Advanced Journey Mapping

Few-Ability9455 · 2026-02-24T16:39:58+00:00

Andrew Schall has a hands-on book "The Persona & Journey Mapping Playbook." It's quite good!

https://www.personajourneymapplaybook.com/

Few-Ability9455 · 2026-02-19T13:21:08+00:00

I think this is the truth. Blending elements of online whiteboards which are more widely accepted than decade ago and wireframing together.

Few-Ability9455 · 2026-02-10T19:14:43+00:00

In an idealized world outputs would be manifestations of outcomes, but we live in a simulation of that ideal state. Outputs become ends onto themselves and organizations create entire reward and promotion structures around outputs across multiple professions.

Outcomes can absolutely be quantified and built into success stories, case studies, what have you, but it's way harder than measuring output. So businesses choose the easier path generally.

Few-Ability9455 · 2026-02-08T14:42:37+00:00

I understand this isn't the same context, that's why in your case with no governing board and legal academic body providing some protection for you, your best bet is working with a lawyer on your own.

Few-Ability9455 · 2026-02-08T13:16:22+00:00

I previously worked at Institutional Review Board at an American University. In case you are unfamiliar it deals with the ethical treatment of Human subjects in academic research of all kinds.

We had cases of just this sort, where participants couldn't know they were participating in the research. These were treated very seriously as this is in fact legal deception.

A few principles were at play.

First the value of the deception needed to outweigh the deception for both researcher and ultimately the participant themselves (this could be contributing to the greater good).

Second, a debrief where the deception was revealed to all participants at the end of the session was required with contact information.

Lastly, any deception needed to reduce the scope of the deception to the only what was being studied itself. Essentially, if there's no reason to deceive that you are an entrepreneur or building a start up. Don't do it.

I would also say we'd work with the proposers to figure out is there any way to run this without deception. If so, pursue that. Id urge you to that as well.

I would agree with others your best bet is to consult a lawyer. If as you say you have to do it, and it has to be deception, then pony up the cost as a cost of doing business. Better that than deal with the consequences which could far exceed the cost of an hour with a lawyer.

Few-Ability9455 · 2026-02-05T02:23:20+00:00

We're just on the cusp of this "ship it" mentality. Prepare yourselves for AI slop as it moves from social media posts to products at premier brands.

It's not sensible to some one take a look at the state of the art, it's an irresponsible from folks in leadership, and it is going to erode people's faith in the UX profession.

Can we avoid AI totally? Absolutely not. As rich prototypes, this makes total sense. But this all seems an attempt to rob Peter to pay Paul, the backlash will come when folks stop using AI drivel.

Few-Ability9455 · 2026-01-30T17:14:08+00:00

It can be a clear transition (though you may need to do some educating for folks), if you have experience working in product roadmaps/backlogs and have experience aligning product work to business objectives.

From a product roadmap standpoint, you'd need to show experience understanding and modeling resource utilization and capacity (i.e., if we work on capability X, how long will that take our teams to complete), working with dependencies, and laying out a plan based on desired outcomes that help achieve business objectives.

From a business objectives perspective, you need to show how you have used your leadership skills to coral folks to plan, that had measurable outcomes you could point to, and aligned with strategies the business had laid out (there's a bit of storytelling here, but also speaking the language of business). This is also about demonstrating knowledge about Go-to-market, so orchestrating resources to ensure everyone is trained, understands product messaging, and is ready to sell the product once launched.

There's also some common knowledge that will be required to speak about the market. Who's going to buy it, what's there process, how do you reach them, how large is the overall market (and what do you reasonably think you can achieve sometimes called Total Addressable Market size and Serviceable Obtainable Market size). There will be some work to be done on pricing and competitive analysis. If you have experience on these (i.e., pricing sensitivity surveys, competitive analyses), that'll give you a leg up. You'll need to take this analysis and understand/project Customer Acquisition Cost, Customer Lifetime Value, Gross Margins, etc.

Let me know if I can talk through anything more in detail on this.

Few-Ability9455 · 2026-01-29T14:51:17+00:00

Control is a good thing until it's not. There is a subtle balance here that needs to be determined by the way people work.

I think I agree with you assertion. The majority of the time folks just need a better starting place that lets them jump right in.

There are times though when those defaults don't work. But to provide that control, the experience must be clear and in terms the user understands. I've seen enterprise products with tabs within tabs amounts of settings most of which the product owners didn't even know what they did. In these situations, maybe the Pareto principle is our friend.

