In our Season 3 finale, Erin and Carol are joined by Caroline Morchio, Head of UX at Dashlane, a credential management platform. Their conversation explores UX research best practices at a security-minded organization like Dashlane, highlighting other what teams can bring to their own work.

Caroline shares the ways she structures the UX team to support the product landscape at Dashlane, their processes for empowering colleagues to contribute to research, and why she prefers a "decentralized" model. The conversation also unpacks the core skills that Caroline emphasizes no matter the company: storytelling, actionable insights, and templates. Together, these help her team maintain rigor while scaling to meet new user experiences opportunities.

Finally, Caroline discusses how to balance the security and usability when conducting UX research, and forecasts what the future of data privacy and security might have in store, like passwordless authentication.
 
Episode Highlights

• 04:27 Implementing research in stages
• 07:22 The strategic impact of UX on a business
• 11:23 Focusing on ICP segmentation and user sophistication
• 18:06 The importance of privacy and data security
• 23:01 Decentralizing research processes
• 30:17 The importance of research in complex technology

About Our Guest
Caroline is a Design leader with experience in innovative companies transforming their industries. She has led design teams through all phases of product development and fostered a culture of open collaboration and feedback. Caroline was previously VP of Design at Handshake, Neuralink, and is now an AWS Design ambassador and Head of UX at Dashlane.

More Resources on Security in UXR

• A Researcher's Guide to Data Privacy Regulations
• NDAs and Consent Forms for UX Research
• Examining Ethical Design and Respectful UX

Erin and Carol are joined by Jo Widawski, founder and CEO of Maze, to discuss the major findings from their "Future of User Research" report, which unearthed three trends animating researchers, PMs, and founders alike: 1) the demand for research is growing, 2) research democratization empowers stronger decision making, and 3) new technology—like generative AI—allows teams to scale their research.

Erin, Carol, and Jo unpack each of these trends, flagging what they mean for both the work of researchers and the value of research more broadly. For example, these trends signal a rise in importance of the research generalist, the critical value of stakeholder influence, and the skills tomorrow's successful researcher must build today. Together, these trends and skills help create a roadmap for how researcher's can grow from a tactical resource to a strategic partner.

Episode Highlights

• 03:57 The nature of research in organizations
• 11:01 Transitioning researcher roles: from operational to educational
• 18:01 The importance of democratization in design
• 22:43 Overcoming resistance to research in design
• 30:25 AI's impact on user research trust
• 37:59 Understanding competitive landscape in building products

About Our Guest
Jo Widawksi is the Founder and CEO at Maze. He’s a veteran Product Designer & former UX teacher. As a UX lead working with clients like McKinsey, Rocket Internet & PSG, he saw first-hand how hard it is for product teams to get the data, insights, and feedback they need to make confident design decisions. Now he’s co-founded Maze, the continuous product discovery platform for user-centric teams.

More Resources

• Read the 2024 State of User Research Report (from UI)
• Read the Future of User Research Report (from Maze)
• Learn how to create stronger stakeholder relationships

Carol and Erin welcome George Whitfield, an expert in applying AI to the analysis of qualitative data. George discusses the intricate challenges of leveraging language models to interpret expansive open-ended data (like interview transcripts), emphasizing the importance of context and not just keyword or topic identification.

They'll dig into the crucial role of human oversight in AI, what preliminary analysis might look like using AI, how to check and refine the work of an AI assistant without derailing your project delivery date, and recommendations for etiquette regarding the reporting of AI-informed results.

The episode closes with an exploration of the limits of AI and where user experience researchers can play a larger role in its development. George believes AI can (and should) inspire new directions of research, but not dictate them.

Episode Highlights

• 03:48 - Innovating consumer insights using AI
• 12:21 - Importance of human involvement in AI tools
• 20:04 - Enhance discussion sections with  AI tools
• 26:50 - AI-inspired insights provide inspiration, not guidance
• 34:12 - Interpretation beyond analyzing transcripts
• 36:46 - Applying engineering rigor to the process of building a business

About Our Guest
George Whitfield is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and CEO at FindOurView. As CEO of his most recent company FindOurView, he launched a Gen AI product to help user researchers synthesize insights faster from high volumes of customer interviews. George holds 4 patents and has 3 degrees from MIT including a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a Masters and Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering.

Resources on Qual Data and AI

• Our AI in UX Report shares findings from a survey of over 1,000 researchers
• What does it mean to "code" qualitative data? This breakdown explains it all.
• Interested in trying an AI tool for your analysis? Here are 20 worth considering.

User research and anthropology have more in common that you may realize. Both involve studying the way people interact with their surroundings and make critical decisions, though anthropologists focus on the cultures and societies that shape behavior. This week on Awkward Silences, Erin and JH chatted with Vanessa Whatley—a Senior UX Researcher at Google—about what researchers can learn from anthropology.

Vanessa talked about…

• How anthropology can teach user researchers to look more closely at the context of participants’ decisions and behaviors
• The benefits of a diverse research team,
• And how she puts insights into perspective for stakeholders.

Highlights

• [4:58] Anthropology is about looking at the differences we may not notice in our own familiar environments, which is also an important mindset for researchers to adopt.
• [7:14] It's easier to see bias with lots of practice and by starting in your analysis. It's something that you grow in as you grow in experience and exposure to other researchers.
• [10:28] Vanessa illustrates how race and experience may color how different researchers think about a situation.
• [19:13] Having a team of diverse researchers that reflects the population you're studying is incredibly important because we're all human and can miss important context or cues.
• [26:07] How Vanessa puts things in context with contextual inquiries and video clips.
• [32:15] Everything is by design, so when something bad happens, we need to look to the systems to see why.

About our Guest

Vanessa Whatley is the UX Director - Research & Documentation at Twilio (previously at Google). Her background in Anthropology has inspired her to think about ways in which companies can prioritize user/customer needs when building products and executing business strategy. She seeks to promote humanistic/people based solutions to the challenges that institutions and individuals face. 

People are 22% more likely to remember something when it’s presented as a story, rather than a cut and dry fact. So if you’re struggling to get stakeholders to care about and utilize your research, storytelling can be the key to getting research to stick. 

This week on the podcast, Erin and JH chatted with Harrison Wheeler, UX Design Manager at LinkedIn and host of Technically Speaking, about the power of storytelling. Harrison talked about how getting everyone on board with storytelling can make the facts of research stick around for longer, learning if your research presentations are engaging, and reminding everyone that it’s all about the users. 

