Impact

A complete guide to creating a research practice at your organization

Impact will provide you with a comprehensive guide to setting up a research practice. You will learn how to think through every step you need, to leap over obstacles that get in the way, to make your best decisions, and create a unique process for your situation and circumstance. This book is your thought partner throughout this process. In Impact, I share everything that I’ve learned in my experience. I share exactly how you can start a research practice at your organization and help research reach its full impact.

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Real examples and case studies to demonstrate exactly how you can set up your research practice at any organization

A playbook that you can dive into at any point and come back to again and again for practical advice and guidance

Links to templates you can start to put into practice today, so you never have to worry about starting from scratch

Part I: What is a research practice?

Part II: Reflect on your current state

Part III: Set up operations and a strategy

Part IV: Define your playbook

Part V: Methodology rundown

Part VI: Analysis and synthesis

Part VII: Deliverable and outcome rundown

Part VIII: Activation rundown

Part IX: Juggling it all

Part X: Feedback and iteration

You’ve decided you’re ready to build a research practice at your organization - how exciting! In the first part of the book, we’ll take a look at exactly what a research practice is and why it is so important to create your own unique practice, given the context of your organization.

The most important part of creating a research process is to make it your own and contextualize it to your current experience. The time I see research practices fail is when someone tries to adopt a practice from another company as if it will fit into a different environment. This is the “square peg, round hole” problem. It’s a trap I fell into many times when I tried to “copy and paste” a practice from one company to another.

By truly personalizing the practice to the needs of your teams and organization, you are setting yourself and your research up for ample success. In this section, we will go through several exercises of reflecting on your current environment and then use that information to create a strategy and subsequent practice that is relevant to your organization.

Setting up operations and strategy for your user research practice is like cementing the foundation of your house. These types of operations give your practice a solid place to stand and keep everything together when things get chaotic. Operations are a way for you to streamline your work and ensure there are standardized steps in place, making it easier for you and your colleagues to know what is happening when and why. A strategy is a North Star that you can continue to return to that guides you through questioning times. It is also a way for you to align your work with the organization and teams, and to track your impact over time.

In this section, you will learn the key pieces to put into place for your operations, as well as how to set a clear strategy for yourself, regardless of being a team of one, in a research-adjacent field, or a team of fifty.

There are a lot of processes and frameworks out there when it comes to user research. For example, we have design thinking, lean user research, sprints, Jobs to be Done, and product development processes.

As a user researcher, what is your process? How do you execute different research projects? Which elements of design thinking do you mash together with product development phases? When do you throw away lean research for an in-depth study?

And what are your boundaries? Colleagues can come to you with questions or requests that would break any templated process. There weren't answers to what to do if stakeholders didn't care about parts of the process or wanted the research to go quicker.

In this section, we will answer all those questions and more as you define and build your user research playbook.

There are many different methodologies in user research and, sometimes, it can get overwhelming to keep track of all of them. I mentioned quite a few in the chapters above, some of which you may be familiar with and some which may be completely new to you.

In this part of the book, we will explore some of the methodologies mentioned in the previous chapters. This isn’t meant to be a comprehensive list of methods, nor a comprehensive guide to each methodology - we’d be here forever if that was the case! - but it should give you a starting point to get comfortable with methods you may be less familiar with.

There are some methods that are simply covered better in other books (ex: Jobs to be Done and mental models). For those methods, I have linked directly to the resources I most recommend on those subjects.

The point of this part is to get you thinking about these methods and for you to begin getting comfortable with them, and to begin practicing. Because, as much as it is great to read, the best way for you to learn these methods is to practice them.

There is nothing more wonderful and fulfilling than watching your research come to life in the form of patterns and insights. Although it can be long and, sometimes tedious, the analysis and synthesis process are where things come together and teams really see the power of user research.

Because analysis and synthesis typically includes confidential and valuable insights, we don’t often hear about the best ways to conduct it. Sometimes (at least it felt this way to me), the analysis and synthesis process can seem shrouded in mystery.

In this part of the book, we will uncover that veil of mystery and go through concrete ways you can analyze and synthesize your research results.

Deliverables from user research studies can be difficult to put together. You spend so much time with the data and trying to wrangle everything together that it can feel impossible to put it into a box with a neat bow.

On top of that, there are quite a few different types of deliverables. I cover some in this part, but also check out the resource appendix to dive deeper into some of the deliverables I don’t mention in this part.

If you are struggling to choose a deliverable, remember to ask your stakeholders what they need - refer back to Part II, Chapter One on how to have these discussions with your stakeholders. It is so important that your deliverables include the exact information they need to make decisions - we are making deliverables for them, afterall!

Activation is one of the most important parts of a user research process, and often the most overlooked and underutilized. Even when you have finished creating your insights and deliverables, there is still another step to make your research actionable and impactful to teams.

This step is critical to being a successful user researcher and to enabling you research to have an impact at an organizational level. Through activation, you help teams go from the problem space to solutions, which you can then further test. Activation allows for the natural cycle of user research to shine at your company.

In this part, we will review the different ways you can go that extra step and really make your research come to life at an organization.

As a user researcher or someone doing research at your organization, there is a lot to consider and handle. From intake documents to prepping the right recruitment, to prioritizing the most impactful projects and making sure everything gets done on time, it can feel like a juggling act. Often, researchers or those doing research in their organization can feel this pressure, which leads to some negative consequences.

In this part, we will talk through the all-famous concept of democratization, as this is always something that comes into play, especially if you are a solo user researcher or the only person doing research in your company.

Then, we will talk through the really important aspects of time management and burnout, which can be really difficult for all of us.

Feedback and iteration are as crucial for self-development as they are for product development. As researchers, getting feedback is essential, but it can be challenging for your work to be assessed regularly. There may be limited time and capacity to gather feedback, especially if your manager is not a user researcher or unfamiliar with user research.

There are a handful of ways to get frequent feedback from stakeholders, which we will cover in this final part of the book. This feedback is essential for your development and allow you to understand your blind spots.

About the author

Nikki Anderson - AKA The User Research Resource Queen - is a blogger, podcaster, and founder of User Research Academy, where she publishes regular content dedicated to helping user researchers conduct research more creatively and confidently.

She started User Research Academy in 2021 to help user researchers grow within their skills and find fulfillment in their careers with the mission to highlight that there is no one right way into research, no one right way to approach research, and no one right way to be a researcher. She is also the author of over 250 user research articles and a speaker at over 100 events featured by dscout, Dovetail, UXInsight, UXRConf, UX360, UXCon, UXCrunch, and the ResearchOps community.

Her work is constantly described as “the most vulnerable, transparent, and actionable article/talk/webinar I’ve heard all year.” She is wildly obsessed with Pokemon (Charmander in particular), has a snort when she laughs really hard, and can often be found in her garden, singing (terribly) to her veggies to grow faster, which is why they probably grow so slowly.