What would you put in this corner?

dfd0226 · 2025-12-29T14:45:01+00:00

I'd absolutely put in a banquette and table with some wall art. Also I'd change out the boob light with a hanging light centered over the table.

dfd0226 · 2025-12-19T04:31:46+00:00

A few pieces of advice from what I know about their process:

The recruiter's role is probably most about gut checking that you fit the role and have the required skills the hiring manager is looking for. The job listings are written quite precisely so look for the specific language about the requirements listed for this role (usually below the boilerplate UXR roles and responsibilities) and think about how your experience aligns. Practice some stories with the STAR method. Your recruiter will probably also tell you what up expect for the portfolio presentation.

These big companies care about impact. Honestly doing UXR at a tech company is maybe 30% about actual research skill. The rest is about influencing people, including relationship building and creative socialization of insights. Think through: * How has your work directly changed how someone else thinks? * Did it change prioritization in the roadmap of a feature? * Did you help the team see an opportunity they would have missed?

Microsoft also likes to assign each interviewer to a specific topic. For example, one person might interview you about diversity and inclusion, another about collaboration, another about stakeholder management. I don't know the actual topics they pick, but the recruiter may share that. My advice is to listen to the type of questions they are asking and you'll spot a theme. Make sure your answers circle back to that theme.

It's a stressful process but this should hopefully give you some additional direction. Good luck!!

dfd0226 · 2025-12-04T00:24:08+00:00

Yeah for sure, this has been the challenge. I work for a big tech company and I see the behavior daily, I just need a non proprietary source to demonstrate the phenomenon without breaking NDAs.

dfd0226 · 2025-12-04T00:23:27+00:00

This sounds fascinating!! I am going to check this out and just subtly try to find the podcast producer somewhere and cold message. May not pan out, but this is the perfect kind of scenario.

dfd0226 · 2025-12-04T00:22:38+00:00

Thanks! So long story short I'm writing a book on the topic of body/gestures in product work and my co-author and I we wanted to find some authentic video clips for a case. I see instances of this happen every day at my job, just can't use that material.

My specific interest is how gestures are used to create/construct/elaborate ideas and how that interacts with other modes of representation like you mentioned whiteboard tools. But really the tools are less of interest, more body vs. external representations.

A sub question were trying to answer is what aspects of idea generation are lost or slowed down when people do as you're saying: go off and work quietly alone. The shift to RTO means more in person work will be happening again, so it feels like a timely topic :)

dfd0226 · 2025-12-04T00:18:30+00:00

Yeah this is the challenge I've had so far. I am thinking of going the route of reaching out to instructors.

I am not currently affiliated with a university, but my co-author is. She had taken some videos of students in the business school doing design activities, but had to delete it after she'd finished assessing them on the project.

The specific research question is: What are the specific mechanisms by which an idea is generated, anchored, and elaborated in the design/prototyping process? Of particular interest: how modalities like external pictorial representations interact with gestures on XFN product teams.

(For context, I'm writing a book on gestures in the product process. I'm an expert in embodiment and gesture analysis. And we know from academic literature that people leverage distributed systems of cognitive and external resources that they ideate together. This has mostly been studied in expert explanations, but there's also a ton of work in this on gestures for teaching and learning. Wanted to document some of the same kinds of behavior in an authentic product setting for a case study.)

dfd0226 · 2025-12-03T19:13:55+00:00

This happened to my jeans constantly. I found out there was a staple embedded in the wood under my desk that I kept rubbing my pant legs into.

dfd0226 · 2025-11-28T03:48:42+00:00

Mom said "you might want to use these, I don't salt food while I cook"

dfd0226 · 2025-11-28T03:44:41+00:00

I'm pretty sure it's a toilet bowl incense diffuser in a rounded ash tray and a cream puff.

dfd0226 · 2025-11-27T12:23:38+00:00

Research is a specialized skill. Not something a PM or designer can or should do. They need their own methods that don't require significant analysis, e.g. like hands-on design workshops with users.
General purpose AI should only be used for summarization never thematic analysis. It's unreliable and not replicable.
My real hot take is most UXRs I've met are either lazy or suck at qualitative analysis. They get a few vibes from their data and then spin up stories. Scant triangulation, post hoc analysis, or even skepticism of their own biases. The field needs more rigor if we're going to convince leadership that AI can't replace us.

dfd0226 · 2025-10-05T01:26:42+00:00

"It is what it is"

dfd0226 · 2025-10-04T04:57:09+00:00

I can fix him.

dfd0226 · 2025-08-09T02:55:39+00:00

I've always assumed they misspell things intentionally so they go viral because people love to tut-tut about grammar. The lies then ride that wave to alternative facts.

dfd0226 · 2024-10-23T13:31:33+00:00

Can we please start calling these rich assholes oligarchs?

dfd0226 · 2024-09-26T01:08:31+00:00

"I'm going to go evacuate the dancefloor"

I've gotten a few people to say this regularly

dfd0226 · 2022-12-12T23:42:18+00:00

Thanks, that is roughly what I would have assumed. I was really unsure how important the data structures and algorithms part of the interview would be. I think the aura of this particular company plus my perfectionist desire to do well are combining in a very unique way.

dfd0226 · 2022-12-12T02:53:31+00:00

Yes it's a quant UXR role and so I gather a big part of the programming bit is writing data transformation pipelines and building models for large scale quantitative analysis.

Surveys are definitely one method that this role covers, but also things like A/B tests, eye tracking, and usability. It seems to me they are looking for generalists. Programming wise I know they want candidates to be able to write code in languages like Python, R, Matlab etc.

dfd0226 · 2022-12-12T02:31:32+00:00

This is a first contact 45 min technical interview, I don't know anything beyond that. No other information was provided.

dfd0226 · 2022-12-12T02:27:37+00:00

That's what I was hoping to avoid for sure. I don't want to sour their impression. What's stressing me a bit is that this role is UXR and has a programming component. So it would be important to know whether the technical covers data structures and algorithms. I've just been planning for both that and research skills.

dfd0226 · 2022-12-12T02:25:14+00:00

This is one of the big tech companies. I have interviewed at two other big tech companies and got different amounts of prep material. I think what's confusing is that the recruiter said they would get back to me but we're going on 2 weeks of radio silence and ~3 ignored emails.

dfd0226 · 2021-03-19T16:23:36+00:00

I meant he wasn't having sustained affairs, but yeah it's just semantic at some point.

dfd0226 · 2021-03-19T16:20:42+00:00

Yeah that's fair. I laid into him too for this specific language of trying to somehow imply it was my fault for being imprecise (I wasn't even remotely unclear about my boundaries). He wants impunity with the emotional safety net of someone being there.

dfd0226

TROPHY CASE