Highlights

• [4:13] Ideally, research is the base for everything. Your whole team starts with research and learns to use it to tell compelling stories about the product.
• [8:17] Understanding your audience, their expertise, and how they like to consume data is incredibly important to telling a story that sticks.
• [13:47] Telling your user story by using quotes is really impactful at the beginning of a project.
• [19:07] Practicing telling fact-based stories about research helps you reflect on how well you know the information.
• [23:23] Knowing what kinds of media resonates well with your key stakeholders can help you tell a better story on their terms. 

About our Guest

Harrison Wheeler is the Director of Product Design at LinkedIn and the host of the podcast Technically Speaking. He’s passionate about UX, design, and empowering everyone to tell great stories. 

AI is becoming a part of everything we do. With voice-activated smart homes, ad targeting algorithms, and increasingly smart cars, AI is more and more a part of the fabric of daily life. But how do we make sure AI is built in a way that is user-friendly, unbiased, and ethically sound? 

That's where user research comes in. 

Erin and JH chatted with Hana Nagel, a Service Designer at Element AI, about how she researches for AI, why inputs are just as important as outputs, and the ethics around improving AI through your data. 

Highlights

• [2:53] Establishing the ethics around AI is a collaboration between private enterprise, governmental organizations, and the civic sector.
• [4:53] The difficult part of researching for AI is assessing how people may feel about something they've never interacted with before.
• [9:25] A big challenge for theAI industry as a whole is how comfortable are we with giving up our data in exchange for optimization?
• [14:42] How the system as a whole is responsible for AI outputs, not just the individuals who work on the AI.
• [24:59] It is incredibly important to identify our own biases when building AI systems. This involves a lot of self-reflection to root out biases you may not know you have.
• [32:42] In Hana's dream world, the work of creating and researching AI would be more widely shared among people with different expertise to create something more reflective of many perspectives. 

Mentioned in the episode

Moral Crumple Zones: Cautionary Tales in Human-Robot Interaction by Madeline Claire Eilish

It's time to take the next step in your research career, but is management right for you?

Erin & JH chatted with Amber Davis, UXR Director at Audible, about her journey as a research manager, how to evaluate what you really want from your career, and who to talk to when you're ready to level up.

Highlights

• [5:03] Even if you think you don't have management experience to look back on, research is full of management and leadership.
• [8:17] Being a manager gives you many more opportunities to contribute at the strategic level. 
• [12:00] Straying too far from day-to-day operations can make being a manager really tough, especially when you're managing researchers.
• [20:12] As a manager, being a coach is more important than telling people what to do.
• [23:12] You have to really connect with your direct reports and learn how to show up for them. Amber takes 10 minutes before every 1:1 to ensure she's grounded and there for that meeting.
• [34:21] Even though it's important to build good connections with your direct reports, make sure you keep enough distance socially so you can stay professional.

Looking to add a new research method to your stack? Diary studies are a great way to get to know what your users are thinking in context, plus they can be run remotely! We chatted with Tony Turner, Lead UX Researcher at Progressive Insurance, about how his team uses diary studies to build out better customer experiences. 

He offered some tips on scaling up diary studies, which tools he uses to get the job done, and how he uses the data he gathers from diary studies to build out customer journey maps. 

Highlights

• [4:03] Diary studies are all about context.
• [9:08] Tony talks about how he combines self reported data from diary studies with in-app analytics.
• [10:27] Using a mixture of open ended questions and closed ones is incredibly important to getting the most useful feedback.
• [12:32] Recruiting early is key in a dairy study because it gives you time to find the best participants for your work.
• [14:54] It's ok if every participant doesn't answer every prompt, as long as you're getting the moments that matter.
• [19:37] If diary studies seem intimidating, start small with just a few participants. You can hone your skills and get lots of great insights.
• [21:44] After each diary study, Tony and his team make individual journey maps for each participant that help them understand how different people experience the process.
• [28:05] User research is all about helping people share their stories and experiences. 

Resources Mentioned in the Episode

• Expiwell - Diary study tool
• Adobe XD - Customer journey mapping tool

About our Guest

Tony Turner is a Senior Product Designer at Paramount (formerly Meta). At the time of our interview he was Lead UX Researcher at Progressive Insurance where he led all kinds of user research, like usability testing, contextual inquiries, card sorts, tree studies, first click studies, surveys and interviews. He's interested in HCI and studied Cognitive Science during undergrad.

This week on the podcast, Erin and JH chatted with Randy Duke, Senior Research & Design Strategist at Cantina. They covered a topic that's on many people's minds right now, systemic racism and inequality, and how UX research can have a positive (or negative) impact on these systems. Randy talked with us about UXR's role in all this, how we can work to change the systems we work in, and how we can create more inclusive research.

Highlights

• [4:58] A good place to start thinking about how to address inequality is to reflect on the system we work in.
• [6:03] People in UXR help to bring truth to the organization through research, which puts them in a good position to do it in a greater context.
• [8:46] Now is the time to really dig into the messiness that comes with the details of user research.
• [10:22] You need to be actively seeking out feedback and information from all of your users and thinking about their unique situations. If you don't, you're opening yourself up for failure.
• [12:49] We spend a lot of time asking if we can build something, rather than should we built it.
• [14:57] Don't look at where you can go wrong when solving a new problem, look at what you can do to get it right. That means including people of diverse backgrounds from the start.
• [18:25] To make more inclusive panels when you recruit, think about the demographics that are actually important to your study. If you're recruiting for a test of a new keyboard on a mobile phone, does the person's income or location really matter?
• [26:35] Inclusivity is not only the right thing to do morally, it's also the law.
• [28:25] Randy talks about the difference between how think something will be used vs. how it is actually used and the importance of checking in.
• [31:35] It's also important to think about how features and products could be abused.
• [35:08] At the end of the day, systems work because we allow them to work. Taking the time to stand up and say things should be different is the only way to create change. 

Additional Reading

Randy recommended a few books for those interested in learning more about UXR, design, racial inequality, and inclusion. 

• Design Justice by Sasha Costanza-Chock 
• Cross Cultural Design by Senongo Akpem
• Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design by Kat Holmes

We've been more and more curious about how user research can be used by more than just researchers. This week, Erin and JH chatted with Jon MacDonald, founder of The Good, about how marketers can use research to improve conversion rates.

He talked about what conversion rate optimization really is, how to get stakeholders to see the value of research work, and why the key to conversion success is really just giving users what they came to your site for in the first place.

