Welcome to Good Research, a program that explores what excellence looks like in the research practice. To get started, Colette is going to walk you through what this program will cover this week to help you grow and find confidence in your research practice.

Great research starts with great preparation. That means a lot more than recruiting the right people and creating discussion guides. We have to understand the business we work for, the characters we work with, and the incentives and outcomes we are driving towards. Let’s talk about how we orient ourselves to make sure we’re working on the right research.

How do you define the right objective? The right method? Every project needs a plan that suits what you are trying to learn under the set of constraints you're working with. Raz, Senior UX Research Manager at Spotify is going to walk you through the key considerations to planning good research projects.

We can’t be good partners to the leaders in the businesses we work in if we don’t understand how the business works. In this session, Alec will talk about how business acumen is a key blind spot for many researchers, and discuss a few core themes you need to understand to be a better business partner.

The worries, pressures, and aspirations of leaders in your organization might seem like a mystery. But what if we told you that if you work in a big company, there are quarterly documents freely available to you that tell you exactly what execs in your org are trying to accomplish, and how well they are doing? In this talk, we’ll be covering how to read financial documents for publicly traded companies to uncover the secrets of your leaderships’ business objectives.

Qualitative research is often open-ended, a little ambiguous, a little mysterious… and that’s what makes it all fun. But it can often mean that it’s hard to know when you’re doing it right, and where you can improve. Here, Colette is going to talk through what good qualitative research looks like.

Interviews in user research are so much more than talking to users. If you do them right, you end up with so much depth and richness that it will drive product growth and strategy. In this talk, Raz will share her advice for getting the most out of every conversation.

Most of us are familiar with affinity mapping (a.k.a. clustering sticky notes on white boards), but qualitative analysis is so much more than that. Emily is going to take us a level or two deeper to give us more tools to understand the rich qualitative data we generate.

There’s no doubt quantitative research can be intimidating for many, especially those whose natural skills lay in building rapport and having open-ended conversations. But developing a comfort with quantitative research can be a huge advantage for your practice and career, so let’s dig into what good quantitative research looks like.

Alright, we’ve convinced you to jump in full steam ahead into the practice of quant research. Time to get into more specifics. In this session, Alex and Marina will be going through various quant strategies and methods, survey design, and analytical approaches (with some practice sessions for you too!).

As researchers, we don’t create value directly - we do it indirectly by improving the decision making capabilities of others. This fact has profound implications for how we work, and what it means to work well. Let’s talk about what impact in research really is.

Communication is a critical component of translating data from our brains, into those of our stakeholders. But, like so many things, communication is a skill that has to be developed. In this session, George will talk about how to be a better storyteller to make your insights stick.

Research is a people practice, and that means being a great practitioner requires great relationship skills. Managing up, down, and sideways all play into making the research ship sail smoothly. In this session you’ll get to learn from one of the best in the business.

Now that we’ve spent most of the week talking about the tactics of research and how to do them well, it’s time to take a step back. What does a good research practice look like? What does the work about the work even look like? Let’s dig into how to make our work work.

Research is much more than testing prototypes and chatting with customers. It’s a way of doing things - one where curiosity and inquiry are encouraged and celebrated. How do we build such a culture and environment? Listen in as Behzod starts this conversation.

Zooming out, how does the research function fit into the core operations of a business? How do we work with others, and how do we become a critical part of the success of the business? Christina started the research practice at Slack, and today she’s going to talk to us about what success looks like at the departmental level.

When you’re the first researcher at an organization, you are faced with a daunting number of choices about which capabilities to invest in first. In this talk, Cristen Torrey will not produce a magic formula for building your research practice. She doesn’t have it! Instead, she will share her mind map for the capabilities of “A Good Research Team,” talk about how she prioritized building the team at Figma, and share lessons learned. She hopes this case study is a jumping off point for others trying to articulate their next steps in expanding their research practice.

Every company has a head executive, and there has been (or will be) a moment where they understand that they need research. If we better understand that moment, that need, then maybe we can better set ourselves up for a successful practice and career. In this fireside chat, we’ll talk with a CEO who recently jumped on the research bandwagon about his journey to embracing the practice.