Building Successful UX Teams

In 1965, Herbert Simon predicted that "machines will be capable, within twenty years, of performing tasks that a man can do." Similarly, in 1970, Marvin Minsky was quoted saying, "within a generation, the problem of creating 'artificial intelligence' will largely be solved." These two men were pioneering AI researchers and are widely regarded as founding fathers of the field. However, these predictions turned out to be shortsighted and overly optimistic.

Recently, AI research and companies have made tremendously interesting advancements, introducing brand new products and tools that are categorically different from anything seen before. Are we on the cusp of something radically new about how humans work and live?

In this episode of YouX, the hosts delve into AI and its implications for the practice of UX research. Each host offers a unique perspective, sparking a spirited and engaging debate. The core question that they begin with is whether AI, in its current form, can replicate the functions of UX researchers, and if the field should be concerned about ChatGPT taking their jobs.

The discussion begins with the hosts defining UX research and AI. Chris, refusing to mince words, strongly asserts that AI, particularly the current iteration of Large Language Models (LLMs), cannot conduct primary research (produce novel knowledge) like a trained professional. Mustafa takes a more techno-optimistic stance, arguing that with minimal human input and sophisticated automation, many types of primary research are within AI's reach, even today. Chris counters by arguing that, by virtue of what LLMs are, they cannot collect or interpret data as humans do. He points out that they lack, and cannot be programmed to have, the motivations or desires a human researcher possesses to explore a topic or question—elements that often initiate research projects. Furthermore, Chris argues, LLMs cannot model or manipulate the world as humans do when seeking answers to unknowns and producing novel answers. Mustafa, unperturbed by Chris's arguments, believes that with sufficient development and the right kind of prompts, these systems could match the capabilities of run-of-the-mill researchers and designers.

It's evident that this is just the beginning of broader and deeper conversations, as AI continues to evolve and become increasingly relevant in various aspects of life and work. We are witnessing the dawn of a new era in technology and industry, so join us for what is sure to be the first of many episodes of YouX that will discuss AI and its far-reaching implications for the world of UX and beyond. 

Find Chris:   

christopher-s-kovel-660029a6  

www.chriskovel.com

Find Mustafa: 

 mustafazubairahmed  

Muzzy the Researcher: 

mustafazubairahmed  

Sources: 

https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~kuipers/o...

https://www.datacamp.com/cheat-sheet/...

Welcome to the Universal Lens Channel. Getting to the bottom of all things human-centered design. I'm your host Chris Kovel.

In this episode of our "In Dialogues" series, we are pleased to bring you our conversation with Kathryn Brookshier. Chris and Kathryn sit down to chat about several issues within the nascent and growing field of UX research. They discussed centralized vs. decentralized research models, the challenges faced by researchers on immature cross-functional product teams, the continual specialization of UX research job titles (a good thing!), and other topics.

However, the main reason Chris wanted to have Kathryn on was to discuss her publications that told an intriguing and possibly heterodox story about the state of UX in 2023 (see links below). This story is particularly relevant for anyone who is bearish about the future of UX or believes we are in the midst of a reckoning because tech has lost faith in design. 

Kathryn Brookshier is a mixed-methods UX research manager at Indeed and a lecturer for the University of Washington's Human-Centered Design and Engineering master's program. She holds a master's degree from the University of Washington in Human-Centered Design and Engineering and a bachelor's degree in Interaction Design from Olin College of Engineering. She is an active mentor with Hexagon UX in Seattle, WA.

Where to find Kathryn:

• https://kathrynbrookshier.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/kbrookshier/

Where to find Chris:

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-s-kovel-660029a6/
• www.chriskovel.com 

UX Research Job Postings Show the Discipline is Here to Stay

UX Job Listings Plunged in 2023

How Indeed Established a Major UX Research Org in Just a Few Years: 

In the guys' 3rd installment of their recurring series on the business value of UX, they have another marathon episode for you. Chris gets things started by highlighting two themes that have emerged based on past conversations and interviews on UX business value: (1) the ROI of UX and (2) how to best reorganize or transform businesses to be more experience-led.

