Let’s imagine you’re comparing the portfolios of two UX Researchers:
UXR A vs. UXR B. Both candidates possess nearly identical backgrounds and skills: 3+ years in research, experience with different methodologies, industries, and so forth.

They’re nearly the same — at least on paper. Yet there are specific things that could imply that UXR A will likely be considerably more successful in their career than UXR B, by just about any measure. How could we compute this?

Technical skills and experience will only get you so far. Successful UX Researchers also cultivate critical thinking and mindsets that set them apart.

There is one necessary precondition to growing into any career: focus on the things that matter, and give up what doesn’t.

I am a UX Researcher and in the last couple of years, I have written quite a few articles, mainly related to research methods, stakeholder engagement, and challenges of being a UX Researcher. I enjoy analyzing different roads and potential mistakes that UX Researchers might make at the beginning or any stage of their career, and that’s precisely what I have done in this post: I have collected 8 things UX researchers should avoid if they want to step up their game.

1. Thinking that “I do not need to write this down”

“I will remember it” is the biggest lie you can tell yourself when attending user sessions or meetings! Write everything as much as you can — this includes meeting notes, your own interpretations of what you hear, codes, and any annotations. Use meaningful tags, so you can quickly categorize information and know what and where things are.

Taking notes and tracking the information early will save you time later on.

User sessions are often recorded with participant’s consent but note-taking is used whenever feasible to make the research synthesis faster. Make sure you take notes of everything, picking up about user needs in the context generate insights that might shape your product roadmap.

A frequent thought might be that “We can listen to the recordings and complete the notes when we get back at work”. However,going throughrecordings after the sessions is a cumbersome task and you might not always have the luxury of taking time to go through the sessions. Depending on your UX team structure, occasionally, those who attended the sessions with you may not be free to help in the analysis and this can create a backlog in your plan.

Post research, you will probably spend time with the analysis process and time is something we might not always have at hand.

Taking notes while you are present at the session can help you capture more about the user than the recorder can. Consider taking note of personality, behavior, the body language, and maybe mark your own interpretations as well.

There are some great articles out there and I’m not going to paraphrase them, instead, I’ll recommend the following read by

2. Rushing into research planning and roadmap

You can’t rush into ideas about the tools and methodologies you use without proper analysis and thinking. Rushing’s not suitable for coming up with a research roadmap.

If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions. — Albert Einstein

To devise an efficient research proposal, it would be rational to draw back at the start and work through your discovery stages. It might be counterintuitive to take the “slow” approach for speeding up the research, but it works.

Slowing down to inspect the product and problems from different aspects can help you come up with the right method and strategy.

Slowing down is sometimes the best way to speed up. — Mike Vance

As an Experience Researcher, irrespective of your seniority, realize that you’re in relentless competition to advance your research. To ensure you are on the right path, follow this step-by-step approach:

• Identify your resources: Identify the range of tools you currently have access to and your available resources. But don’t be afraid of thinking big and beyond the resources!
• Recognize the knowns vs unknowns: What do you already know about the users? Who are they? what are their motivations? Are there different user segments? Where do they encounter problems with the workflow? Ask yourself questions, and that will provide you a list of knowns, unknowns, opportunities, and requirements that you should consider for the project. Once you know what you want to learn about the unknowns, then you can start thinking about how to learn them!
• Improve the likelihood of delivering persuasive research: Identity what resources, skills, and support from stakeholders can enhance the research results. Involving them into planning and asking them to attend sessions can increase the likelihood of your research findings being persuasive so you don’t have to justify every detail of your research in case of disagreement. Think about these before you start!
• Be mindful of the time: Estimate the time required to wrap up the project vs. your available weekly schedule. Divide your time cautiously to projects that have a higher scope of impact, and don’t underestimate the time and effort for each project.
• Balancing the expectations: Ask yourself if you can leverage the opportunities to find a balance between what users need, what the business world is interested in, and the involvement of other stakeholder you can expect to bring in for the project.
• Stay analytical and reasonable: Do you understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing this (for example your choice of methodology and recruitment)? Briefly try to write the exact reasons why you are taking a particular approach, and only take on the approach if the reasons are convincing.

Once you reach clarity to devise the research project roadmap, do all you can to make the project a success. Then take all the learnings from this project to your next one!

Recommended reading by

3. Perfecting the reports before delivery

In order to stay agile and tailor the research according to your team’s needs, you should wrap up and communicate the findings to your immediate team without having to wait for “delivery” day. Send out your research finding as soon as they are verifiable.

Communicating the findings on regular basis shows that you let your research have an impact on the product. That opens up your options to many post-research conversations.

