Cultivating Business Partnerships to Grow Research Ops (Videoconference)

The landscape of Research Operations is vast, and there is no “easy button” for organizations implementing a successful practice. So how do you multiply your effectiveness and increase your impact in a scalable way? Whether you’re a team of one or twenty-one, cultivating relationships across the business is critical in these days of interconnectedness. In this session, Noel Lamb shares examples of how you can get your company to invest in helping you build your Research Ops program.

Business Influence Without Losing Your Soul (Videoconference)

To be an effective design leader requires knowing about the business, but does it require an MBA? Maybe it’s more about exerting influence by leveraging simple models of behavioral science and persuasion to achieve outcomes—and doing it without losing your soul. Join us for an enlightening approach to achieving our goals as designers, in a fireside chat with Ryan Rumsey, Chief Executive Officer, Second Wave Dive. He shares his own journey from Apple to Electronic Arts (EA) and beyond as a design leader learning how to gain effective influence with “the business” side of things.

What UX research can learn from other research practices [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series] (Videoconference)

Three of your research colleagues discussed and defended their respective positions (below) on what UX research can learn from other research practices. Participants engaged with them in a discussion and Q&A, facilitated by Brianna Sylver.

“UX research is inherently future-oriented. An anthropology of the future can offer more distinguished and nuanced ways to explore the meaning of users’ expectations, anticipations, hopes, and speculations.”

     – Nicole Aleong

“UX research should learn more from market research, a larger and more mature field in which it has roots. Market research is a multidisciplinary field with an extensive collection of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies that have been used to support product development decisions to deliver business outcomes for decades—no need to reinvent the wheel.”

     – Michaela Mora

“UX research is often viewed as cute, charming and ‘nice to have.’ For that perception to change in the market, we need to learn from those charging millions of dollars for their strategic research skills: management consultants.”

     – Prayag Narula  

Framing Tomorrow by Questioning Today

How can you use the humble question to be a better leader?

Over the past year or two, Brave UX Podcaster Brendan Jarvis has been asking great questions of over 75 of the best and brightest design leaders with the goal of surfacing the biggest questions facing the field, and using them as a springboard to becoming a better leader.

Brendan joins Lou for a wide-ranging conversation about questions—a preview for his talk at June’s Design at Scale 2022 conference. Along the way, they cover the importance of diverse perspectives, the controversies of Amazon Alexa, and how designers can get a seat at the table.

Warning: this talk may raise more questions than it provides answers for!

Figure It Out: Getting from Information to Understanding

Authors Stephen P. Anderson and Karl Fast discuss the complex world of information (think incomprehensible tax policies to confusing medical explanations) we are faced with, and the ways in which information can be transformed into better presentations, better meetings, better software, and better decisions. Stephen also shares a personal anecdote about part of the inspiration for the book.

How to make UX research leadership more effective [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series] (Videoconference)

Three of your research colleagues discussed and defended their respective positions on making UX leadership more effective in this Advancing Research community workshop. Participants engaged with them in a discussion and Q&A, facilitated by Peter Merholz.

“UX Research leaders of tomorrow need to stand tall, assert themselves, and take a seat at the table because we have a purpose and companies cannot afford to make investment decisions based on intuition.” 

 – Sarah Alvarado

“Move out of your UX org.” 

 – Nalini Kotamraju

“Most organizations talk a good prioritization game but fail to actually prioritize their projects, creating the perfect opportunity for Research leadership. Developing and maintaining a stack-ranked ruthless prioritization of projects has the power to grow Research headcount and budget and elevate Research strategically while minimizing researcher overwork.”

 – Anne Mamaghani

Panel: Excellence in Communicating Insights

Insights wither and die when they gather dust on the shelf. Excellence in research is only excellence when data is turned to insight, those insights made actionable and are told in stories which engage, inspire and provoke. Our esteemed panel of research leaders will be sharing their best practices for ensuring that insights are heard, acted upon and given the power to become received wisdom which drive business’ forward.

Puzzled? How to Coordinate Humans for Complex Challenges

How do we coordinate people for complex challenges? Certainly not with traditional work structures, designed to optimize for performance. Rather, we need new ways of working—new structures—that have been specifically designed to coordinate people for understanding. We’ll look at a framework that can be used by teams, organizations, and other groups of humans working on complex problems.

Stephen P. Anderson is a speaker and author who spends too much thinking about visual collaboration, how people learn, and board games; not necessarily in that order. Oh, and he’s on a mission: To make learning the hard stuff fun, by creating ‘things to think with’ and ‘spaces’ for generative play. This mission has led Stephen to MURAL, where he facilitates design strategy and innovation. Stephen’s newest book, Figure It Out: Getting From Information to Understanding, has been described as both “required reading for designers and anyone else who needs to explain things” and a book that will “change the way you see the world.”

The Other L Word—Addressing Workplace Loneliness with Kat Vellos

Kat Vellos, author of Connected From Afar: A Guide for Staying Close When You’re Far Away and We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships, is our opening speaker on day one of the DesignOps Summit this October 21-23, 2020.

Here, she discusses the issues of loneliness in the workplace, and how managers can support their teams—especially in the time of remote work and added stresses from a global pandemic. In addition to supporting employees’ humanity, a manager who keeps their staff happy enough to stay can have a major impact on a company’s bottom line—at the average national voluntary turnover rate of 25%, a company of 100 people with an average salary of $50,000 will spend between $625,000 and $2.5 million dollars on staff replacement costs in one year.

The Past, Present, and Future of DesignOps: a 2-part DesignOps Community Call (Part 2) (Videoconference)

In this follow-up to our February call, “DesignOps Trends and Forecasts, Part 1,” design leaders Dave Malouf, Patrizia Bertini, and Jon Fukuda join the DesignOps curation team in a collaborative discussion with community members. Reflecting on responses to earlier surveys and conversations regarding the history and current state of DesignOps, the panel and community look ahead to the future, with opportunities for all in attendance to share their own insights and predictions, as well.