25. What are some good reminders for the New Year?

Joe Marcantano: Drew, welcome back.

Drew Freeman: Hey, Joe. It's good to be back.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah, this is exciting. we took a little break, but this is our first episode of the new year.

Drew Freeman: It was weird not recording and talking to you every couple of weeks.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah, it was weird for me, you know, because I've always kind of got the editing hanging over me and was a little odd to not have that hanging over me for two weeks.

Drew Freeman: Yeah. So we didn't intend for this to be quite as long of a break as it was, but first Joe got sick, and then I got sick, and, you know, the holidays are just germ magnets. So thanks for sticking with us.

Joe Marcantano: We've got some cool stuff planned for this year. and I thought that a great way to open this year to kind of kick off this new batch of episodes is, you know, it's the new year. Let's talk about what are some good reminders of best practices.

Drew Freeman: Yeah. I love that you brought this idea up, because no matter how experienced you are, no matter how good you are, there are always things that you need to remind yourself of. And, you know, think of these as the fundamentals. These are things that even professional sports players like, the things that they practice the most. They're the fundamentals that they've been practicing since they were 8, 9, 10 years old.

Joe Marcantano: I mean, when we were coming up with this list, I think that there were several times where I just out loud said, oh, I screwed that up last week. It doesn't matter how senior you get. These are easy to make mistakes.

Drew Freeman: Yes, absolutely. Okay, so where do you want to jump in first?

Joe Marcantano: why don't you hit me with your first one, and then we'll hit each one, we'll talk a little bit about them and just move through the list.

Drew Freeman: So my first reminder to myself and to everyone listening, your stakeholders don't know that much about research. You are much more of an expert on research than they are. You need to remember that. You need to explain the. Explain the researchy things, make sure you're not using jargon, and basically just remember that it's your job to do the research and explain it to them. It's their job to take that information, make decisions, and run with it.

Joe Marcantano: Something you said in one of our earlier episodes was, you don't need to be an Expert in the product area. You need to be the expert in research. Your stakeholders largely are going to be experts or much closer to experts in the product areas. You need to be the person that says this is the best way to learn this piece of unknown information. This is my recommendation of how we do this or how we answer these questions.

Drew Freeman: I agree. I think it's also a nice reminder to me to not get out over my skis or get ahead of myself to not use jargon when it comes to making recommendations. It's super easy to say, oh, you should move this button over here or you should change this button to be green instead of blue, whatever. But that's not my decision to make and I'm not the expert in that area. What I'm the expert in is saying users had a hard time finding, understanding, whatever the case may be. This button, consider ways that you can change it to make it more discoverable, understandable, whatever that is. Where I'm an expert. And it's always a good reminder to myself that you're not a designer, you're a researcherick. Stick in your lane.

Joe Marcantano: I love that.

Drew Freeman: Okay, hit me with your first one.

Joe Marcantano: So my first one. And I'm a firm believer that this is the most important thing that we do as researchers. And it's, that UX researchers are storytellers. I have said this before. It does not matter how good a researcher you are. If you cannot tell a story, if you cannot deliver your research in a way that is impactful, then you may as well have not done it at all.

Drew Freeman: Absolutely. If you. Yeah. If your stakeholders don't ingest the information and actually hear it and take it in, then what was the point? And stories

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Drew Freeman: and storytelling is an incredibly proven way throughout human history to be able to convey information well.

Joe Marcantano: And this goes along with all of the things that kind of come with being a good storyteller. It's public speaking. It's creating visuals that are engaging but not distracting. It's understanding your audience, knowing what pieces of information they need, knowing what pieces of information they don't care about. It's all of the things that help you deliver an effective message so that your research can be impactful.

Drew Freeman: And I think the other important thing to remember here is that there are many different styles of story. There are many different styles of storytellers. What works for one person might not work for you. What works for you might not work for the next person.

Joe Marcantano: Folks at home can't see it, but I am m vigorously nodding along. You need to find Your voice. Don't go online and find the best head talk and say, I'm just gonna copy that.

Drew Freeman: Instead, watch the 5, 10, 20 best TED talks and figure out what resonates with you.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah. Take bits and pieces from each one that you really like that fit your personality, that fit the style of presenting you'renna do, and make that your speaking voice.

Drew Freeman: And if you're not sure what those bits and pieces are just from watching, try them out. It'll be very obvious to you whether that is in your wheelhouse or not.

Joe Marcantano: Absolutely. Drew, what's your. Your next one.

Drew Freeman: So my next reminder is not necessarily one for me because this is kind of a mantra that I have come to internalize. So I need this reminder less and less often. But it is a reminder that I give to researchers that, are younger researchers or just other researchers that I'm, that I'm helping quite often, and that is always be prepared to be wrong. So one of my favorite things, and I had an example of this in the last project that I ran, is when I have a hypothesis, I totally think I know what the answer is going to be, what people are going to say. We run the sessions, I do the analysis, and what do you know? I was 100% wrong. People said 180 degrees the opposite of what I thought they were going to say. And we learned something really important. That's really fun for me. And I was 100% wrong. That's okay. It's not a sign of weakness. It is incredibly important to be able to drop at when the moment is right, to drop your preconceived ideas and your prior hypotheses, when the data shows you that you need to look in another direction.

