Hello everybody. I see Rhoda Sol Winona. Welcome everyone. Um, I hope you're having a good Wednesday. Uh, I'm Joe, I'm gonna be taking, uh. Passenger seat today. We've got Odette here. Um, Odette, if you could say hi and just make sure your audio's coming through and everything's good. Hello? Hello? Hello. How are we?

Sound in chat. Let us know. Can you hear us? See us see my screen here. Um, gimme a quick thumbs up in the chat. Uh, you are a first group of people here, so we're gonna hang out just for a couple more minutes and then we'll get started with. Super quick intro, um, and then get into some questions for Odette.

As you can see with our slides or title here, we're talking about synthesis, collaboration, um, something that Odette and I both have a lot of experience in, but Odette has even way more experienced doing it, but leading it and, uh. Uh, creating a, an environment framework, getting people on board, uh, with all the stuff that comes after doing the research, all the stuff that needs to happen to turn those, uh, post-it notes and findings and recordings into, uh, some product improvements.

So we're gonna get into that in just a second, but I have a, uh, poll here that I'm going to launch, um, on that topic. So let me open this up. Um, you guys who are joining should see a poll somewhere popping up that you can vote on. Um, but if not, I've got the prompt right here. All right, so going with what we're talking about here in our, our q and a today, you've just wrapped up a big round of research.

You've got your, your pile, uh, digital or physical of findings, quotes, feedback, metrics. You've got all the. Stuff you gathered and did the work to, to retrieve as a good researcher or designer. Um, so I wanna hear from you guys with, uh, with your votes. In your experience, what is the most challenging next step going from taking those findings and actually bringing them to life?

Turning them into real product improvements? So in the poll we have. Synthesizing, prioritizing, getting stakeholders to buy in, um, turning findings into a, uh, actionable next steps, all of the above. Uh, Odette, do you have any, uh, any thoughts on this one? I think these are all really good and I'm, I'm not surprised that, uh, already 40% says all of the above.

Yeah, I'm not either. I launched this on, uh, on LinkedIn. I couldn't do an all of the above one, but I was like, that's kind of an easy, easy answer for this. Um, yeah. So, uh, put a vote in. We're gonna wait for some more people to join. Lemme check the shout out here. Uh, Matt says loud and clear. Wrote a thumbs up.

Lois, thumbs up. Excellent. Um, cool. So cast your vote if you've done that already. If you've got an other option for the, for the poll, if there's something I didn't, didn't cover here, uh, that is one of the many challenges of synthesis and turning, bringing it to life, let me know in the chat. Um, otherwise we'll hang out for another minute or two and then get into our interim questions.

I actually had a kind of a, an other, I think I would go with vote for all of the above on this one, but I guess the slide, I can't see it here, but it depends, maybe would've been a good one. It depends, is always a good answer for any ux, any product designer. Agree. Um, the one that came to mind for me that was kind of the meta was like making a decision, right?

You get all this stuff back. Mm-hmm. You've put a lot of, uh, work and time and probably. Scratched and clawed to get resources for research. Now you have it all and everyone's kind of like looking at each other. No. Yeah. Um, figuring out like what, where do we move forward with this? Um, I think that comes up in a lot of areas, even outside of design research, but just that idea of like.

Leadership in a way, but also like moving, uh, charting, prove you were worth it. Totally. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Committing, committing to committing to something. Mm-hmm. Yep. Awesome. Let's check our poll here. Okay. Let me stop it and I'm gonna put it up on. Let's see what we got here. Okay. Wrapped up. Research. Most challenging.

Next step in turning those findings into improvements, synthesizing, prioritizing what will have the biggest impact. Stakeholder buy-in, getting stakeholders to care. Uh, and we got that tied with all of the above. I think that is, uh. I think that's pretty, pretty in line with what I expected. Um, we're gonna talk about all or a lot of this stuff today, so thanks for voting, everyone.

Let's get into it. Um, I.  My name is Joe. But I don't really matter for this workshop today. Other than I'm the design advocate here at Lyssna. I've got a background as senior product designer, researcher and educator. I've worked on a whole bunch of different projects and my, as we're talking through stuff, bring some examples or some chime in with a couple things.