Highlights

• [1:43] Everyone expects Jon to have great stories about one quick thing that 20x'ed conversion rates, but unfortunately the truth is that his work is a lot of research and testing to make meaningful changes. 
• [7:05] The trick to better conversion rates is giving the customers what they came to your site for in the first place.
• [9:33] Why onsite surveys may be hurting your customer experience, instead of getting you valuable qualitative data.
• [12:21] How Jon changed a real stakeholder's mind with feedback and business impact.
• [13:51] Jon suggests starting with quantitative data to identify the right areas to test, then following up with qualitative to learn what's wrong.
• [15:37] How Jon worked with baseball bat maker Easton to improve their buying process and doubled their conversion rates.
• [21:14] Why recruiting is one of the most important factors of research. 
• [27:18] The gang talks about A/B testing, including the tools they use.
• [35:11] How Jon cuts through the noise created by lots of different data sources.
• [38:58] Following up on your work at a regular cadence is a huge part of success.

When Andrew joined Adobe back in November, he faced an interesting design challenge. How do you manage a vast library of help content, spanning tons of different products in different industries, so that users can easily find what they need to know to fix their problems? Andrew has learned a lot about leveraging the power of community to problem solve, experimenting with different formats to make technical explanations more accessible, and proving the value of great help content. 

Erin and JH chatted with him about how he positions help content to stakeholders, tackles creating content for products that have evolved from box software to the cloud, and uses research to focus on the right things at the right time. 

Highlights

• [1:43] Great product doesn't need as much help content, but people will always need help, and the more powerful your product is, the more help they will need.
• [8:53] By connecting customers with the right information through communities, they're 3x less likely to reach out to support for help.
• [10:59] Early engagement = better retention, so Adobe segments out its customers to focus on what gets them started.
• [13:35] Adobe has segments and chapters to keep everyone on the same page and communicating well.
• [25:20] People who get value from help content actually end up having a higher lifetime value. It's all about trust and mutual respect.
• [27:41] How Adobe creates help content for different languages and cultures.
• [32:09] How Andrew is thinking about simplifying solutions, and making help content work smarter, not harder
• [37:58] Help content and product can work together to create even better solutions for users.
• [39:32] Quantitative information can tell you what some of the issues are, while qualitative can help your team dig deeper into why they're there
• [43:03] Building out recommendations for other things you may be looking for helps your help content build a story for the user. 

Jonathon Hensley spends a lot of time creating strategies for businesses. So Erin and JH chatted with him about what's changed since COVID-19 and why alignment matters more than ever right now.  

The takeaway? Everyone needs to be aligned around a common goal. They also need to understand how every project supports that larger goal. In a world that's moving faster than ever, user research is a pivotal part of making sure each effort is serving that goal well.

Highlights

• [7:06] The key to individual alignment is clarity on your goals and purpose, and providing people with the ability to fulfill those things.
• [10:46] Coming into research with bias or trying to validate an idea you already have can be a sign of misalignment
• [16:46] Right now, people want something concrete. While making a plan can feel good now, having a strategy and goals you're clearly aligned around is the key to long term, agile success.
• [25:13] Strategy is equating things to value and sharing values across your organization
• [30:47] The strategy, not the plan, will keep everyone working towards the same goals
• [37:52] If you can't afford to fail, research is one of the things that will ensure you don't.

There's a lot of data out there. Keeping track of Google Analytics, NPS scores, site metrics, usability test results, industry data, and everything else can be downright overwhelming. Which is why Hannah Shamji, Head of Research at Copyhackers, likes to say she's doing data-informed work, not data-driven work.

For Hannah, her team, and her clients, working with tons of data can be overwhelming. Since you can usually find at least one graph to support a research point, it's important to put data in context. Hannah outlined how she gets in the zone with large amounts of data, puts things in context while doing her best to stay unbiased, and frames data around her research questions.

Highlights

[2:12] The difference between being data-informed and data-driven.

[6:21] Why it's important to put data in context and pull from many different sources.

[9:25] How Hannah approaches data through the lens of her research question.

[16:40] How Hannah tries to build data narratives that tell both sides of the story.

[23:21] Digging deep into data is a little bit like meditating.

[27:07] Hannah, Erin, and JH chat about data and COVID-19. (This episode was recorded on April 24, 2020.)

About our Guest

Hannah Shamji is a Consumer Psychologist, formerly the Head of Research & Insights at Copyhackers. There, she helped clients create great, data-informed, copy and marketing strategies. She blends qualitative and quantitative research to tell client stories.

In this episode Carol and Erin are joined by Ruby Pryor, founder of Rex, a consulting firm specializing in UX research and strategic design.

They explore the world of measuring the impact of UX research. with Pryor introducing a four-level impact assessment framework. Ruby shares a four-level assessment framework and the conversation moves to prioritization, making "strategic" decisions, and increasing your research influence.

This episode also gets into what it means to demonstrate the "business value" of one's work, specifically how researchers can and should quantify their impact in terms that are tangible to the company. Ruby will share ways to score early wins, build momentum, and overcome communication frictions to find shared value.

Episode Highlights

• 03:14 - UX researcher impact: insights, optimization, prioritization, strategy
• 09:14 - Understanding organizational structures and strategy development collaboration
• 20:22 - Challenge of quantifying impact and strategic level
• 21:33 - Measuring strategy impact: challenges and indicators
• 30:04 - Prioritizing investments based on strong market indicators
• 38:51 - Stakeholders prioritize growth, revenue, and cost reduction

About Our Guest
Ruby Pryor is the founder of Rex, a service design and UX research consulting firm. Her previous roles include UX research at Grab, strategic design at Boston Consulting Group and management consulting at Nous Group. She has taught courses on increasing the impact of UX to learners from 5 continents and has spoken about design and UX at conferences in Asia and Europe.

Resources on UX Research Impact

• How to Track the Impact of Your UX Research
• Leading an Impactful User Research Team
• Use Stakeholder Interviews to Drive Impact

UX benchmarking may seem like a lot of work, but Kate Moran is here to show you how to do it effectively. She's VP of Research & Content at Neilsen Norman Group and leads UX teams to better benchmarking, teaches newbies how to get started, and explains this complicated subject with clarity. She joined Erin and JH on our very first live episode to explain how UX benchmarking can help teams show the ROI of their work. 

She walked through how benchmarking can help get stakeholders on board, how to choose the right metrics early on, and most importantly, how to translate that to real ROI. 

Our very first live podcast was a great learning experience and a ton of fun! We really enjoyed the interactive aspect, and our audience asked a lot of thoughtful questions. 

