The UXR field is shifting, changing, and evolving before our eyes 👀 The best thing to do is keep up to date with the discourse - what are people saying, what are people experiencing, in what ways are we seeing shifts, in what ways are we not seeing shifts? Knowledge is power 💪🧠
Over the past couple of months, I've been sharing lots of articles, posts, and videos with my research team surrounding the UXR field 💛 And now I'm going to share them all with you!
📽️ Business 101 for Researchers | Eniola Abioye | User Interviews
https://lnkd.in/eNGCXnUF
📽️ Making UX Research Matter to the Business | Nikki Anderson, MA & Dr. Ari Zelmanow & Emily DiLeo, PhD, MLIS | Stravito
https://lnkd.in/eWma5R29
📰 The Future of UXR: Redefining the Role of UXR Advocacy | Fatimah R. | Dscout
https://lnkd.in/eFHfcSYs
📽️ The Future of Strategic Research in an AI First World | Nikki Anderson & Ned Dwyer | Great Question
https://lnkd.in/eKGgtkah
📰 Align UX Research to Your Company's Goals for Impact & ROI | Heather Wright Karlson & Ben Wiedmaier | User Interviews
https://lnkd.in/e3xRTs4j
📰 Articulating the Strategic Value of User Research | Nikki Anderson | uxcon vienna
https://lnkd.in/exAr6B7V
📽️ Connecting Research to Revenue | Claudia Natasia | Awkward Silences podcast by User Interviews
https://lnkd.in/eV6S5qa4
📽️ The New Business of UX Research | Brett Krajewski & Trevor Calabro | Accelerant Research
https://lnkd.in/eeaFg63w
📰 "If your research isn’t influencing decisions, it’s just collecting dust." | Nikki Anderson | LinkedIn post
https://lnkd.in/eVrncUDM
📰 The Fastest Gun in UX: Why Your Team is Telling the Wrong Story | Pavel Samsonov | UX Collective
https://lnkd.in/e9QRwXzi
📰 Why a UX Metrics Menu Helps Align Business and Research for Impact (and How to Create Your Own) | Heather Wright Karlson & Ben Wiedmaier | User Interviews
https://lnkd.in/erDU4ipY
Do you have any other videos, articles, and/or LinkedIn posts you think should be on this list? Or any other thoughts? Share below 👇
Reflection: A UX Journey Across Industries
Sometimes, it can be so weird working in UX because from job to job, you may work in completely different industries. I actually find it fun because, as a lifelong learner, I love diving into a new space and uncovering new information about it. But even still, part of it is weird because something will be reported in the news or come up in conversation, and I'll inevitably wonder about the users from a past industry that I no longer serve. Since 2019 alone, I've worked in aerospace, e-commerce, logistics, and cybersecurity.
The minute I saw the news about CrowdStrike last month, all I could think about was the primary user group from my previous job: cybersecurity professionals. I spent over a year and a half thinking about and advocating for these users. Already knowing the cognitive load of their jobs, I immediately thought about what kind of mornings the over 60 cybersecurity professionals I had interviewed might be having. 😓
Or take the launch of the last TDRS (Tracking and Data Relay Satellite) in 2017. It reminded me of my time working on the TDRSS (TDRS System) team back in 2007. In that role, I was part of a three-person team tackling the TDRSS physical library digitization project (and doing IA before I knew what IA was). We were going through literal physical files housed in a secured room, shredding the unneeded ones and scanning the important stuff so that everyone on TDRSS moving forward could have easier access to them. I like to think that someone on the TDRSS team in 2017 might have referred back to something I scanned into the system in 2007. (Fun fact: we found a 1970s candy wrapper in one of the manila folders -- luckily no moldy chocolate or bugs were involved 😅🍫.)
Reflecting on my time working in various industries reminds me how each role has shaped my perspective, even long after moving on. 🤔💭 Have you ever had a moment where current events suddenly transported you back to a past role? What industries or user groups still occupy a corner of your mind, even though you no longer work directly with them?
