First 30-Days Checklist for a UX Research Team of One
I’ve been the first in-house UX Researcher twice, once at Meetup back in 2007 and once at Foursquare in 2012. I often talk to UX Researchers in similar situations: people who are joining a growing company where no one has defined a scalable UX Research practice yet.
I am writing up the advice I usually give in case it’s helpful to others. If I were in that situation again, these are the things I would do right away (within the first 30 days) to define processes and make my life in a new job easier. It’s a lot of meeting people and advocating for the things I need to do my job well.
When I’ve overlooked introducing myself to a key stakeholder, or forgotten to explain something I needed, something often fell apart later. For example, in my first few weeks at Foursquare I started booking conference rooms for 8 hours at a time on research days without telling anyone ahead of time. You better believe I had an awkward conversation with the Office Manager who assumed I was using the space as a private office. I just didn’t realize how much competition there was for available conference rooms, and how much pressure I was putting on other meetings by holding up a single room for an entire day.
As another example, I ran through the entire company’s post-it supply in my first month. When I requested more, I talked to that same puzzled office manager who told me she had recently received a large order. I had to explain that I, personally, planned to run through more post-it notes than the entire rest of the company.
That brings me to our first lesson! These are in no particular order:
1. Meet your office’s Receptionist &/or Office Manager. If you’ll be doing in-office research, this will likely be the person greeting participants (and commiserating with you about no-shows). They may also manage supplies and room booking. There are any number of early logistics they may be able to help you with, from buying a secure cabinet to store incentives to making sure participants are offered drinks when they arrive.
2. Meet legal and collaborate on a participant NDA. Your company’s standard NDA probably isn’t ideal for UX Research sessions. You’ll want to draft an agreement with Legal that includes feedback release clauses and video/audio recording consent. Beyond that, the shorter and friendlier you can make it, the better. At one past company the standard NDA had a clause that freed the company from liability in the case of “SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH.” I had to negotiate with Legal to explain that the risk of those outcomes was vanishingly small during an in-person 1-hour conversation in a conference room, and that mentioning DEATH in all caps was spooking my participants.
3. Meet finance and collaborate on a participant recruiting and incentive process. Some platforms (Respondent.io, Userzoom, others) will handle both the recruiting and incentives. If you plan to do your own recruiting, you’ll need to buy your own incentives ahead of time. I’ve used everything over the years, from AmEx gift cards to envelopes of cash, to newer digital platforms. Whatever you land on, Finance will love you if you’re able to estimate your budget. It’s possible you won’t know your ongoing spend until you’ve gone through a few studies, and in those cases, I’ve done my own tracking so I could eventually extrapolate out and make a case for an informed budget. Check with them also on how much lead time they need for incentive purchases so you avoid emergency gift card purchases from a nearby corner store on research day (spoken from personal experience).
4. Meet with Support and Analytics. You don’t want to waste time uncovering what the organization already knows. The more you can immerse yourself in the data that already exists, the more useful your research will be. Does your organization already have a Market Research team? Meet them! What about Analytics? Quant data of all kinds will be invaluable. Hear what people are complaining about in support channels. While you’re learning, you may encounter data that’s stale, anecdotal, or missing altogether. That can form the early basis for your research roadmap!
5. Work with your manager on your UX Research intake process. As the first researcher, I was inundated with requests since both times the companies had years of unanswered questions without an outlet. It’s overwhelming. Just remember, the company functioned fine without those answers before you started so while it might all feel like an emergency, it’s really not. If you can start a list of potential projects and develop a prioritization plan, you can build a roadmap and start delivering value. Of course, be careful about the turnaround time you promise at the beginning. Until you know how easy it is to find the right participants and operate within a new environment, you’ll have a hard time estimating timelines accurately. Hopefully you’re operating in an understanding environment and your estimates get better with each project.
6. Meet with all relevant stakeholders. This includes (at a minimum) the Designers, PMs, and Executive Sponsors for the products you’ll be working on. Learn what they’re working on, what problems they’re stuck on, what they want from you. Above all, learn how they’ve worked with UX Research before (and if they haven’t, learn how they expect your role to work). I’ve often run into friction due to a simple disconnect between how I understood my role and how someone else understood my role. As one example, I once worked at a company where UX Researchers were expected to write their own SQL queries and as hard as I tried, I never did get very far with it. Getting curious about people’s expectations for UX Research is not just a good research practice, but will help you lay the foundation for empathetic working relationships. Make sure you understand not just the current research priorities for everyone you’re working with, but where future priorities will come from. Are there meetings you need to be in? Planning rituals you should participate in? If you’re not included immediately in everything you should be, it’s likely not personal. Just as you’re figuring out how to fit in, others are also figuring out how to best work with you. Two techniques have helped me navigate those early days: 1. I have heavily leaned on my manager (and close working team) in the early days to get me into the meetings or channels I need to be in to do my job well. They’re also incentivized to make this new function successful, so involve them when you need an advocate. 2. I also accept that some amount of relationship building takes time. Things will be rough and weird for a while in any new role. That’s part of it, though usually I’ve enjoyed the novelty and early wins enough that early miscommunications were easy to brush off.
7. Set up your software. Depending on what your company already uses, you may have everything you need! It’s worth asking around before buying licenses. If you can use software your coworkers are already using and comfortable with, it also may be easier to get them involved in research. Bringing research where the eyeballs already are can reduce friction for stakeholder participation. In addition to the basics (video conferencing, document editing, etc), you may need to buy research-specific software for video editing, collaborative whiteboarding, etc. I personally can’t live without a QDA platform (Dedoose or Dovetail are my favorites).
8. Set up your hardware. Depending on what type of research you’ll be doing, you may need a portable field kit for in-homes, or hardware that can live in a lab for in-office sessions. On the other hand, if most of your research will be remote, you may not need much at all. I am used to an IPEVO Document Camera + Snowball mic for in-office research, but preferences are personal. GoPros are quite flexible with their wide angle lens (and not too pricey). You may also need access to test devices and a loaner research laptop. Make sure you have whatever you’ll need to get participants in front of the experiences you’ll need to test.
9. Set up your UX Research repository. Do whatever will be easy for you to maintain and easy for your stakeholders to use. I know there are whole businesses set up around research repositories. I don’t think you need to do anything nearly that fancy. Figure out how the company works and just match that. If people live on wikis, start a wiki page. If people live on slack, start a slack channel. I once got a lot of mileage from a spreadsheet embedded on a wiki page. Just make sure you include enough information to help people find what they need when you’re on vacation or unavailable.
While so many UX Researchers are changing roles this year (voluntarily or not, as wave after waves of layoffs are announced), I can imagine many might find themselves leaving large, established practices to join smaller upstarts where these processes and infrastructure don’t already exist.
If that’s you, congrats on the new role and good luck! I hope this checklist helps you think through the first few weeks establishing a brand-new function.
Thanks to Kate Roberts for feedback on an earlier draft