Highlights

• [2:01] Kate explains what UX benchmarking is
• [3:37] How to choose benchmarking metrics
• [12:01] The difference between summative and formative studies, and why you need to distinguish between them.
• [17:21] Why context matters when evaluating benchmarking metrics
• [21:28] How to translate benchmarking results to ROI
• [29:11] Kate talks about case studies from NNg's ROI for Usability report
• [35:34] Q&A - How do you limit bias in unmoderated studies with non-users and users?
• [38:16] Q&A - How do you measure time spent on a task? Stopwatches aren't great.
• [39:59] Q&A - How do session replay tools fit into this?
• [41:10] Q&A - What happens when your stakeholders have different metrics for success?
• [44:57] Q&A - If a participant thinks they completed a task successfully, is that a success?
• [46:42] Q&A - How do you benchmark for emotional aspects, like how fun a product is?
• [49:07] Parting words of wisdom

Kate's recommended resources 

• NN/g full-day seminar: Measuring UX & ROI
• NN/g articles about benchmarking, ROI, and quantitative research
• Jeff Sauro’s articles about quantitative UX research (he also has very useful confidence interval and statistical significance calculators): measuringu.com 
• Jeff Sauro’s book about benchmarking: Benchmarking the User Experience
• Two great books for getting started with statistics: Straightforward Statistics and The Cartoon Guide to Statistics

Sales demos are a great opportunity to get to know your customers. The person on the other end is interested in your product, looking for a solution to a problem, and likely have some pain points with their current solutions.

That's why Jane Portman, co-founder of Userlist, uses demos as an opportunity to connect with potential customers, keep pain points top of mind, and learn how to make her product even better.  She chatted with Erin and JH about why she's doing customer research and sales demos at the same time, how constantly talking to customers helps her develop a better product, and how she came up with the podcast name UI Breakfast. 

Highlights

• [2:16] During the MVP phase, all new customers had to go through sales demos to start using Userlist. 
• [4:24] Making early customers go through demos ensured that Userlist's customers were all well informed about the capabilities and what to expect from the product.
• [5:49] How do you combine meaningful research with sales demos?
• [8:35] Because Jane and her team are talking to people all the time, they're learning as things change.
• [11:57] The specific questions Jane asks in her demo calls.
• [14:40] If something is coming up in calls all the time, you can't forget about it. Since Jane and her co-founder are always hearing about pain points, they can focus on building solutions before logging insights.
• [20:43] Asking your most active customers for feedback as you go is helpful for product teams who like to stay in touch with customers. 
• [24:03] How do you stay objective when doing research in a demo?

About our Guest

Jane Portman is the CEO & co-founder of Userlist and the host of the UI Breakfast podcast. She's passionate about helping founders connect with their customers and learning more about their stories. 

Recommended Reading

• User Onboarding: The Ultimate Guide for SaaS Founders
• How to Design and Conduct a Customer Interview

We’ve heard from a lot of designers and user researchers on the show, but we’re always looking for fresh perspectives on how research can help your business. So this week, Erin and JH chatted with Aazar Shad, Head of Growth at Userpilot, about how research methods are essential to his growth strategy.

Aazar started using research methods to find our who his users were, but continued using them to grow Userpilot’s business. He talked about how secondary research helped him find the best ways to connect with his target audience, continuous interviews help him identify where to go next, and how he honed his research skills over time. 

Highlights

• [3:44] User research is essential to acquisition 
• [5:13] Aazar found that his usual toolkit wouldn’t sway the product managers he was targeting, so he’d need to meet them where they were: Google Search
• [13:03] Asking users how they would describe Userpilot to other people helped to better understand what they might search.
• [13:38] Setting notifications for keywords to conversations he may want to jump in on in Slack helped Aazar be in the right place at the right time.
• [22:39] Aazar found that asking less questions, but digging deeper during his user interviews helped him learn more about his users.
• [29:56] Asking other people to review the feedback you get from research helps to identify trends with less bias.

Related links 

• How to use Slack for social media marketing & user acquisition
• SEO strategies for leads
• Conferences as a growth channel

About our guest

Aazar Shad is a growth marketing leader and founder of The Performers, a paid social mastermind group (at the time of our interview, he was Head of Growth at Userpilot). He is the host of the podcast Growth Marketing Stories

With so many research tools on the market, it can be hard to nail down exactly which ones are right for your team. This week on the pod, Erin and JH chatted with Daniel Loewus-Deitch and Leo Smith, who are the Directors of User Experience and Research, respectively, at a large insurance company. They wanted to learn more about how Daniel and Leo choose the tools with the best ROI for their team.

Daniel and Leo have spent a lot of time building out their tool stack. Since they have a lot of experience working for large organizations with many people conducting research and even more consuming it, it was important to them to get it right. In this episode, they talked about how they evaluate the ROI of tools, the summit they assembled to identify the tools their team could and would use, and how important it is to leave your assumptions at the door when tool-hunting.

Highlights

• [10:15] Leo used to spend 20-30 hours just on recruiting.
• [12:53] Sometimes the simplest tool is the most effective.
• [14:23] It's important to consider how accessible the tools you're using are to everyone on your team. Even if you choose the best tools, your team won't use them if it's not easy to do so.
• [16:23] How the team defined their user-centered design process, mapped tools to the right parts of it, and moved forward from there.
• [20:43] Why Leo and Daniel's team prefer a customized toolset over an all-in-one solution.
• [24:07] Applying the thinking behind design systems to a larger ecosystem is helping the team build a better toolkit.
• [33:56] The shiny new tools everyone is eager to try.
• [38:58] Usability test the tools your team will be using.
• [42:09] Going for an all in one tool is like going to the Cheesecake Factory, lots of choices, all pretty mediocre. Choosing a few specialized tools is like going to a farmer's market, less choice from each vendor, but better results.

Tools mentioned in the episode

• Loom is great for recording your screen and sharing it with your team. It can also be used for usability testing. 
• Dovetail is a research repository tool that makes it easy to organize and analyze your insights.  
• Lookback is a great tool for conducting usability tests and taking notes live. 
• Descript is a video, audio, and text editor. We’ve recently switched to it for editing the podcast, and I am absolutely in love. It does really good automatic transcription and makes pulling clips incredibly easy. 
• Rev is a transcription tool that provides really accurate, done-by-a-human transcription. 
• Zapier is a workflow automation tool that helps us make connections between apps that don’t naturally talk to each other. 
• Userbit is a research repository tool that makes it easy to code your analysis into deliverables. ‍
• Dedoose is a research repository tool that makes the academic process of analyzing research more collaborative. 

About our guests

Daniel Loewus-Deitch is the Assistant VP, User Experience at Unum. He has over 20 years of experience in UX, and has worked at companies like IBM and Microsoft. Daniel is interested in holistic wellness and technological harmony. 💻🎵.

Leo Smith is the Director of UX Research at SS&C Technologies. He has over 20 years of experience in UXR, and has worked for companies of all shapes and sizes in roles ranging from research to design. Leo is also a certified Hatha Yoga Instructor 🧘.

