Hey Reader,

I hope you're having a great week so far! My next few weeks are going to be all about teaching -- the third cohort of my Maven course just started, and I'm teaching a different multi-workshop series for an outdoor exploration app company as well. I managed to pack quite a lot into this newsletter despite being busy, though, so let's get right into it!

✨ How to write unforgettable research insights

On October 25th, I got together with Thailand-based UXR Ruby Pryor for a "fireside chat" style session where we took questions from the audience about how to create and share research insights. It was a really fun, high-energy session, so I want to share a bit of it with you.

Below are a couple of the questions our audience asked us, and Ruby's responses to the questions. I'm sure I also said some smart things during the session, but everything Ruby said was so on-point, I want to use this space to share some of her brilliance with you all 😊
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How do you write research insights so they will actually make an impact?

Ruby Pryor says:
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"So I think the kind of number one thing you have to do is make sure you're actually writing an insight, and you're not just writing an observation. Put really, simply, an observation is a “what” — like what you're observing. And an insight is a “why”, like why is this behaviour actually happening […] I think if we don't do our analysis really well, we can only end up at the observations.

But the key thing to get stakeholders really excited about your work is, explain the “why” and then explain the “so what?”. We understand this about the behaviour of our users, therefore we should take this action. And I know this can be a little bit contentious among some UX researchers who feel that the dominion of recommendations is not actually somewhere that we should stray. But I strongly disagree with that.

My role for organizations is to help them design and execute better user experiences. And if I don't tread into the realm of recommendations. It's going to be really hard for me to do so right?

Actually, really pointed insights have really good recommendations that go alongside them, and then structure those insights into a compelling storyline that starts with the answer first. Your stakeholders are incredibly time poor. Stakeholders don't want to sit through a really long presentation. They want to be hit immediately with “what I need to do next”. So that's the kind of information I always try and front load in any kind of share back session that I'm doing with my stakeholders."

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Do you normally connect your insights to business metrics? What kind of frameworks do you normally use.

Ruby Pryor says:
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"Considering the business metrics, as in what are the top numbers that your stakeholders really focus on and really care about, is essential at the very beginning [...] if you know that your organization has a couple of North Star metrics, and there are PMs inside of that organization, and whole teams, frankly, whose job it is to try and move those recommendations. You probably want to align your research priorities to those recommendations as well.

So I think that's the first thing: really understanding what are the key metrics of your organization and then tying your research efforts to those metrics. And when we think about impact, I think that's one kind of metric that research teams can talk about, and should be aligning their work to, and should be celebrating their wins against.

But we can also think about metrics to do with our own work. So we can think about activity metrics in terms of the research team. For example, like what percentage of stakeholder requests are we getting through? How many studies are we doing? How many users are we speaking to? Where are our insights being used? Are they being used in, for example, strategy documents in product roadmaps, like recording and keeping records of the way that your insights are being used inside of an organization. Putting numbers against those metrics can be really super helpful to convey to stakeholders the way in which research is making impact.

And generally, when I think about research impact inside of organizations, I think about it at 4 levels:

The foundational level is insights. Are we helping to advance the culture of understanding customers inside of our organization?

One level up from that is around optimization: are we helping to optimize the products and features that our company already has?

The next layer is prioritization: are we helping our organization make better decisions about where to put their efforts? We're going to build A and not B, or we're going to build B before we build A, are we actually redirecting resources inside of an organization?

And then the highest level is strategy. And when I talk about strategic impact, I mean things like, are we helping our organization make different decisions around the type of problems that we solve, the type of users that we solve them for the type of markets that we play in. And I strongly believe UX research has dominion over all 4 of those levels. But firstly, we need to make sure we're in the right rooms in the right conversations, doing the right research."

​You can watch the recording of our full conversation here (use passcode pOfT8%LR), and check out the Tools & Resources section below for 20% off Ruby's upcoming course!
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🎟️ Events

November 5 (today!): Breaking through recruitment myths Join UX recruiting expert Lena Kul at 11am ET as she clears up misconceptions about AI rejections, applying to jobs with 100+ candidates, negotiation strategies, and evaluating recruitment advice. Get free ticket

November 7: Designing your workshop experience As part of the Seen In Scenes Festival, Brittni will share tangible advice on building more powerful workshops, as well as some simple ways for you to embrace your own facilitation style. I'm going to this one! Get free ticket

November 7: What UXRs and content designers can learn from each another Ruby and Yi Lynn will discuss the similarities and differences between UX writing and UXR writing. This one is well-timed for those in Asia and Australia/NZ -- it may be late at night if you're elsewhere :) Get free ticket

November 7: From strategy to roadmap You’ll learn to bridge the gap between strategy and execution, a key skill for driving product success. By understanding how to turn vision into actionable plans, you’ll enhance your ability to lead, influence, and deliver results in any product environment. Get free ticket

Like David, I try to bake multiple iterations into my usability testing projects when I can, and take advantage of remote panels like Userinterviews.com to get participants quickly. It doesn't make sense for every project, but it always feels like we're closer to the "right" thing at the end than when we run all participants at once with the same prototype.

🎒 Tools & Resources

Podcast Episode - Scaling your UX consultancy: Newsletters, courses, and deliverables I sat down with Kyle Soucy to talk about this newsletter (!) and the other things I do to try to get my name out there as a UXR consultant. Take a listen if you're curious about courses, newsletters, talks, and more! Listen at UX Consultants Lounge

Course - Turbocharge your UX research: Writing for impact Get ready to transform the way you communicate your insights. In this course, you’ll master the art of turning complex data into clear, powerful stories that captivate your audience. Make sure to use the code BRAZEN20 for 20% off! Get 20% off

Coaching - The Backchannel: Confidential PM cohort My friend, executive coach former Google PM Director Tom Leung, is offering a 3-month, weekly, curated small peer group for PMs to accelerate their career success with group discussion and expert mentorship. The link gets your $200 off this program. Get $200 off

Book - In through the side door: 50 years of women in interaction design Erin Malone begins with a handful of pioneers who brought to the field various methods from a variety of backgrounds, them moves through the early days of desktop computing, the invention of the world wide web, the third wave of feminism, the dotcom boom and bust, and into the present day. Check it out

I'm biased because this is my husband, but I really do think many of us have the same cozy feelings about working on smaller-scale stuff 😌

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Okay, that's all for now, Reader -- hope you enjoyed it, and I'll see you again soon. ​ -- Elizabeth @ Research For All

Elizabeth Creighton​
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Questions? Comments? Compliments? Complaints? Hit 'reply' -- I'd love to hear them.
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Looking for more research stuff? Book a chat or resume review, download my free research plan template, or join my User Interview Skills course at 20% off.
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Logo designed by the inimitable Tom Creighton.
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👾 The Bonus Level

Your reward for scrolling down this far may not even apply to you, but I'm putting it here anyways. Congrats!