But for the most part, my role here today is to let Odette shine, answer your questions, and talk about something, as I said, she's extremely knowledgeable and experienced about, which is all of the intricacies and challenges and how to get over them in terms of synthesizing research and bringing it to life.

This series, our Q&As are all about bringing practitioners in, like Odette, so while I host a lot of workshops and other educational stuff for Lyssna, these Q&A series are really us finding people and connecting with people who are doing interesting work in product design, UX research, education.

And bring them into answer questions, but also to talk less about, you know, theory concepts behind things. More about day-to-day work, team structure, career journeys and lessons learned. We had Taylor from Allied Bank months ago, who shared a lot about her journey into UX research and, you know, her role.

And also kind of the real stories, like I don't wanna say like behind the scenes stuff, but the stuff that Odette's working on that our other guests are picking up and opening up on their screen every morning, and solving or finding a way to do better. So bringing all that in today, Odette is a perfect guest for all three of these regarding synthesis and all the collaboration around it.

So we're gonna get into some questions. We've got a couple prepared questions for Odette to talk about. Some of her work and scenarios, and then we're gonna go to a live Q&A where you guys will be able to put some questions in the chat. We're gonna do that at the end, so we'll make some time for Odette to answer your questions.

But if you have a question that comes up, put it in the chat. I'll move them over to the Q&A tab, and by the time we get to that, we'll have a nice, hopefully list of questions to go through. So if anything comes up, drop it in the chat and we'll get to those after these next couple questions that we're about to do.

All right. That's my spiel. Important part. Meeting our guest, Odette. Welcome, Odette. Would you like to do the honors and introduce yourself? I mean, you've already sold me quite well, but, yeah. Hi everyone. Nice to be here. My name's Odette, as it says here, as well, been in UX for, 14, 15 years now.

And yeah, I currently work as a UX at a bank, where I manage the research team, obviously, but also content and sales design. And next to that, I am one of the founders of UXR Study, which is a learning platform for UX researchers. Yeah, that also I have a cat, two dogs.

They're great. And, from the Netherlands. Yeah. Where's everyone checking in from today? Odette is joining in the evening near Amsterdam. I am, it's two o'clock here mid-afternoon. Perfect timing for me, which isn't, working for an Australian company, doesn't happen often, but it is for me. Nice, awesome. Odette, we'll, we're obviously gonna get into more of your deep dive into what you're working on in your roles.

Yeah, I didn't wanna spoil too much right now. Let's get into it. Let's go to the questions here, the big one. Tell us a little about your background journey, what led you into UX research and what you're doing now, both in your role and with UX R study.

Yeah, so once upon a time, when I was a little girl, I used to play a lot of video games and make outfits for my sister's Barbies, and I used to draw comics and game characters because, yeah, love video games. And through that I thought I want to do something with design. I had no clue what, but something with design, something creative and I'm not gonna go through all of the history of that, but basically, did a study in communication and multimedia design, and that's where I first got into UX or first time actually heard of it. And I specialized in UX in games. Again, huge nerd. It had to be games, and afterwards worked as a UX designer in games and quickly went, you know what, nah, I don't wanna work in games anymore.

I just wanna play them. And I switched to product really quickly. stayed a designer for a while. I think four-ish years, worked at an agency, then went to in-house, because I wanted to experience that as well. And then I got in touch with the marketing department. I worked for an e-commerce fashion retailer.

And they said they were going to do some tests on some designs we made for the website. And I was curious. I wanted to see what that meant because while I was studying, there was just the role of UX designer. You did a bit of usability testing, you know, it was the whole shebang of UX was on your plate.

And then here they were like, oh, we're testing stuff with marketing, or we're just making the website, we're designing the website here, but marketing is actually testing stuff. And I was like, okay, well I wanna see. And they started doing these A/B tests that we collaborated on to see how we could convince people to buy other products when the product they wanted was sold out.

And that to me was just so interesting. I stared at the screen to see the numbers change basically, and to see which of the designs that we made actually was converting better. I went back to the design department, I was like, I am so done doing this. I don't wanna sit here and just design the screens anymore.

