an interview and done it. Yep. Well, first of all, is this voluntary? Or is it a requirement that they go into this training?
Roberta Dombrowski. 26:04
Yeah, it's a good question. When I designed the training, it was definitely voluntary, I rolled it out with our product team UX team depart. And then I invited I did a version for a whole company. So we had people and operation sales calm as well, was not requiring for it for new people that join the product and research team. And it's part of their onboarding. So they'll watch the recordings of it. And it is a part of their role. It is the expectation when you join our product team, that as a product manager, you are talking to customers on a continuous basis. As a product designer, you are going to do usability testing as part of your practice. You're not all on your own in it at all. But it's a core competency that we
Leigh Arredondo 26:51
look for. And so what was the reaction when you started this program? What was the reaction of folks who maybe had already been doing interviews? And this was this was new to them?
Roberta Dombrowski. 27:05
Yeah. So it was a the experience on our team is definitely different. I had someone on the team who the CPM who was a designer for over I want to say 12 years. At first, he was like, Yeah, I know this. Towards the end, the more advanced sessions came the more specific questions. And I knew that was going to be the case, too, if somebody has a baseline knowledge of research, I was just going over the basics. But I went over the basics, because I wanted us to have a shared understanding. Yeah, you like a practitioner might be way more experience. And that's okay. But I need to know that we're all aligned and using the same terms because I sat down, and we went through it together. And so it was very positive. The other team members from sales, customer success, they loved it, too, because they're supporting researchers every single day. And so it strengthened their knowledge about our customers, and how to best support our customers and what their lives are like. So it was pretty positive reception from the team. I also like my learning design background is like satisfaction around learning is not a key indicator of learning. So like, they could have loved it, they could have hated it. But as long as it's impacting their work, that's what I care about.
Leigh Arredondo 28:24
And in what is the impacts that you've been seeing?
Roberta Dombrowski. 28:27
Yeah, definitely more confidence with the team, we're seeing more people talk to customers, I actually coached two members of our revenue team to run a study. And it was, it was on the key customers that they're working with and understanding more about their lives, so that they knew how to best talk to them and support them, which is very cool to see. And I coach them through the whole thing. I'm seeing people do recruitment on their own do analysis. We're seeing different types of methods incorporated to so yeah, it's been really positive. We're definitely maturing as a team, which has been very cool to see.
Leigh Arredondo 29:07
And when you say maturing as a team, you mean the whole company or the research team?
Roberta Dombrowski. 29:13
I'd say it's a whole company, but definitely, as a product UX research team. We're definitely maturing. We're doing mixed methods studies. Now, where I joined the team a year ago, it was usually one method. It was like, we're using data and analytics, or we're talking to a customer, not we're doing a survey, we're talking to a customer. Is it an inept survey or an email survey? Like those aren't even things the team thought about before? So we're triangulating data, and we're getting more rigorous in our practice, which is really cool to see.
Leigh Arredondo 29:47
Yeah. And that is something else that you mentioned early on, which is that the trained researchers there that you've been hiring, do some of the more advanced types of research or maybe more advanced studies, maybe their larger studies, but maybe you could tell us a little bit more about that. And kind of what's the difference between, you know, what you would expect to come from the trained researcher versus say a trained designer?
Roberta Dombrowski. 30:20
Yeah, for a trained researcher, it's definitely more mental model studies, Persona studies, jobs to be done strategic. We did some buyer persona work earlier this quarter, we did competitive analysis, too. So we do not only product UX research, but we do market research to the studies might be higher sample size, we talk about validity, different methods. So it's usually it could be multiple phase study, right now, my, my, one of my researchers is wrapping up a study the first phase of the study, and then she already knows that the other methods she's going to be looking into, and like crafting a survey to just measure the scale, like great, we did five interviews, six interviews, but now we're going to do a survey and try to quantify it a little bit more. So it's definitely broader, the way that we work is definitely slower. It's usually like a big meaty strategic project multiple phases, we do like three projects within a quarter of those strategic projects. Whereas the product team product designer, when they work, they're working on Sprint cycles for the product team. It is we're doing a usability study in like a week, maybe it might be a little bit longer. And so we're also getting involved in that as it's going on, we're coaching and jumping in. But the cycles are usually quicker, not as large sample sizes, not as rigorous of analysis to it's usually like affinity mapping, or looking at the data like using zero, whereas with the research team will often like have our spreadsheets and try to quantify things that we do, like VLOOKUP, formulas, stuff like that. So my research or the competencies that we look at from my team is that you can do either type, you can do the super rigorous research, or you can do the iterative, jump in with product too. And it's always gonna depend on the questions and the problems as to which approach you're taking.
