The story of ‘Leading Research’

We’re very excited and proud to be launching the ‘leading research’ initiative. This initiative is for user researchers working in tech and product. For the past few months, Swetha Sethu-Jones and I have been working behind the scenes to shape this initiative. We have been thinking about the support we could provide for user research leaders in the UK.

Our goal

Our aim is to start addressing key leadership questions we hear in our discipline: ‘What makes a good (research) leader?’ , ‘ How should researchers advance their careers?’, ‘How to get C-suite buy-in on research approach?’ to name a few.

We want to help current and future user research leaders to find their voice in the tech industry. And contribute to the user research discipline as it matures.

I’d like to share with you why we’re setting up this initiative and how you can get involved.

How the idea started

In June 2019, I was facilitating a Researcher Skills workshop in London for the ResearchOps community. And Swetha was one of the participants.

We did a few activities for the workshop. They included identifying skillset for user researchers and mapping your career path.

We allocated 10 minutes at the end to reflect on the workshop. What meant to be a 10 minute conversation turned into a 40 minute discussion! The discussion centred on: “Where should we go next?”- as individuals and as a discipline.

The experienced researchers in the workshop reflected on their career maps. What was interesting was the drop in ‘contribution’ when they took on management roles. This included job titles like ‘Senior’, ‘Lead’, ‘Head of’ or ‘Director’. There were concerns about the contributions and value they were bringing to organisations. They are in less hands-on roles than before. They have less career clarity than when they were research practitioners. The focus shifted from delivering projects to leading teams. And often without the support or buy-in to inform customer strategy. Impact is less visible than meeting a project timeline or delivering artefacts.

Career gaps identified

Here were some of the questions asked during our reflection:

• How do I show my contribution when I’m no longer an individual contributor?
• Where do I go next when I’m a senior/seasoned practitioner? Do I have to move into management? What would that career path look like?
• How do we show research has made an impact to the organisation?
• Should researchers ‘get a seat at the table’? What does that even mean?
• Do I need to move into a product role to feel I have made an impact to the organisation or product?

We didn’t have all the answers during the discussion. But, one thing was clear that more work is needed to support researchers in leading roles. So we can set the path or an example to help those coming up from the discipline. If we can’t look after ourselves, how can we look after others?

The questions on impact, value and future career paths resonated with Swetha and I the most. From then on, we met regularly to talk about what can we do to address some of those questions asked.

We also spoke with Emma Boulton about the research leadership work she’s been doing. We also know that ResearchOps community will share their workshop findings and skills framework in 2020.

Ultimately, can we create an initiative that help support other research leaders in the UK?

What we will do

We’re starting an initiative for user research leaders (current and future). We will start by meeting at events or writing about topics that are relevant for leaders or senior practitioners.

We have some initial ideas on topics to cover, and they fall into four broad categories:

1. Leadership and support. (E.g., what are the areas we can provide better support for people moving into leadership positions?)
2. Impact. (E.g., What does ‘impact’ look like? How do we lead research to make an impact?)
3. Team culture. (E.g., What is a good ‘research team culture’?)
4. Vision and strategy. (E.g., How do we balance democratising research and growing the research team?)

We want to discuss these topics in a variety of ways. We know that some of these topics would work better in an event format. We’re exploring formats like workshops, roundtable discussions, case studies or meet up events. Both in person and remote. While other topics might be better served if we curate content for the blog and follow up with discussions.

To start with our events will be in London. Our hope is that once we get the format right, other people can take on the format and run the discussions on their own. We’re very mindful that we don’t own any of this initiative. We’re creating a space for everyone to contribute.

How you can contribute and get involved

We’re looking for contributions in two ways.

1. We’re keen to build a network of research leaders to gather to discuss topics in our four key categories. This is for participation in events. (We’ll also be looking for event partners and sponsors).
2. We’re looking for content contributors to produce content for this publication. It could relate to the four key categories or something new in leadership!

If you’d like to get involved in either of the above, then please share your details with us in this form. We will be in touch in early 2020!

Christina Li is a user researcher and the Director of Melon Experience Design. She’s passionate about mentoring and sharing her experiences with designers and researchers.

Swetha Sethu-Jones is a user researcher since 2010. She’s on a mission for to uncover problems and needs both for target users as well as for cross-functional team members.