I wanna do that. That's way more interesting. They didn't have a place there because it wasn't really something that they were building. So I went back to an agency again, and started focusing more on research, more on testing. It was still very much evaluative, and I wanted to do more. So I went into education, actually, I started teaching people about UX, both in games and in product, and also trying to bridge that gap a bit, among also cultural communication trainings, professional development, that sort of stuff. And at the same time was doing research for the educational institution to figure out like, how can we make sure that the students are more engaged or they feel more confident in stuff? And so this turned into more like generative research, more discovery research, and I was like, this is interesting.

Did a master's at the same time, which focused a lot on design research and actual, more the human part of the research. So not just the usability testing or not just like evaluating if the design works, but actually figuring out like how do people work and how do we. Bring that with us when we design solutions.

And so after I finished my master's degree, I felt like I was ready to go back into UX again, like an actual dedicated UX company. And I got hired to lead the research, well I was gonna say team, but there was nothing. Basically build the research team at at a company healthcare SaaS they did, in Finland.

And basically built the research department there, which was a lot of ops, hiring, synthesis, lots of problems with, very low UX maturity, which was super interesting. And then after that, doing that for almost two years, moved to ING, the bank, and I've been there now for a little over a year. And basically got hired for a similar challenge, fixed the research departments.

And the content team was having similar problems as the research team. So I was like, hey, do that too. So now I am fully on fixing UX maturity within research within UX. And now I'm here today.

There's a common theme there. A team needs help, needs saving, and I like fixing things.

I can tell. And you said what every single guest has the word that every guest has said in every Q&A multiple times, which is curious about X, Y, Z in in your journey. Curiosity. Awesome. Thank you, Odette. So let's take a look at, get my slides up here. So I want to talk a little bit about, what's up with my slides.

There we go. So this is the post that kind of connected us because, Diane from Lyssna, who I work with, came across this post, sent it over to me, and then that got the ball rolling on us linking up and running this Q&A today. This post is about something that probably I've definitely experienced probably many of you have here, which is the research gets done.

The work happens, the findings surface and researcher puts those findings together, or presents them in some way and nothing happens. Going back to our poll at the beginning of this, all the challenges involved in that, you know, I'm sure you've seen different causes of it, but it happens all the time. We see it over and over again where, all this work that is gold in terms of improving a product and an experience gets put together and doesn't go anywhere. So I want you to talk a little bit, if you could about, let me my link over here, about some of the workshops and facilitation that you do.

Maybe starting with this question, why. What happens, why don't these research, and then we'll get into, maybe some of the things that you're doing to change that.

I know you sent the questions beforehand and I was already laughing before, so it almost feels like a weird secondary laugh that I'm having at this question because there's so, so many reasons why reports don't get read.

Like they're too long, they're too academic, they're too vague. They're not actually connected to the question that was asked that led to the research being done. I think depending also on the researchers, I love writing reports. But there is many researchers that I know that absolutely detest it, which means in the beginning maybe it's good, and then as they progress through the report, the quality goes down.

And so you're also not delivering the right thing. So there's many. No, no, it's totally fine. There's there's many different reasons. I think the main one for me, what I see the most is the disconnect between how research communicates and how the business wants to receive information.

So it's, I need an answer to my question and you are not giving me the answer, and I also don't wanna spend five hours trying to find it.

Yes, that's been a big one. I also think what you said is an important one that I didn't think about, which is, the researcher's, desire or ability, let's say, to like, create those reports and how far they want to go in it. It's the expectation, right?

Yeah. So just like, you know, you do the interviews, you talk, you analyze, you put the data together, and then you write a report. That's the process you go through. But just because that's the process, that is the original process, it doesn't mean that that works for everyone as well, which is why you get reports that aren't good either.

Yeah. So everyone who's watching, if you chime in in the chat, just to bring it back to your own work, have you had this experience, if you wanna share what you think is kind of the cause or the challenges, please share those in the chat. But even just, just to start, let me know have who here has experienced this where whether you're a researcher or a, you know, busy designer who's doing some resourceful testing and research. Have you had this experience where you do the research, you come back with findings that are going to lead to hopefully good design decisions? Present them, send them to someone, share them with your team, and nothing, nothing happens from there. I'll raise my hand because that has happened plenty of times to me, even as I've really worked to improve my skills of presenting them and being able to, you know, distill it down and speak in the language of stakeholders or the people that the two business partners.