After three failed MVPs, Jonathan Anderson and the team at Candu realized they needed a better strategy for understanding how users interact with their product. So they started doing some user interviews. And they kept doing them. Every day for a year before launching their product. Jonathan chatted with Erin and JH about what he learned from those interviews, how it changed the direction of his company, and how he went from a total newbie to a research pro.

Highlights

• [5:36] Doing one interview a day every day keeps the Candu team curious about what the users have to say, rather than hearing the same things all in one day.
• [8:29] Jonathan and his team always ask users what they would expect the prototype to do.
• [11:34] How do you know when you've done enough interviews?
• [13:31] Creating low-fidelity designs to use, even if it's just drawing within Zoom, is incredibly helpful to Candu's design team.
• [15:51] After their third failed MVP, Jonathan and his team decided they need to make research a priority to build something truly great.
• [16:41] Candu built out a panel of trusted partners who gave great feedback and wanted to be a part of building something new. They supplemented this with new people to get great perspectives regularly.
• [21:55] When Jonathan started, he really didn't know how to do a user interview. Learning to step back from his excitement and be objective was important in evaluating feedback.
• [23:53] Jonathan shares his secret to identifying good research participants
• [26:12] Asking people about their process and how they currently solve thier problem can be illuminating, both for your process and finding the right people to interview.
• [29:02] Research shifted Candu's entire outlook as a company

This week on the pod, Erin and JH talk to Cat Noone, CEO of Stark, a suite of tools designed to help teams ship accessible work. They chatted about how accessibility is constantly evolving, what teams can do to get started, and inclusive design.

Highlights

• [1:50] Accessibility is continually changing and evolving, so it's important to think of it that way.
• [3:01] Accessibility is a side effect of inclusive design.
• [12:59] Identify other people in your organization that may be able to work with you on accessibility and create a bridge between teams.
• [15:08] Accessibility helps everyone, and framing it that way can help teams to understand its importance.
• [23:09] Ethics change team culture, exposure changes executive's minds, profit and customer loss changes action. 
• [31:11] If you can, speak up about having the tools to do your job well.

This week on Awkward Silences, Erin and JH chatted with Joel Klettke, who has 6+ years of experience writing killer conversion copy for clients like Hubspot, Scott's Cheap Flights, and WP Engine. His first piece of advice? 

All the best copy [is] words you've stolen from the customers themselves.

He also stressed the importance of meeting your customers where they are, involving copy from the start of any new project, and structuring your user research so it's easy to pull out the best insights. He walked us through how he used research to make changes at Hubspot that resulted in a 35% increase in demo requests and a 27% increase in inbound call volume. He also outlined how he used chatbot data to help an online divorce startup net an extra 165k in revenue by answering questions their users needed answers to.

Highlights

• [2:09] The best copy comes straight from the mouths of customers
• [3:46] You can't sell to an audience you don't understand.
• [6:02] Structuring your research is important, so you can better identify good copy when you see it.
• [6:24] Joel wants to hear about people's experience. Here's the specific questions he asks to learn about them.
• [8:31] Taking copy straight from customers mouths is more compelling and specific. It makes you stand out from what your competitors are saying.
• [10:07] Joel uses text analyzer to identify recurring phrases from his research.
• [10:52] Companies default to their own internal language, but you have to speak to customers in a language they understand
• [13:00] How Joel used this process at HubSpot to make meaningful copy changes that resulted in a 35% increase in demo requests and a 27% increase in inbound call volume.
• [16:28] Joel works on anchoring new ideas for copy in known concepts to make it easier to digest.
• [18:16] Get specific, but not so specific your audience can't relate
• [21:44] Copy is more agile than design. It takes just a few minutes to change, so the best test is to actually deploy it to market.
• [26:35] Copy can help establish the order of operations for users, and work with design from the start to create something better than adding on copy later.
• [34:32] How Joel approaches copy for startups that don't have any data or customers yet.
• [35:51] How Joel uses insights from churned customers to write better copy and understand where promises weren't kept.
• [37:02] Ask your sales team "what question do you wish you never got asked again?" to identify gaps in your copy.
• [37:34] How Joel used chat bot data to help an online divorce startup net an extra 165k in revenue by answering questions their users needed answers to.
• [45:22] Every job Joel's had since university was something he didn't know existed until he started doing it.

One of the key tenets of the Lean Startup approach is ensuring you have product-market fit. To find it, you'll need to talk to potential users, and get them to confirm your product is something they really need, and are willing to pay for. Loic Alix-Brown started doing user interviews to learn if he had product-market fit for his Instagram hashtag startup Flick. But he didn't stop doing research after the MVP, it became an integral part of the way he's built his business. 

This week on Awkward Silences, Erin and JH chatted with Loic about how he built his MVP, how his research strategy has changed as his business has grown, how he used research to find the right pricing structure for his customers, and how he's maintained a regular research cadence amidst the chaos of launching a startup. 

Highlights

[5:27] How do you decide what's viable enough for a minimum viable product?

[7:20] What happens after the MVP?

[8:28] How to find users to talk to for generative research.
[11:17] Interview users who are less active, or even ones who have cancelled, for a better overall picture.

[12:42] Loic talks about why qualitative interviews are more helpful at very early stages than quantitive testing.

[15:58] How Loic restructured his pricing to make more sense for his users.

[19:46] How Loic learned about who was using his product most often. 

[25:25] Adding a survey to your cancellation flow can help you learn why users leave.

[27:26] Keeping a regular cadence of user research helps the Flick team stay on top of user needs.

[28:36] Solve one problem at a time, and build up that way.

About our Guest

Loic Alix-Brown is the Co-Founder of Flick, a SaaS solution to help entrepreneurs, content creators and small businesses find the best hashtags to reach their target audience on Instagram.

This week on the pod, Erin and JH chatted with Luke Fraser, Founder & CEO of Stepwise Innovation (formerly Paper Ventures). They work with insurance innovation and product development teams to get products to market faster. Before starting Stepwise Innovation, Luke worked at IDEO's Design Lab and Liberty Mutual Insurance as a Product Manager.

All in all, he's spent a lot of time working with teams at large enterprise companies, with lots of red tape around user research. He chatted with Erin and JH about how he democratizes research in risk adverse environments, works with legal teams instead of against them, and even how he got teammates from legal to start attending daily standups.

Highlights

[4:16] Luke talks about working on research in 100 year old financial organizations

[6:56] Bringing legal and HR teams along for the ride

[8:01] How to get legal to be a part of your daily standups

[15:23] Getting everyone on the team to understand research findings

[16:44] Research is going to happen, how to pitch it as a less expensive and time consuming option

[20:02] Why participants really participate in research

[22:20] How to work with other teams to do even better research

[25:02] Making the tradeoffs clear when pitching research

[28:45] Luke ❤️s recruitment

Vivianne Castillo’s career has always been human-centered. She started off as a counselor, helping people navigate through complex issues, but eventually found her way to UX research, helping companies better understand their users. 

