Photo by Chris Yang on Unsplash

Over the past 13 years, I’ve worked at several small companies (as well as a couple of big ones). I’ve been the first UX hire, or the first UX rehire after a time without UX resources, tasked to build out the UX practice. I usually spent the first while doing hands-on work too.

When you’re coming into a company that’s at a level 1 (absent) or level 2 (limited) in terms of UX maturity, you’re going to get some common questions:

• Why can’t you just design something?
• Why do you need to talk to users?
• Don’t you know what will work?
• I thought you were the expert?

Read more about UX maturity here:

This attitude isn’t uncommon. Despite much hard work by thousands of individuals and many strides in our industry, people and companies still don’t understand the value of UX. You’ll see that design teams are one of the first to go in the redundancies happening recently. We’re still a ‘luxury’. Surely the developers can just build something without upfront design... right?

Building the wrong thing fast isn’t faster in the long run. Nor is it good for business. If users have a crappy experience the first time they use your software, they might not come back — we don’t get a second chance for a first impression. Good design is vital and thus it’s part and parcel of the job to advocate for UX and research. To explain the benefits to stakeholders. To find the argument that will work for them to see the value. But sometimes, frankly, it’s an uphill battle.

I’ve had success in embedding UX in companies. Some companies are more willing to listen than others. I’d classify at least one company I’ve worked at as hostile towards UX research — actively blocking the work we needed to do to design the right thing. No matter how many times I spoke about the benefits and the ROI, when I went to conduct research, it would be seen as ‘slowing us down’. I’d be told what to do, based on the CEOs’ opinion and not ‘allowed’ to talk to actual users.

It’s hard to be the sole person in a company trying to make the case for design. I’ve been the first UX hire when I was still new to UX myself — I knew the way things should be done, but I didn’t have the experience or maturity to explain why. I didn’t know when I should follow the theory or when it was OK to bastardise best practices.

UX research needs to be pragmatic — we’re not learning something to publish a journal article about it, we’re just trying to make a useable, desirable, design. The goal isn’t to do research, the research is a means to an end. So, how do you get research done?

Getting research done

Here are my tips for getting the insights you need in an environment hostile to UX research:

1. Test with people available to you
2. Find powerful allies
3. Find places you can recruit
4. Set up a research panel
5. Run as far ahead as you can
6. Don’t do research (but only if it’s a conscious decision).

1. Test with people available to you

You can’t talk to people who aren’t the users to understand the users’ needs, opinions, and feelings. But you can use proxies to gain insight into the usability of a flow or the understandability of an interactive component. This doesn’t guarantee that your target audience will be able to use your design, but it does reduce the risk somewhat.

You can do lightweight usability testing with:

• Friends and family who don’t work in the design or tech space. You don’t want to repeatedly use the same friends and family for this though.
• Non-technical people within the organisation, who aren’t familiar with the screen / flow you’re testing.
• Guerrilla testing in the wild with people at cafes or on public transport.

My preference is for the first two. Guerrilla testing should always be conducted with informed consent, and you should make it clear to people you are approaching that their involvement is voluntary, and that you won’t be offended if they aren’t in the mood. You’re not entitled to a stranger’s time just because you need input into a design.

2. Find powerful allies

Let’s say the PM won’t listen to you espouse the benefits of UX research. Is there someone in the organisation that values logic, reason, and evidence? They’re prime candidates to be advocates for research and you can get them to rally on your behalf. Is there another PM whose team is doing research? Can they get in their ear and talk about their metrics before and after? Real-life data and examples are the strongest proof for PMs.

Let’s say the CEO is your biggest blocker, and because they have a tendency towards micromanaging they’re right down in the weeds blocking you. That’s hard. If it’s the head honcho and they won’t listen to people below them, who do you go to? Well… does the company have a board? Is there another C-level who has their ear? This isn’t going ‘above their head’; it’s enabling yourself to do your job and ultimately (ideally) making a more profitable company.

Keep in mind you can really only influence the allies if it comes up organically. If you’re several layers down, you may not have access to these people. If you happen to meet them at conferences or similar events, take the opportunity to introduce yourself and get talking about what it is you do. Ask about their background and (casually) mention how design aligns with their interests.

Are there any board members or C-levels who have research backgrounds? I’ve worked at med-tech companies. There’s often a chief medical officer on the board and medical people understand the value of research. If you can meet them, getting them on side won’t take much. This will open opportunities for research.

Is there someone who is UX-curious who you could do some work with? Even better if they’re the kind of person who gives credit where it’s due and bangs their and other people’s drums. If you enable the line of business of a person like this to be more successful, they’ll be singing the praises of UX to anyone who is listening.

Don’t shut up about UX and research

If you can’t find one (or a few) powerful allies, go for quantity — create a groundswell of support for UX and research. This way, it’s multiple people advocating for the work you need to do.

