Research: ResearchOps

A common refrain among UX professionals is that there never seems to be a big enough research budget. To be fair, it does often feel that this is the case. But, rather than focusing on what my team and I might not be able to change, we have attempted to streamline our use of the one asset that is completely within our control: our time.

Over the past year, I have attempted to improve our efficiency by creating a process for the operational aspects of our research work. Ideally, as an organization grows, they should be able to employ more ResearchOps employees. But, regardless of a UX team’s size, we can always attempt to improve our research practice by reducing the time we spend on operations tasks that we can easily standardize. Read More

UX research is vital to the successful design of a new product or when launching a key new feature. However, even though UX research is an essential part of an effective design process, it can be time consuming when you do it correctly. Research operations, or ResearchOps, is now playing a developing role within UX design. ResearchOps can provide UX researchers with the necessary frameworks and tools to gain valuable user insights efficiently, thereby enabling UX teams to do their finest work.

What Is ResearchOps?

ResearchOps refers to the staffing, procedures, methods, strategies, and tactics that enable effective, large-scale UX research across an entire organization. Its goal is to optimize the impact of UX research at scale. An organization must scale research operations along with its UX research practice. Read More

UX researchers in every organization have likely experienced a situation when a stakeholder came by their desk and asked: “Have we done any research about the search feature?” or “What do we already know about the painpoints of our small business customers?”

When a colleague poses a question about existing research findings, suddenly the search for relevant data starts. The researcher sifts through spreadsheets and presentations in shared folders, ask colleagues whether they know anything, and might even check their own drive for pertinent information.

Answering what seems to be a simple question can take hours if the research data is spread across different locations or is in the heads of the people who conducted the prior studies. Even worse, the responsible person might have left the company, taking all the relevant findings with them. Read More