Elyse Voegeli is a UX professional. At the time of our conversation, she was working as a UX researcher and designer for the City of New York. She talks about being a UX researcher in government.
Imani talks about her UX research fellowship experience with the NYC[x] Innovation Fellowship co-produced by US Digital Response and New York City Mayor’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer. Jessica Watson, Co-Founder and Chief Experience Officer at U.S. Digital Response, provides some more context about volunteering in digital government.
Jeff works at a company called Artefact. Artefact produced a digital product you may or may not have heard of called The Tarot Cards of Tech. Jeff talks about what the tarot cards are and how technology professionals can use them in their work.
In this episode, Imani speaks with Babz Jewell. Babz talks about ethnographic sociology in the context of conducting UX research. She also gives practical and creative advice for navigating the UX researcher job market.
Imani conducted a crude analysis of 12 associate UX researcher job descriptions and she shares what she found.
Diary studies are the perfect balance between research and storytelling. Diary studies are arguably one of the most human research methods. A while ago, Imani had the chance to conduct her first diary study and she was so excited! Imagine how vexed and frustrated she was when she jacked the whole thing up! She botched her first diary study, but wants to try again. In this episode, Imani will explore how researchers fail and how researchers can recover.
If you want to be a UX researcher, you have to understand the difference between discovery, evaluative, primary, and secondary research. When Imani first became interested in UX research, she would hear evaluative and discovery research mentioned quite a bit and though she googled them to learn more about them, she didn’t fully understand what they actually were, when to apply them, and which methods they encompassed until fairly recently. If you do some googling, you’ll notice that there are di...
Mario Carrasco is a market researcher and he owns a market research firm called ThinkNow. Mario talks about multicultural research and the challenges of building a panel, especially a multicultural panel. If you are a UX researcher, you should still listen to this episode because Mario gives practical advice about recruitment and building a panel. There’s also some wonderful dialogue about acculturation, immigration, and identity.
In this episode, Imani speaks with Jia Liu who talks about his time working as a product designer at LinkedIn. In the first part of the conversation, Jia discusses: the importance of doing secondary research as a UX professional, how he tackles working on a huge product like LinkedIn, how LinkedIn supports the entire hiring journey with its recruiter suite of tools, and how making tiny UI decisions affects the business and its various customer segments.. In the second part of the conversation, J...
Imani talks about UX research in general. She talks about what UX research is, who a UX researcher is, what a UX researcher does, how UX researchers do it, evaluative research, generative research, moderated research, and why UX research is important. This is a good episode to listen to if you're learning about UX research.
Imani revisits guest interviews from season one and reflects on building domain vs. method expertise as a UX researcher, why research is both an art and a science, and UX research in the United States and Hungary.
Hosted by UX researcher, Imani Nichols, The Yzzi Research Podcast is the resource for people who research people. The first episode of the second season will be live on October 18, 2021. Visit yzziresearch.com and sign up for the mailing list to be updated about the podcast. Follow Yzzi Research on Twitter and follow Imani on LinkedIn .
Becoming a UX researcher can be tricky. There’s no clear path into the career and as a result, it can leave you confused and vulnerable. Considering such, coaching and mentorship are critically important. Keep listening to hear my thoughts on UX researcher career coaching and mentorship.
Iris Yim is a market researcher and principal at Sparkle Insights. She focuses on multicultural market research. Listen to her thoughts on doing good market research, creating engaging reports, creating a sound sample, and why she thinks MBAs are worthwhile for market researchers to pursue.
There are several personality traits that enable people to be good researchers … and there are a few bad ones that undermine the capacity to become a good researcher. Listen to Imani outline the personality of a good researcher.
How much money does a UX researcher make? What are the differences in the role of a user experience researcher and user experience designer? How should I feel about my team not applying my research? Stay tuned to hear Imani’s answers to these and other listener-submitted questions.
Imani met Asha Toulmin when she was interviewing for a UX researcher role. At the time of this recording, Asha was working as a Research Manager at CNN, but had been a UX researcher at Google, Airbnb, and Bloomberg previously. She’s conducted research and hired UX researchers. Asha is incredibly well rounded and has a lot to share about graduate education, career pathing, and hiring UX researchers.
There’s a shortage of UX research internships which makes it hard for aspiring researchers to test the field to see if it is what they want to do. It also makes it harder for people to become UX researchers considering that many UX researcher roles require direct UX research experience. If you do secure a coveted UX research internship, what should you expect? Imani analyzed 20 UX Research Internship job descriptions and this is what she learned.
Imani used academic research as a strong foundation to build a successful career in industry research as a UX researcher. Listen to this episode to hear what she learned during her time as both and how she was able to transition.
Michele McDonald is an experienced market research expert. Michele has been a mentor of Imani's for a few years. When Imani decided to produce this podcast, it was natural for Imani to invite her as Imani wanted to share Michele's expertise and wisdom with other people.
When you are a researcher, you interact with a lot of people. People who can help or hinder you as a researcher and people that you can potentially help with your research. Imani calls this the researcher’s ecosystem.
What is being a lone researcher like? What are some pros and cons of being a team of one? Imani has been the lone and first UX researcher twice. Listen to what her experiences were like.
In this episode, Imani talks through days in her life as a UX researcher. Days when she is actively working on a UX research project and days when she is not working on an active project. There are a lot of meetings. There is a lot of organizing. There is a lot of mediating. Imani answers the frequently asked question, “what does a UX researcher actually do?”
Zsolt is a UX Researcher from Hungary. Zsolt and Imani are on a UX researcher mailing list and they connected when Imani sent an email to this mailing list and he responded. They then had a great conversation via Zoom about UX researcher career pathing. In this episode, Zsolt talks career pathing, how being a market researcher helped him become a UX researcher, researching terminally ill patients, and much more.
How do you create a UX research portfolio? What is it? Why do you need one? Who’s going to read it? Why is it so important?! Listen to this episode for the answers to these questions and more!
The UX researcher job interview requires some prep ahead of time, but, unless you’ve interviewed for many UX researcher roles, you wouldn’t exactly know how to prepare. Listen to this episode to hear what advice Imani has to help you prepare for the UX researcher job interview.
For reasons unknown, becoming a UX Researcher is difficult. If you want to become a UX Researcher, it’s not clear how you’re supposed to do it. If you want to become a UX Researcher, how do you do it?
The Yzzi Research Podcast is the weekly podcast for aspiring researchers, current researchers, and research enthusiasts. Created, produced, and hosted by Imani "Izzy" Nichols (UX researcher and founder of Yzzi Research), the Yzzi Research Podcast features straightforward and digestible episodes about becoming and being a professional researcher. The focus is on UX research, but there are conversations that market researchers and academic researchers may appreciate. The first episode will be live...
