Meet Drew and Joe (Update)

Drew Freeman: Hey, y'all. Drew. Here we've got something a little bit different for you this week and for the next couple, what with the holidays coming up and a little bit of cold weather related illness for both me and for Joe. We're bringing you some rebroadcasts of previous episodes. These episodes are some of our favorites and some gems that we think you might have missed. All of these episodes have been re edited for audio. Goodness. We'll be back with new episodes at the beginning of the year, at the beginning of January. Enjoy these episodes and have a very happy holiday season.

Joe Marcantano: Welcome, everybody. My name is Joe Marantano.

Drew Freeman: And I'm Drew Freeman.

Joe Marcantano: And this is the Inside UXR podcast. It's our first episode. I'm kind of excited, Drew.

Drew Freeman: Oh, yeah, we've been talking about this for a little while now, so. Yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to it.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah, this should be a good time. this first episode is going toa be a little different. We're gonna talk mostly about ourselves and our backgrounds. Kind of make this an introductory thing. And then episode two, which drops at the same time as this one, is going to kind of be the meat and potatoes of what this podcast is really about.

Drew Freeman: Yeah. So, Joe, what can people expect?

Joe Marcantano: So I think that the cool thing about this podcast is that it's not gonna be just for UX researchers. If you are a more junior researcher, or maybe you're even a more senior researcher, and you just want some extra tools in your toolbox, that's great. But this is also gonna be really cool for folks who are UX designers or product managers, people who are not researchers, but they have to do research.

Drew Freeman: the plan is that we will release an episode every week. This first batch, we're gon toa be kind of going big and getting things off started with a bang, but after that, you can expect a weekly episode from us and we'll bounce around various topics and hopefully you guys all like this and you have questions of your own that you want to hear us talk about and hear us answer, and you can send those emails to us. Our email is inside uxrappinessmail.com and we hope to hear from you and talk more about Your questions and less about ours. We really want to hear what you are interested in rather than just hear us drone on and on.

Joe Marcantano: I think that's the coolest part about this podcast, is that the people who listen will actually determine what we talk about. The first couple of episodes. We've kind of come up with some questions, but I would be happy to ditch that list if we start getting questions sent in.

Drew Freeman: Absolutely. So, let's kick us off. So Joe, tell me about your UX journey. How'd you get started with this? What's your path look like so far?

Joe Marcantano: My path is very non tradditional. and I know that a lot of folks nowadays are kind of coming from academia. They're getting these human factors degrees. That was not my path. I spent nearly 15 years as a police officer in a, major metropolitan police department. I was an officer answering 911 calls and then I was a detective, and then I was a sergeant. And when I was a detective, I had a friend who took the more traditional path and was established in the field. And he called me up one day and said, hey, you're a detective. You know how to interview people. You want to make some money on the side. I've got some freelancing gigs and over the years it went from me just doing the interviews for him to him basically subbing out the whole projects to me. And about three years ago I hung up the badge and now I do this full time.

Drew Freeman: Yeah, that's awesome. working with you, it's been really fun to kind of get more of your background. So tell me, more about how being a police officer on the streets, being a detective, being a sergeant, has influenced or led you to UX and kind of helped you hone your skills as a researcher.

Joe Marcantano: For me, one of the coolest parts about being a detective was solving the mystery. I loved figuring out the why and the who. It was the puzzle. I loved solving the puzzle. And I get to scratch that itch as a UX researcher now. And, now I'm a UX research manager. I run a team of researchers and I get to help them use all these methods and solve all these problems. And what's really cool is the years that I spent practicing and perfecting interviews,

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Joe Marcantano: I get to use that skill. It's not like some other skill or background like accounting or it that's really specific. It's a skill that I use every day to help me get to what folks are actually trying to say if they don't have the words. For it.

Drew Freeman: So Joe, any other part of your background that you want to highlight for the folks?

Joe Marcantano: I think we should address, the thing that you kind of hinted at and that's that you and I work together. We're both at the same agency. I run a research team and I'll use this as a segue to ask about you. Why don't you introduce yourself to everyone and tell everyone what it is you do today?

Drew Freeman: Yeah, so I'll start at today, as you hinted at.

Drew Freeman: So today.

