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Fuel Your Curiosity Newsletters
Written By michele ronsen
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I HEAR YOU

Transitioning into user research, and growing these skills, can be a long and lonely journey. There isn't one clear, direct, or "correct" path. If you are anything like me during my transition... you seek feedback along the way to understand if you're heading in the right direction. You're curious how your skills compare to others, what's transferable from your current experiences, and if your resume and portfolio resonate as intended. You wish for a safe place where you can tinker with new "things". Or perhaps a "research buddy" to help banter ideas around or evaluate what approach is best for your unique situation. Does any of this resonate with you? I'd love to know!!

My plan is to prototype a solution to begin to address this gap in Q1. It delves deeper than my one-off classes and has potential to reach more people than my 1:1 coaching. So I am lining up some beta participants. Does this interest you? Please send me a note and include what about this idea resonates the most with you.

By the way, please know that the irony of this "gap" is not lost on me. You seek feedback yet UXR is largely about gathering feedback! The cobbler's children...

NEW CLASS AT LAST!!

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Ask and you shall receive. My new three hour workshop, The Art of Conducting User Research Interviews, launches Friday morning, November 8th, at San Francisco's General Assembly. Most user research classes concentrate on important practical and pragmatic tactics. While this scientific approach is necessary, and logistics are super important, unfortunately many key nuances of the “art” are often omitted.

This class addresses that gap by focusing on the personal interactions, soft skills and other subtleties talented interviewers employ to ensure meaningful conversations. I hope to see you there!

RARE JUNIOR DESIGN RESEARCH ROLE

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This position is not yet posted! One of my clients, Invoice2go, is looking for a junior researcher to join their team onsite in Redwood City, CA. I've worked on two projects with them and very much look forward to a third one. They have terrific research talent, big ambitions, a great product and a lot of juicy research questions. Here are a few bullet points about the role:

  • 1-3 years of research experience

  • Identify and communicate high priority research questions and opportunities

  • Identify and communicate the appropriate methodology for achieving research goals

  • Support recruiting participants for research studies and contribute to a larger participant pool

  • Conduct product related surveys, interviews, usability tests, diary studies, and other research methods

  • Analyze research data to generate findings and insights

  • Organize and participate in impact workshops with product teams and stakeholders

  • Create and deliver compelling stories to communicate actionable insights to product teams and stakeholders

If interested, please contact Brandon Randazzo directly at Invoice2go.

SIGN UP TO BE A TESTER

One way to improve your UXR skills is to provide feedback. There are tons of panels out there that you can join as a tester, either by participating in surveys or diary studies or click tests or five-second tests or a variety of other types. This is a great way to get exposure to how people are administering different types of research and to learn about different tools and platforms. Even better, you can get paid to do it!

That said please do not, under any circumstances, submit responses for any study in which you do not meet the criteria. In other words, don’t mess with other researchers’ data. Only take part in studies you are qualified to participate in. Google “user research ethics.” This is important.

(Karma is real. This industry is small.)

IN THE CLASSROOM

Considering the above... if you are receiving this email you are likely qualified to participate in my UC Berkeley students' evaluative interviews. They are gathering feedback from people in UX-related roles on their "Crowdsourcing Terms" website prototypes and use cases. Please consider participating in a 30-minute remote interview via Zoom his week or next week. Complete this simple, five question screener to participate. Trust me. Helping aspiring UXers improve their skills feels rreeeeeaaaallllyyy good!

This week the students are also learning about card sorting with our 200 terms. Some of you are probably thinking "How did they card sort 200 terms?!" Good question! First they categorized all of the terms that were not familiar to them and moved them aside. This eliminated at least 30-50% of the terms off the bat. It's interesting in itself to see which terms fell into this category. Some were pretty surprising (to me).

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UPCOMING SAN FRANCISCO CLASSES

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michele ronsen
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