Building a UX Research Portfolio
Lately, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about UX Research portfolios. Why do UX Researchers need one? Which projects should be included? How do you organize the information? Where do you even start? Well, I’m here to answer these questions so let’s dive into it!
Why do you need a UX Research portfolio?
Portfolios haven’t always been needed to apply for UX Research roles. Technically, they still aren’t “required” for most UX Research roles now. Some people even feel like UX Researchers don’t need a portfolio. What I’ll say to that is it’s ultimately each individual’s choice whether they want to create a portfolio or not. And, yes, maybe it is unfair that we need portfolios in the UX field when so many other fields don’t need one. But, in this job market, my stance is to do everything you can to position yourself to stand out as a candidate. When you view recruiters and hiring managers as your users, there are a few things you can do to make their lives easier:
Craft an elevator pitch to summarize your background
Create a resume that displays your experience
Build a portfolio that demonstrates how you think and problem-solve, which is what we’re here to chat about today!
As a UX Research hiring manager, having access to both a candidate’s resume and their portfolio gives me a much clearer picture of who a candidate is and how they think, before we even meet in an interview.
Which projects should be in a UX Research portfolio?
When deciding what projects to include in a UX Research portfolio, I would start off by creating a list of the projects you’ve worked on. If you haven’t ever created a portfolio before, this could be anything you’ve worked on in the last ~3ish years. This will give you a high-level overview of the types of projects you’ve done. You can even start bucketing (or affinity mapping 😅) your projects into categories such as:
Qualitative vs. quantitative
Foundational research vs. generative research vs. evaluative research
Information architecture
By methodologies used: user interviews, surveys, cognitive walkthrough, contextual inquiry, stakeholder mapping, service blueprints, card sorts, tree tests, etc.
Rapid research
And more!
Once you have a categorized list, you can start narrowing down what projects you’d like to highlight in a portfolio. I usually recommend 3-5 portfolio pieces. If you have more than 5, I would try to narrow it down because a hiring manager will spend maybe 10m on your portfolio the first time they look at it so make it easy for them to navigate and get the information they need.
When choosing your final portfolio pieces, I recommend showing diverse projects and methodologies to show the breadth of your capabilities. For example, if you take a look at my portfolio, you’ll see the following (as of May 2024):
Research-backed user personas for a cybersecurity company
Information architecture for a security admin console
Service design and process improvement for a small NASA contractor
Rapid research (2 mini case studies in one) showcasing quick research efforts that took between 2-4 weeks total
Management & mentorship - selected examples highlighting my experience in these areas, as well as speaking engagements
How should the information be organized in a UX Research portfolio case study?
There are many different ways of organizing your UX Research portfolio. To get some ideas, I highly recommend checking out Aona Yang’s YouTube video How to Create a UX Research Portfolio. Also, check out the portfolios of some UX Researchers you know/follow (if they have publicly available ones). This will help you finalize a plan for how you want to organize your portfolio case studies!
Taking into account research storytelling and the impact of research, here’s how I organize my portfolio case studies:
Project Summary: This can include your role, the high-level objectives, cross-functional partners, timeline, etc.
Background: Short but needed context to understand the project
Key Insights: 2-4 key insights and recommendations that came out of the research
Research Impact: How this research impacts the Business, the Strategy (product strategy, project strategy, etc.), and the Users
Methodologies: What methodologies were used during this research study
Reflections & Learnings: What did you learn from this project (highlight soft skills, conflicts, etc. here)
And there you go! You’re on your way to building your UX Research portfolio 🙌🎉
Crafting your Perfect Elevator Pitch: A Step-by-Step Guide
Intro
You're in a job interview and your interviewer says, "So, tell me about yourself." How do you normally answer❓ During my job search in 2022 (when I was first pivoting into tech), my mentor helped me develop an elevator pitch. 🛗 Now, it's my turn to share that advice with you!
