The Tale of Two Companies: Building a Successful UX Practice in a Century-Old Enterprise
How do you establish a thriving UX organization in a century-old company? Our opening presentation is a tale of two organizations and two different UX leaders. They followed very different paths and come from different industries, yet their stories of success and lessons for others have a lot in common. Rob Mitzel spent his entire career at Ford, starting from a Safety Engineer and changing roles to evolve into a Design Ops Manager, as the company evolved. Sébastien Malo parachuted to CN (Canadian National Railway) only a couple of years ago, but has already changed the course of his organization. Rob and Sebastien compare and contrast stories of how UX adapted and iterated their teams, skills and service to meet the needs of an evolving enterprise IT organization and the business at large.
Research as a Vehicle for Organizational Transformation with Natalie Hanson
After abandoning the world of academia, Natalie Hanson found an innovative way to connect with other ethnographers: she founded a new community (Anthrodesign)!. This year, she brings her community-organizing talents to the second Advancing Research conference as Lead Curator. She joins Lou to share her own story and the story of the conference, offering a sneak peek into what we’ll cover — and what the conference might look like five years in the future.
The Evolution of User Research with Steve Portigal
Author, researcher, speaker, and frequent Rosenfeld Review guest Steve Portigal joins Lou for a chat on the state of the user research industry – where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re headed. If the field of research was once a lonely desert, today it’s a jungle. It was once a field where researchers could get lost and forgotten. Today, the field is teaming with life—so much so that you could get eaten alive.
Gleaning lessons from the past, Steve doesn’t want us to forget the desert. But he has no desire to return there.
In his chat with Lou, they look back, and they look ahead. They discuss shifts in community and networking, and how research agencies are being replaced by in-house research teams. Finally, the two discuss Steve’s role in the upcoming, in-person Advancing Research conference in Queens, New York.
What you’ll learn from this episode:
How the world of user research has evolved over the last 25 years from a widely-respected industry expert
How the research industry has shifted from agency-based work to in-sourcing
About Steve’s work, career, and books
About the upcoming, in-person Advancing Research Conference
About Steve’s role in past Advancing Research Conferences
Quick Reference Guide:
[0:00:29] Introduction of Steve
[0:02:50] “Dog fooding”, preparation, and collaboration that happens before conferences
[0:09:30] Comparing the user research field and community now to how it was 25 years ago.
[0:16:22] The evolution of networking, connections, and community
[0:23:09] Shifts and pivots Steve has seen over the last 25 years in the user research field
[0:30:32] Writing it down and moving on
[0:35:13] Plug for Advancing Research Conference, including Steve’s role
[0:36:27] Steve’s gift for listeners
What It’s Like To Be a User Researcher at Compass
Join the moderator, Kayla Farrell (Sr User Researcher), as she runs a Q&A session with Chelsey Glasson (Staff User Researcher), Sean Fitzell (User Research Manager), and Jared LeClerc (Sr User Researcher), as they discuss life as a user researcher at Compass.
The Past, Present, and Future of DesignOps: a 2-part DesignOps Community Call (Part 1) (Videoconference)
If you’ve been wondering just how DesignOps has evolved to its current state, where it’s going, and how you can influence its future, you won’t want to miss our upcoming two-part series of DesignOps community calls. It’s your chance to learn from expert panelists and participate in a community exercise centered around mapping out the practice of DesignOps.
Esteemed emeritus DesignOps curator Dave Malouf and emcee Meredith Black provide a firsthand account of the trends and factors that have influenced the direction of the practice over the past five years. We then begin working on our own mapping of DesignOps as a community, led by curator Farid Sabitov.
A Mixed Method Approach to Validity to Help Build Trust
Quantitative instruments are frequently sought because 1) they can be quickly fielded to lots and lots of people, and 2) when carefully sampled, they can be generalizable to the population of users/customers. However, because many times the focus is on speed to launch because decision-makers need results quickly, there is not much depth given to their development, nor an investigation of the validity evidence. In the session, I will share a framework that centers validity and is necessarily a mixed methods approach to research. I will also share ideas on how to scale the research over time so that findings and insights are able to be iteratively delivered to stakeholders, while also iteratively informing one another in a qual-quant research dance that brings more trustworthy, user-centered evidence to decision-makers. Finally, I will share ideas for a course I am developing for supporting qualitative researchers to become more mixed in their approach.
