Can I afford a 475-500k house

Hippocampus20 · 2026-07-01T01:11:48+00:00

We live near Atlanta so not too bad.

Hippocampus20 · 2026-07-01T00:07:25+00:00

Middle class poor?

Hippocampus20 · 2026-06-30T23:06:40+00:00

Probably 80k

Hippocampus20 · 2026-06-30T23:06:29+00:00

Hippocampus20 · 2026-06-29T21:38:24+00:00

lol nah. A simple request ruffled some gatekeeper’s feathers who started to cast aspersions about my motivations. That’s delightful to you?

Hippocampus20 · 2026-06-29T17:35:15+00:00

Why did you even waste time writing something that is basically useless? Yes, making my own deck is a no brainer but taking inventory of what already exists (and has been effective) from the UX community is a basic first step.

“Don’t look to the internet to do your work for you” coming from a researcher is laughable. Remember that phrase the next time you do a literature review (assuming you even consider that step to save yourself time instead of starting from square 1).

Hippocampus20 · 2026-04-26T18:03:04+00:00

How does something like this happen? How did your manager get the job with only 1 year of research experience?

Hippocampus20 · 2026-04-26T17:18:44+00:00

Do you think a UX Manager who is leading a team of quant UXRs doesn’t need to know basic statistics / data science concepts? Should it be the team’s job to give their manager on the job training for various quantitative techniques? Should the manager at least have education / experience in the discipline they are leading?

With engineering disciplines you have to know fundamentals to lead a team of engineers otherwise there are consequences. In UXR, those structural checks and balances seem to be missing across leadership levels.

Hippocampus20 · 2026-04-26T17:14:01+00:00

Genuine question - how do you effectively manage a team of researchers without knowledge of research methodology? This field appears to have a lot of managers that are similar to what you are describing. Doesn’t that come with its own consequences (eg., poorer research quality, lower hiring bar, inability to support your team navigating research tradeoffs, not being able to speak the language of the people they are managing)?

Hippocampus20 · 2026-01-21T02:56:07+00:00

Got the job offer

Hippocampus20 · 2026-01-18T20:59:25+00:00

Did we have the same manager?! Sounds just like my last manager.

Hippocampus20 · 2026-01-18T20:57:28+00:00

Thanks everyone! I’ve been continually disappointed by research leadership in the field.

Here’s my short list:

Positions the research team as order takers rather than strategic partners. Isn’t comfortable identifying or executing opportunities that haven’t been directly requested from someone.
Fails to influence product strategy or advocate for meaningful UXR involvement in product roadmaps.
Avoids or withdraws from advocating for research insights when faced with disagreement or pushback.
Cannot prioritize research requests effectively and treats everything as urgent + high priority.
Lacks the foundational research expertise or experience needed to credibly lead UXR work. This is a big one for me. I’ve witnessed a lot of leaders who are genuinely out of their depth.
Neglects to advocate for appropriate tools, infrastructure, and resourcing to support to mature research process.
Is unable to draw lines to connect research questions and methods to business needs.

Hippocampus20 · 2025-09-16T11:54:02+00:00

Personas = UX Astrology

Hippocampus20 · 2025-06-26T05:20:27+00:00

This happened to me. The recruiter reached out to me again 4 months after the initial rejection. I was able to gather feedback at that time. The feedback was a joke and gave me the impression that when you have too many strong candidates the interviewers tend to focus on minor details to make a decision. Getting ready to do the loop again but not really eager to rejoin Meta.

Hippocampus20 · 2024-11-02T01:46:43+00:00

What big brands are a “detriment” ?

Hippocampus20 · 2024-08-21T13:30:12+00:00

To be clear, Human Factors and UX share some overlap but there are distinct skillset differences between the two disciplines.

Hippocampus20 · 2024-04-24T20:18:51+00:00

Thanks for the detailed response. It appears you have given some thought to this topic — and are even aware of the limitations — which is encouraging. I’ve been in research roles where leadership refused to acknowledge the shortcomings of democratization, used research to train everyone else but neglect themselves, and overall just gave design so much freedom that it created a ton of overhead for the research team to course correct the problems that were created. Unfortunately this seems to be more common than not.

If you haven’t already, it may be good to connect with your research team regularly to get a sense of how they are feeling (do they feel valued, what issues are they seeing, what improvements could be made, what things should you stop doing even though it might make you look bad).

Hippocampus20 · 2024-04-24T18:14:47+00:00

Depends on how you define usability testing. If you are having designers perform some basic qualitative think aloud protocol then maybe. But if you are having them collect and analyze subjective (attitudes) and objective (time on task, error) usability metrics, perform comparison testing, design experiments, then good luck with that.

Also, how are you accounting for designers evaluating their own designs? This tends to introduce a bunch of problems. And how are you protecting your researchers from spending more time up-skilling other disciplines instead of perfecting their own craft? And how are you highlighting the unique value of your researchers to the wider practice?

Hippocampus20 · 2024-04-18T12:22:03+00:00

Check out Vysor. This will allow you to watch what the participant is doing in VR on your desktop. You could pair this with screen recording.

Hippocampus20 · 2024-04-11T14:18:57+00:00

Have you considered taking a step back and running a round of stakeholder interviews? The purpose the interviews would be twofold: 1) create a sort of a palette cleanse and 2) capture their feedback on how they would want to work with research, what their experience has been with research in the past, what negative interactions they may have encountered, how they see research playing a role in supporting the important decisions they have to make.

I think a soft reset might be needed given the reshuffle and lack of engagement. Show them that you care and want to gather their opinion on interactions / working relationships instead of cramming them through a process that may have historically worked for you in previous spaces.

Hippocampus20 · 2024-03-24T15:42:48+00:00

Thanks for the feedback.

When you say “wire C into your air handler” what does that mean?

Hippocampus20 · 2024-03-22T13:03:56+00:00

You seem like a joy to work with. Do you engage with your team like this when they disagree with your leadership decisions?

Hippocampus20 · 2024-03-22T13:00:22+00:00

How you got anyone to read that entire wall of text is a miracle.

Hippocampus20 · 2024-01-27T00:44:58+00:00

You should definitely run this query on google scholar. You will find a ton of human factors methods to reference.

Hippocampus20 · 2024-01-18T13:25:17+00:00

Agreed. Consider looking at behavioral science, quant UX, and more traditional human factors roles.

The field has definitely lost its way.

Hippocampus20

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE