In keeping with his reputation as a gifted storyteller, Louis Rosenfeld held a captive audience in our Slack channel today.
Lou was talking about a topic which he is passionate about, and it was obvious.
Despite their heavy investment in research, large organisations still face an insight gap, which can gravely curtail product success. Lou believes the time is ripe for InsightsOps: the synthesis and operationalisation of research—currently locked in silos—that can lead to true insights across the organisation.
So that is what we learned about today.
If you didn’t make the session because you didn’t know about it, make sure you join our community to get updates of upcoming sessions.
If you’re interested in seeing what we discussed, or you want to revisit your own questions, here is a full transcript of the chat.
But first… here are the images referred to in the transcript:
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Transcript
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:01
Greetings from Brooklyn, NY.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:01
…USA
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:01
I shouldn’t forget that.
luked1uk
2018-05-16 21:01
Welcome Lou
hawk
2018-05-16 21:01
Hello all – thanks for joining us today, and mostly a huge thanks to Louis for his time. It’s greatly appreciated.
hawk
2018-05-16 21:01
So the formal intro: Lou Rosenfeld is Rosenfeld Media’s founder and publisher. Like many user experience folk, Lou started somewhere (library science), made his way somewhere else (information architecture), and has ended up in an entirely different place (publishing).
hawk
2018-05-16 21:01
Lou spent most of his career in information architecture consulting, first as founder of Argus Associates and later as an independent consultant. He co-founded the Information Architecture Institute and the IA Summit. And he does know something about publishing, having edited or co-authored five books, including the IA “bible,” Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, and Search Analytics for Your Site. He tweets @louisrosenfeld
hawk
2018-05-16 21:02
And with that, I’ll ask Lou to give us some insight into today’s topic
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:02
Lou uploaded IMAGE1 and commented: My epitath
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:03
Really, that’s what most people know me for.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:03
It gets a little unsettling, as I did the bulk of my writing on it about 20 years ago.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:03
I don’t want to be a one-hit wonder.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:03
So here I am, talking with you about some other new-fangled thing that most people will say–as with IA–doesn’t exist, or is not important.
hawk
2018-05-16 21:03
Maybe you could write about some other kind of bear then?
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:03
What would an insight bear look like?
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:04
I’m not even sure bears have good vision.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:04
Though they are fast, can climb, and are lethal.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:04
Anyway…
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:04
Here’s the story…
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:04
Around ten years ago, I was an indy IA consultant, working with Fortune 500s and government agencies.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:05
You could have called me an “information therapist” at that point, because I was getting to do precious little IA, and mostly trying to make my clients feel better about the fact that they had precious little opportunity to help their organizations provide a better user experience.
luke
2018-05-16 21:05
But their foraging techniques and scent are great :rolling_on_the_floor_laughing:
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:06
I would always start them off with the request to see their user research. Because, of course, if you’re going to try to get an organization to change, you’ve got to have evidence to prove that things are shitty for customers, and that they could be improved.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:06
Not to mention HOW the experience could be improved.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:07
As I worked with these large orgs, I found that there was no shortage of user research. In fact, they were spending HUGE amounts on different kinds of user research.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:07
Only it wasn’t always called user research. Sometimes, they called it market research.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:07
Sometimes Voice of the Customer research.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:07
Sometimes it was locked up in the analytics group.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:07
Sometimes there were multiple user research groups.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:08
There were brand research projects going on.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:08
And on and on. No shortage of information on the what and why of what customers wanted, need, and how they were behaving.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:08
You with me so far, @channel?
hawk
2018-05-16 21:08
I am.
luked1uk
2018-05-16 21:08
yep! :smile:
gary.bunker
2018-05-16 21:08
Absolutely
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:08
Cool. (Can be hard to type into the ether.)
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:09
Biggest problem is that the research was almost completey siloed.
luked1uk
2018-05-16 21:09
who you calling an ether :stuck_out_tongue:
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:09
Different tribes/disciplines using different methods and techniques to produce different types of data in order to learn different things about the same people.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:09
And that takes me to a fable. I wonder if you’re familiar with this one?