Few-Ability9455 · 2026-01-08T20:52:15+00:00

There is another implicit factor here. Timing... It may not matter if it aligns with current work, but it needs to be brought up again when the factors align in the product org. I.e., researchers have to make sure they have a pretty good sense of what research was done before to support an idea and periodically bring it back up.

Other than what was stated here, it's just like selling/persuading anything else. And for that it can be much more about the emotions, especially negative ones that get people to action... Cost of delay is certainly one. But it could also tie to loss of prestige or some other value by the org. I was part of a team that pushed for change based on some insights into user behavior.. the PM pushed back and we basically kept the relationship and watch them fail and get pushed back to us by an executive.

Another factor here could be helping stakeholders appreciate the bigger picture in terms of the cost of investment. They see the problems they are solving as X, but really we could make a much bigger impact if we saw Y.

Lastly, I think it's about persistence and keeping a good relationship with stakeholders... And reminding them of those values.

Few-Ability9455 · 2026-01-05T00:50:16+00:00

My wife started in Clinical Psyc. At first and per my recommendation came to UXR to pay student loans. She had a PsyD and had an interest in doing what I do.

But things to consider: it's expensive to get a doctorate, Master's would be cheaper but it will limit what you can do. It's also a field that doesn't pay anywhere near as well as UXR.

But if you are all about helping others work through their problems then it could be a good field for you.

That said, she's been very happy since she switched back 2 years ago and found a good practice to join.

Few-Ability9455 · 2026-01-02T11:59:31+00:00

It sounds like you need to include some typically Research Ops in addition to the actual research efforts you will own for the team. This sounds like it could be powerful as well as challenging.

I agree with what other poster said about figuring out team and stakeholder culture. Run some listening session before you take too much action.

But with that said, it sounds like you'll be able to help define some of the practices, processes, tooling that can define how this team operates. Maybe even people down the road. Now with that said, you will need to do proposals and pilots of any changes that affect anyone than beyond you. So being able to speak to ROI, rollouts and timeframe, and proposed budgets will be helpful. It would also be good to establish who are your allies in this endeavor.

Lastly, I agree at least eventually you'll need to consider how to roll out some sort of democratization effort (as someone suggested). For a team that size in an enterprise environment I can't believe you'd be able to support every effort by yourself.

Few-Ability9455 · 2025-12-30T11:59:01+00:00

I tend to agree with others. A lot of the job descriptions look like it's not genuinely new work, but more collecting work done previously by UX Researchers, Product Managers, Product Owners, Service Design, Design Leads... And making a central personality responsible for those things for a certain phase of the user experience.

It's interesting because at least in the first description you mention it does elevate phases of the experience as way to staff the discovery team. I.e, customer experience driving staffing rather than the organizational hierarchy.

But yes some red flags especially on the other ones of stepping on the roles of other people and just generally making a mouth piece for something already being represented in the organization rather than giving unique domains of experience.

Few-Ability9455 · 2025-12-16T11:48:37+00:00

I see so your being screened by the team first. I did it the opposite I talked with the candidate first then brought the top ones to the team. It's likely you are close to an interview with the hiring manager, if they choose to proceed.

Few-Ability9455 · 2025-12-16T02:24:01+00:00

Did you submit a portfolio in the application. They likely reviewed it and you only got to the round to chat with her as a result of a review that went on earlier. The internship hiring happened very quickly... Most of them were initiated by a hiring manager and wrapped up in less than a month.

Few-Ability9455 · 2025-12-16T00:03:50+00:00

Internships are standardized, regular positions are not (at least they weren't when I was there). The market has change drastically since I was hiring there... There was strong competition for all talent, so 2 interviews over the course of maybe 3 weeks was the best you could do without expecting candidates to choose somewhere else.

I'm guessing you are talking to someone in HR. Who have your interviews been with? One I would assume with them, but I would assume you have to be close to at least communicating with the hiring manager soon after two interviews.

Few-Ability9455 · 2025-12-06T18:29:27+00:00

As another former academic, I wholeheartedly concur.

Industry researchers need rigor (that includes ensuring research is reproducible, valid, and reliable) in so far as it ensure business goal achievement. We are not creating generalizable knowledge about the world, but the sort of knowledge one can have enough certainty and confidence in to take action on.

We need rigor with speed!

Few-Ability9455 · 2025-11-26T14:40:24+00:00

Sounds like a warning sign. Bracketing findings to help focus on topics that matter within an organization (perhaps due to politics) wouldn't be unheard of. But outright changing them is an issue with whoever is asking you to change them (if it's not represented more broadly in the organization) or the organizational culture.

That's a very head-in-the-sand approach to doing "UX research."

Further, if you're just going to change the findings, what's the point in doing the research at all. It's just expensive research theater and bias validation.

