UX teamwork can be a long game, but it’s worth the effort

Last week I ran five remote, one-hour sessions for a study we had just begun. While P1 was verbose (and a little angst), all five provided excellent, meaningful feedback and were on time! My stakeholders were involved, accessible, and responsive, they helped rightsize the question set, took notes, and pitched in when we had a technical issue with the prototype. The participants were engaged, focused, and overall (mostly) delightful.

We’re seeing strong patterns and deviations in patterns. Sessions will continue this week.

The team and I are learning a lot and accomplishing our study goals. The stakeholders have communicated their appreciation for these research efforts and the inputs we’ve gathered thus far. I’ve also managed to gather meaningful feedback for another team along the way, on the fly, and pass it on to that team.

This is what research should look like and feel like. This is why I love conducting research. This is why I love working with great teams.

This is the type of study experience I enjoy describing to our Ask Like A Pro students. Of course, other study experiences aren’t as fruitful or rewarding. But this one? This one is pretty much ideal. Yes. It took a while to get here, and there were challenges along the way, but we're making it to our goalpost.

Bottom line? UX is a team sport. While UX teamwork can be a long game, it’s worth the effort.

Cheers to all of the teams that make doing research “feel good”, “worthwhile”, and “important”. And cheers to all of the teams striving to reach this level.

Stay the course! UX teamwork makes the dream work.

Happy Monday.