How to craft your elevator pitch
📝 Let's write your personal elevator pitch in 5-8ish sentences:
1. 🗣️ Intro: Start with a brief introduction of yourself and your role. If you are pivoting, this should be the role you are looking to pivot into. (1 sentence)
2. 🗣️ Education: Mention relevant educational background or qualifications. You can skip this if this doesn't apply to you. You can also switch this with experience if your education is less recent. (1 sentence)
3. 🗣️ Experience: This is where you would highlight your most recent relevant work experiences and achievements, including any role-relevant methodologies and skills. (1-3ish sentences)
4. 🗣️ Other Relevant Methodologies/Skills: Discuss other specific methodologies, skills, or areas of expertise relevant to your role that you haven't mentioned yet. (1-2 sentences)
5. 🗣️ Additional Skillsets: Optionally, transition into any additional skills or experiences that complement your current role. This is especially relevant if you pivoted but have transferrable skills. Always tie it back to the role you're applying to. (1 sentence)
Example of an elevator pitch
🌱 My elevator pitch from 2022:
I’m a UX Researcher with a foundation in Service Design. I have a master’s in UX from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), where I focused on mixed methods UX research. In my current position as a Service Designer & Researcher at a NASA contractor, I have overhauled all corporate processes and procedures by building a scalable infrastructure to support future company growth. Throughout this project, I have employed various UX research methodologies such as journey mapping, user interviews, contextual inquiries, focus groups, user surveys, and usability testing. Prior to pivoting into UX, I had over a decade of experience as a visual designer, which has served me well in my UX career as I can take projects from planning and problem-scoping through generative research to ideation, sketching, and wireframing.
Further thoughts
💡 Use your resume to help you write steps 3 and 4.
💡 The longer your career, the more you *could* add to steps 3 and 4 but try to keep your elevator pitch to ~1-1.5 minutes. There will be plenty of time to get into the nitty gritty throughout a job interview. Your pitch should be a good high-level intro of who you are and your skills.
💡 Practice saying your elevator pitch out loud to make sure it sounds and feels natural!
💡 Use this elevator pitch for the "No-Ask" policy (if you're unfamiliar, learn more: https://lnkd.in/ewrcGTqP).
Outro
As you write your elevator pitch, remember: your story is your superpower. 🦸 I hope this guide helps you as you network and job search!
Taking Control: Strategies for Standing Out in a Difficult UX Job Market
I've seen a lot of posts on LinkedIn lately discussing hiring in UX, especially highlighting how tough the UX job market is right now. There's absolutely no doubt that we're in a difficult job market -- I myself was just recently job hunting and know how few fully remote UX Research roles there were.
We can’t control the nature of the market right now. But what we can do is focus on the aspects of your job search that *are* within your control to help position yourself for success (and get that initial interview!).
🗂️ Portfolio:
I know portfolios are newer for UX researchers but, in a market this rough, do anything and everything in your control to present your skills as a candidate. A portfolio provides another way to showcase your abilities so take advantage of that! Remember, a resume talks about your history, but a portfolio shows how you think -- this is what hiring managers are looking for, regardless of the type of UX role you’re looking for.
📄 Resume:
I always recommend following the "what I did, how I did it, why I did it (impact or projected impact)" formula for writing your resume bullet points. I did a whole post on it here. You can also check out my LinkedIn because the bullet points on my profile are written in the same format.
🤝 Users:
As a UX professional, approach building your resume and portfolio as UX projects. Who are your users? Recruiters, hiring managers, maybe even the ATS! What are their needs? Think about what a recruiter is looking for compared to a hiring manager. And then build your resume and portfolio case studies to be usable and skimmable for both of them. On an initial pass, no one can sit down and read every single sentence of either a resume or a portfolio, even in a "normal" job market. Right now, especially, every role has 100s of applicants! The easier your resume and portfolio are to skim, the better! If you want feedback, use adplist.org to sign up for free mentorship and have multiple mentors review your resume and portfolio.
I personally iterated on my resume and portfolio multiple times throughout my recent job search! Though this job market is a difficult one, I'm hoping that these tips can help you prepare as you search for your next role! 🙌
FigJam Template: Information Architecture (IA) Structural Argument
Visit my Figma Community page to use this template!