So let me know in the chat if this is something that has you've experienced, and if you have a reason for it. I think, obviously, as you said, Odette that there's so many different, uh, it's, it, it depends, right. Our favorite answer, but, um, you know, I think it, like for me, the, the main thing or the, the overarching challenge of it is that research is, and the findings that you come back with are.

Yeah, some, they're nuanced, they're complex, they're not, it's not a straightforward answer. And a lot of the times you're under the pressure to deliver a straightforward answer. Are we gonna use homepage A or homepage B? Are we gonna build this feature next, or that feature next? Just tell me, you know, if I'm the stakeholder, tell me what it is.

Yeah, what do I do? Answer my question so we can build this feature. And yes, help me move forward. Yeah. Help us move forward. Okay. So that's a perfect segue into the next question on how you actually do that. You run synthesis workshops that are focused on this exact challenge of being able to take that information and, not just like synthesize it and find the themes, but to bring it to action with, and collaborate with all the different people in the organization.

So tell me a little bit about the workshops that you run and. Yeah, kind of what, what experience you wanna create for the participants and even who are the participants, I guess, adding that in as well.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, let's make it three questions. So I have a bit of a format that I use, but it's not really set in stone because I adapted based on the people that are in my workshop or the people that I'm trying to.

Get on board with the research through the workshop. It depends. It also really depends on the UX maturity of the organization. It depends on the UX maturity of the people that you have. But I like the second part of the question the most because it is indeed about what the experience that you're trying to create.

To me the workshop is a product in itself, right? And so I look at it as in, okay, who is the user of my product? My stakeholders, who are they and how do I make sure that the experience that they have leads to solving their problem, which is I need an answer to my question, I need to move forward. And so I think it's something that I say often to researchers like.

Your users, yes, are the people that use the product that you're doing research on, but your actual users are the stakeholders that need to work with what you've found. And that one is often forgotten. So that's why I wanted to highlight it here as well. Like it's those users that you need to understand and that you need to serve with your workshop.

So. Yeah, I, I, so I look at, okay, what's the situation? What's the organization? I look at, what's the projects also, what's, what's the prioritization of the project? Because I don't run census workshops for everything. I run it for the high stakes one, the ones that are important, or the ones where I feel like the teams could use it to learn more about research or to get more involved in research.

And it's to not go into too much detail, 'cause I'll be talking for three hours about this. It basically makes sure that the people that come from the different directions, so developers, business people, product owners, the designer, the researcher that, you know, there's often a little bit of a clash between, yeah, but this, I do this or you do that and you know, give me the answer.

But the whole point of doing this is that we're all going towards the same direction. So it starts a little bit with, okay. You know, what's our goal here? What are we trying to get out of this? Why did we do this research? And it gives a little bit of an overview of the things that we found so far. So it's sort of like a little tease of information and making them curious, because it's very important to put yourself in that curious mindset to be able to do this properly.

And so giving them a little bit of a hint of like, Hey. We're finding things and today we're actually making it actionable. So at the end, you don't even have to read a report at the end, you know what? You, you walk away after these often. They're like two hours. Yep. You walk away after two hours knowing exactly what to do next.

We go through the data, which is of course preselected, 'cause I'm not bringing tons of raw data to a session like that. Most of the times I've already done like a pre synthesis to make sure that I already know what the themes are, I already know what the are, so that I can help them get there as well.

So we go through it, we have them discuss. Them together. What does it mean, what's being set here? And it's also, it's almost also a research exercise for myself to figure out like, okay, how do these stakeholders look at the data? Yeah. What do they help? What do they find interesting? 'cause that also helps me change the workshop as we go.

And afterwards I let them, I give them a moment to shine from their perspective. And so after we've sort of done the theming a bit and started discussing, the possibilities, et cetera. I tell them to basically get in a lane. I love to do these physically 'cause it's, it's more interesting. I tell them to go in their lane and basically answer questions from their perspective.

So I put product owners in the business lane. I put the researcher in the user lane. I put the designer in the design lane basically. And it has a few pre-made questions, depending again on the, on the project, the goals, the. Metrics, KPIs, whatever. And I have them answer those questions based on the findings that we've just found.