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:10
(Give me a sec to grab the image.)
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:10
Lou uploaded IMAGE2
hello107
2018-05-16 21:10
has joined #ask-the-uxperts
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:10
This is the blind men and the elephant.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:10
If you don’t know this fable (and I’m actually surprised it’s not better-known), let me tell you the story.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:11
Bunch of blind men, out for a stroll. Seriously, no sighted person to guide them. Don’t ask me why, sounds hazardous.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:11
They find themselves in the jungle. Like I said, sounds quite dangerous.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:11
They encounter an elephant. But, of course, they can’t see the elephant.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:12
One touches the elephant’s trunk. “It’s a snake!”
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:12
Another touches the elephant’s leg. “No, no, it’s not a snake–it’s a tree trunk!”
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:12
And so on.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:12
Not one of them has the truth. No real insight.
heath.alexander
2018-05-16 21:12
My kids have a book by Ed Young that’s a retelling of that fable, https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Blind-Mice-Caldecott-Honor/dp/0399222618/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:13
It’s only after they talk to each other, share information, and figure things out together that the arrive at true insight: it’s an elephant.
martina.net
2018-05-16 21:13
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Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:14
That’s called synthesis. And it’s something that we don’t really do in most organizations, especially large ones, and for that reason, we’re missing out on the Big Insights. We’re not working or spending wisely or efficiently. This needs to be addressed somehow, and it’s not easy. In the least
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:14
I only use the term–and hesitatingly–of InsightOps to draw attention to this problem. Because we need to go at it consciously. Its a design challenge, and an organizational change problem. And a bunch of other problems to boot.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:15
I’ve been talking about this for about five years–I’m kind of a broken record in that I keep giving pretty much the same talk about it at conference keynotes.
meganweise
2018-05-16 21:15
But it is still so so important, please keep talking about it!
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:15
The good news is that more and more people seem to share this same concern. I’m starting to see them address it. I’m hoping to talk about it here with you and see if you’ve encountered similar problems.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:16
Let me share a couple links, and then let’s talk. I have some ideas for solutions that I can get into later, but I want to open things up–in just a second.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:16
Here’s a video of me giving a talk on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LRdCAWz1pI
lindamanofficial
2018-05-16 21:16
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Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:16
Here’s a corresponding deck: https://www.slideshare.net/lrosenfeld/beyond-user-research
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:17
And an ALA article (getting a little old now): https://alistapart.com/article/seeing-the-elephant-defragmenting-user-research
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:17
OK, let’s discuss! Is this something you’re struggling with?
hello107
2018-05-16 21:17
Going through it right now, where even in a 150+ people organization our UX researcher used to work in a silo for 2 weeks and then come back with a deck + showreel from usertesting for a day. Everyone would watch, give comments and then walk away.
dave
2018-05-16 21:17
My teammates Teena Singh and Greg Petroff say Hi :wave:
gary.bunker
2018-05-16 21:17
Yep, same here
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:18
Hi Teena and Greg! Love those folks.
david.balcak
2018-05-16 21:18
has joined #ask-the-uxperts
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:18
@gary.bunker Where are you seeing it? (Willing to disclose?)
hello107
2018-05-16 21:18
I started with a framework inspired by Tomer Sharon, used airtable to democratize atleast the input part + access to user research insights. Even that small 2 day effort has helped quite a bit.
gary.bunker
2018-05-16 21:18
Forgetful organisations too – they run research, go ‘aaaahhh!’ then get new jobs. 12 months later, nobody even knows they ran the research
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:18
Yes, I’m a big fan of Tomer’s work (we published his last book, Validating User Research).
richard
2018-05-16 21:18
I am not 100% sure I understand. Let’s say my team does a GV style sprint, which means we’ll be doing user interviews to help diagnose a particular design problem, recording it, with a room full of people in the other room furiously taking notes all over the wall on post-its about that user’s experience. After five or so of these interviews, we have a clear direction for our design, and we make some changes. And then all the “noise” knowledge – everything except the decisions themselves – go down the tube.
