Day 1– Theme 1 Panel

Panelists

Jenna Ahmed (JA): Lead Curator, Rosenfeld Media

Robert Fabricant (RF): Partner and Co-Founder of Dalberg Design

Llewyn Paine (LP): Principal of Innovation Strategy, Llewyn Paine Consulting

Sean McKay (SM): Founder, Whole Product Thinking

Noah Bond (NB): UX Research Lead, Hinge

Kate Towsey (KT): Independent Strategist, Author, Research that Scales

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Excited to welcome these thinkers to stage and think about broader theme brought up in talks today and will go straight to questions

One of things found so interesting in common theme of embracing change in relational dynamic requires radical acceptance and lot of mindset shifts. Broadening of research and role that needs to pivot, and shifting from creator to curator

  1. Can you share from experience how you’ve made radical acceptance and mindset shift into own practices?

SM: For himself coming from design background, and doing design before web and watching it go through whole design of research and think it’s embracing parallel and what can be shifted over from skillset and mindset to do what going forward

KT: About new skills, but looking at skills that already exist like librarianship— which we ignore at our peril, and when we think about research practices, and not just looking forward, but not forgetting value we forgot about in past and leveraging skills from other domains to press us into a whole new space

NB: Research teams and how to approach research ethically, and skinfolk aren’t necessarily kin-folk, and diversity won’t necessarily prevent inequitable design practices

  • Need to be intentional to learn and unlearn best approaches to research
  • Where diversity is important is that we are not getting deep insights from people if they don’t trust you
    • Trust is easier to build if there is sense of shared identity

KT: Jess Lewis pointed out that part of book about recruiting, and for more inclusive products and services— incentive for inclusive recruiting practices and have all people take part and provide their views in the product lifecycle

  1. Great segway, of ongoing discussion and re-centering the participant in our work and core consequence of relational dynamic.
    1. It can be hard in commercial context we are in right now, with relentless demands to prove value and work at speed and efficiently. Outside of methods, what do you think it means to center the participant, and how do we balance business value and re-centering the participant?

RF: Will jump in that not working in commercial context the way used to

  • See it as maturity model and see it as process of where we are at and right expectations that sit inside purview of our own research practices
  • As community we have catch-up to do there
  • Putting in place longer-term partnerships with other community groups with people we are working with — important as leaders as head of process to get alliances in place and trust ahead of time and hard to cost out
    • Critical to do, as rare to go into situation that you know enough about individuals on best way to center them and engage on how to work together
  • This will raise the floor to help your team be agile in what you engage and learn, and not view it as separate projects
  • Raise awareness and expectations of partners and stakeholders you work with
    • Bar will go up beyond hours of research, and doing things less and better. Few people with useful insights, and existing frame of analysis are those are dealt with in most ethical way
    • Some will run up against norms, policies, and processes

EL: Also thinking about partnering with AI and using tools we don’t understand and ways we choose how to measure the impact of ourselves and partners would be linked with values and important influence and what metrics measured and what we are communicating

SM: Going back to risk and value, and what we are exposing business to risk and asking what value to get from business and then customer

  1. Lightning round: Spoke a lot about practical changes dynamic shift likely to cause and each of you, and which of changes is most important for attendees to takeaway?

RF: Came up in Q&A and trust yourself and skills you’ve developed. Let go of control and expertise as the placeyou think is where value is derived, and accept if you grasp that you really understand what you do to help people and figure out in what way you can incerase degree org is prepared for change and participant centered

NB: Bandwagoning and social norms dictate people’s behaviors, and decisions in society trickle down to what to company’s invest in. Need to figure out how to engage with stakeholders, and stay vigilant with shifting practices

  • View work as form of activism, and knowing it’s draining, that work we do is shifting world in better direction and how to frame how important this stuff — and do it in community

LS: Changes on AI and practices to research. AI has power to deskill lot of roles, so double down on what we do well, like how we evaluate tools we use and can play critical role if we take it on

SM: Getting context for certain insights, and how it gets incorporate into workflow and processes, and stitching it together into people’s connections.

KT: Having the beginner’s mind, and everything being up for play and rebuilt and no rules in mind.

  • Overtime adopted certain ideas about how things should work, and at point of diminishing return
  • Back to beginner’s mind we can have far more fun if we saw our work creatively without relying on old patterns

Audience Questions:

  1. What standard research practices to get rid of or eliminate if you could, suspending reality and business constraints, given change you are going through?
    1. Robert: Viewing research as ‘project’, and having more continuous engagement and stakeholders with customers, users, and situations
    2. Kate: What to call it if not a study?
      1. Robert: Learning process, but a ‘study’ rings of academia, and power dynamic of studying people
    3. Jenna: Idea of being flexible with approaches and ideas that you have to be comfortable with adapting to constraints and person in front of you
      1. Treating people with humanity and dignity, based on who they are and how they show up, and has business values
      2. We are in middle of data quality crisis, and this can provide far better data
    4. Noah: Distinction between reactive and proactive, and replying to design requests and product requests and planning and think we need to be more proactive to add value
    5. Lllewyn: Migration to more adaptable way of doing research, and be more fluid and engage with stakeholders and how teams participate with it — sense of what value is, and making roles harder to automate by showing what machine can’t reproduce
    6. Kate: Work in business structure that rewards growth, and heuristic that the bigger the team is, the higher the job
      1. Size should not be equivalent to research maturity
    7. Sean: Thinking of triangulating across inputs, and remove NPS and false indicator businesses lean on
    8. Robert: Research advisory and how can someone who has been with the org move into advisory role, and how can institutional knowledge be useful to the org as a whole

Keeping up with talk and users as not resource we took info from, importance of lit reviews and other teams— integrative techniques to use, and building goals and silos to let knowledge flow