Then they talk about that together. They see where the overlap is also because the, the findings, they are always the same for everyone, just from a different perspective. Yep. And so. The goal there is to connect them to each other, to also show like, oh, hey, we're all working towards the same thing.

We're all talking about the same thing. Even though we're talking about it differently, we then go into a sort of a prioritization exercise to figure out like, okay, what is the impact of this finding? And what does it mean moving forward? Which then. Goes into, depending on again, the, the type of, stakeholders I have, it might go into more like, okay, we're having these findings.

What can we actually do with it? And we go a bit more solution based to make it more actionable. Or we go into an impact analysis basically, of the findings. So it depends a little bit on where the project is. And then at the end there's a very clear list, top three, top five, like critical things that they need to start with the next minutes basically.

Awesome. The, so kind of a follow up question for that. And, uh, I've, so I've done a lot of, uh, sessions like that with clients that I've worked with, probably not as a lot of them, not in person, but some, and not as, you know, structured and refined as yours, but a similar, similar idea. And what I've found is, you know, and you kind of said this, but just the fact that you are, just, the fact that you're doing it together right, is like a huge hurdle.

It's not something being delivered to you from another department that you don't have the context in and then have to weigh in on. I found that that just sets the tone, like changes how you're thinking about it. Yep. And gets everyone on board of like. Kind of out of the who's, who's right, who's wrong, who's up?

This is mine. And that's yours? No. You are responsible for this. No, it's, we're all doing this together. Yeah, totally. And so for everyone here, I don't know if you, not to put you on the spot, but do you have any tips, like if someone is for a researcher or designer who's joining us right now, if they're, if they're not facilitating a full workshop or running, you know, doing this in the as structured way, maybe some, like, are there some little ways or tips that kind of.

You've implemented that, bring that feeling in of making it more of like a collaborative thing that people could put into place in their own work? Yeah, so that's actually a really good question because workshops in itself are, people find them scary to do. They're large. They, they put you on the spot, like you have to have your stuff together.

Because, you know, you are, you have to perform in that moment. And that is quite a big thing. And I've, I've experienced with researchers I've hired as well, that they're just not super comfortable doing it. But once they've experienced a few, they get it and they can do them on their own. But one of the things that I, I've, I still do actually is, at the beginning of a project, I ask my stakeholders, how do you want to receive your answer?

Because a lot of the times we default to report because that's what we know. Well, we all know that they're not gonna read them anyway. Okay. So what's the best way for you to process new information is basically the question. Is that a PowerPoint? Do you wanna sit down? Do you want me to walk you through it?

Do you wanna a video? Do you want a podcast? Do you wanna, do you want to q and a for example, where we just sit and answer your questions? Because that already helps put people in, put your stakeholders in the mindset of, okay, it's tailored to me. They're actually here to give me the answers that I need.

And that's actually a really small thing that you can, start doing tomorrow. Awesome. And it changes the tone. It's like, I'm gonna tell you, oh wait, you're, listen, you're actually listening to me. And how, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Um, amazing. Thank you. So, let's see, I'm gonna go to, I'm gonna come back.

Oh. Can you gimme a quick answer on this one, one last tip, and then, we'll, we'll do some Q&A. So for everyone in the chat, if you have questions, drop them in. Now I'll give you a couple minutes to do it, after we answer these questions, but we'll keep going with these and if I see some questions pop up, we'll move on to that.

But yeah, let's keep going with these. So this is an important question. How do you get buy-in? From all the busy people to actually show up and engage in something that's not their job or, you know, someone else's responsibility. How do you get them involved and doing it in the workshop and I guess beyond that as well?

Yeah, a great question. I was at a conference last week and it was also a question I got a lot because. People were saying, yeah, but they just don't listen. They don't want to hear what I have to say. And it's, it always makes me laugh a little bit because it's not that they don't want to hear what you have to say, they just don't wanna hear how you say it.

Yes. Right. It's those long reports or it's the jargon or it's too heavy on the findings and not actionable enough and it's actually. The buy-in you get from showing that what you're offering is valuable. And it's a bit chicken egg, right? How do I get to show if it's valuable, if they're not listening to me?

