Building User Research Teams: How to create UX research teams that deliver impactful insights.

by Steve Bromley

Starting or growing a research team? Upgrade your UX Research and make successful products.Successful products require good decisions. Good decisions need good information.

User researchers run robust and repeatable studies to find that information, but they need some tools and support to get started.

Building User Research Teams is a step by step guide covering how to start a new UX research team.

Learn how

Convince colleagues that user research is worthwhileBudget for and equip a research teamCreate the templates and tools needed to run researchRun studies that are impactful and accurateOptimise your research team’s workflowGrow a research team long-termThis book is useful

Companies looking to hire their first researcherNew research leaders establishing a teamIndependent researchers in companies looking to maximise their impactDesigners, product managers and UX professionals wanting to incorporate research best practice into their work What’s in the book?

Building User Research Teams is a practical guide covering how to build a research team of any size. It covers the whole journey, from convincing colleagues that they need a user research team, through to the development and implementation of the tools and processes needed, to running high quality studies and mapping the future development of a growing research team.

In the book, you will find out how

Part 1 – Make the case for research

Learn how research and design work together in product developmentExplain the benefits of research in business termsAvoid some common mistakes for new teamsTechniques for educating companies about researchMake friends with other disciplinesCreate a budget for researchSet research standardsPart 2 – Build research capability

Set up participant recruitmentBuild a user research labCreate a process for researchCreate research templatesStore team knowledge and research filesMeet ethical and legal standardsPart 3 – Run good research from the start

Define research objectivesPlan research studiesRun studiesAnalyse research findingsDebrief findings and run workshopsContinually improve and iterate the research processPart 4 – Grow a research team long term

How to grow a team over timeCreate a demand for researchDevelop new research methodsHire and develop researchersMake research collaborativeBuild a research repository

Genres: Design, Business, Research

227 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 18, 2020

Reviews

[gingerbbm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent primer for any practitioner or team dipping their toes into dedicated user research. I felt there is an imbalance of supporting examples - a lot of references to evaluative research; generative research not so much - but in fairness this isn't the focus of the book.

From a practical point of view, the book could use a good editor (to tighten up the content) and a copy-editor (to catch all the typos and grammar misses), plus the page layout is a little strange (I read the paperback edition).

But despite these relatively superficial shortcomings, the book provides an excellent programme for establishing user research inside an organisation, and keeping it going!

[Katie · Rating 1 out of 5]

My rating is a reflection of my experience, less so the quality of the book. I was not the intended audience. I am a UXR with many years of research experience. The book said "This is for: New research leaders establishing a team" - and I am hiring to build my first team, so I thought it was for me. What I think it really meant was "New to research (with no research background) leaders establishing a team". I would probably recommend this book to people trying to break into UXR, but it was almost solely about "How to do research" with hardly any content on building a team, which is what I was hoping for. If I was earlier in my career and trying to make a switch, I'd probably rate this a 4-5. I think the title does the content a misjustice, because it has a lot of valuable information in it, and the right people might not be picking it up.

[Tomi Ola · Rating 5 out of 5]

ResearchOps is a growing area in the field of User Research, as more organisations finally wake to smell the coffee about user-centred thinking. The demand for user researchers is on a rise, and with that comes the need to organise the bits that enable research insight to pack a punch in design decisions. This was timely read for me, loved it.

[Dale Furutani · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish this book existed 2 years ago, when I was first making the jump to user research manager. This is a great primer for anyone starting out in user research, or building a new team. Some typos made it in, a second edition is probably warranted.

[Jaydorn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally I'd rated this book 3 stars as I'd originally found it to be somewhat vague and nebulous, but since that time I've found myself returning to it almost monthly as we build out our UXR capabilities. While it's not a "how to guide" per say, it has ended up being my regular handbook for research ops, what goes into a repo, how to increase the visibility of UXR in an org, and how to ensure research is being planned for accordingly.