Boost your team’s confidence in customer and UX research

Get hands-on user research training developed for teams like yours. Learn how to free up your dedicated research staff to focus on more strategic and generative work, and more.

Stop guessing what your customers think or want from you

Stop guessing what your customers think or want from you. Start making data-driven decisions to immediately impact topline growth.

To make better decisions, your team needs a common foundation of user research knowledge, a shared vocabulary, stronger user research skills in general, and support in training non-researchers to gather input on evaluative needs.

This will free up your dedicated research staff to focus on more strategic and generative work. Our expertise in culturally relevant UXR training and streamlining processes with consistent tools, templates, and methodologies will help you achieve these goals and more.

We’ll help you upskill the various levels of UXR experience on the team and step up the rigor to enable you to conduct more meaningful, relevant, and iterative research to stay competitive.

Sample Workshop Topics

All topics can be customized in length and depth. Most workshops include interactive activities, tools, and templates, and can be tailored to fit your team’s tool stack.

Fundamental Skills and Techniques

Basic Note-Taking Strategies to Expedite Analysis: Effective techniques for both moderated and unmoderated sessions.

Conducting and Enhancing Unmoderated Studies: Learn best practices to set up and uncover deeper insights with creative approaches.

UXR Presenting Skills: Master the art of presenting research findings effectively.

Tasks and Scenarios in UX Research: Understand the purpose and differences, best practices, and tailoring based on product maturity and research goals.

15 Most Important Design Terms for Researchers: Every researcher should know essential design terms from a former designer turned UXR.

UX Research Piloting: Benefits, considerations, and the who, why, what, how, and when of piloting.

Additional Fundamental Skills and Techniques topics are listed below.

Strategic and Organizational Insights

Building Research Enablement Programs: Key considerations and lessons from implementing research enablement programs.

Not Everything is a User Research Problem: Seven reasons not to conduct User Research and how to educate stakeholders about UXR.

Fractional Research Consulting: Trends, benefits, hiring tips to get the most out of your contract hires, and insights from personal experience.

Research Roadmapping: Benefits, considerations, who, why, what, how, and when of creating a research roadmap.

Additional Strategic and Organizational Insights topics are listed below.

Advanced Practices and Perspectives

28 Ways to Measure UXR Impact: Diverse methods to evaluate and demonstrate the impact of user research.

Advanced Note-Taking Strategies to Expedite Analysis: Effective techniques for both moderated and unmoderated sessions.

Research Productivity Hacks: Save time and money while improving consistency in your research. Leverage our full suite of tools and templates to jumpstart your practice.

Verbs Matter: Stop “Understanding” and Start Doing THIS: How choosing the right verbs in research goal setting clarifies and focuses research goals.

What If We Changed Our Perspective on Data? Strategies to empower teams through a better understanding of data.

Additional Advanced Practices and Perspectives topics are listed below.

INTRODUCING

Ask Like a Pro for Teams

Online and in-person UXR training for teams who want step-by-step guidance on how to conduct meaningful, relevant, and impactful research.

Get hands-on, proven methods and tools to help your team genuinely understand your customers, challenges, and opportunities in less time, while reducing errors and risk.

★★★★★

Michele's UXR workshop series was an inspirational booster for our research team in Japan. Her hands-on training gave us unique insights and practical tools for the usability testing of websites and applications, particularly for clients from the US. Michele's flexibility and cross-cultural sensitivity were valuable as she adjusted the content to fit our needs. Her willingness to learn from us was impressive, and her collaborative approach made the workshops informative and engaging. Michele's workshops were insightful, practical, and entertaining, leaving us with a newfound appreciation for digital user experience research.  A fantastic experience!”

— Susanne, Client Service Director at CarterJMRN KK

Professionals from some of the most innovative organizations in the world have studied user research with Michele

- Matt Gallivan, Director of Product Research at Slack

 “Michele worked with my team at Slack for an extended period of time and added tremendous value to our research practice. Michele is not only a great researcher who is more than capable of handling whatever research challenge you send her way, but she is also a gifted educator who elevated our partners’ understanding of user research through powerful educational modules and through good old-fashioned partnership. I hope I get to work with her again soon, and recommend her without hesitation!”

- Matt Gallivan, Director of Product Research at Slack

Ask Like a Pro for teams provides the skills and research know-how without the complexity

With these straightforward and easy-to-follow workshops, your team will come away with …

Confidence built through hands-on practice

Properly plan research studies with stakeholder buy-in; find, screen, and schedule the right participants; gather feedback with organized note-taking tools and frameworks that save time; analyze your results with the methods that are most pertinent to your study; present your learnings with impact; and archive it all for future needs.

Best practices of user research all in one place

You’ll get everything you need to increase interest, confidence, efficiency, and effectiveness in conducting research, from GDPR to PII, building participant pools, processing incentives, and the stages in between. We share our real-world and customized examples, templates, guidelines, scripts, and more.

Mentorship from one of the foremost UX practitioners in the world

Learn from a pro who has helped Fortune 500 companies like Facebook, Zillow, and Slack develop better products and services through research, interactive workshops, and in-house team training. Our hands-on workshops are designed for scale and save valuable time.

Workshop options to fit your goals, needs, and budget

Take a deep dive into design feedback with a bundle of workshops or go á la carte.