Though she loves user research, she’s found it frustrating that it doesn’t adopt the same standards of care for its practitioners that counseling and other human service work does. Since researchers deal with the messy task of human emotion, all those sessions can take a toll on them. Things like compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma occur often, but without a name for what they’re feeling or the tools to do something about it, researchers are left feeling burned out and unsuccessful. Erin and JH chatted with Vivianne about how researchers can take better care of themselves and how they can empower their teams support each other psychologically.

Resources

Vivanne Castillo’s “Self-Care for UX”

About our guest

Vivianne Castillo (she/her) is the Founder and CEO of HmntyCntrd, an award-winning professional growth community supporting UX and Tech professionals in transforming the status quo of what it means to be human-centered in their professional and personal lives through courses, community, and consulting. 

In this episode of Awkward Silences, Carol and Erin dive into the world of conference networking and planning with Bryan Dosono, a staff UX research lead at eBay known for his extensive experience curating and organizing conference programs.

Bryan share insights on how to prepare for conferences such as using apps to schedule meetings and emphasizing networking over solely focusing on content. He also discusses strategic scheduling to align conference participation with career goals and offers advice on making spontaneous, serendipitous connections.

The conversation also covers practical tips for adding value during small talk, how to approach and connect with other researchers, and the importance of being open, vulnerable, and willing to face rejection in the pursuit of meaningful interactions. Bryan provides guidance for both newcomers to the UXR field and seasoned professionals: overcoming imposter syndrome and leveraging transferable skills from related fields.

Episode Highlights

• 03:58 - Navigating the Unpredictable: Strategies for Introverts at Networking Events.
• 08:24 - Strategic Networking: Maximizing Opportunities Before and During Conferences.
• 12:33 - Networking strategies for academic and professional growth.
• 22:36 - Balancing Attendance: Prioritizing Conferences with Active Roles.
• 28:03 - Maximizing Remote Networking: Strategies for Engagement in Virtual Conferences.
• 33:07 - Conference Insights: Making the Most of Your Experience through Pre-Planning.

About Our Guest
Bryan Dosono, PhD, is a user experience research leader in the consumer technology space. He applies human-computer interaction research methods with visual storytelling to modernize the design of global marketplaces and online communities. He currently volunteers as a Conference Chair at UXPA International and serves on the User Interviews Research Council.

Looking for a UX community? Here are 16 to join for networking and development.

This week on the pod, we chatted with Elyse Bogacz, who has worked on product on Drift, Runkeeper, and now NDVR. She walked us through how she uses session replay tools like FullStory to supercharge her user research. She talked about how she shares replays with developers and stakeholders, how she deals with privacy issues, and how other teams can use session replay tools to add to their user research programs.

Highlights

• [1:11] Tools like FullStory hand Hotjar have helped Elyse learn important things about users at early stage startups
• [4:43] You only get a limited number of time to speak with each user, use it wisely
• [6:20] How Elyse uses session reply to decide who to reach out to for user research
• [9:35] Actually seeing users struggle in session replay helps stakeholders build empathy
• [16:40] There's no replacement for a one on one chat with a user, but replays can be a good icebreaker
• [19:46] How privacy and GDPR plays into all this
• [25:21] Session replay is not screen recording
• [28:59] How Elyse keeps track of all the insights that surfaces
• [31:33] How to cope with backlog

Erin and JH chat with Michele Ronsen, founder of Curiosity Tank and General Assembly instructor. Michele talks to a lot of different people about user research, and she's found there are some situations where user research is (😱) not the best move forward. In fact, there are 7. Michele walked us through each one, and what teams should do instead. 

About our guest

Michele Ronsen is a UX and design researcher, founder of Curiosity Tank (formerly Ronsen Consulting) and an instructor at General Assembly. She loves digging deep into research, being people’s research buddy, and introducing teams to the power of research. 

If you’ve ever presented research to a crowd of glazed over eyes, or sent around a detailed report only to hear back crickets, this episode is for you. After reading Caitria O’Neill’s article UX Research is Boring and No One Reads It, we knew we had to chat with her. 

Caitria has made sure research is heard, absorbed, and utilized in companies like Airbnb and Facebook before moving on to her current role as a Staff UX Researcher at Google. She shared tips on how to make research reports fun, storing insights so they’re used more often, and how she makes the whole process easier for herself and her team. 

There are many ways to become a UX Researcher. To learn more about the winding career paths many researchers take, Erin and JH talked to Jud Vaughan, Khalida Nicole Sebree, and Christianne Elliott, who are all UX Researchers at Mailchimp. 

Though they all hold the same job at the same company, they took very different paths to get there. Jud started at a Support Technician at Mailchimp and worked his way over to the Research department. Khalida wanted to go into medicine and studied Psychology in college. Then she got into the startup scene and began doing freelance design and research and eventually found herself at Mailchimp. Christianne also studied Psychology and wanted to go into medicine, but fell in love with academic research and moved into that after school. She wanted a new challenge and found her way to UX Research at Mailchimp. 

Researching with your own users means you have to make some special considerations. When was the last time they used your product? Where are they in the funnel? When was the last time they participated in a research session with you? 

We chatted with Chad Aldous, Head of Design and Co-founder of Rentable (formerly Abodo), an apartment listing company, about how he and his team handle research with their own users. He chatted with Erin and JH about doing continuous and one-off research projects, how he chooses the right users to talk to, and how he creates great research invites that get results. 

This is the third episode in our three part series on cross-cultural research. In this episode, Erin and JH chat with Chui Chui Tan, author of International User Research and Founder of Beyō Global. 

Chui Chui walked us through her "three tiers of culturalization", which can help international and cross-cultural researchers focus in on what they need to be researching. She also talked about how to prioritize different elements of your research based on the culture you're researching, the product you're working on, and how those two things interact with each other.

This is the second episode in our three part series on cross-cultural research. In this episode, Erin and JH chat with Leia Atkinson, Staff Researcher at Shopify. 

Leia chatted with Erin and JH about how her degree in Anthropology helps her learn more about international audiences through research. She shared her technique for recruiting participants through "snowballing", how she deals with culture shock, and how she maximizes her learning each time she takes a research trip abroad.  

This is the first episode in our three part series on cross-cultural research. In this episode, Erin and JH chat with Elsa Ho, a Senior UX Researcher at Uber who works on airports and events.