Have you ever completed a big, juicy UX project only to realize you aren’t sure how to “sell” it to relevant stakeholders? I think this happens to all of us UX-ers at one point or another. We get so immersed in the research and design that, once we climb out of that hole, we think, “Who wouldn’t be into this?!” But that’s why storytelling is such a hot topic right now! We can’t just expect stakeholders to understand the long journey we went on that informed our research/design decisions. We need to be able to convey that journey in a way that makes sense to them and their needs!
Building Structural Arguments is Storytelling
Abby Covert recently published an amazing article, Structural Arguments for Information Architecture, where she discusses the importance of creating effective structural arguments when evaluating and comparing different options for information architecture (IA). 🧩📐 If you don’t know Abby yet, I’m so excited to introduce you to her. She is an information architect and the author of How to Make Sense of Any Mess and Stuck? Diagrams Help. She’s also the organizer of The Sensemakers Club.
Abby’s method of building a strong structural argument for a proposed structure is a valuable tool for the end(-ish) of any IA project because it helps you reflect on your choices in a structured and informative way. It also helps you tell the story of your proposed IA with more confidence!
Abby presents seven common components of effective structural arguments: intention, information, content, facets, classification, curation, and trade-offs. For each component, she also provides examples and relevant questions to consider to help you strengthen your argument. Her article really highlights the importance of thoughtful evaluation and documentation in making informed decisions about IA, as well as increasing stakeholder buy-in for your proposed structure.
Applying Abby’s Advice IRL
This article couldn’t have come at a better time for me, as I was in the middle of a meaty IA project of my own at work. As I finalized my proposed IA structure, I knew I wanted to apply Abby’s advice to my own workflow, even if only to strengthen my own understanding of the value of the IA I was proposing. My first step was to build a template on FigJam, since that’s where I do a lot of my research-related brainstorming and braindumping. 🧠 As I was building out the template, inspired & informed completely by Abby’s article, I realized that the Structural Argument template could be a really fruitful group activity to go through with the product manager, UX designer, & UX manager on the IA project.
Visit my Figma Community page to use this template!
During our team’s weekly sync about the IA project, I proposed that we go through the Structural Argument activity together. Not only was it extremely illuminating, but it also improved stakeholder alignment, facilitated meaningful discussions, clarified different perspectives, and ultimately led to a shared vision for the IA structure. WHEW! Here is the impact of going through the Structural Argument activity as a team in more detail:
📄 It got all of us on the same page — Throughout our IA project, we all kept learning and gathering more and more information in different ways. I was, of course, conducting card sorts and tree tests. But everyone else was also gathering relevant information, too. For example, our product manager was meeting with cross-functional teams, reprioritizing based on business needs, and uncovering internal insights about the product all the time. Doing this activity together allowed us all to share what we had learned and really see the whole picture.
✍️ We had the opportunity to document all relevant information — I start every research project with a problem-scoping exercise that I conduct as a group activity with relevant stakeholders. It helps us better understand the problem, which helps inform our research based on our goals for the project. Doing this Structural Argument activity toward the end-ish of our IA project was a great bookend to starting the project with a problem scope; it allowed us to document everything and make sure that our argument for the proposed structure supported the initial intent of the project.
🫣 It uncovered areas where we didn’t have all of the answers… yet — Abby laid out the seven common components of effective structural arguments, with questions to ask ourselves in order to reflect on how our proposed structure fit into that component area. Going through each component, we found some areas harder to answer than others — which is a good thing! It helped us realize that there is still some information we need to uncover and understand better to make sure that our proposed IA is appropriate for the intent of the project.
Publishing the Template on Figma
After chatting with Abby about how awesome this activity was, we wanted to make this template available for anyone to use for their own information architecture projects! So I published it on my FigJam community page. I would love to know if any of you end up using this template in your next project! Drop a comment with your thoughts! 💭
Links:
Structural Arguments for Information Architecture by Abby Covert
Information Architecture (IA) Structural Argument Template on FigJam by Sahar Naderi
Research Maturity, Maturity Frameworks, and Service Design - Oh My!