Leigh Arredondo 32:24
And just in summary, the business value as a whole, because this has been a big switch for your Yeah, for your company and an investment of time. Right. So yeah, what has the result of that been from the people who are making the investment from their perspective, huge impact,
Roberta Dombrowski. 32:43
huge impact with the team, it is able to focus on more strategic work, like the buyer journey persona work that we've been doing, that is the future of the business that we're looking at. And nobody could investigate that before. Because my team didn't exist, this framework didn't exist. We're updating packaging, pricing, how our go to market strategy, there's a lot that's coming out of that a lot of confidence from the team, from the product managers, designers, they have a better idea of voice of the customer, and what matters to our customer a lotta empathy for my team, we definitely have more demand for research that's going to so requests from our team requests for consulting time. And so with that I am getting additional headcount.
Leigh Arredondo 33:32
Yeah, that's excellent. Yeah. And I'll point out that, that in and of itself, getting requests for more research shows that acknowledge it's it is a signal that others in the company are seeing it as valuable, because it does take their time too, right, you know, like, often what you see when you're able to offer some research and you know, this is kind of the first step towards like, pushing the maturity of UX at a company, which is like getting others to pull, so you're not pushing. Yeah. Right. And when it is seen as valuable, they do start making time for it. You know, also, when you can start turning things, sometimes you can turn things around more quickly. And it really helps to start with that to you know, start with quick wins. And yeah, and then, you know, you kind of the value is really clear, then you find that stakeholders are realizing, Oh, well, if I asked for this further in advance, you know, then we'll we'll have more time for some longer studies. But yeah, that has been my experience in many, many companies.
Roberta Dombrowski. 34:49
Yeah, that was my experience in former companies too, the maturity was definitely a little different where we had like no buy in for the strategic research. And it was like an A/B testing House of Cards. That's all they did all day long. And so I started with usability testing the start because I needed like the quick wins to get buy in didn't start there with your interviews because the practice was completely different. But the demand is such a signal. If people are asking you for things, that's a good thing. If you can't fulfill those things, that's also a good thing. Use that for buy in for more headcount for your team too, if I had x number of people, we could have this much of an impact team.
Leigh Arredondo 35:34
That's excellent. we're winding down here. So I want to make sure that folks who are interested in learning more, I think you had a couple resources that you had mentioned. Yeah.
Roberta Dombrowski. 35:45
One of them is we'll have the blog post that I that I mentioned, you can dive in deeper, there's some questions that you can think about, as you're looking into your practice. Maze made a really great research democratization playbook to a few months ago. So there'll be a link to that. But one of my favorite references guides is Theresa Torres continuous discovery habits really great if you're a designer, if you're a product manager, you want to do research. And it talks about the difference in rigor of research as well and making research a habit. And you don't have to be just a researcher to do that. We also have user interviews as our state of user research report that we publish each year if you're looking to learn about trends in the industry, what research looks at different types of companies, and research enablement in the space and what it looks like now. So there'll be a few links in there for folks.
Leigh Arredondo 36:39
Oh, awesome. And what's the link to the user interview blog?
Roberta Dombrowski. 36:43
Yeah, it's user interviews.com/blog. And yeah, we have a trial you can try out can also sign up for your first study and get three free credits. Talk to some participants for free if you want to do some research.
Leigh Arredondo 36:59
Oh, that's excellent. How do people do that?
Roberta Dombrowski. 37:01
Yeah, it's user interviews.com, I believe slash three free. I might be wrong. Yeah, we'll get it out there. If it doesn't address we'll make it exists.
Leigh Arredondo 37:15
Yeah, here we go. It's user interviews.com/lps/three-free-participants. Not quite as easy as getting to the blog. Yeah. But I will say that I have used user interview as a platform and one of the startups that I worked at and found it to be really, really helpful. I can vouch for it. All right, Roberta. It has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for joining me. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Hey, if you enjoyed this slice of UX cake, please rate it and subscribe. tell others what you liked about it. It really helps us spread the word and get this free content to more people. You can follow UX cake on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, and get all the episodes and show notes at UX cake.co. Thank you for listening and sharing the UX