Elsa is no stranger to international and cross-cultural research though, she's spent most of her career helping companies and teams learn about international audiences. She walked through some of the meaningful cultural differences she's encountered over the years, how she works with translators to ensure she's getting the full message, and how she makes the most of each trip.

About our guest
Elsa is a mixed-methods and impact-driven research leader with 12 years of experience. She led strategic research for products, services, and businesses that serve millions of people around the globe. Currently a Staff Researcher at Doordash. Ex-Facebook, ex-Microsoft, ex-Uber (where she worked at the time of our interview).

We’ve talked a lot about how researchers do research, now it’s time to hear from the participants. We invited our Participant Marketing Lead, Brittany Rutherford, and had some recent participants leave voicemails about their experience.

We asked participants, "why do you participate in user research?" to help us understand how participants think about user research and how we can make their experience better.

Learn more about why people like being part of User Interviews.

How do you get everyone on board with research? Vicki Tollemache has found that building a branded research practice that's fun, engaging, and impactful is pretty effective. She started Grubhub's Parts Unknown research practice to involve everyone in researching emerging markets and exploring new ideas within their product. 

Erin and JH talked to Vicki about how she set up Parts Unknown, the effect its had on Grubhub, and her tips for establishing your own standing research day. 

The decision to leave academia can be difficult. Often, it involves giving up a stable career path and a lifetime commitment to a particular field of study. 

But as Joe Stubenrauch explains, the move also offers researchers the opportunity to pursue new career paths, improve work-life balance and geographic flexibility, and reinvent their lives.

And he should know: Formerly a professor of history, he walked away from tenure to join a big tech company as a UX Researcher at AWS. In this episode, Joe discusses his decision to walk transition to the private sector and shares thoughtful advice for others considering a similar move.

Highlights from the episode

• [04:06] Joe reflects on feeling burnt out, bored, and doubtful in academia 
• [11:23] What makes you happy? Joe weighs the pros and cons of things like mental health, geographic mobility, and proximity to family and friends.
• [19:41] Breaking into a new field, experimenting, and talking to people. 
• [34:47] The importance of having a portfolio that includes compelling stories 
• [41:35] Tactical advice for job seekers (resumes, LinkedIn profiles, job interview strategies, etc)
• [44:23] Working in a team environment as a former academic

About our guest

Joe Stubenrauch is a former professor of British history at Baylor University, and the author of a prize-winning book published by Oxford University Press. During the height of the pandemic, he walked away from tenure and joined a big tech company in order to redesign his life. Now as a UX Researcher at AWS, Joe has found unexpected similarities between his work as Victorianist and his work in the cloud. He also writes regularly about the transition from academia to industry and is obsessed with how people can reinvent their lives and careers.

You can follow Joe on LinkedIn.

Teresa Torres is a master of continuous interviewing. As a product discovery coach and founder of Product Talk, she works with teams of all shapes and sizes to help them build better stuff. Part of that is talking to customers all the time, and establishing a cadence that keeps customer needs top of mind.

In this episode, she talks to Erin and JH about what it takes to establish a continuous interview practice, shares some tips for doing better interviews, and encourages everyone to get out there and start talking to customers.

Highlights

• [3:31] What's continuous interviewing all about anyway?
• [11:52] Focus on the frequency of your interviews, not the number of interviews. 
• [14:56] Automate your recruiting process first
• [17:03] Make customer interviews a part of your weekly schedule, just like any internal meetings you might have.
• [22:21] Throw away the discussion guide
• [35:55] Map everything on an opportunity solution tree
• [37:07] Make your synthesis visual
• [42:00] It's all about the magic lightbulb moments

Resources

• Continuous Interviewing Course Teresa Torres
• Why does every product have to be agile these days? Jeff Gothelf
• Pencil Me In Christina Wodtke

Personas are polarizing, some love them, but many love to hate them. This week, Erin and JH talk to Andy Budd, co-founder of Clearleft about why the social mediaverse should stop freaking out about the evils of personas. They're a tool in the toolkit, and come with contextualized nuance all their own.

Read our blog post about it here: https://bit.ly/2KA7B5H

About our Guest

Andy Budd is the co-founder of Clearleft, an agency that helps design leader, founding member of the Adobe Design Circle, Venture Partner at Seedcamp, and executive coach. He writes down some of his thoughts about UX and design on his blog, and is a big fan of nuance.

Surveys are everywhere. They bombard us at every turn, and most of them aren't even helping teams learn what they need to know. We chatted with Erika Hall, co-founder of Mule Design and author of Just Enough Research about why most surveys suck and what we can do about it. Check out our blog post about this episode here 👉 https://bit.ly/2O5oDOg

About our guest

Erika Hall is the co-founder of Mule Design and the author of Just Enough Research. She loves design, getting to the bottom of things, and well-designed research.

This week on the pod, we talked to Alec Levin, founder of the The UXR Collective and Learners. He chatted with us about something he thinks UX research needs more of—failure.

He put it this way in the podcast, "If you’re batting 100% on all your points of view, you’re not trying hard enough. You’re working on stuff that’s too easy." 

Erin and JH spoke with with Alec about being open to new ideas, challenging yourself, and being transparent about your work. 

This week on the podcast, Erin and JH talk to Noam Segal who recently gave a talk at the UXR Strive conference in Toronto, and after hearing all the buzz we had to chat with him about it ourselves. He shared some lessons he's learned about research from his four year old daughter, including, keep your eye on the prize, find a method in the madness, tell it like it is, be a good host, and believe in magic.

About our guest

Noam Segal is a UX, business, and career coach and the Senior Research Manager at Upwork (at the time of our interview, he was Director of User Research at Wealthfront). When creating magical experiences, he strives to see the same look on users’ faces as he saw on his daughter’s face the first time she saw a real live fish. 

At the end of the day, we’re really just lucky to be in this field. You get to learn all the time every day. And you can’t ever assume you know all the things because you just don’t. That’s just a human thing. To learn from our customers and to serve them, it’s just so meaningful.

This week on the podcast, Erin and JH talk to Susan Rice of Toast.

As Toast developed their Toast Go, a handheld POS system for restaurants, Susan learned a lot about researching for both hardware and software at the same time. She also talked about her passion for service design, what she loves about working in design and research, and how she juggles design for B2B, B2C, and everything in between.