Signature Corporate Workshop Series

Workshops to take your team from UXR novices to confident researchers

The Art of the Conducting User Research Interviews

Introduction to UX Research

Getting to the heart of user experiences isn’t easy. It’s a cerebral adventure that requires preparation, innovative methods, artful interviewing skills, sharp analysis, and empathy.

This day-long session covers how to create an effective research plan, manage the logistics, recruit the right participants, craft research questions that unearth meaningful insights, and more, at a high level. 

We’ll get super hands-on with at least two activities.

Evaluative Research 101

Research Planning with Stakeholder Buy-in

This workshop focuses on how to craft a winning research plan with stakeholder buy-in. 

We’ll tackle how to gain confidence that your product and service-focused research will improve your customers' experience. 

Plus, we’ll discuss the importance of stakeholder engagement, how to align on success criteria and metrics, and questions that yield accurate, relevant information, and more.

Research Planning with Stakeholder Buy-in

Evaluative Research 101

Evaluative research is an umbrella term for studies in which participants are “evaluating” something such as a storyboard, video, sketch, packaging, question set, prototype, or even a fully developed live product, service, or interface.

In this workshop, we explore:

  • The pros and cons of different approaches

  • The role discussion guides play

  • How to author tasks and scenarios, tools and platforms to facilitate evaluative studies, and other topics pertinent to planning and conducting evaluative research.

Surveys/Screeners

The Art of Conducting User Research Interviews

Most user research classes concentrate on important practical and pragmatic tactics. While this scientific approach is necessary, many key nuances of the “art” are often omitted.

This session addresses that gap by focusing on the personal interactions, skills, and other subtleties talented interviewers employ to ensure meaningful conversations.

You’ll see, practice, and get feedback on how to successfully begin an interview, develop a rapport with participants, get out of difficult situations, and wrap up while leaving the door open for future correspondence. 

After this session, you will feel more confident preparing for and moderating conversations. 

7 Reasons NOT to Conduct User Research

Strategic Note-taking

Note-taking is a critical process and skill set for people who conduct user research and the stakeholders who observe these sessions.

How and when we take notes impacts biases, analysis and synthesis, team collaboration, and the speed at which we can move from insights into action. Note-taking also expedites learning and processing speeds.

This workshop covers note-taking do’s and don’ts, best practices, frameworks that provide strategic value, how to right-size the information collected, example templates, and hands-on activities.

Analysis and Synthesis

Qualitative Analysis and Synthesis

Analysis and synthesis is the phase where we make sense of the data collected. 

This workshop includes qualitative activities to build your pattern recognition skills and techniques to increase your efficiency and move you from insights to action, faster.

We’ll explore dozens of frameworks to facilitate this process and when to use them.

Your team will get hands-on practice synthesizing and coding qualitative data while learning the difference between findings and insights.

Storytelling/Presenting And Insights into Action

Functional and emotional skills are at the heart of this workshop — increasing your confidence in presenting so it’s enjoyable and effective.

We focus on building credibility and trust with stakeholders and potential employers before you present your learnings. 

We’ll explore how to expand opportunities, triangulate your data, to influence product decisions and business strategies, and how to design and deliver presentations that fit your audience’s specific needs and constraints.

Options to fit your goals, needs, and budget

Choose from the complete user research training series, bundle two or more, or go á la carte with individual workshops.

Not seeing a topic you're interested in? Ask us about our other UXR training topics here.

Individual Workshop

Best for teams that…

Are just starting on their UXR journey

Seek to explore a specific topic

Want to test the UXR waters without the commitment of multiple sessions

Enjoy getting together for a day of teambuilding

Individual half-day workshops start at $3500

Inquire for 1-2 hour workshop proposals

2 or More Workshops

Best for teams that…

Are looking to fill the gaps in their current UXR program

Need to quickly help everyone get up to speed on more than the basics

Can invest time and resources into more than one day of training

Full-day workshop bundles start at $7000

Inquire about discounts for multiple day workshops

Signature Corporate Workshop Series

Best for teams that…

Are ready to upscale and democratize their UXR practice

Want a best-in-class research program

Understand the importance of empowering the entire team to tackle UX research

Inquire for signature series workshop proposals

What you can expect from the workshop experience

You'll get Michele's undivided attention and world-renown mentorship along with...

Live Sessions (typically broken up in 2-hour blocks) + Tools and templates

All sessions focus on design and user research phases, methods, approaches, and other aspects

All sessions include content, activities, and materials to prepare, empower, support, and inspire

you along with your design and user research journey

michele ronsen, ux researcher and educator

Created and led by Michele Ronsen, CEO of Curiosity Tank 

Hey there! I’m Michele Ronsen.

I’ve been conducting interviews on behalf of Fortune 500 companies for nearly a decade. I’ve helped companies like Facebook, Zillow, and Slack make better products. My clients rely on me when they want consumer data that is accurate and actionable.

Companies who hire me save thousands in development costs and efficiencies and make thousands from these discoveries.

When your team takes my workshops they can apply what they've learned to anything they explore or launch in the next month, year … or anytime. These workshops are an investment that pays off over and over again.

Build your team’s research competencies and help them deliver insights that will pay off for years to come.

See what a few of our Ask Like a Pro students have to say about working with Michele