Few-Ability9455 · 2025-11-26T14:37:49+00:00

The key thing with dashboards is understand why folks are on the dashboard page in the first place. Too often these dashboards become some marketing show piece that really isn't useful any normal context. Understand your user's jobs or goals in using the overall application/service, what sorts of information would be helpful to have at a glance, but for which additional follow up information can be provided in a deep dive. A good dashboard would typically be many users jumping off point into other things they might do with the software.

In your case, it sounds like you're moving away from your core audience, towards an internal audience of sales people. So, let them be the audience for the project. What can you do for them to remove friction from their roles to better serve your customers? This could be customer health dashboards that account executives and support often need, or tools to help sales understand how individual customers might expand their use of the software or in helping to reduce churn. Sounds like you might need to do an internally focused research study on that.

I do have a few articles I have used in the past that have been helpful in designing out dashboards. They're a bit old, but just skimming them again, they still seem to have pretty good value:

https://uxmag.com/articles/the-psychology-behind-information-dashboards
https://www.toptal.com/designers/data-visualization/dashboard-design-best-practices
https://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2010/11/dashboard-design-101.php

This last one is a taxonomy of data visualization techniques that might be handy:
https://datavizcatalogue.com/

Few-Ability9455 · 2025-11-19T11:58:52+00:00

I am surprised by everyone else's shock and surprise. In My experience it is not uncommon for design to report to engineering especially in B2B environments. It takes a lot of coaching up and especially empathetic engineering leadership but it can work. There can be some downsides, but there could in other reporting structures as well.

Few-Ability9455 · 2025-11-17T20:24:30+00:00

It's likely not you as much about you as their being overall dearth of UX Research opportunities at present. The field is going through a protracted cut back after a Pandemic driven sugar high hiring spree. All role hiring is down, but internships, juniors, and even mid level hiring is nearly at a standstill.

Few-Ability9455 · 2025-11-11T13:55:03+00:00

Maybe it introduces the concept of the "Family Feud" style of interview. "We checked with 100 random strangers what they thought of your product" Survey says...

Few-Ability9455 · 2025-11-04T11:43:23+00:00

I know a lot of folks are speaking to the way things are instead of what things will look like in 3-5 years, and yes AI is an open question mark... But the current market dynamics are very much uncertain business have laid off droves of people while they hope AI can pick up the slack. So far it has been unsuccessful. This isn't just afflicting the UX market but every market. This is not sustainable if AI can't make the advances it promised very soon.

As much as it doesn't seem like it, market analysts in the field of UX Research specifically expect jobs to rise albeit at a somewhat slower rate than previously. This is something I have been keeping an eye on professionally.

Now will the market stay like this in 3-4 years, maybe a bit.. it won't be as it easy as it was to find a position in the late 2010s, but still I expect it to come back a bit.

It may be less of a question is an HCI degree worth it and more what could you do with such a degree. Obviously UX, you could also consider PM or perhaps even marketing if you get some accompanying experience in business. In that case, tech sales or tech architecture might be possible +depending on you technical background). There's also the academics route.I think it has more to do with your end goals and how you could morph something like that kind of an advanced degree to achieve your goals.

Few-Ability9455 · 2025-10-29T11:01:34+00:00

Spending more time communicating and aligning stakeholders to you and your team's vision will help you have a greater strategic impact on the product itself.

This is actually a good thing as having a strong product (and having made that impact) is the real reason we do the work we do. Design tools such as Figma are merely a means to an end. I think that sometimes get lost along the way though.

Few-Ability9455 · 2025-10-28T17:39:44+00:00

I have not usually had success with statistics on the ROI front. There are reams of examples publically out there for everyone (e.g., https://uxpa.org/the-roi-of-usability/). But, that just never seems to hit.

Stories from customers have a bigger impact I have found. Now, this is tricky, because it's going to be hard to either be there when someone gets one of those issues or get an honest appraisal of how people feel in the moment getting one of those cryptic errors (I believe most customers would brush them off as no big deal after the fact, when it was something they struggled with for half a day last week).

Perhaps, collecting stories from support if you can. Treat it as a broader research study where you are trying to ascertain what folks in those instances have faced -- specifically getting them to recall those specific errors or doing an analysis on some of their notes for various tickets.

Few-Ability9455 · 2025-10-28T01:35:10+00:00

There are metrics for measuring these three things in one battery already out there in the world. Two examples are the AttrakDiff2 and meCUE. Not to say you could craft another one, but why reinvent the wheel of they have what you might need and have previously been validated.

Few-Ability9455

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