The point of focus for this episode is the 2018 McKinsey article “The Business Value of Design” (link below). While the article does supply facts and figures on how design can positively impact traditional business metrics like P&L and stock prices, this article is mainly centered on how to transform businesses to make them design-led. The authors argue that organizations can only gain the increased profits generated by design principles and methodology by restructuring and becoming design-led. The way this happens, according to McKinsey is by caring about 4 main business characteristics:

Analytical leadership

Cross-functional talent

Continuous iteration

User Experience

The guys dissect all 4 characteristics and embrace some digressions along the way. They bring up a number of topics including the difference between UX and CX, the importance of research and design ops to work quick, agile, and continuously iterate, and what customer-centric strategies look like. Chris also raises the important and open question: do all businesses want and need to be design-led? For UX and HCD to fully mature as a profession, does that mean we need a new form of business that challenges the status quo and seeks to rewrite the operating model? All good questions that we need more voices on.

To finish things off, Chris talks about the parallels and overlap between different models, calling for businesses to be more customer-centric. From his vantage point, the two clear points of agreement across all the models are (1) placing a designer in the C-suite and (2) relying on customer data and user research across every step of the business and design decision-making funnel. Sit back, buckle up, and get ready for a business transformation deep dive! 

Do all businesses need to be design-led? 

Drop us a line about what you think!

 https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities...

Welcome to the Universal Lens Channel. Getting to the bottom of all things human-centered design. I'm your host Chris Kovel.

In our second installment of the "In Dialogue" series, we are delighted to welcome Kelly Bowker as our guest. She will be discussing a wide range of topics related to what it means to be a designer in today's ever-changing professional landscape.

Kelly is the Director of Design at EverQuote. She leverages her education in Graphic Design, Masters in Integrated Marketing, and MBA in Organizational Behavior and Technology Operations, to lead a team of designers that are focused on improving the experiences of enterprise software for internal and external users.

Kelly's Career Resource Folder

Thinking Fast and Slow

In this installment of the YouX Freestyle, the guys have a wide-ranging and free-wheeling conversation on numerous topics concerning research, design, development, and user experience. Mustafa gets things started by expressing frustration about how common it is at companies to silo product teams. Because these teams are working on different parts of a common user experience the result is fragmentation and an inelegant user experience. Chris proposes that senior leadership should do their best to "carve the product at the joints" and make sure to talk to each other about the big picture regularly.

The conversation switches gears, and Chris finally gets to put his history degree to good use. He points out that human-centered design (HCD) is an outgrowth or continuation of what companies have historically termed "R&D". Significant differences exist, such as how HCD emphasizes the complexities of human behavior while R&D teams have been focused on understanding and harnessing the complexity and laws of the natural world. Not surprisingly, the duo then delved into the topic of research and its role in the design process. They discuss the theory and rationale behind its ability to deliver business value and justify the ROI of a research budget. They also hint at a topic that they might cover in a full episode:'research recommendations' and how researchers nagivate the practice of taking the evidence and facts from the findings and appropriately implementing design adjustments and solutions.

Concluding their conversation, they talk about their aspirations for the podcast now that they have a few episodes under their belt. Chris wants it to be a platform for exchanging ideas, fostering maturity in HCD, and enhancing collaboration between design practitioners and businesses. Mustafa envisions the podcast as a hub for an open-minded community and hopes listeners will aim to harmonize design, technology, and business. While the podcast may not have all the answers, its spirit, rooted in its inception, is to ask questions fearlessly and with a healthy dose of humility. These are exciting times, but there is much work to do. And it is day 1. 

Chris' Article calling for more theory

Welcome to The Universal Lens Channel. Getting to the bottom of all things human-centered design. I'm your host Chris Kovel.

For this inaugural episode of our "In Dialogue" series, we have Steve Portigal as our guest. Chris and Steve discuss a wide variety of topics, including how Steve got started in user research, methods, UX maturity levels, and the differences between an agency and corporate model.

Steve is one of the pioneering thought leaders in the nascent field of user research. He operates his own user research consultancy and is the author of two books on the subject: "Interviewing Users" and "Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries." He holds a B.Sc in Computer Science from The University of Toronto and an M.Sc in Computing and Information Science from The University of Guelph.