To me the best thing to do is to find the people that do listen or are open to listening and get them on your team. So not researchers, but people outside of research that will advocate. For the value that you bring. Yeah. And if that means working on some smaller projects with people, that are interested in it, then do that first.

Because that means that you, build proof, you make impact that you can then start spreading. And most researchers I know hate to brag because like, you know, the, the facts, the findings, they speak for themselves. But in this day and age, even more so you have to. Brag, you have to show that you are providing this value to your organization, to the product.

I have made workshops in like smaller forms where I went like, oh, I can, I can only do like, like three people. So, you know, it's, it's a bit quick, you know, make it a bit exclusive. It's creating want basically, or like, I kind of want to attend that because I'm gonna get the stuff that I need to move forward and.

Year, those, those I think are the things that help, but it is, it's almost a bit political where it's like, okay, but I need you to listen to me because I'm helping you make your product better. You have to make them want it and understand. It too, it's a common theme with what you're, what you're saying is like, I mean, you what you, the, you said it, the workshops are like a product into themselves with users, and you have a deep understanding of like what.

They a stakeholder, whoever it is, like what they, how they like to receive information, what they care about. I mean, I remember when my light bulb went off for this on a client project that I worked on and I was trying to get some buy-in to do research, on this test prep product. And I had video recordings.

I did. I just went out on my own and did some usability tests with no. You know, sanction, um, and judging. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And uh, I had videos of, um, students that were basically trying to, let's say like upgrade kind of. And there was friction within that, which was something I suspected was, was a problem.

I clipped that into like. Ten second videos. Right. And the main person who was kind of the, the gatekeeper to that research and the founder of the product, I just showed him that like a few videos and just like, these are the people we're doing all this work to, to, to sell to. And they can't, they can't confidently.

Pay for the, for the product. Right. And that's like really basic, but it's, you know, same idea as what you're saying is like, and it, and it might seem a little scrappy, but it all comes back. No, that's the good, right? It's almost like that coffee machine. Like, oh, have you seen this by the way, you know, those 10 seconds or when you're in meeting like, oh Ned, I've got you here, let me show you this real quick to the right people.

And it, yeah, it does feel a bit scrappy or. Yeah. But it's, it's what helps get you buy-in, show them, show them the value. Yeah. Yeah. nd the trade off of not doing research or not, you know, having, having a say in this where it's like, Hey, you know where that feature we're gonna go work on for the next two months.

Here's why you might wanna come to my workshop. Learn why? Let's, let's talk about that. What's the, I have some thoughts. Yeah, rethink that one. I think that one is even harder, right? Because it's one thing to be like. Okay, we're working on this feature. Let's test it. Let's see, you know, how, how users work with it.

If they, if they can work with it, if they understand it. And then there's the part where they are super confident and you're, you have to tell them that they shouldn't be that confident. That's hard because you're basically telling them they're wrong and no one ever wants to hear that they're wrong.

And that's, and they won't be proven wrong until months down the road when, if and when it, no, we're just gonna build it. It's, you know, you just, it, yeah. Five usability test. Yeah. Whatever. We're, we're development already. We'll see. We'll just see how it goes. Yeah, that one is nice. If you have a good relation with the data analysts, you can actually show the data that, you know, look, it's.

Not doing what you, what you said it would. But the workshops also help there because you're never saying that they're wrong. You're letting them find out that they're wrong. And then when they've come up with the fact that they're wrong, you are not the, the boogeyman and they feel great because they have their ideas moving forward.

Even though you've like puppeteered a bit behind it.

Last one here, before we get to some Q&A, for those who are here struggling to get their research insights acting upon, let's go top, top piece of advice to take away from this, to change that. Yeah. I think the biggest one is the allies. Find the people that, that want to work with you to make impact slowly to get by and slowly because.

A lot of companies have one researcher, and it feels like a really hard battle to fight on your own with multiple stakeholders that have very strong opinions about things. And there you are with your facts and your data. Yeah. Your binder. It's, yeah, your binder. Like, but guys, here's the truth. I know what to do.

And it's the strongest, the loudest voices, they're always the ones being heard. It's never the researchers for some reason. But there's always people within the organization that have more UX maturity or have more curiosity. And it's those people you need to sort of like sniff out and be like, Hey, let's talk and what can I do for you and let's team up.

