An Accidental Research Study - Part 2

This is part 2 of the “I accidentally kicked off a research study” post. Today, I’m diving into the first insight: We are a Passionate Group

We, using the term broadly to include both researchers and designers, care deeply about research. Just in case it’s not clear, we are passionate about research. We love the process - identifying the questions to be answered and problems to be solved, building the plan, executing and achieving amazing insights for our stakeholders and customers.

Research helps us so some incredibly remarkable things:
✅ Influence positive change for customers? Check.
✅ Help an org deeply and succinctly understand its users’ motivations and challenges? Check.
✅ Gather inputs needed to build a strategy? Check.
✅ Answer tough questions? Check. Check. Check.

As researchers, we cover an extremely broad range of areas (tech, healthcare, banking, science, transportation and non-profit, among so many others). Regardless of topic, the process is almost identical: we field studies to answer tough questions and solve hard problems.

Almost universally, we accomplish this in the face of limited budgets, skeptical stakeholders and internal politics. In a perfect world, we would have unlimited budgets and stakeholders who are bought in from the beginning, and politics would not get in the way, and, and…But the reality is a bit different. This isn’t necessarily bad, rather, it’s a core part of our jobs that we negotiate with eyes wide open.

Personalities also play a role in our passion for research. We are a mix of curious, engaging and friendly. For those of us in the qualitative business, we like to talk, a key moderator requirement. Or as I joke, “if we didn’t like to talk to people, we would be in the wrong job.”

Finally, this is obvious, but worth mentioning: research is a discipline that welcomes and embraces many different backgrounds, academically and career. Used to be a dev? Welcome to research. Was a poli sci major? Welcome to research. This makes us unique among professions; many of us stumble into research, not quite sure about this “research thing”, and find a career that we find incredibly exciting and fulfilling. We are a diverse bunch, but very, very similar.

In part 3, I’ll dive into the other two insights, AI and Jobs, plus Next Steps.

Are you interested in being part of my “accidental” study? DM or book a time slot here: https://lnkd.in/gyB4nyMu