Are you talking about putting that insight to broader / longer-term use?
hello107
2018-05-16 21:18
I read it!! :raised_hands: Great one!
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:19
He makes the point that @gary.bunker is making: lack of InsightOps/ResearchOps leads to a failure in organizational memory.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:19
Here’s a link to one of his articles; he’s done a lot more in Medium: https://medium.com/amplify-design/polaris-research-ops-by-wework-e1fb54bc99ac
luked1uk
2018-05-16 21:19
I think the problem is different teams in one company can have different goals. in my last job the marketing team did a ton of user research that was pretty much almost useless to us on the ux team.
hello107
2018-05-16 21:19
Yes Polaris! :slightly_smiling_face:
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:20
@richard Yes.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:20
There are cases in whch your team would have greatly benefitted from another team/researcher’s data–AND perspective on the problem. And vice versa.
gary.bunker
2018-05-16 21:20
Same here. I’ve seen huge decks with massive data on segmentation and responses and emotive mapping that has literally nothing in there to help design or improve an experience.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:20
In fact, you probably would have had a better outcome if you’d had more blind men at the table, sharing notes and data and sythesis.
richard
2018-05-16 21:21
So, something _other_ than rolling up all the giant papers covered in post-it notes in long scroll-like tubes, and stashing them all in a bin in the corner, running off with our new direction for our 12 person product team given our specific goals for the month.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:21
Now, without some sort of infrastructure and conscious effort, @richard will have no idea that other teams are doing relevant work.
richard
2018-05-16 21:21
Got it
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:21
Hah! Yes
gary.bunker
2018-05-16 21:22
Having a single sharable location for insights and research can help – bringing the blind men together for lunch each day to report on findings
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:22
It does, @gary.bunker But it’s not just an issue of having a giant repository, a la Polaris (or Aurelius or HandRail, to name a couple new commercial entrants into this space).
richard
2018-05-16 21:22
Can these insights get rolled up into our broader personas and other high-level artifacts?
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:22
It’s also critical to acknowledge that we 1) don’t know about each other, especially in large orgs.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:23
2) We don’t speak the same language–given that we come from different tribes.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:23
3) We don’t have common motivations.
luke
2018-05-16 21:23
I have worked at large companies and now at a startup. With many different and common challenges. I have actually pivoted my career into a product role to be able to create space for researchers in my team to influence the workspace. I think the more we separate ux as a separate function the more harm we sometimes do
luked1uk
2018-05-16 21:23
What I would love to see is 1 person for each team/department come together to do a user research study, that way you get all corners covered for what ever it is people want to get from their own users. I think that would work way better than 1 team doing it themselves, but that would require company organisation and strategy. thoughts Lou
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:23
“company organisation and strategy”
hello107
2018-05-16 21:23
Much like branding, I feel if the key stakeholders have not bought into what the process is, how it impacts the workflow/product and the resources needed to keep it going – it would end up on the bookshelf. – an issue pronounced in larger orgs.
crystal
2018-05-16 21:24
When we finally do know about each other, we don’t know each other well enough to realize we’re working on the same/adjacent projects where we could each benefit from sharing
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:24
Exactly, @luked1uk; that’s why I say it’s not enough to have a repository. Just like DesignOps is more than pattern libraries and design systems, you’ve got to have people responsible for guiding principles, strategy, and organizational change in order to make this work.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:24
Exactly, @crystal
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:25
@hello107 In branding, we’re seeing a growth in “CreativeOps”. On the product side, “DesignOps” (in fact, my company puts on the annual DesignOps conference in NYC in November).
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:26
Of course, there’s (very suddenly) huge energy and engagement in the nascent ResearchOps community.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:26
We need to take that operational goodness and keep extending it.
luke
2018-05-16 21:26
Why would a research ops and design ops be separate?
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:26
Lou uploaded IMAGE3
hello107
2018-05-16 21:27
ooooh!
