Researcher
The Researcher Role
The Researcher focuses on uncovering insights about users, their behaviours, needs, and motivations. The researcher helps teams get the context they need to create better quality and more user-centric solutions. Researchers employ a variety of methods to gather qualitative and quantitative data, which informs the design and development process. But the role of a researcher goes beyond just initial research; it involves active participation in the entire product lifecycle, from ideation through to delivery and iteration, based on user feedback and product performance.
Product Risk
The researcher has a core responsibility for validating the Desirability risk - do customers really want this product? And, where applicable, the Third-party incentive risks - if we rely on an intermediary are they incentivised to help us? However, they are also accountable for, and provide input into, the other core risks: Usability risk, and Viability risk.
Key Responsibilities
Preparing Research: Working with the other Stream Team members to identify the research objectives, target audiences and developing a research plan with the necessary materials to conduct the research.
Conducting Primary Generative Research: Designing and executing various primary user research methods such as interviews, surveys, diary studies, and field studies to gather meaningful data.
Conducting Secondary Generative Research: Designing and executing various secondary research methods such as reviewing analytics data, sourcing industry reports and running competitive analysis.
Synthesising Insights: Analysing the collected data to derive actionable insights. This involves identifying patterns, pain points, and user needs that can inform product decisions.
Communicating Research: Sharing the insights with the rest of the team in a way that is easy to understand and actionable.
Prioritising Opportunities: Working with the Stream Team to identify the most promising opportunities to pursue.
Collaborating with Cross-Functional Teams: Working continuously with the other Stream Team members to ensure that user insights are integrated into the product development process.
Key Artifacts Produced
Research Objectives: A document outlining the research questions that need to be answered.
Jobs to be Done: A document outlining the jobs that users are trying to accomplish and the progress they are trying to make.
Research Plan: A document outlining the research methods, the target audience, and the timeline for the research.
Interview Guide: A document outlining the questions that will be asked during user interviews.
Interview Snapshots: A document summarising the key insights from user interviews.
Research Repository: A collection of all the research artifacts produced by the Team.
Customer Journey Maps: A visualisation of the flow of each persona / job when interacting with the product.
Opportunities: The potential areas of focus that the team is considering based on the insights gathered.
Opportunity Solution Tree: A visual representation of the opportunities that the team is pursuing and the solutions that are being considered.
Why a dedicated researcher?
The conflation of UX and UI leads to a lot of companies condensing the researcher and designer roles into a single person. This is possible but it comes with tradeoffs that companies should be aware of. Researchers are responsible for validating the desirability risk - do customers really want this product? They do this through generative research, uncovering insights about users, their behaviours, needs, and motivations. Designers are responsible for validating the usability risk - can customers use this to solve their problems? This can lead to a tendency to focus more on usability testing. When effectiveness is a key goal a separation between researchers and designers ensures that both desirability and usability are given equal weight in the product development process.