4 Tips for Handling a Product Owner Who Is Nervous About UX Research

Also, be sure to invite the product owner and other members of the product team to listen in on the research sessions—or, alternatively, offer to record the research sessions for later consumption. This can be incredibly powerful. They won’t have to take your word about what users are saying, but can hear their feedback firsthand. Offer to debrief the team after the first few sessions to get their early feelings and provide guidance and further explanations as necessary. What did they think? What were their initial reactions? What surprised them? Plus, your final insights and recommendations won’t come as such a surprise—or threat—if the team has already experienced the data-rich research sessions and discussed key themes with you ahead of time. Hopefully, they’ll come to the sessions with an open mind and the intention to learn.

You can guide the data analysis and recommend next steps, but the project will be infinitely more successful if the product owner personally knows what users are saying and understands the reasons behind your recommendations and next steps.

3. Make your research recommendations descriptive, not prescriptive.

As a UX researcher, your job is to help a product team understand the problem they are solving, while the team’s job is to generate solutions. The members of the product team have backgrounds and technical and product knowledge that you don’t have. Focus on generating data-driven insights and descriptive recommendations rather than prescriptive solutions.

For example, if your insight were that HR Practitioners need a way to quickly scan and sort through the barrage of daily communications, your recommendation might be that the team should focus on creating communications that are more scannable and sortable. You’ve specified the necessary outcome, but left the means of accomplishing it up to the product team. Let them take it from there and figure out how best to solve this problem. Of course, you can offer to help them test their ideas with users along the way.

4. Remind the product owner that your research is ultimately just one input of many in the decision-making process.

UX research can help inform product strategy and be a major source of innovation. However, it is rarely the sole decision driver. As much as UX researchers might love for their research to provide the key inputs, business decisions are complex and people rarely make them in isolation. Decision makers must also consider the larger business context, weighing technical requirements, resource allocations, broader business strategies, and competing priorities. Remind the product owner that your research findings provide additional information to help them make decisions, but won’t typically be the final word.

Conclusion

Product owners have a lot on their plates, but the last thing they want is someone coming in and telling them what to do. Alleviating their concerns and gaining their trust is all about how you present yourself as a UX researcher.

Assure the product owner that you’re there to help, not to push your own agenda. Be transparent about your research process and get the product owner and the rest of the product team involved early on. Finally, remind the product owner that your research will provide additional information that you hope will help them in making decisions, but will not be the sole factor in the decision-making process.