Joe Marcantano: I couldn't agree more. I love it when somebody shows me something and I have a reaction. You know, that reaction might be, this is amazing, or this is ridiculous. No one's gonna love this. Whatever my preconceived notion is. And then we start to do the studies of the sessions. and it is very clear that whatever I thought was wrong, that is one of the coolest, most exciting things. You know, like, selfishly, I get to learn, I get to grow a little bit. And that's really cool.

Drew Freeman: And tying this into your last, your first reminder that researchers are storytellers. Being wrong is really just, a different version of a surprise twist in a story. And we all know that surprise twists hook people and bring them in. There are authors who have made an entire career out of this kind of work.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah. I'm thinking back to you. All of the LinkedIn posts that get super popular and go viral and they start off with something like, I was totally wrong or I blew it or whatever it is, but it's always like, I did it wrong. And then the whole story is how they discovered it and how they corrected it.

Drew Freeman: Right. So my other kind of lane or my other approach to this, always prepared to be wrong, is really something that anyone can learn from and incorporate into their work processes and really their personal processes as well. And that is whenever I have an idea and I'm confident enough in it to share with someone, one of the first things that I do is go to a trusted co worker, a trusted friend, and say, here's my idea, I've thought it through a little bit. What am I missing? That kind of asking for someone to poke holes is so valuable to me.

Joe Marcantano: Totally agree.

Drew Freeman: Okay, hit me with your next one.

Joe Marcantano: So my next one is. This is one of those ones where

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Joe Marcantano: like I violated this rule just last week. and that is you are not the user, even if you are the user. And you, what this kind of means is you might be working on a product that you are the user for. You might be working on an email platform that you use. You might be working for whatever product that you also happen to be a customer for. Even if you're the user, you're not the user.

Drew Freeman: I think you might have to explain that one a little bit more. If I use the product, why am I not the user?

Joe Marcantano: Because you are a user.

Drew Freeman: That's the key.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah. And the way you use it is going to be different, especially if you work for that company or you're doing research for it. The way you use it is going to be different from everyone else. You're going to have a different understanding. On top of all that, I'll share a little story. I've got a little side thing that I'm working on and it's a physical product and I ran it by people that I trusted. I did what you did and the feedback I got was great. And then when I launched it, I found lots of people were resonating with the messaging on social media and I was getting lots of click throughs to the site from that messaging on social media, but at very low conversions. And that's when I kind of realized, just because the site makes sense to me doesn't mean that it makes sense to somebody who's coming to look at it. You know, if I show somebody the website and then I have to explain it the website's not doing its job. And I kind of designed this site as if I were going to the site to buy it because I am a part of the target market for this. But just because I'm the user of the product doesn't mean that I am the users. And it was very clear that I did not appropriately set up the site so that it would be intuitive for people beyond me.

Drew Freeman: I love it when researchers don't do research. I'm guilty of this too. It's always funny to me.

Joe Marcantano: Yep. And it was the most humbling experience when I sat down and I was kind of doing the post mortem on, okay, why did the launch go so poorly? And it was like, because I didn't research any of this. I just assumed that since I'm in this market, since I'm one of these people, I know what information they need, how they want the messaging, and I was very clearly wrong.

Drew Freeman: Really helps give a little bit more empathy to your stakeholders, doesn't it?

Joe Marcantano: For sure.

Drew Freeman: Okay, so to summarize this one, even if you are a user, you are not the user.

Joe Marcantano: Why don't you hit me with your next one?

Drew Freeman: Yeah, my next one is really goes kind of hand in hand with the one that I just did, which is ask lots of questions, ask for help. It's not a sign of weakness. In fact, it should be seen as a sign of strength. Again, I know I've told this story on the podcast before, but one of my early kind of mentors in my career had a saying that he loved to say, which is, if you're doing usability alone, you're doing it wrong. And that has stuck with me. And I think that's true. Use usability and user experience are as much an art as they are a science. And that means that there are lots of different techniques and approaches and things that you. Things that you might not think about, but someone else will. And that's before we even get into the fact that bias exists. And a big part of being a researcher is m minimizing that bias. But we are biased too. So what slips by my bias sensors might not slip past yours.

Joe Marcantano: I'm reminded of the first project that you and I worked on together, and it was a project that I was kind of running in quarterbacking. But it became very clear that the analysis that was required was outside of my skill set. And I asked for help. And it just so happened that you were that help. But because of that, because I was able to raise my hand and say, hey, this is Outside my skill set. I need somebody else to come in and help with this. We were able to tackle a pretty huge data set and deliver some really cool insights to our client about it from it.

Drew Freeman: Yeah. What was that, like 9,000 responses? Something like that?

Joe Marcantano: Yeah. Across nine countries in six languages.