Drew Freeman: Yeah, we work at the same agency and I am both an individual contributor, researcher, still run in projects on a semi regular basis. But I've also moved into kind of that education and training background, which is what makes this podcast so exciting for me. So I'm also our UX research trainer, helping both newer folks who are coming to the company and getting them up to speed on research basics and the best practices, but also kind of how the individual ways that we run things that make our company unique. Also, I am really, really excited about mentoring and coaching and helping people grow their skills and become better researchers and really figure out where they want to take their career. So I spend a lot of time trying to be kind of that coach and that advocate for people who might not be as comfortable doing that for themselves or might not really know exactly where they want to go next or even what options are available for them.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah, it's awesome to watch you work with some of the more junior folks or even some of the more midd and senior folks to kind of hone skills and kind of carve out direction for career paths.

Drew Freeman: Yeah. If there's anything I've learned in my time, it's that you are. You're never too experienced to still be learning things. You're also never too experienced to take your career in a different direction.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah, exactly. And with that, let's talk about your career and your background. What is your path, to UX research Senior researcher and research trainer? What does that path look like for you?

Drew Freeman: Yeah, so similar to you, I also don't feel like I have a traditional UX background. Although maybe we should talk at some point. Is there even such a thing as a traditional UX background? With that being said, I got my degree in college in economics and if I could do it all over again, I would do. I would add on a psychology degree to that. So already when it comes to psychology, I love thinking about how people think, process, information, all that sort of stuff. but I didn't use that when I first Started working, I went to work for a large software tech company that was one of the leading players in the electronic medical record space. So making the software that replaced paper charts for doctors and nurses and all of the folks that work in hospitals, doctors offices, all that sort of thing. And when I started, I was a quality assurance software tester. So essentially I was working hand in hand, day to day with the developers who were actually doing the coding and creating the products. And it was my job to, one, make sure that those products worked at the way they were supposed to, two, I was supposed to try to figure out how they were broken, where they were broken before they got released to the public, and so that we could, so that our developers could fix any issues and hopefully minimize the amount of problems that our end users saw through that software testing. I got introduced to UX by, by a colleague who essentially just needed some help running a UX study. And I happened to be relatively new, which meant that I had relatively few responsibilities and more time than most. And I think like a lot of people when they first get introduced to ux, I had kind of a revelation where it was like, oh, so this is what I've been thinking about. And these are the words that describe the frustrations that I've been feeling. And ever since I got introduced to it, I've just wanted to do more and more research and spend more and more time with this. So much so that by the time I left this company, I was one of the recognized experts in UX research, at a company of, you know, 10,000 plus, which was pretty crazy, but also really satisfying and really rewarding to see people kind of look up to you in that way. And it was also really fun because like everybody, like me in particular,

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Drew Freeman: almost everybody at this company that worked on UX stuff did not have a traditional research or UX background. So it was a lot of different backgrounds, different perspectives, different voices, and also a lot of that coaching and that mentoring and trying to help cultivate and grow people who we saw that had potential and really turn them into folks that we trusted to just kind of hand research projects to and say, all right, you're responsible for finding out the answers, go do it.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah, you've told me before about some of the huge projects and huge series of projects you've done, and it's really cool stuff and I hope that we're going to get to talk about it, as these questions from folks start to roll in. So why don't we kind of wrap this episode actually Talking about a little bit of UX research. let's do just kind of a general friendly what's your favorite UX research method? And maybe it's the same, maybe it's a different one. What's the most impactful thing a researcher does?

Drew Freeman: Yeah, so for me those are different answers for me, me as my favorite. So my personal favorite is task based usability testing. Kind of your bread and butter. You are a user trying to complete this task, go do it and then, you know, watching and asking follow up questions. I love that stuff. That's actually the first task that I was ever given as someone who knew nothing about UX research was to write a task based study. And like you said, kind of talking about the puzzle, it. Figuring, figuring out the puzzle. Writing a good task based discussion guide really feels like not a puzzle necessarily, but like making sure that all of the pieces are facing the same direction and I'm not forgetting something. And I have the really interesting and I think frankly kind of unusual background of both writing, writing discussion guides, writing study guides for studies that I was not going to facilitate someone who was not a part of my research team or even the development team was going to facilitate. And then I've also reviewed and moderated or facilitated hundreds of task based usability studies that I had no input in the creation of. And that is unusual but also totally my jam like that. Also that's how I got to be as good at writing task based usability guides as I am today. Because I've just seen so many different ways that you can do it, you can do it poorly and I don't want to do that because that didn't work. Or man, you wrote that question really well. Or like that task was awesome. Let me try to figure out how I can steal that and use it and incorporate it when I'm writing my next studies. So yeah, writing and running task based usability studies on stuff that you've maybe never seen before. Super fun, super interesting challenge. Wouldn't necessarily recommend it for the newbie, but it is a lot of fun once you have your legs on under you just a little bit.