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:27
@luked1uk Not sure they should be. In fact, at our conference they’re very much combined, in terms of the program.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:27
But sometimes we separate things that are closely related simply to get a better look at them.
hello107
2018-05-16 21:27
This is an amazing representation Lou :raised_hands:
luked1uk
2018-05-16 21:27
I can see benefits to outsourcing this stuff sometimes for some companies. I love meeting my users and throwing them into tasks and watching them do stuff. Lou Do you think that sometimes out sourcing might be a better way to go? or is it vital that people understand their own users from their own research?
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:28
@luked1uk Yes and no. Yes in terms of getting a smart agency to help you with this, because it’s a HUGE challenge. No in terms of implementation–this is basically your organizational brain, and you really, really don’t want to outsource taht.
richard
2018-05-16 21:29
Woah. I didn’t know outsourcing this stuff was even a thing. I’m a product manager, and I want to literally be present during the user interviews. That’s my lifeblood.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:29
I will say that the agency model, as we all know, is very likely dying–except for those agencies that specialize. I’m seeing more smart agencies moving into operationalization. Some get acquired. Think CapitalOne acquiring AdaptivePath, and Verizon recently acquiring Moment Design.
hello107
2018-05-16 21:30
Agency models – highly recommend Jules E.’s writeup on State of Digital Nation :ok_hand:
luked1uk
2018-05-16 21:30
Can we change it from User Interview to something more friendly? I feel like when ever I meet users I want it to feel like the opposite of an interview. :smile:
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:30
@luked1uk You’re a smart project manager, because you want to be a part of the research. THat said, I’d be careful–you’ll potentially spread yourself too thinly if your research becomes so multimodal. You really should be thinking about setting up the infrastructure to support the work; IMHO, that’s more critical, as it’ll enable you and your research to scale.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:30
@hello107 Link please?
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:31
I’m letting my fingers take a little respite while y’all come up with questions/thoughts.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:32
Go for it @luked1uk
luke
2018-05-16 21:32
We have been harping on about user research sessions should be attended by everyone for years now. What I’ve witnessed as a bigger problem, is that few people use the products they are building. This in itself should be the first step we encourage
luked1uk
2018-05-16 21:32
Ill try to push a new phrase, User Hangout or something :stuck_out_tongue:
luked1uk
2018-05-16 21:33
Lou in an ideal world, ideal company, what does the perfect scenario look like to you? and have you seen it?
hello107
2018-05-16 21:33
Lou part 1 came out in 2016!
https://blog.marvelapp.com/state-of-the-digital-nation-2016/
https://blog.marvelapp.com/state-of-the-digital-nation-2016/
Part 2 came out 2 days ago:
https://medium.com/swlh/state-of-the-digital-nation-2020-venture-road-22de4377836
Highly highly recommend
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:33
@luke You bet–but let’s take things further a bit and get down the road to a place where it’s not so much an issue of convincing your org that user research is worthwhile. I’m really talking about a stage later on (which is why the talk is called “Beyond User Research”. I argue that we’ve not won the war–just a battle.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:34
@luked1uk No way. But I’m optimistic that we’re getting there.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:34
I mean, think of how our research is so clearly the sum of its parts. It’s hard to ignore. Here, let me throw a few slides your way that demonstrate this…
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:35
Lou uploaded IMAGE4 and commented: Some of us are really good at figuring out the what, others the why. SO MUCH BETTER WHEN COMBINED!
luked1uk
2018-05-16 21:36
What are we saying here? its all the same thing? the what and the why?
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:36
Lou uploaded IMAGE5 and commented: Or the obvious complementary aspects of qualitative and quantitive research.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:36
No, not at all. Actually, they’re currently siloed/separate. I’m saying that they need to be combined.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:37
Lou uploaded IMAGE6 and commented: Here’s another: some of advocate for users, other for business–and our data supports us. Why not combine?
