New UX Researcher on the block: What to expect in the first 90 days on the job

About the authors: Rayoung (Rae) and Preeti are early career UX researchers who made the transition to UXR after graduating from PhD programs. In this article, they draw on their experience in discussing how they navigated the first three months on the job.

You have finally landed your first UX research role (Congratulations)! But what to expect when you start working? As you ramp-up, there is a lot to do and learn! Through the chaos of all the incoming information, meeting your colleagues, onboarding tasks, building relationships, you could be overwhelmed. In this article, we describe how we navigated the first 90 days on our new jobs as early career UX researchers and some practices that worked for us to cope with the job.

1. Secondary research

When working for a company, you are likely assigned to a specific product area/space. In the first month, start by gathering as much knowledge about the product space as you can. I (Preeti) spent the first 2 weeks on the job learning about the product through desk research.

• Information repositories: Searching through your company’s repositories as well as any external sources to find information about the product space can be useful.
• Past research: Was there any previous research done in this space? These could be Research, Design, Product, Marketing + led research efforts that can provide more context on what’s been done and can help identify opportunity areas for future research. Your company might maintain a Sharepoint site or an Airtable repository to document all on-going research efforts. This can serve as a great source of information as you ramp up
• Product roadmap: Is there a product roadmap that highlights the quarterly/bi-annual/annual priorities for the product space?
• Stakeholder interviews/chats: Ask your manager who your key stakeholders are. Make an effort to meet them and get to know them beyond work. You can also have them provide you an ‘elevator pitch’ about the product space alongside understanding what their role is (More about stakeholder management in the next section).
• Heuristic evaluation/experience the product: If the product is already in the market, experience the product yourself as a user. This is also a great empathy building exercise.

2. Stakeholder management

This is what I (Rae) spent most of my time on in the first month — figuring out my product space and who’s involved. The experience may be different depending on the size of your organization and the scope of your work. But you are likely to have a very similar experience if you are a researcher at a large company.

As someone who is new to industry, I needed to find out first who my stakeholders are and what they do — this is not simply about what their job title is but about what it really entails. Here are some stakeholders you will likely be working with closely:

• UX Designers
• Content designers/Content strategists/UX Writers
• Product owners

You will mostly likely need help from these folks:

• Research Ops — Those who help us get our participants and tools!
• Analytics partners (Data Scientists and/or analysts)

Besides these individuals, you will also interact with the following stakeholders depending on your domain, project, and company size:

• Program managers
• Engineering partners
• Legal partners
• Leadership for all aforementioned functions

Setting up 1:1s with key stakeholders is one of the greatest ways to gain a good understanding of the product space. Ask them to describe “a day in the life of XXX (their title).” This way, you know what they actually do day-to-day, what problems they try to solve, and who they work with. If you’d like to learn more about their future goals and research needs for collaboration, consider asking these questions:

Priorities:

• What is your top priority right now?
• Among your priorities, where do you think we need research the most?
• How do you think UX research could contribute to the team?

Knowledge & Gaps

• What do you feel we already know about?
• What do you think are the biggest gaps in our knowledge around the product space?
• In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges we need to solve in our product space?

Tips:

• What are any words of wisdom you can share about the other team members & stakeholders that I’ll be working with?
• What is something you wish you knew when you were starting that you know now?
• Who else do you recommend I speak with?

3. Coffee chats

Virtual work has taken over the world, making it more difficult to form organic connections at work. This means, no more “break room or water cooler chats.” While it is important to get to know your stakeholders, it is also important to expand connections outside of your immediate work group to avoid getting siloed. As an early career researcher, I (Preeti) set up one coffee chat a week with someone that I do not work with on a daily basis. These ~30 min. weekly chats have helped me in different ways:

• Getting to know people outside of my work unit
• Sound ideas, ask questions, and troubleshoot with someone other than my manager and/or stakeholders
• Keep the “social” element alive while navigating virtual and hybrid work
• Expanding domain knowledge to other product spaces
• Identifying common threads across research foci in different product spaces
• Gaining an understanding of new methods, techniques, tools being used by peers
• New opportunities for cross-department collaboration (how can another researcher’s project- method, insights etc. help you inform your research?)