Joe Marcantano: Now I want to know when you're either writing the guide that you're not going to do the interview off of or you're doing the interview off of a guide you did not write. Is it just handed to you blind and it's good luck or do you get some time to like talk to the other person and kind of ensure that the goals are aligned?

Drew Freeman: So with that big event that you hinted at. This is where most of that kind of blind facilitating happened. It was pretty much just handed to you blind and you had five minutes to set up the software, get to the starting point. You could maybe skim through some of the tasks and like, okay, what is the completion value? Like, what is the completion path for this task? Or like where. Let me look at some of the screenshots that I can at least get an idea of what part of the system I'm even in. And like, maybe something circled in that screenshot so that, oh, that's an important thing that I should be watching out for. But yeah, I've got a lot of experience with here, Drew. Here's the study guide. You got like two minutes and then you got toa go get your participant.

Joe Marcantano: Gosh, that, that sounds like, incredibly difficult, but also exhilarating. Like there's a part of me that's very thankful I've never had to do that. And also a part of me that's very jealous that I haven't gotten to do that and you did.

Drew Freeman: So here's where I will say that my non traditional background and simply my naivete about what is best practice and what the rest of the industry does, especially when I was running it, I had no idea what the rest, what an industry standard usability test looked like. No idea. I only knew what we were doing.

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Drew Freeman: So to me I was just like, okay, this is what we do, this is how we do it. Yeah, it's a little bit difficult but like I can figure it out and then to kind of broaden out my horizons and really understand what kind of industry standard is and what the rest of the industry is doing. It'like oh, this is very weird and like very, very strange. But yeah, at that company with that event, we specifically trained our moderators and these are brand new moderators, people who are not UX professionals, people who, you know, like me, software testers, or maybe they are software developers or they run implementations for customers and they're helping folks get off the ground and go live with the system or they'customer success folks. Like no experience in usability before and it was part of my job as that coordination team to help train people and get them up to speed so that they can be facilitators in this very specific way.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah, that's really cool. so my favorite method, and I'm a little jealous now because you stole the one I was going to say and so I'm not going to say the same one. it is Also a one on one interview, but it's less specific than that. I really like, I really love the baseline fundamental research. Right. Like when somebody's first got the kernel or a spark of an idea and they want to know is this even feasible? Is this something we can do? Is this something people would want? But what I love even more about that specifically is when you find out something unexpected when somebody says something and you're like, whoa, that is not the response I was thinking we were going to get here. And now I have a whole new tangent to explore. I.

Drew Freeman: That's the good stuff.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah, it's my favorite thing in the world is when I know I have time for it and I get a tangent that comes up and I get to explore it. I love doing it.

Drew Freeman: So is it just one on one unstructured interviews that are your favorite or is there specific flavor of interviews that you enjoy the most?

Joe Marcantano: It is the one on one interview. Now I've done the focus groups and diets and triads but you know, I think my struggles with those are what a lot of people are. It's ensuring that you're kind of getting something from everyone and that everybody's getting hearrt and that can be tough in me groupers in tougher in group settings. Especially when you get people who just want to kind of conform to whatever the first person said. but that one on one interview, when you get somebody who says something you didn't expect, that to me is just the coolest thing in the world.

Drew Freeman: Yeah, that's such a good feeling. So you hinted at this when you asked me the question and I hinted at it as well. It sounds like for both of us our favorite method we don't feel like is the most impactful method. So why don't you tell me what you feel like the most impactful UX research method is.

Joe Marcantano: So I'm actually taking this question a little broader it and I'm going to interpret it as what is the most impactful thing a researcher does? And it's the readout. I am a very big believer that it does not matter how good you are as a researcher, it does not matter how good the findings are. If you can't communicate that finding in an engaging way that gets your stakeholders to actually want to act on your research, then it doesn't matter. You could have the best findings in the world but if they don't make decisions based on your findings, then they don't really matter. So having an engaging readout being really Good at commanding the audience, knowing your audience. These are the skills, I think, that researchers can really, really drive, change with.

