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 ...
Jun 12, 2020•32 min•Ep. 44
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 ...
May 29, 2020•50 min•Ep. 43
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 dem...
May 20, 2020•35 min•Ep. 42
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...
May 07, 2020•34 min•Ep. 41
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 exper...
Apr 30, 2020•49 min•Ep. 40
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...
Apr 17, 2020•31 min•Ep. 39
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 y...
Apr 10, 2020•35 min•Ep. 38
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. ...
Mar 25, 2020•47 min•Ep. 37
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 ...
Mar 19, 2020•32 min•Ep. 36
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...
Mar 12, 2020•32 min•Ep. 35
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 t...
Feb 14, 2020•39 min•Ep. 34
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...
Jan 31, 2020•34 min•Ep. 33
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 Asse...
Jan 07, 2020•43 min•Ep. 32
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, st...
Dec 06, 2019•47 min•Ep. 31
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...
Nov 07, 2019•49 min•Ep. 30
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, h...
Oct 23, 2019•27 min•Ep. 29
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 ...
Oct 17, 2019•33 min•Ep. 28
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....
Oct 17, 2019•24 min•Ep. 27
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 s...
Oct 17, 2019•23 min•Ep. 26
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....
Oct 01, 2019•29 min•Ep. 25
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....
Sep 23, 2019•40 min•Ep. 24
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 th...
Aug 20, 2019•42 min•Ep. 23
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, V...
Aug 08, 2019•29 min•Ep. 22
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, a...
Jul 23, 2019•44 min•Ep. 21
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.
Jul 10, 2019•29 min•Ep. 20
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 Mana...
Jun 28, 2019•45 min•Ep. 19
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 s...
May 30, 2019•28 min•Ep. 18
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
May 16, 2019•22 min•Ep. 17
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
May 08, 2019•28 min•Ep. 16
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...
May 01, 2019•44 min•Ep. 15
