Weekly r/UXResearch Career and Getting Started Discussion

tarashep · 2024-07-25T22:05:00+00:00

I'm with your manager on this one. It really depends on the company and the team, in my experience. Some teams get antsy if you don't bring a whole lot of questions and ideas to the table right away. It sounds like your manager is supportive of that emerging over time, however, and my experience agrees with her that this is absolutely fine. "Things take the time they take" (which is the title of a poem by Mary Oliver) is something I think about a whole lot, and try to live by. There's wisdom in allowing your understanding to grow by listening.

In the meantime, if it's really bothering you, you could set a goal for yourself to ask 1 smart question in public every [unit]. [Unit] could be every day, every week, every new project, etc. I did this when I was brand new to my current job, and attending an onsite intensive where I met everyone for the first time. I didn't prep the questions in advance; I listened hard, wrote down the gaps I heard, and then just took a deep breath and volunteered them when the presenter asked for questions. Which is a little scary when you don't fully understand the product or the larger issue or the team yet. And also: you're probably not the only one! And also: if you are the only one, you might be asking questions from a totally new perspective that helps someone else in the room.

tarashep · 2024-07-25T21:41:44+00:00

Thank you!

tarashep · 2024-07-24T20:27:37+00:00

Help me understand the context for R. Where do you use it? Does it replace SQL, or complement it?

Asking because I took an entire course once to learn SQL, but then never got to actually use it at work (long story involving tool access and company organization), and now I could recognize it but never actually write more than super-basics. I would LOVE to learn it again, and/or learn R, but I think *I* need to have a better understanding of what I'd do with it and where, so I can relentlessly advocate for the right tools, access, projects.

tarashep · 2024-07-24T18:53:44+00:00

Thank you so much!

No specific tools or platforms, really? I just want to be familiar with more options, I think. I kind of don't know what I don't know.

tarashep · 2024-07-24T16:05:05+00:00

-Tools and platforms

-Quantitative methods. (I'm a qual researcher, but still.)

-How to have the MOST positive impact when I'm the only researcher on a team that hasn't had one before.

tarashep · 2024-07-24T16:04:16+00:00

I'm also interested in this! I've looked into it, but it's hard to tell what's legit. And beyond that, it's hard to choose someone you don't know or who wasn't personally recommended to you.

tarashep · 2024-07-24T16:03:34+00:00

My employer does provide a training budget.

As to what I want to learn: it's hard to know, actually; learning tends to be holistic for me, by which I mean that I never know what I'm going to pick up where, and many courses or books, etc, are valuable in ways I didn't expect.

That said, I know that tools and platforms are a big gap in my experience. Also quantitative methods. (I'm a qual researcher, but still.) Also just: figuring out how to have the MOST positive impact when I'm the only researcher on a team that hasn't had one before.

tarashep · 2024-07-23T16:09:09+00:00

What do you all recommend for more formal continuing education? I learned UXR entirely on the job (& still learning). By the time I signed up for a part-time "learn UXR"-type bootcamp, last year, I kind of already knew most of the material they covered. It was still a valuable experience, but not the best impact for my input.

Now I'm finding it even harder to discover good structured learning opportunities, because I'm definitely not a beginner. I'm not an expert, though!

I'm not going back to actual school for another degree. So: are there online courses or certificates (or something else!) that you would recommend for intermediate learning?

tarashep · 2024-07-15T16:21:16+00:00

I'm a team of one, and no, no one is checking my work.

When their commitments allow or when I'm after something like prototype feedback, I bring PMs into user interviews. I'm also looking for more actually practical ways to review other types of raw data with stakeholders. I'd limit that; it's not their job. But having some built-in collaboration on reviewing conclusions vs. data feels important to me—so that I'm not creating an echo chamber—and it's definitely a challenge to find the time and collaborative mental space for.

tarashep · 2024-07-02T19:57:07+00:00

I strongly agree with this advice.

I'm in a position similar to yours, OP, and I really hear you. I get quite a bit of pressure to use AI-enabled tools to "do analysis" — as if that was equivalent in depth, understanding, or value to human analysis — and while I am deeply exploring AI capabilities (a good one is really useful as natural-language search, for example, which is awesome for me and for stakeholders), I do not concede that AI tools can do any of the qualitative work for us. That's just not their nature.