Drew Freeman: And these are the skills that not a lot of people seem to teach. These are the ones that, at least for me, I know I had to kind of figure it out as I went. And these are the things that I want to try to maybe shortcut that learning a little bit so that you don't have to go through as much trial and error as I did when I was learning it.

Joe Marcantano: And I don't think that's a you specific learning thing. I think that that's one of the things that is driving a little bit of the upheaval we're seeing in a lot of companies laying off researchers or laying off research teams. And I think it's because they're not seeing the impact. And some of that could just be shortsightedness on the business side. But there could also be an element of the researchers not doing a good enough job of tooting their own horn, not doing a good enough job of measuring their impact, or maybe even because their readouts aren't as compelling as they should be, not having an impact not based on their research,

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Joe Marcantano: but on their ability to communicate that research.

Drew Freeman: Yeah, I totally agree. One thing that I liked to tell my developer counterparts when I was an embedded researcher at, my past job was that if users cannot find a particular button to do the action that they need to take that button, that feature might as well not exist. And you can really say the same thing about research insights and research findings.

Joe Marcantano: 100%.

Drew Freeman: If you, if you don't communicate that insight or that finding, well, you might as well not have done the research.

Joe Marcantano: Yep. So now I want to hear yours and take, the question any way you want. But what's the most impactful, you know, either method or thing that a researcher does.

Drew Freeman: Yeah. So I'mn toa stick with a method. And it really is like if I can only teach one thing, one UX thing to someone who's interested, the thing that I will teach them, and I'm sure that we will go over this in a future podcast episode, are usability heuristics. There's a bunch of them out there. One of the most, one of the most famous, well known ones are the Nielsen Norman, usability heuristics. And a heuristic is simply, it can be thought of as a rule of thumb. It's not something that's true 100% of the time, but it's true the vast majority of the Time. And it is simple and easy enough to understand and apply in a lot of different situations. So one of the, one of the most common ones, or, the first one, the first Nielsen Norman heuristic is visibility of system status, just as an example. And the idea there is I should always know what the system is doing. So like loading bars or progress wheels, that's an example of good visibility of system status. Whereas if you have, if you've got a program and you click it and you click a button and nothing happens, what are you going to do? You're going toa click it again and again and again and all of a sudden you are four screens away and you have no idea what you've just done. That's an example of really bad visibility of system status. And so whenever I am explaining these usability heuristics to folks, I always start off in my intro by saying, I want to apologize up front. I am going to be infecting you with a brain virus. You will not be able to see the world the same way. Once I tell you about these heuristics, you will see these usability heuristics all over the place.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah, that's such a good one, man. That's. The usability heuristics are so impactful and.

Drew Freeman: They become, and they're so easy, it doesn't take much time. Like anyone, anyone who's been kind of familiarized or trained on these heuristics over the course of like an hour or two, maybe even less, you can run through a given workflow with all of these heuristics and come up with a really large amount of violations or places where we're not meeting this heuristic as well as we can. And beyond that, beyond the simple roi, return on investment for those who may not be familiar with the business lingo, for even beyond that, just understanding these usability heuristics as a group gives us a common set of language that we can all use to be talking about the same thing in the same way, rather than trying to both. We're both talking about the same thing, but we're both using slightly different language and we just start talking past each other. I mean, I know you and I, as we were planning this podcast, we had a number of examples where we were both basically saying the exact same thing, but using different words. And we're like, well, Joe, I don't think, I don't think you're understanding what I'm saying. And I think you're wrong. Turns out Nope. Just using different language.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah, we were re talking about the exact same thing. Yeah, you're right. It becomes such a great baseline set of guidelines that you can essentially ward off, so many problems right at the pass, right at the beginning.

Drew Freeman: So hopefully that has given you, as the listener, a little bit of a teaser into some methods or some things that you want to look into and think about yourself. Like I said, I'm sure we will hit those. Both of those topics we will cover in future episodes. But we got to leave you wanting more. Right.

Joe Marcantano: And with that, I think that's a good place to kind of wrap. I think that's a, good place for us to kind of call it for this first episode. And we dropped three right at the beginning here, so be sure to check out the other episodes. We're going to be on all your favorite podcast apps. Give us a like and subscribe. And we don't want to talk about our questions. We want to talk about your questions. So send those emails in insideuxr@gmail.com and, we're also on all

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Joe Marcantano: the big social media platforms. Give us a follow there. And we hope to, hear from you soon.

Drew Freeman: I've been Drew Freeman.

Joe Marcantano: And I'm Joe.

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