Drew Freeman: Yeah, that was a mess. So me being able to focus on the pure data analysis and running those calculations and computations while you dealt with all the B's around, cleaning the data and

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Drew Freeman: managing stakeholders and basically just keeping everything else off my back. Super valuable partnership there.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah, it was super valuable for me because I was looking at the complex calculations that would be needed and I don't have a math background or a quant background, so that to me felt really overwhelming. So to have that off of my plate made it super easy for me to manage everything else.

Drew Freeman: Whereas I have a educational background in statistics. So I just had to remind myself, oh, right, this is the right method to use in this situation. Let me find the calculator for that. Because I don't remember how to do it by hand. But the most important thing was I remembered which calculations were appropriate and so I can run them. And something that took me hours would have taken you days, if not longer.

Joe Marcantano: And you know, I hope that nobody on the team looked down or frowned upon the fact that I raised my hand and asked for help. I think that everybody recognized that this was the best way to get the client the best results as quickly as possible.

Drew Freeman: And that's the, in the end, that's the only thing that matters. So, another example of this from a previous job. I was working with someone else on how to kind of level up mid level folks into more senior folks who we trusted more essentially. And we came up with this idea that the level of questions that someone asks is kind of U shaped to the amount, as related to the amount of experience they have. When you're new, you ask a lot of questions because you don't know what you're doing. When you're experienced, you ask a lot of questions because you know what you're doing and you know how valuable it is to get other opinions and other viewpoints. It's that middle, when you're kind of middle experience and you think you know everything, where you don't ask enough questions and that's where you become dangerous and not in the good way.

Joe Marcantano: It reminds me of, the term sophomore. Ah. Are you familiar with the, etymology of the word?

Drew Freeman: Vaguely.

Joe Marcantano: I believe it's Greek that it goes back to and it basically Means wise fool or wise foolish. And that's somebody who kind of has just enough information to be a little bit dangerous and probably a little foolish in that they're not asking the right questions.

Drew Freeman: Yep. Okay, so the next one that you wanted to talk about again, ties in nicely with what we've just been talking about.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah. One of the things that I think that we kind of need a reminder of is that you should always be looking for new tools for your toolbox. And what I mean by that is always be curious about new methods. You'll hear one of the most common ways, that it's described is that like somebody has a T shaped skill set, so they're really, really knowledgeable in one or two things and then somewhat knowledgeable across a multitude of things. And that's. That I think is the kind of way that you want to try to aim for your skills. You don't have to be an expert in every single study type that exists out there, but you should be familiar with a lot of them and you should be at a point where you can talk from a place of knowledge about what it's good for and kind of gross timelines of what it would take. Even if, you know, maybe it's card sorts or whatever and you haven't done one in years, you're going to need to do a couple of Google searches or pull out a book to remind yourself best practices. But always take advantage of adding new tools to the toolbox. Always be looking for new things to bring in.

Drew Freeman: And this ties in perfectly with the one that I wanted to talk about next, which is you're smart, you can learn these new things. Like, like Joe said, you don't need to be an expert in every single method the Internet exists. There are experts out there who have put their knowledge and shared their knowledge with the rest of the world. For all of us, it's totally okay and expected and a good thing to be confident and flexible in running a method that you've not run before.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah. And if you don't work as a team of one, if you work with other researchers, leverage that, the experience of your coworkers, of your teammates. If I were wanting to become more of an expert in quant research, I would call up Drew and say, hey man, I want to learn A, B and C. Can you point me to some resources?

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Joe Marcantano: Can you point out the potholes that, that you hit that slowed you down? There's no reason that anyone should have to start from scratch there.

Drew Freeman: What I love about this is that we kind of came up with our lists separately and now we're like three or four deep in a chain that are all interrelated and tied to each other. Any other reminders that you want to give folks for the new year?

Joe Marcantano: You know, I'll give everybody the same reminder that I give myself and that is a, year is a long time. And you know, maybe you're a resolution person, maybe you aren't. But when the end of January, beginning of February rolls around and you don't feel like you have made the progress that you expected to make on whatever goal or objective you had for the year, just remember that if you can do, you know, 1% to half a percent better every day, that's going to add up over the year. You do not need to, master whatever objective or resolution that you have by the end of February.

Drew Freeman: And again, this ties nicely into my final reminder, which is sometimes good enough is good enough. We don't need to be perfectionists in everything that we do. it's not possible, frankly. We don't have enough time, we don't have enough energy, we don't have enough knowledge to be perfect in everything. The key is understanding where you need to give 100% of your energy and your capacity and where and which tasks are maybe 70 or 80% tasks and that's go going toa get the job done.

Joe Marcantano: I love leaving it there. I want to thank everybody for joining us today. we're so excited to be back in the new year and see what the new year brings for inside uxr. If you want to help out the show, help us get the word out, post about us on social media, tag drew on LinkedIn. we always love to hear folks kind of sharing the good word with others. If you've got a question that you want to hear us talk about for an episode, send that over to insideuxr@gmail.com and if you want to support the show, there's a link in the show notes. You can do that with that. I'm Joe Marantano.

Drew Freeman: And I'm Drew Freeman and we'll see you next time.

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