Steve's Website:

https://portigal.com/

Steve's Podcast:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEfdxA4EqZUI7IRXd2g8XNPQdz-wwg4iQ

Join Chris and Mustafa as they welcome their old friend Mark Donohue for this wide-ranging and thoughtful conversation. Topics discussed and explored in this episode run the gamut from how design is essentially communication, to whether universal and objective design principles can be identified through research and study. They also delve into what's next in the realm of digital banking and what is required to create exceptional digital experiences. We even asked Mark to imagine that he was the Nick Fury of digital banking! Few people are as knowledgeable about digital banking experiences as Mark, so we invite you to join us as we pick his brain on these and related topics.

Mark Donohue is the CEO and Founder of iSky Research, a leading provider of fact-based research for digital services industries globally. The company incorporates a team of analysts, data scientists, digital practitioners, and UX experts. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Communications from La Trobe University and a Master's degree in International Relations and National Security from Deakin University (both located in Australia).

iSky Research

The guys are kicking off a new series with this episode called "YouX Freestyle." These conversations will be free-flowing and agenda-less, focusing on topics that are currently on the minds of Chris and Mustafa. For today’s episode, the guys tackle the well-known concept of empathy. Chris gets things started by slightly denouncing the term and questioning whether it is causing confusion within the feild and diulding UX Research. Mustafa likes the word and thinks it is a simple way of explaining that the designer is not the user.

The conversation shifts into a discussion about empathy and its role within design thinking frameworks. The guys talk about how design thinking should permeate the entire business, helping to set high level vision and direction. Chris raises the question: Should the whole business understand the product design process? They conclude that baking design thinking into the company's DNA can help organizations truly become "experience-led."

The discussion then returns to the topic of empathy and highlights the fact that numerous stakeholders and/or organizations fail to effectively implement empathy throughout the entirety of the development lifecycle. Chris suggests a terminology adjustment and thinks a re-branding of empathy as "user understanding" or "user study" might be useful and help slove issues. The guys conclude the conversation with the very likely hope that Christopher Nolan will one day produce a blockbuster about UX Research.

On this very special edition of YouX the guys are talking with their first guest! Springboarding off of their recent conversations on the business value of UX and transforming organizations around the principles and practices of UX and product design, we have on Joseph Boston to talk about his presentation "Becoming Product Led" he gave at Product Tank Dubai. The guys and Joe dig into his ideas and touch on many points like starting projects by discovering customer pain, the importance of using research across the product lifecycle, OKRs vs. KPIs, why legacy organizations resist being product led, product-market fit, the divisions and convergence between product and design, and other topics.

Joseph Boston is Product Director at Eat App based in Dubai, UAE. Starting his career in London, he has been building digital products and services for nearly 15 years. He holds a BSc in Creative Computing from Goldsmith University of London. 

Becoming Product Led Deck

Eat App

The YouX Podcast

The guys back with a new installment in their Business Value of UX series. Chris & Mustafa kick off the conversation by discussing the various ways businesses measure success and systematically set strategic goals. The guys wonder if these traditional practices apply to UX teams. Mustafa thinks that OKRs should become the industry standard, mesh well with the nature of UX work, and talks about how KPIs are becoming a thing of the past. Chris thinks that traditional business success metrics and measures (like ROI) may not be able to be applied perfectly to the more creative, experimental, and knowledge growing work that human centered R&D teams do and might be a main reason why it sometimes becomes difficult to justify UX work in purely financial terms. 

After their short digression on success metrics the conversation switches to making businesses design-led or customer-centric via reorgs and transformations. They both believe that company structures and high-level goals are imperative to get right if embedded Design teams are to flourish. Following the teaching and principles outlined in the CX book Outside In they march through the 6 main themes that are necessary (according to the authors) for any company to get right before they can confidently call themselves “customer-centric”. Those themes are:

Strategy

Customer Understanding

Design

Measurement

Governance

Culture

Buck up for this one. It’s a marathon! And look out for Part 3 which will be coming soon!

The YouX Podcast

Three Myths About Calculating the ROI of UX

Outside In