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How to manage UX researchers
A few things to keep in mind when hiring and managing people in the field of UX research and analytics
Many organizations are jumping the UX research bandwagon and happily hire people from the field to join their teams and rightfully so (most people will pay more for a product or service that gives them a better experience). The discipline has been maturing in the past few years and typical openings for UX researchers may carry the title “Product researcher” “Design researcher” and “User researcher”. While this interesting and growing niche gives non-engineering professionals the chance to join the technology world, we still have to remember that this world is still dominated by technologists who sometimes do not see eye-to-eye with the less engineering-oriented crowd and that can create management conflicts.
In this article, I'll list a few rules of thumb on how to set the expectation of UX and user research, and how to manage people who work in this unique field.
Understand that UX research is a marathon, not a sprint
In my years of working as a business insights analyst and UX researcher, I felt that many organizations want to hire this type of professionals to find quick insights that will move the needle of their bottom line within days. This happens since the world of technology works in “Sprints” — a period of 2–3 weeks where new features are released in hope that they would contribute to the bottom line.
Sadly, a case where researchers can move the needle so fast never happens. Data and research professionals show the best ROI over time (some even say ROI is inherently flawed), after understanding how to improve the overall user experience from many angles, recommending how to improve products and services, and then testing and measuring again over the course of a few sprints.
If your organization hires UX research people but then doesn’t apply any of their recommendations (or doesn’t want to do it) then all they can do is design experiments, surveys, and look at bottom-line numbers that aren’t likely to change, let alone in the short run. If you want to seriously invest in having people in this field on your side, it’s better to understand sooner rather than later that…