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:38
Lou uploaded IMAGE7 and commented: Some of us are really good at tracking and measuring what’s known with our products and customers. Others of us are good at finding patterns that suggest the UNKNOWN aspects of how our users and products interact.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:38
Lou uploaded IMAGE8 and commented: Last one: some of our data is facts and figures. Other data is concepts and ideas. How do we combine them?
luked1uk
2018-05-16 21:38
I do feel like part of being in UX is pulling it all together sometimes and seeing it from all sides
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:39
Yes, but UX represents a specific POV.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:39
We can’t do this on our own.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:39
We, like everyone else, come to the table with baggage, and therefore are suspect and should be suspect.
luked1uk
2018-05-16 21:39
very true
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:40
That said, we certainly have much to offer. UX is a synthetic discipline–really a mashup of other disciplines–so we may be more comfortable with a variety of points of view/methods/tools/perspectives than some other, more established disciplines that do some form of user/customer research.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:41
VIVA LA DIFFERENCE!
luked1uk
2018-05-16 21:41
:smile:
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:42
I see “several people are typing” but no questions/comments. I’m going to drop a bunch more slides on you people if you don’t type over here soon!
richard
2018-05-16 21:42
Lou Forgive my ignorance on this topic. It’s new for me. At first it seemed like you were talking about problems fairly unique to larger organizations where there are lots of silos, maybe less applicable to a 20 person startup. But now as you describe the synthesis of the different kinds of user insight, that seems to be a different thing than the organizational tribal knowledge / siloing issue.
luke
2018-05-16 21:42
Consolidating insights from all areas of the business has been our greatest challenge. From one off surveys, to web agent support chats getting tagged in ZenDesk. Having a consolidated tagging system has been so difficult to coordinate
luke
2018-05-16 21:42
And advice?
richard
2018-05-16 21:42
As this more about synthesis of different classes of knowledge, or of the process of shared knowledge?
gary.bunker
2018-05-16 21:43
What about having a consistent IA for how we describe the knowledge we gain? Terminology, form, structure.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:43
@richard No need to apologize–it’s new to us all. The synthesis of different classes of knowledge is an organizational/cross-silo pursuit by definition, BECAUSE those classes of knowledge come from different parts of the organization. Parts that don’t know about each other, have different vocabularies and motivations…
luked1uk
2018-05-16 21:43
Print it all out and put it on a wall :smile: take a good look at whats going on
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:44
@gary.bunker If you look closely at what Tomer and team were doing with Polaris, it’s IA all the way down. Huge investment in metadata and content chunking. I just gave a talk in Taipei last week and basically said that the fools who say IA is dead aren’t looking too closely at the challenges associated with operationalizing all these aspects of design and research (among other htings).
luke
2018-05-16 21:45
The vocabularies and motivations have been the main challenges for us. Particularly as the CS team is in Jordan, with English not necessarily a first language
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:45
That makes things even harder, eh?
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:45
No one has a wall that big.
luked1uk
2018-05-16 21:45
lol
crystal
2018-05-16 21:45
I completely agree with all of this. I work for an extremely large organization – silos within silos – and have spent the past 2 years trying just to identify the ux team or the user research team. I’ve found a vast majority of people who do this work don’t have these titles, as you said. I have met others who have tried to get a small group on the same page and share. Do you have any hints, leads, gut feelings about some good avenues to begin exploring to make InsightOps/ResearchOps come to fruition?
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:46
I’ve got a bunch of things in that video/deck. Let me drop a few on you here.
crystal
2018-05-16 21:46
Awesome! I will definitely watch it in its entirety after this!
crystal
2018-05-16 21:47
And share it with others who I work with
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:47
Lou uploaded IMAGE9 and commented: Many of you are probably familiar with Christian Rohrer’s Landscape of User Research Methods.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:48
It’s by no means perfect–AND it reflects a very HCI-influenced view of research. For example, an analytics person would craft a very different landscape. (And I tried to get Avinash Kaushik, one of the top gurus of analytics, to work with Christian to combine perspectives.)
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:48
But look at those axes, then look at what’s covered in the four quadrants. Think of each method as a blind man.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:48
Now you can audit your org’s research methodology. Are all your blind men living in one of these quadrants? If so, that’s a problem.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:49
ANd one you can address–in some cases, by finding other blind men who are already in your organizaiotn.
richard
2018-05-16 21:49
I like that
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:49
Lou uploaded a picture (1) and commented: Here’s another: the concept of cadence.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:50
If you’re using the Landscape I showed a moment ago to “balance” your research methodology, you might also want to “balance” it over time.
luked1uk
2018-05-16 21:50
good map
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:50
Some research methods look at user behavior on a daily basis–or even more frequently.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:50
Others are more involved and expensive, like a field study. Can your org balance those things out?
luke
2018-05-16 21:50
Do you have advise for strategy/product people on supporting this better?