4. Manage(r) relationship

As an early career researcher, you will have a lot of questions when trying to navigate the first few weeks at work. Your manager is your point of contact for any questions about work, team assignment, project, tools, goal setting and any other questions. It is necessary to ‘break the ice’ with your manager early on and set expectations. During the first 90 days on the jobs, you would likely have a weekly sync with your manager. Here are some questions to ask them:

• Team assignment: What can they tell you about the team/business unit you will be working with? Who are your key stakeholders and what is the appropriate cadence to contact and meet with them? Are you being assigned a project to start with?
• Tools: What tools would you need for work (user research tools like Decipher, User Interviews etc.), communication (Slack, email, Teams+), collaboration (Jamboard, Miro), research repositories (AirTable, Sharepoint, Google drive), miscellaneous? How can you ensure that you are set up for success in terms of access to tools?
• Preferences: It is a good idea to understand your manager’s expectations for you in this role. If you are working in different time zones, it is always polite to ask your manager what their preference is when setting up meetings. You can also ask them questions to assess their work style (how often they would like you to check in with them, end-of-week updates, involvement in research and design process).
• Goals: Work with your manager to discuss possible career trajectories. It’s never too early to start having this conversation; in fact, the earlier the better! Work with your manager to identify measurable goals (Ex. Growing survey design skills by Q3) and outline a plan of action.
• Ask and clarify: The first month in a UX team can be overwhelming with the amount of incoming information. Don’t be afraid to ask questions to your manager. Remember, they are here to support you and ensure that you are set up for success in this new role!

5. Tools & tutorials

One thing I wish I (Rae) did even before I began my first day is this — Find out the tools that I will need to use at the company and watch tutorial videos for the same!

Learning how to use tools (a dozen of them at the same time) while you are learning the products and business can be overwhelming! Knowing how to write sticky notes in bulk mode and how to make short video clips using your research tools (UserZoom Go, Usertesting etc.) is useful.

Make sure to meet with a research ops partner who is in charge of your tooling access as soon as you can. It may take some time to get access to research tools (e.g., User testing, UserZoom Go, Dscout etc.), so it is best to get that access even before you have a study to run.

I also recommend you set up a meeting with your research participant recruiting team (if your company has one) as soon as you get some breathing room! Learn about the process — what lead time they need for recruiting, the process they follow for recruiting participants, how participants get paid, what kind of information you need to provide, how you work on study days etc. They are going to be one of the most important and crucial resources for you once you start doing research!

6. Communication cadence

As more and more companies are moving towards a remote & hybrid model, each company and team may develop distinctive communication styles. For example, 95% of my (Rae) team members are located on the other side of the world. It is crucial for me to have a stable channel of communication other than synchronous meetings or emails to stay connected to them.

Since we have about 1–2 hours of overlapping working hours each day with some of my team members, I cannot rely too heavily on meetings. I set a 30 minute bi-weekly check-in for any ongoing and upcoming research needs, but this is certainly not enough to get things done for UX research. A good way to update on the progress of research and have your teams collaborate on your asks is setting up a dedicated channel to post all updates and questions.

But before you set this up, make sure to check your team’s preferred communication channels — I mostly used Slack for communication at first, but later I found out that the main communication tool for my stakeholders in India was Teams instead! Here are some questions you should consider when you figure this out:

• What is your team’s preferred channel of communication?
• What is their preferred time zone and any time constraints you should be aware of?
• Are there any meetings that you need to attend?
• If you cannot attend standup meetings, what is a good cadence for meetings?
• What is the best way to collaborate asynchronously? (Docs, Teams/Slack channels, emails).

In this piece, we have reflected on what we did in the first 90 days as UX researchers and shared some tips for you to be more successful in your first 90 days. What do you think about these suggestions? Please let us know if you have any questions or suggestions!

*Opinions in this article are our own and do not reflect those of our employers.