It's Our Research: Getting Stakeholder Buy-in for User Experience Research Projects

by Tomer Sharon

It’s Our Research provides a strategic framework for people who practice UX research who wish to be heard by their stakeholders. It gives you the techniques needed to involve stakeholders throughout the process of planning, execution, analysis, and reporting UX research. Dramatically increase the chances that product managers, engineers, and management agree to do research and act upon its results; follow Tomer Sharon’s techniques and methods detailed inside.

Named a 2012 Notable Computer Book for Information Systems by Computing Reviews Features a series of video interviews with UX practitioners and researchers Provides dozens of case studies and visuals from international research practitioners Provides a toolset that will help you justify your work to stakeholders, deal with office politics, and hone your client skills Presents tried and tested techniques for working to reach positive, useful, and fruitful outcomes

Genres: Design, Research, Business, Nonfiction, Website Design, Technology, Buisness

296 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 1, 2012

About the author

Tomer is Head of User Experience at WeWork in New York City leading a team that designs work and living spaces, communities, and services around the world. Formerly a senior user experience researcher at Google Search, Tomer is the author of the book, Validating Product Ideas through Lean User Research (2016) and author of, It’s Our Research: Getting stakeholder buy-in for user experience research projects (2012). He founded and led The Israeli Chapter of the User Experience Professionals’ Association and has been preaching and teaching UX at Google’s LaunchPad program, a bootcamp for early-stage startups around the world, in conferences, and at Treehouse and General Assembly. Tomer holds a master’s degree in Human Factors in Information Design from Bentley University in Waltham, MA. He is @tsharon on Twitter and Instagram.

Reviews

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a must read for anyone interested in how to conduct UX research in an organization where it is nascent.

Tomer does an excellent job remaining tactical on basics such as putting together a research plan or publishing a report, while also speaking to the softer side of how to make research a more participatory process across a broader team of product, design, marketing, etc.

Don’t hesitate to pick up this book!

[Inu · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book can be valuable for someone who's just entering the work force and is in their early years of research. As for me - there was nothing that I didn't know about already so meh

[Rong Yong · Rating 5 out of 5]

The essential and piratical book for UX professionals

This books provide very essential and practical knowledge and techniques about research that covers all critical moments across the product design and development lifecycle.

What I love most is that the writer tells me why those techniques or methodologies are so important and how they work together to get buy in and establish trust by delivering high quality, usable and useful research.

I recommended this book to any UX professional who wants to make real impact to customers experience, product strategy, any decisions that should be made across all design and development phases, especially to someone who wants to efficiently and smoothly plan, collaborate and communicate with stakeholders.

[Vanessa arango · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good book is you are navigating stakeholders relationships as a researcher. It is a guide if you are starting to build awareness about the role, start building a team in a organisation or to deal with clients if you work or own an agency. For more mature teams and organisations or to build more executive level or strategic blueprint, could be not enough

[Kathleen Aubrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great reference with lots of ideas and for new and seasoned UX professionals.

Excellent overview of how to establish UX research within an organization through skillful communication and by developing trusting relationships with stakeholders and integrating them into the work. Tomer incorporated advice from dozens of accomplished UX researchers.

[Francis Djabri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Packed with practical wisdom. This book will quickly ramp up UX researchers at the start of their careers on the art of collaboration with other team members to ensure that research efforts aren’t going to waste.

[Shreya Jaiswal · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I had read this book before my first research sprint. This book teaches you how to have empathy for your partners-in-crime (developers and designers) and how to get buy-in from skeptical team members or managers.

This book was concise and highly useful.

[Nacho Bassino]

I’m not the best audience for the book, so I don’t think it would be fare to rate it. The book contains a lot of practices and examples. It was hard for me to find a unifying theme throughout the chapters, even when they were individually helpful.

[Garrett · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the first books I read in transition to becoming a UX Researcher, and frankly an indispensable manual for communicating research to different audiences and increasing visibility. Required reading for anyone in the field or anyone looking to break into UXR.

[Juniper · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was exactly the book that I needed when I was doing my ux research internship and looking for ways to shift the culture towards one of design research, rather than ux-is-ui

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unclear who the audience for this book was supposed to be.

[Cori · Rating 3 out of 5]

Would be most relevant for: researchers who are early in their career and/or consultants rather than in-house researchers.

[Lasse Larsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book on UX research. Lots of helpful anecdotes. Thorough walk through of actual cases. Cases get backed with actual UX theory, methods and tools when you get further into the book.

[Nick Mauro · Rating 3 out of 5]

great book for budding UX research professionals

-very well organized, progresses nicely
-stays focused on user experience research topics
-corresponding video content is a great addition
:-)

[George Wang]

heard about this book at Velocity Campus UX Workshop on 2012-10-29

[Mekayla · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little digital / usability focused but some really great ideas around how to be more inclusive in the way research is done and how stakeholders are involved in the process.