Erica Jorgensen on Tools and Techniques for Testing your Content
Erica Jorgensen is one of Rosenfeld Media’s newest authors with the publication of her book, Strategic Content Design: Tools and Research Techniques for Better UX. ( rosenfeldmedia.com/books/strategic-content-design/ ) With a background in journalism, her book draws on her experiences as a content designer with the likes of Chewy, Microsoft, Slack, Amazon, Starbucks, Nordstrom, and Expedia.
Erica’s book is a toolkit of research techniques for anyone struggling to create content that makes an impact. Not all companies have dedicated research budgets or teams, yet research can save us from redos and yield more targeted, effective content.
Without research, you may be flying blind without even realizing it. We assume the words and phrases on our websites and apps are effective, and a little due diligence can confirm those assumptions or enlighten us about something that was previously completely outside our awareness.
Erica warns us to be prepared because content research will open proverbial cans of worms. False assumptions will be exposed, and what you learn may take your work in unexpected directions. Oftentimes, the whole company will need to get on board when language has to be changed or cleaned up.
In a nutshell, content research will expose problems. But it will help you make progress, and the payoff is worth it.
What you’ll learn from this episode:
• About Erica’s career journey in content design
• Case study: The impact of one company’s confusing language, and how content research came to the rescue
• How to incorporate content research into non-research roles
• How to prioritize and strategize content research
• How to harness content audits to highlight what needs attention
• Why it’s important to present your team’s work in the most flattering light possible
How to create actionable insight in the face of politics and silos [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series] (Videoconference)
Three of your research colleagues discussed and defended their respective positions on creating actionable insight in the face of politics and silos. Pariticipants then engaged with them in a discussion and Q&A, facilitated by Robin Beers.
“In organizations that may not incentivize informed decision-making, researchers need to study power dynamics, cultivate their political influence, and consistently communicate their value to the business.”
– Sonja Bobrowska
“AI tools will change the way people consume researchers, relying more and more on receiving personalized summaries. This will only exacerbate silos and lead to miscommunication. To avoid this, the best skill researchers can learn is creating compelling visual frameworks rather than weighty reports.”
– Mujtaba Hameed
“The best report and presentation ever do not necessarily mean your findings will be adopted. Insights virtually don’t exist if you aren’t able to make them stick by putting them to work.”
– Josh Morales
Get Your Whole Team Testing to Design for Impact
Experimentation can be intimidating to non-data science folk. But Erin wants to get everyone excited about A/B testing. In this talk, Erin shares the Conversion Design process. It centers A/B testing as a way to gather high-quality evidence to make highly informed decisions to improve your digital product. She also introduces the Good Experimental Design toolkit. These easy-to-follow templates usher teams through the logic needed to design trustworthy experiments that you can learn from.
Transforming Language with AI with Peter van Dijck
In the latest episode of the Rosenfeld Review, Lou sits down with old friend Peter van Dijck, author of Information Architecture for Designers: Structuring Websites for Business Success, one of the first books ever written on Information Architecture. Peter is now a partner of Simply Put, a Colombian company that builds and designs useful AI Agents—including the soon-to-launch Rosenbot!
Peter offers insight into the world of AI. Having been one of the first to speak about IA, it is fascinating to hear what he now has to say about AI. Join Lou and Peter as they take you through the journey where language itself is transforming from design to technology.
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
- An introduction to the Rosenbot, an AI bot that Peter’s company is developing for Rosenfeld Media
- Some basic vocabulary for speaking about AI and ML so you “don’t feel like an idiot”
- Mind-blowing truths about the potential of Generative AI’s language capabilities
- How writing has transformed from a design to a technology and learn what that means for how we interact with the data
- About the importance of highly curated information when training bots and the tricky balance that comes when you want to present less polished sources like unedited conversations
- The importance of the human side of things
- The biggest surprise that has come from working in the industry
Quick Reference Guide
[0:15] – Lou’s introduction of Peter Van Dijck
[3:00] – AI on a basic level
[4:59] – Generative AI’s language capabilities
[18:08] – How we interact with metadata and writing as a technology
[20:00] – How real-use cases make technology more exciting and instantaneous
[22:19] – Information about the new Designing With AI Conference
[23:33] – Some of the jargon around AI and IA
[24:16] – Introduction to Lou’s Chat Bot, the Rosen Bot
[24:39] – The importance of training bots on highly curated information
[28:34] – The tricky balance of curated and less polished content
[30:26] – The human side of things
[31:55] – Different interaction models
[37:58] – The biggest surprise working in the industry
[38:30] – A Gift For You