Because then they start to basically evangelize research for you. Yep. And the value of it. And overall starts to just like lower the whole temperature of our ideas versus theirs versus this department where it starts to be like, yeah. And so we're all working towards the same goal, right? You want, you want more money.

Yeah. I want the, provide a good user experience so that I get to keep my job and it's all the same. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. It's so obvious when we're talking about it like this, but then in the, it's like it doesn't feel that way sometimes. Awesome. So for everyone here, find. The allies, the people who get those little crumbs of interest in user research what you're doing, things they should be looking at, the evidence you have that you might not wanna.

Spend two months on feature a. Might wanna rethink that a little bit with, with Odette. Awesome. Thank you Odette. So let's hear from you guys. If you have any questions for Odette on day-to-day stuff, synthesis, getting your research acted on. I don't know anything about a debt's path, anything, yeah, drop it, drop it in the chat.

I'll give everyone a couple minutes here. And we'll look through the Q&A, and then we'll just do a super quick wrap up. Thank you. I'll share some of Odette's links and we'll let you guys get outta here to enjoy the rest of your day or evening. But take two minutes now. Drop something in the chat and

Do you wanna answer this question? Yeah, sure. What are the types of questions you ask in each role's lanes in the workshop? Yeah, it's a good one. Very specific. I don't have set questions, because again, it depends on the people that I have in my workshop, but what I, what I try to look at is what I know about the project.

That's important. So for example, for the, for the business lane or the product owner, they have certain goals that they need to achieve with that product or with the feature that they're building, right? There's certain KPIs or certain metrics. And so I try to have them focus on those metrics. So say their goal is to increase conversion rate for a specific flow.

And then I try to have them look. At the insights that you've synthesized from that perspective. So which of these are going to help you, do you think, to increase that conversion rate? And so it's that. So look at the, look at their goals, what they want to achieve, and then formulate those into questions that they can answer.

'Cause that's also the point, is that they can answer the questions. And so, yeah, and for the research, I mean, you probably know what to fill in. It's, what does this mean for the user? What's the impact on the user? What if we don't do this? What if we ignore this finding, for example? Yep. And for the designer as well, like what, you could even reframe those into like, how might we challenges kind, how might we in insert insight, or yeah, what, what does it mean if we ignore this from a design perspective or from a UX perspective? So it's really looking at their goals that they need to achieve and then turning those into questions. Awesome. And I imagine that, I love that, aspects of like questions that they can answer confidently.

Yeah. Especially in a workshop that's about research. If they're not in that department, I imagine that really builds like the, yeah, productive, but it makes people feel competent as well, that they indeed are also providing value in the workshop, right? They're not ownership over participants and just on the sidelines.

That's awesome. Really, really good tip. I'm learning a lot right now, Eduardo, as designers, how can we ensure that our research report have a real business impact? How do we keep track of the process? Lemme put that one up on, on the screen so we can check it out. Okay, so I might make some assumptions here based on how the question is written, so please type more if I'm not answering it fully.

The main thing to do is when you start a research study is to figure out why you're even doing this research study. It is, the questions are, what are you going to do with the findings that I'm going to give to you? What are these findings going to lead to? When are you going to use these findings?

It's understanding the impact for you as a researcher when you are working on this project, but at the same time, making them accountable for providing you with the reasons for doing this research. Because it also means that when you write your report, you have information that you can use to sell your findings.

And the second question there was how do we keep track of the process? Now, my question back is, is it the process of throughout the research process or is it of the impact afterwards? Wait, reach the answer, answer that one too. Yeah, in the, the research reports, having a real business impact, thi i, I like how you described that.

Odette, like, I think of it as like the, like we have to be super aligned on. For the report never happens until we can never try to refit that into matching a business goal. Like, Hey, we did this research and hey, look how it could contribute to this. And a lot of times it seems, at least in my experience, that it seems like obvious maybe what the business goals or priorities are, but when you actually, if you don't talk about it and you're just like, make assumptions, it's easy to get off track from where you're showing a research report to a, you know, product manager and they're like.

Cool. Yeah, this is semi-important, but it's not our priority. And that might, like, it's easy to stray from that. So I think that's a great answer for like really having that down from the beginning and being aligned of like, here's what's gonna come. Not, not the actual findings, but like, here's what we're trying to decide on based on this.