So often when a project starts, we all want to do a very good job at it:
writing a proper research plan, executing the research thoroughly, preparing the results in fancy boards or slide decks before delivery, etc. Executing the perfect research can include all these and that’s what you should do, but for research results, sometimes what works better than waiting for final delivery is sharing some bullet points right after each user session.

This can help your team to already start the ideation and soak in the information so they don’t get so surprised on the delivery day. This also makes it easier to convince your teammates and even executives on the project. Most of all, it helps you as a researcher to get feedback on your research from your team so you can iterate on your questions in case something is off.

So instead of waiting for the perfect report or the final delivery day, always keep your team in the loop and aim for delivering at each stage!

“A report is not the atomic unit of a research insight” — Tomer Sharon

Recommended reading:

4. Always relying on others’ ideas

This one point is especially for those working at agencies or with external stakeholders: When you start a new project, you get a project description if you are lucky. And then, you get more information with kick-off workshop and stakeholder meetings and then a “now, work it out”.

There you are, a project and a lot of ideas from your teammates on what’s needed to be done. You filter out the things based on facts vs. assumptions. You will gather the information about the product and the past research projects. Your colleagues might have a lot of assumptions and opinions.

Some of their ideas and suggestions might be plain assumptions. And you have to understand where their opinions come from, and then separate facts from assumptions. Don’t be scared of saying no to some of their suggestions.

In the end, you are the expert in your field. As the researcher you will be liable for the outcome of the research deliveries, so you should decide how things are done. Acquire more and more responsibilities. The more you practice, the more confident you will be to find your voice.

5. Being afraid of public speaking

As researchers, we regularly need to present work to teammates, stakeholders, developers, etc. Being able to articulate what you want to say and express your thought processes professionally is an impressive skill.

Don’t forget that you should prepare your presentations for your audience: Some audiences want a lot of technical detail about how you conducted research(e.g., researchers); others don’t (developers). Some enjoy bullet points, recommendations and quantifying impact(e.g., executives); others want to see how the results impact the product roadmap (e.g., product managers).

Here’s a good collection of relevant articles on this topic:

6. Forgetting about accessibility

Whether it’s about research and operations or presenting the results, you shouldn’t assume that everyone has the same needs. To craft a successful presentation or workshop, you need to check the needs of your audience. That’s why besides knowing the professional backgrounds of your audience, you should also check for accessibility needs!

In case there’s anyone with hearing needs then make sure you prepare a script so you can hand them over during your workshop or presentation.

If you don’t have time to prepare that, you can use various tools that transcribe live presentations (e.g., Microsoft speech to text API from their AI tool boxes). But they may not be always accurate, might have delays, or you might not have access to them, that’s why I prefer preparing a script before the meeting, that way if technology fails, my script handovers won’t.

“For those with visual needs, make sure your font size is not less than 14 and note the font type — these are the most accessible fonts Arial, Calibri, Helvetica.
Use the Colour Contrast Analyser tool to check the accessibility of foreground and background colors. Use alternative text (‘alt text’) to describe what’s inessential images or graphs, which will be picked up by screen readers.” —Source: Traverse, by Tim Bidey

7. Thinking you can’t write

Writing helps researchers:

• Understand a topic better and provide better-written reports
• Articulate research process
• Learn to craft research stories instead of plain results
• Pass on their learnings,
• Influence those who don’t attend meetings but want to follow up with research results (busier team members who are indirectly influenced by research such as executives, business team, etc)

Clear, eloquent communication can help you convey research results easier. Whenever you’re corresponding with research participants, stakeholders, or colleagues, the way you write affects how people perceive both your company and you.

Writing can help you become a better communicator, learner and researcher. Review everything you write to ensure your writing is free of mistakes. It’s worth it!

Here’s a great article on writing as a skill for UX Researchers by

8. To approach learning only through reading too much about user research

There is so much content out there in books, blogs, and conferences, instead of following all of them, focus on those that build the foundations of your field.

Don’t get overwhelmed by all the various approaches to UX Research. You think to yourself “before trying this method on the project, I will read all the necessary articles and reports till I understand everything about it”. Surprise, surprise … you might never be ready enough to start.

Read, but also learn to tailor the research based on your product and constraints.

Better understanding of a method can only come from blending the theoretical knowledge from reading into doing. How, if you didn’t experience the thought process of choosing one method instead of another? How are you going to understand the pros and cons, if you never tried it by yourself?

Don’t be overwhelmed by all the information out there. You cannot know it all. Reading will help you save some time as you don’t have to reinvent everything as there is already a standard protocol on a method. But getting too much caught in reading can slow down your research process.