About our guest

Susan Rice is VP, User Experience at Workiva. She previously led Product Design and Research at Toast, where she built and scaled the UX function 500% in 1.5 years to create right-sized product teams focused on solving customer needs across mobile, web, hardware, and services platforms

This week, we’re doing something a little bit different. We’re talking to the CTO of User Interviews, Bob Saris, and a bunch of random strangers about one of the biggest questions out there—is it ok to recline your seat on an airplane? We got our whole team involved to do some on-the-street research. Read all about it here: https://bit.ly/2w3iUfU 

This week on Awkward Silences, we talked to pro UX designer and researcher Nicola Rushton. She's worked with teams large and small to facilitate fantastic research. She walked us through how she does it and how to think of researchers as facilitators of learning. Read all about it here: https://bit.ly/2VRwqSk 

This week on Awkward Silences, we talked to Kate Towsey, a ResearchOps thought leader and advisor and founder of the Cha Cha Club—a members' club for ResearchOps professionals. Previously Research Operations Manager at Atlassian, you may know her as the person who started the ResearchOps Slack community in March of 2018.

In the past year, the ResearchOps community has grown and Kate has left her consulting career to join Atlassian. Erin and JH talked to Kate about how she's started a ResearchOps practice and what she's excited to see as ResearchOps grows. 

65% of homeowners have experienced anxiety related to their home. Adam Sigel wants to figure out how to get that number down. As the VP of Product at Hometap, a home equity startup, he talks to homeowners about their hopes and fears about their homes. We talked to Adam about his experience interviewing users and how he's become a more empathetic researcher.

Highlights

• [2:21] Adam talks about his research at Hometap
• [4:32] Resist the urge to pitch
• [9:15] Let discovery conversations be open ended
• [12:39] The difficulties of pattern recognition in complicated discovery interviews
• [17:40] Can someone productize dads?

About our Guest

Adam Sigel is VP of Product at Hometap. He once shared an elevator with Michael Keaton.

How often do you think about content design? The answer, most likely, is: “not enough”.

The work of a Content Designer involves fitting the right words in the right places, understanding the nuances of things log in vs. sign in, and knowing the right words to use to engage customers. Content Design is an important part of the user experience—and the ROI is high. Like, “millions of $s saved through content-testing” high.

Erica Jorgensen is a Staff Content Designer at Chewy.com and the author of Strategic Content Design: Tools and Research Techniques for Better UX. She joined Erin and Carol on the podcast to discuss the ins and outs of content design, the importance of clarity for effective communication, and how to involve your audience in content design.

Highlights from the episode:

• 00:02:03: What is content design in the context of UX research?
• 00:06:48: Gaining clarity by thinking about the words you use frequently 
• 00:14:00: How Erica used simplified language to get customers to buy more insurance plans
• 00:26:42: Using cloze testing to ensure general content clarity
• 00:29:26: The importance of syllables and length 
• 00:39:46: Resources and guides for better content design
• 00:42:56: How Microsoft saved $2 million through content testing

  Sources and people mentioned

• BrainTraffic
• Chewy.com
• Cloze testing — “Cloze Test for Reading Comprehension,” NN/g.
• Curtis Kopf, Chief Experience Officer at REI
• Dylan Romero, Affiliate Instructor at University of Washington, UX at Microsoft
• Flesch–Kincaid – Wikipedia 
• Hemingway Editor
• Jorgensen, Erica. Strategic Content Design: Tools and Research Techniques for Better UX. (2023) — GET 15% OFF AT ROSENFELD MEDIA WITH CODE AS15
• MeasuringU (Jeff Sauro)
• Merriam-Webster Dictionary
• Metts, Michael and Andy Wefle. Writing Is Designing: Words and the User Experience. (2020)
• Scott Kubie
• System Usability Scale
• Tracy Vandygam, Senior Content Designer at Mozilla
• Visual Thesaurus
• Winters, Sarah. Content Design. (2017)

About our guest

Erica Jorgensen is a staff content designer at Chewy.com and the author of Strategic Content Design: Tools and Research Techniques for Better UX, published in April 2023 by Rosenfeld Media. 

She's a content designer, content strategist, and team leader determined to bring greater respect to the content field. To that end, Erica speaks frequently at conferences including UXDX USA, UX Lisbon, Microsoft Design Week, the Web Directions Summit, and Button: The Content Design Conference, and on podcasts like The Content Strategy Podcast with Kristina Halvorson and Content Insights podcast with Larry Swanson. In addition to working in content roles for companies of all sizes, she has taught at the University of Washington and Seattle’s School of Visual Concepts. 

Erica earned her B.A. from the University of Connecticut and M.A. from the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism. In her free time, you can find her exploring Washington State’s wineries or hiking with her husband and rescue dog, Rufus.

Talking to customers is pretty powerful stuff. This week Erin & JH talked to Katelyn Bourgoin, 3x startup founder and growth geek, about how qualitative research can become your marketing team's competitive advantage. Learn more about the episode here https://bit.ly/2IHsbSu 

Highlights

• [3:30] Go into qualitative research with a goal of learning
• [7:18] Stop running away from the angry bear
• [13:41] Doing a switch interview to learn about the buyer's journey
• [16:46] How to do churn interviews
• [20:03] Creating better marketing personas based on qualitative research
• [23:54] Don't do selfish marketing
• [27:57] Create a culture of consistent research

About our Guest

Katelyn Bourgoin is a growth strategist, marketer, and 4x founder. 

She's founded 4 startups and has learned a lot about growing your business through customer feedback. Her specialty is helping growth-hungry teams figure out what triggers customers to buy so they can market smarter. Katelyn has been called an "influential entrepreneur" by Forbes and named as one of the "top 20 wonder women of SaaS marketing and growth."

This week on the podcast, Erin and JH talk to Shipra Kayan. After 10 years of working in UX design and research at Upwork, she's launched her own consultancy. On the pod, she talked about getting your research started on the right foot, no matter what kind of research you're doing or how big your team is.

Highlights

• [5:47] How do you decide between what to do long-term and short-term?
• [7:49] Do research your team is ready to listen to
• [17:16] Always plan on learning from your research
• [20:05] Democratize your research planning process
• [24:21] Always document your research
• [27:48] There’s a lot of value in actually getting people together in a meeting 

About our guest

Shipra Kayan worked on UX design and research at Upwork for over 10 years. She is now an Evangelist at Miro and runs her own consultancy, helping teams create amazing research-driven UX.

John Cutler is a man of many talents. He’s a product development champion, team whisperer, and now, podcast guest on Awkward Silences! Erin and JH talked to John about just-in-time research, promoting healthy team practices, and integrating research faster.

Highlights

• [3:22] Start together, work together, finish together
• [7:50] Consistently integrate your ideas
• [9:02] Continuous design, rather than design then build
• [10:16] Create a backlog of learning goals
• [11:30] Integrate research faster
• [17:32] Finding a working balance for you and your team
• [18:10] The dangers of defensive dogma
• [35:02] Critiquing your research process