Reading: An In-Depth Look at Organizational Research Maturity by Jane Davis
Before diving into the rest of this post, I highly recommend checking out Jane Davis' insightful article on organizational research maturity. 📃 In a recent post on LinkedIn, she wrote:
“Team maturity doesn’t matter if you don’t have organizational maturity, because you can’t run a truly mature research practice unless you have impact at the organizational level.”
As a Principal Researcher at Great Question, Jane has been exploring the significance of research maturity in driving effective practices within companies. She identifies and delves into 12 essential components, such as sphere of influence, consolidation of materials, and consistency of process and outcomes, offering guidance on both assessing whether you have maturity in that area as well as how to achieve maturity in any areas where you haven’t reached maturity yet. It's a valuable resource for understanding and enhancing your organization's research capabilities!
What Can We Learn from CMMI and Maturity?
The concept of research maturity, as discussed by Jane, resonated with my experience as a Service Designer for a small NASA contractor. We were focused on obtaining a CMMI certification, which stands for Capability Maturity Model Integration. Originally developed over a 10-year period at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), CMMI was first used to evaluate the quality and capability of software contractors for the Department of Defense (DOD). Now, it’s used by diverse organizations, including government agencies like NASA, to assess a company's level of maturity. 🚀 It is sometimes a requirement for contract proposals, especially for larger contracts with many moving pieces and a large employee count.
Obtaining and maintaining a CMMI certification is meant to demonstrate that an organization has reached a certain level of maturity to effectively handle the influx of new employees and workload that accompanies winning specific contracts. Similar to Jane's findings on research maturity, CMMI deeply relies on infrastructure (and the provable impact of that infrastructure) to determine an organization's capabilities within ~25 different "practice areas". Some of CMMI's practice areas include Risk & Opportunity Management (how does the organization monitor and quantify risks and opportunities), Decision Analysis & Resolution (how does the organization make decisions related to financial commitments such as purchasing new tooling), and Process Asset Development (how are different assets such as forms, spreadsheets, procedures, etc. created, maintained, and updated). This mirrors Jane’s 12 research maturity components by providing a framework to assess, understand, and improve an organization’s maturity.
The Journey to Maturity
Jane's exploration of research maturity also tells us that the path to maturity is a continuous journey rather than a destination. We can gain valuable insights into this by reviewing other maturity frameworks like CMMI (even though CMMI isn't specifically related to research). For example, my experience with the CMMI service design project taught me that achieving maturity requires a holistic and continuous approach. Not only did the project take 15 months to complete (capped off with a grueling weeklong CMMI audit 🥵) but my entire role for those 15 months was dedicated to completely overhauling and improving our internal processes as an organization. Throughout the project, we employed both the required CMMI process area frameworks as well as service design principles to help guide us. Let’s look at the the six(-ish) principles of Service Design:
Human- or user-centered: Consider the experience of all people affected
Collaborative: Stakeholders should be actively engaged in the process
Iterative: Take an exploratory, iterative, and continuous approach
Sequential: Visualize and orchestrate service as a sequence of interrelated actions.
Real: Research and prototypes must occur in reality (not through assumptions!)
Holistic: Address the needs of all stakeholders through the service
Approaching research maturity as a service improvement can provide additional direction to the maturity process, too. We can put on our Service Design hats and embrace these principles to help steer us throughout our organizational research maturity journeys.
Let’s Get Mature!
So, to better navigate the path to research maturity, let's utilize all the tools (… or maps? 😆) at our disposal:
Measure and re-measure your organization's research maturity against Jane's 12 components of research maturity. Regularly assess where you stand and identify areas for improvement.
Reflect on additional maturity frameworks such as CMMI. These frameworks can provide further insights into the process of achieving maturity and help you understand different aspects of your organization's capabilities.
Adopt a mindset of continuous and holistic improvement. Embrace the Service Design principles and infuse them into your research practices. Be human- or user-centered, collaborative, iterative, sequential, real, and holistic in your approach.
By incorporating these strategies, we can propel our organizations forward and achieve impactful outcomes through our research. And we can build a future where research is at the heart of organizational success and drives strategy, informed decisions-making, and improved product (or service!) development. 🫀