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:51
Lou uploaded IMAGE11 and commented: Can your org combine balance and cadence to come up with a framework WHAT research it does and WHEN?
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:52
@luke What I’m showing are frameworks that can be used to pull together diffuse research, researchers, and research perspectives.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:52
Not that it’s easy, or that I’m providng a solution. I’m not really the right person to solve this problem. I’m just not smart or experienced enough–all I can to is point out the problem and make some broad suggestions as to how to move forward.
crystal
2018-05-16 21:53
Nah, I think that you are once again a bit ahead of your time, which is awesome gets everyone thinking about these things more in depth
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:54
Actually that last slide is incomplete but I can’t get the full version out of keynote right now (as I can’t grab a screenshot of a completed build). It’s in my deck though.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:54
Thanks @crystal
luke
2018-05-16 21:55
Yep I understand what these are showing. But for these to be effective communication tools there also needs to be a space for the research team to influence as well as collaborate. I wonder if you have examples you have seen of companies that do this well – and perhaps what aspects enabled then to succeed?
luked1uk
2018-05-16 21:55
@crystal I guess everyone is at a different stage in their Org or team with this stuff. I think its a lot about striving for the future and pushing your self to try these new things and implement new techniques.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:55
We’ve got about five minutes to go. Glad to talk more–also would love to know what people would call this challenge (I’m not wedded to InsightOps).
fmvr26
2018-05-16 21:55
Hello Lou
What is the middle point you think will fit someone from the big data/analytics area within product design? ( I changed careers to product design a while ago but still looking how to use more analytics techniques)
In the other hand I’m currently experimenting with a data-lake like structure for a database of user information (both feedback and research) to then have a central point for analyzing and crafting insights with the hope that it will give a more profound understanding of the users and a better access to all data. *Any thoughts on the matter?*
richard
2018-05-16 21:56
So if the “Ops” monicker is an indication, the thinking here is influenced by the lean movement. Typically that means you accept that there are complex systems nobody can fully wrap their head around, and it encourages interaction amongst parties whose knowledge, inputs and outputs depend on each other, along with feedback between parties.
That evolving system of interaction and continual improvement is in contrast to grand architecture.
Is that a fair representation?
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:56
Trying to digest @fmvr26’s question…
crystal
2018-05-16 21:56
It seems to me to be a lot more than just insights – Collaboration and Strategy
fmvr26
2018-05-16 21:56
sorry if I over-worded it!
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:57
Yes, you’re on the right track. Here’s the holy grail for you and for everyone: how to colocate and, more importantly, CONNECT (in the same repository) those quant and qual data.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:57
I have some ideas about this, but the problem is that “reports” become the intermediary–reports that are based on quant data.
luked1uk
2018-05-16 21:58
If I can take anything away from this talk today Lou its that I need to talk to more people and get more peoples insight. Its not just my job to understand our users but we can all raise each other up to understand the greater overall idea of our users.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:58
Once you’re trafficking in reports, you open up a whole vector of risk. Because reports are the lazyman’s approach to understanding the world. We craft them around a question, then–after running the same report again and again–forget what the question was. Or the question loses relevance.
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 21:58
nicely said, @luked1uk
gary.bunker
2018-05-16 22:00
Thanks Louis, fantastic to spend time with you, awesome insights
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 22:00
So, glad to hear from y’all: I run a free monthly DesignOps community conference call–if you want an invite, email me. And you all should attend these fine conferences: http://designopssummit.com and http://enterpriseux.net. And buy our books: http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books
hawk
2018-05-16 22:00
And that’s that!
Lou Rosenfeld
2018-05-16 22:00
Thanks everyone; hope to cross paths again.
hawk
2018-05-16 22:00
Thanks so much for your time today Lou – it was an honour to learn from you.