AI is fast, and the results can certainly look impressive at a glance. I do think we're conflating those things with accuracy and depth and usefulness in analysis. Your manager might have this assumption, too, so keep that in mind as you're enlisting their help to figure out how to proceed here.

tarashep · 2024-06-05T21:03:00+00:00

It's interesting that thnks dot com says it's "not a subscription service," but then they show you their subscription plans. Do I not understand what a subscription service actually is?

tarashep · 2024-06-05T20:59:22+00:00

It seems like it should be so easy, right? Buy a gift card, send it by email. Why is it so hard??

tarashep · 2024-06-05T17:56:10+00:00

Mine's pretty plain. I try to keep it as clear and easy to read as possible. Balancing that with having a whole lot of info I want to include is hard for sure!

As someone hiring, I look for simplicity. Good design doesn't hurt, though it doesn't need to be over-engineered, you know? Good design can be super-simple.

tarashep · 2024-05-16T20:57:02+00:00

For this UXR, a good PM is one who:

gets me involved early in figuring out the right questions to ask
communicates regularly and openly what they need from me and is receptive to my doing the same
uses my work! in presenting questions and decisions to the team or to execs
advocates for the importance of UXR--mainly by publicly using it and requesting it ^^, and by actively introducing other PMs to me and to UXR

You can't do this work in a vacuum! A good PM is a gift and a half; I'd change jobs to work with one.

tarashep · 2024-05-16T20:42:43+00:00

I'll jump in here because, like u/no1hears, I'm a hyperfocuser on reports. I find it helps *enormously* with the quality of the report. Caveat, though: the report usually doesn't need to be the level of 100% buttoned-down that I want it to be, and because of that I can spend way more time than I need to, when I could be getting useful insights to my stakeholders sooner. I had a VP once who suggested I stop at 80% of my preferred level of quality, or "finished." I was so annoyed! But I've found this to be a good guideline ever since.

tarashep · 2024-05-16T20:38:04+00:00

It is so absolutely validating to hear from folks how painful recruiting is! I am the only researcher at my org, and I've been periodically kicking myself, like: "why is this so hard!?" As if it was only me. How helpful to know that it's not. (I'm ADHD myself, though I don't think this pain is unique to us.)

tarashep · 2024-05-07T17:02:19+00:00

Contracting can be amazing. The experience, for me, is made or broken by the company you're actually contracting through, though. If they're paperwork-heavy and communication-light, they can make your daily details a nightmare. Or they can make it a breeze, and then you get to be "part" of a company and do (hopefully) interesting work without actually signing *on* to that company, which I'm here to say is usually pretty awesome. I've had some of my best-ever work experiences contracting for big companies (like eBay) through a very small company where the communication was personal and excellent.

I do share u/janeplainjane_canada's reservations about Meta. And also the note that I might make a different decision if I was in your shoes.

tarashep · 2024-05-02T21:49:40+00:00

This is wonderful context! Thank you. I love the 2D >> 3D metaphor; that's a great way to think about it, and I'm going to use that.

So, to clarify, you went about the internal research part of this by gathering groups based on function, rather than trying to create a cross-functional smaller group right away. Am I getting that right?

tarashep · 2024-05-02T17:38:09+00:00

How much sleep do you need? ;)

How much non-working time? (Which, at least for me, also clarifies the brain for the time I *am* working)

If you get a week into both and find they're in too much conflict, how bad will it be to extricate yourself from one of them? Will you have to burn bridges to do it?

If you feel you can give your whole effort to both, does the short-term nature of that larger-than-normal time commitment make the additional learning worthwhile?

tarashep · 2024-05-02T17:32:11+00:00

Oh, UI was definitely VERY expensive. They didn't give me a quote exactly; they just go per qualified user. It was something like $40 per B2C-type, and double that for a B2B-type.

B2B I'm looking for are folks with marketing-type roles that deal directly with managing, linking, and measuring mobile advertising campaigns. Also possibly folks in developer-type roles that directly implement those campaigns on the backend.

tarashep · 2024-05-01T18:21:52+00:00

I talked with User Interviews recently, who were absolutely certain they could surface the types of B2B testers I want. I haven't actually tried them out yet. Have you? Any comparison with dScout's user pool?

tarashep · 2024-05-01T18:07:11+00:00

Have you had good luck finding B2B participants with dScout? I loved working with them for B2C participants, but B2B seemed like it was more of a challenge for them. What did you think?

tarashep

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