Find every opportunity you can to speak about UX and research:

• Ask to speak at internal events, both formal and informal, to build the understandability and profile of UX
• Use as many analogies as you can to make the point sticky. At one of the med-tech companies, I’d speak about how a GP wouldn’t just guess what disease you had based on symptoms, they’d do tests. Then, they’d prescribe a treatment and do further tests to see if the problem was resolved. The same scientific method should apply to software development. Is there an analogy you can use that relates to your company?
• Make sure UX gets on every sprint review and showcase
• Set up a Slack channel for good and bad examples of UX and encourage sharing
• Share a weekly UX titbit in Slack or in a newsletter — if you’re using Slack you might want to do more than one a week e.g., a data point or insight on Monday to start the week, a Wednesday wonder where you explain a UX concept or framework and feel good Friday where you share some positive feedback from users
• Get Pavlovian — nominate and award a weekly or monthly “UX superhero” and bestow the honor, with an explanation, publicly.

You can find more tips on building empathy within product teams in this article by me👇

and this one by

👇

3. Find places you can recruit from

I once worked at a place that had customers literally coming into the building all day every day, and yet no matter how much I tried to cajole or advocate for research, I could not get access to them.

But one of those powerful allies I had was quite high up at another organisation that had our target audience coming in for appointments with him. It was easier for me to set up camp there for the day than go downstairs in our office. Ridiculous, but at least it gave me access. I would sit in on appointments, with permission, or recruit from the waiting room.

As an aside, my boss knew I was doing this and supported me. We took the path of least resistance to get input into the work, rather than being blocked by continual denial to access to the people in the building.

Doctors are notoriously hard to get a hold of, and they’re unlikely to be tempted by incentives (and may not be able to take them if they’re in the public system). But, if we’re speaking about usability for the target audience, can you recruit med-students?

Can you use polls or surveys in Facebook or other social groups where your target audience congregates?

With a bit of out-of-the-box thinking, you should be able to think of sources to find your users (or near enough) for input.

4. Set up a research panel

Ask if customers are interested in joining a research panel in existing touch points — for example on the website or on any forms they fill in.

In a relatively short timeframe, this gives you hundreds of people who have opted in to be contacted. You’re now not spending as much time or money on recruitment.

You’ve got people you can send quick surveys to at least have some user-voice. You can also use this pool to recruit from for interviews or usability studies. Just make sure not to over-contact the same people.

5. Run as far ahead as you can

While it’s optimal to be able to work closely with the dev team and include them on the design journey, if you’re being viewed as a blocker, it’s time to get organised and run as far ahead as you can. Hopefully you know what features the devs will work on next (ideally a few ahead), so you can get started ASAP. Plan out the activities you’ll need to do to deliver a design, and front load as much as you can.

6. Don’t do research

I love research. I have a PhD and spent many years doing research just for funsies. I still really enjoy it when I swoop back down into doing research.

But, remember what I said earlier, research in industry is a means to an end.

Research is not a must-have for every small tweak you make to a product. Save research for when it will make a large impact. This way, you’ll be more easily able to demonstrate how research improved what you delivered.

You don’t need to research every single thing, every single time.

Be pragmatic on where you spend your efforts

You’ve got to pick your battles and save research for when you really need it. If you’re researching as a rubber stamp, to check research off the ‘to do’ list, rather than doing it purposely to answer a question or validate a risk, you’re undermining your point that research is valuable.

Are you building something well-known? A low-risk change? A minor tweak? Don’t waste time on research where user heuristics and best practices will be good enough to get something delivered. Then (hopefully) you can iterate based on feedback and research on a live product.

Read the writing on the wall

For me, I enjoy the challenge of advocating for and setting up UX practices. I’ve done it four times, mostly with success. I feel like I get a little more achieved each time as I learn better what works. However, arguments that I have used to advocate for UX and research at one company don’t necessarily work for another.

At one company I just couldn’t find the angle to get the CEO on side. I used all these tips and was delivering research, designs, and value, but I still felt like I was spending most of my time arguing to do the work, instead of doing the work. I’d do research and the findings would be ignored. Sometimes they’d choose to do the exact opposite thing to what the research had said or keep going down the path they had already chosen. This meant the research was a waste of time and was frustrating for everyone involved. I had opened the eyes of developers to good design practices, so they were able to make informed decisions and deliver solutions that were of higher quality, but they were now burdened with knowledge. They too were frustrated, and morale was suffering from the consistent undermining of design.

That company made its entire design team redundant a few years later. The next place was a much better fit for me and I was more successful in embedding UX there. There’s no failure in going where your skills are best appreciated.

While I wouldn’t advise anyone to leave their job in the current economic climate, sometimes you need to read the writing on the wall. I didn’t see a way to change the culture. I didn’t feel my work would be valuable. I was Sisyphus rolling the rock up the hill every day, only to start again the next day. It wasn’t a good fit for me, so I ultimately cut my losses and left.

It’s OK to not want to be Kate Bush (and keep running up that hill); to want to work somewhere that already (mostly) understands the value of UX and has higher UX maturity. It’s nice to do the right work without constantly having to advocate to do the work right. But when you do need to find creative ways to do research, which will always happen no matter the UX maturity of a company (hello time, budget, and resource constraints), I hope these tips help.

Related reading