Business: UX Teams

Some senior UX researchers are boldly carving out their own progression paths in UX research. Indeed, it might be time for us to carve out our own future. A big part of that means creating clear pathways for growth within our UX research teams. In this article, I’ll discuss four career and management tips for UX research leaders to help them and their teams to blossom, survive, and thrive.

As a leader in the UX research space, I’ve had the privilege of managing large UX research teams. I’ve had opportunities to train and mentor many newbies and junior researchers, and throughout my career, I’ve discovered ways of working that have helped me to manage my teams effectively. More importantly, as the industry grows and more and more researchers look to UX research as a possible career path, I’ve been managing their expectations. Read More

This is a sample chapter from the 4th Edition of About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design, by Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann, David Cronin, and Christopher Noessel.

Chapter 6: Creative Teamwork

In the Introduction to this book, we described the Goal-Directed method as consisting of three p’s: principles, patterns, and processes. However, there’s a fourth p worth mentioning—practices. This book mostly concerns itself with the first three, but in this chapter we’d like to share a few thoughts about the practice of Goal-Directed design and how design teams integrate into the larger product team. Read More

I recently transitioned from working as part of a mature UX Research team at a large Fortune-500 company to building a UX Research practice from the ground up at a small, but rapidly growing startup. It’s now been about two months since I joined the company, and I’ve already made some real progress.

In this article, I’ll describe the goals that I’ve focused on accomplishing and what I’ve done so far that has worked well. If you’ve accepted a job as a UX Research team of one or are excited about an amazing opportunity to establish a UX Research practice, but you’re not entirely sure where to start, I hope the seven tips I’ll share here will help you get off to a good start. Read More