ResearchOps, You Complete Me!

Fuel Your Curiosity Newsletters
Written By michele ronsen

Ah, February. A month for celebrating perfect partnerships. Finding “the one” that makes you a better version of yourself. If you’re Research, that one-and-only you may be looking for is ResearchOps.

What’s ResearchOps?

Research Operations, ResearchOps, or ReOps, includes all of the necessary processes and strategies supporting research studies. Ops is how research is orchestrated and optimized to increase its value. It can include:

  • Governance;

  • Budget management;

  • Tooling, physical space, and asset management;

  • Guidelines, templates, and documentation;

  • Internal communications; and

  • Team and people management

ResearchOps can be very complex and strategic: a high-level management function that defines processes, procures resources and sets goals and schedules on an organizational level. Or, ResearchOps can be very tactical: handling the important details and grinding out administrative tasks that keep things moving smoothly. (Sometimes this tactical role is called “research coordinator.”) It can also be somewhere in between. The more ResearchOps support a research team has, the more researchers can focus on their core competency — completing studies, analyzing data, and sharing learnings.

What’s Research like without ResearchOps?

Much like a resourceful single person, Research can get along for a while without ResearchOps; researchers just have to manage all of the ops functions themselves. But as an organization gains more UX and research maturity, adding dedicated ops support allows for more studies to be conducted more efficiently and increases the chances that the learnings are achieved and acted upon. WOOT!

By the time a team has 7-10 researchers, it’s typically ready for an ops specialist. From there, research ops grow iteratively along with research – as pain points are identified in the research process, they are relieved through ops support.

ResearchOps careers are on the rise!

Right now, UX Research is exploding as a field. Recently I saw an article on CNBC about the top 10 growing jobs – User researcher was listed as #8! As Design and Research teams grow within organizations, so does the need to define processes, systems, and strategies to ensure efficiency, consistency, and quality at scale — all the work of ResearchOps. So as research activity explodes, more ResearchOps roles are created.

 

I sat down with Debbie Levitt at DeltaCX for an interview about The Rise of ResearchOps just last week! You can catch it here. We cover MANY facets of ReOps. I have to say this is one of my favorite interviews. Check it out!

 

ResearchOps looks different in different organizations. In my current situation, my ReOps lead negotiated the scope and length of my contract and them an additional study to support another team within the org. She ensures I have access to tools and access I need and get paid. Her team focuses on documents and procedures, with no participant recruiting or scheduling support. On the last team, the ReOps person interacted with the product managers, collaborated on my survey screeners, programmed them, and processed incentives. Different teams, different models, different areas of responsibility. Both are UX mature, world-renowned, Bay Area tech companies.

If I’m interested in Research, should I check out ResearchOps first?

Like any intense relationship, Research and ResearchOps may look like one and the same to an outsider, but they have very different skills and attributes that complement each other. Neither specialty is considered a direct stepping stone to the other.

That said, if your hope is to become a researcher, tactical ResearchOps work would put you close to the action. And if you’re a researcher with a desire to dig into operations work, your background can help you launch a career change in that direction.

People come to UX research from all kinds of paths. And I’ve known excellent ResearchOps people with backgrounds in service design, data management, project management, recruiting, and other fields.

Where can I learn more about ResearchOps?

Kate Towsey of Atlassian is a leader in the ResearchOps field. User Interviews published a great piece with Kate about starting a ResearchOps practice. She also established the ResearchOps Community, where you can keep up with the latest and learn more. NNG and Dovetail also have some great introductory resources.

The framework for defining ResearchOps (pictured above) was created by the ResearchOps Community.

If you’re ready to get a little more hands-on with research operations, check out Ask Like A Pro® Orchestrate, available on-demand as a standalone workshop, or as part of the complete Ask Like A Pro workshop series.

Upcoming Events

  • Feb 7th 9:30 AM PST: CPHUX Event: How to document and present research learnings. Details to come. Register here [free]

  • Feb 8th 4 - 5:30 PM PST: Ask Like A Pro Alumni Mixer/Meet-and-greet with guest speaker Julia DeBari [Students and alumni only]

  • Feb 16th 11 AM - 12 PM PST: Increase Your Research Efficiency, Product Management Today Event. Register here [free]

  • March 15th 5 - 6:30 PM PST: Live Info Session about Ask Like A Pro with Alumni. [free] NEW DATE!!

  • April 7 & 14: Ask Like A Pro Data Security and Privacy Policy spotlight events [Students and alumni only]

Speak up, get involved, share the love

And that’s a wrap!

We try to alternate between a theme and UX/UXR jobs, events, classes, articles, and other happenings every few weeks. Thank you for all of the feedback. Feedback is a gift and we continue to receive very actionable input on how to make Fuel Your Curiosity more meaningful to you.

What do you think? We're constantly iterating and would love to hear your input.

Stay curious,
- Michele and the Curiosity Tank team

PS: We’re only offering two public Ask Like A Pro cohorts this year, and the next one starts in March! If you’re ready to register, click here to grab your spot! Need a little more info? Join our live info session with Alumni on March 15th (new date!) at 5 pm PT to learn more.


michele ronsen
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