Melissa Laurie, WI22 All-In and FA21 Observer

"Part of what I am learning are the words to use/phrasing when I am working with my stakeholders. I am thinking about the role as UXR advocate. Some of the big phrases/descriptive terms that I will probably use in the future are 'not trying to boil the ocean', we 'want to ask the right people, the right questions, in the right way' 'progress over perfection' and 'Your UXR goals must be everyone's goals.'"

Duygu Yeni Cenebasi, SP22 Observer and WI22 All-In

"I really enjoyed learning about different note taking strategies because they can help me focus and work with data in a more efficient way. I also loved learning new tools such as Reduct. I also haven't worked with Miro yet and look forward to experimenting with it."

Nadja Geiger, WI22 Observer

"I learned that UXR is a lot about planning but also a lot about improv, flexibility, and adaptability. One of my favorite sentences I heard throughout this series: Overall goal is to move insight into actions and have an impact."

David Hill, WI22 Observer and FA22 All-In

"UXR research plan goals have to be everyone's goals, and address the business needs. I always knew that at a high level, and always incorporated any specific metrics that PMs mentioned. However, this was a good reminder that I need to get better at REALLY understanding KPIs, OKRs, and high-level business objectives and reflecting that in my research plans. Also, get feedback on the first draft of the plan, early, and think through the UX of working with me!"

Molly Lobsinger, FA21 Observer and WI22-All-In

"Findings vs. insights: this was an interesting distinction to me. Coming from a academia, I never heard this before. Even when I've worked with past qualitative data, we broke it down and coded it so it could be analyzed quantitatively; that way, we could determine whether any differences we observed were statistically significant. Any sort of connections would come from the statistics, or, if the research was only correlational, we might propose a hypothesized relationship in the discussion (for later testing). In any case, this is a very new and interesting way for me to work with and think about data!"

Hillary Shar, FA21 Observer and WI22 All-In

"I realized how important it was to nail down the fundamentals and principles beforehand. For example, methodology. That’s not going to change. If anything it’s going to boost your strategic thinking. I also learned there are different perspectives when it comes to UXR. That was pretty eye opening. Some of what you're learning is based on preference and what will help people understand your work. But things like the research fundamentals, that's not gonna go away. That's really important to nail down."

Shelly Yichoy, WI22 All-In, FA21 Observer

"The value of the constant communication. I always felt I was a good communicator, but when you go into a new team and you're still trying to learn what your dynamic is, and potentially entry level, you don't wanna come in super strong... I've gone into this new contract with Google more confidently, a little bit more assertive. That’s already helped with my first project here. Tthat's an unexpected learning because I thought that was one of my strengths. I learned how to be stronger in that area, which is super valuable."

Serena Hu, WI22 Observer

"Learning that more data isn't necessarily better!! Instead, be very targeted about what you are getting from your surveys."

Faith Eno, WI22 Observer and FA22 All-In

"Learning how to set up a reasonable research hypothesis and assumptions with stakeholders. And how to connect the research plan to an impactful goal that can be learned through research."

Aesclinn Donohue, WI22 Observer and FA22 All-In

"I want to remember to pilot pilot pilot. I found the story arc piece really helpful in terms of thinking how to build the interview guide. And to remember the note taking frameworks."

Erin Greenfield, WI22 Observer

"One main takeaway is that research is a team sport -- speaks to the importance of stakeholder engagement and project team collaboration. Another is the difference between generative and evaluative research. I've done survey screeners before, but had not applied the level of detail and consideration that it requires. One thing that surprised me is how surveys render differently on desktop vs. mobile.It's certainly something I will keep in mind moving forward."

Susan Trevithick, WI22 Observer

"I will be much better prepared to write research plans in the future and/or provide worthwhile comments on plans I'm involved in with my employer."

Chaohong Pan, WI22 Observer

"Learning about communicating with stakeholders and getting them involved from the beginning stage. I'm a grad student and most of my works are solo, so this part is important to me."

Molly Lobsinger, FA21 Observer and WI22-All-In

"I definitely feel confident that I can do the job now. A lot of my skills are applicable. A lot of the ways of thinking and working with the issues, It felt very intuitive. I actually ended up accidentally getting ahead during the analysis part without ever having really studying the different methods. And it turned out that I had done the affinity mapping just on my own. I have confidence that I can do it. Obviously I need a ton of training still. I know tha and this is a good fit for me."

Shelly Yichoy, FA21 Observer and WI22 All-In

"I also feel more confident in what I can do to help myself grow. We got a lot of resources and information and that was one of my main (goals) as well as to just better understand other ways to do things. And more efficiently. Exposure to other ways of conducting research, analysis and synthesis, storytelling… Now I have a direction to go in. This program is trustworthy. It's something that I can refer back to and review. And I can do a deep dive somewhere else if I need to. So that's what I'm pretty excited about now."

Hillary Shar, WI22 All-In and FA21 Observer

"Through this program, I built my improv skills. I do find that to be very valuable. Anything can happen in a research setting with your stakeholders, your participants. When we first learned about how UXR was just like art, science and improv, I was very nervous. I didn't think I had what it took to be that triangle. But with time, and continuous learning, and shadowing people in this cohort, and seeing and hearing everyone, and practicing it, I'm starting to see that that's coming through. That's pretty cool."

Katherine Yamasaki, WI22 All-In

"I feel confident that I can do the job. I feel confident in going into interviews for research positions and that was really what I was hoping for. That was my goal, starting in, so yeah. Excellent."

Hillary Shar, WI22 All-In and FA21 Observer

"It's been a while since I've interviewed participants and actually this was the first time where I did it completely by myself. Prior times it was with a team. I became much more confident and collected and calm. And in control of my thoughts and just the situation in general from the first interview all the way to the end. And I could even see it when I went back and watched the reels, like the first one, I could hear kind of my awkwardness but by the end I was like, wow, like I got this!"

Melissa Laurie, WI22 All-In and FA21 Observer

"I feel like I can talk shop now. I feel like I could do this job… When you get the practice of moving that quickly and answering the questions, you just sort of learn how to do it. So I know what I'm looking for now."

Duygu Yeni Cenebasi, SP22 Observer and WI22 All-In

"I felt most confident when presenting, which is surprising to me. Sharing drafts of the findings through the debrief grid, and topline report drafts, and talking about them with the stakeholders before getting to the stage of the presentation took the pressure off from the presentation. Thank you for setting us up for success for the presentation and each and every step along the way."