Yeah. These, and here's how that is going to have an impact on this part of our business. Do you care about that? Yes, I care about that. Do you care about that? Right. Yeah. And it always, because a lot of researchers, what they do is they ask like, oh, what are the research questions that you have? And one people that aren't researchers don't know how to make research questions.

So you get really crappy stuff. And it's also all over the place. Yep. Because they will have proposition questions. They will have. Market research questions. They will have evaluative research questions, discovery questions, and you will not get any sense of direction from it. Yep. And so the other questions actually put you also in a bit more of a, like owning it from a research perspective.

Because it's like, how am I actually going to help you achieve what you're trying to achieve? Yeah. And then let me worry about what questions to ask. How do we make money? All right, let's figure out what's stopping that or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Why are you not? Yeah. Awesome. Cool. Well I know we're at time here, everybody, so I wanna thank you guys for the great.

Alright. Eduardo had his, question, we have typed out about the, the process afterwards. Yeah. Do you wanna, do you wanna take that one? Yeah, I don't wanna leave. Don't wanna leave them hanging now. No, we can't. The process afterwards, how do you manage to keep track of the process once you have delivered the research report?

This is a really good question. If you have, like project management tools that you use within the company. Then use those like embedded into the tools that the, product owners, the product teams are using if you don't build your own impact tracker. Now this sounds super complicated, and intense.

It's not. It's literally keeping track of what did I do when. What were the results that I got? What was the, the metric that they were trying to influence? And then go back to the data analysts three months and six months later to see what did it change. And I think the key there is keeping that simple.

That's a great question, Eduardo. Like, yeah, keeping it simple, right? Where you can go back and be like, Hey, how are we doing on this? We did it. Do we need to go? You don't have to have everything figured, all the next steps figured out from there. But as long as you're all aligned of like, let's go check back on this in, as you said, three months and that date aspect, the, the, and like putting it on the calendar a place for, it doesn't have to be fancy, but that is a, that's an important point of having it, yeah.

There to see like, is this, is this moving and then figuring out what happens next. Awesome. Thanks for the, the follow up on that Eduardo. Two, two great questions there. Two great answers, Ted. Let's wrap it up, everybody. First of all, I want to thank everyone who's still here for joining. More importantly.

As importantly, I want to thank you Odette, for, spending some time here sharing your expertise and giving us,, me some, some new stuff to put into place as well when it comes to, to navigating, facilitating a big mess of research findings that we need to, that's our job to deal with. So thank you so much for joining.

You're welcome. And also thank you for having me. I will share with everyone, Odette,, LinkedIn and uxrstudy.com, which I can just share the link to this in the chat right now. So you can connect with Odette's posts. A lot of good stuff on LinkedIn, like I said, how we we linked up in the first place.

But a lot of great stuff on UXR study to check out as well. So you'll all get the recording from this a couple minutes after we, we sign off. Some of you might be just watching the replay of this, but some other good follow up material and ways to keep in, keep in, touch or following Odette for other good stuff down the pipeline.

I'll share one more link and I'll just put a little button up for this one. For feedback on this Q&A. That's a quick two minute form. If you click that lead, lead feedback, to just see how the experience was today. We do this for every workshop and Q&A. We want to hear what you liked, constructive criticism.

More importantly, I want to hear if there are other topics that you wanna learn about going forward. That's how we. Figure out what workshops we're gonna do, figure out what guests we wanna bring on, is by listening to you guys who actually take the time to be here and join these workshops.

So if you have a second, fill that out. And let us know. Other than that, thank you so much everybody. Thank you again, Odette. I really enjoyed this. I hope you guys did too. And, like I said, the recording will be sent out to everyone who's here pretty shortly, so check that out and feel free to follow up with me if there's anything else.

Anything else, Odette. No, like I said, glad to have been here and yeah, I hope it was helpful. And also for the people that are viewing the recording at a later time, happy to answer any questions later via LinkedIn still. Awesome. I know it's late by you. Bedtime, dinner time. I'm going to bed.

Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Thanks so much everybody, and we'll see you on the next one hopefully. Take it easy.