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Michele Ronsen (of Curiosity Tank) and Stacy Beran (of Loyola University Chicago and PinPoint Collective), are research practitioners and educators with nearly 40 years of combined experience.
Their time training user experience thinkers and supporting client projects gives them a unique point of view on the UX skills that we all should develop and how we can keep them sharp.
Below, they share:
- Essential UX- and research-specific skills
- Pitfalls to avoid when UX skill building
- Strategies they use to develop their own UX skills
Which UX skills do you consider essential?
Michele
The ability to look at complex problems and develop research strategies that address them—in the here and now—will always be essential. I’m talking about thinking. Thinking through an opportunity or a user problem and applying user research principles to devise or uncover a solution is the primary job of any user experience professional.
Now, the tools we use to help do those tasks continue to rapidly grow in number and type. Artificial intelligence is just one example in a list of many.
"What’s really important is to not let the tool guide our thinking, but to have our thinking and UX principles augmented or supported by the tool."
It has gotten easy to confuse that order and to instead develop proficiency with a tool or technology and mistake that for that core skill set of critical thinking and problem-solving. Tools get sunsetted, merge with other tools, and evolve in ways that disrupt your ability to use them efficiently.
The methods and practices of thinking like a user researcher…those will carry you through.
💪 Strengthen your UX practice with these ethnographic skills.
Stacy
To that—all of which I agree with—I will add the ability to discern, evaluate, and edit. Too often I think UX folks feel like they need to do more to do more, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes doing less—testing only one feature, shipping a smaller change, or piloting part of a project—can give you intel that you can use to shape the bigger (if it is to be bigger) solution or proposal.
"Editing implies evaluation and assessment, two skills that are important for any research project or design solution."
Your team cannot—for resourcing, budget, and other reasons—include everything. So showing what should not be included in a proposal and describing why demonstrates a thoughtfulness about limitations and a pragmatism that I think really builds credibility with colleagues and clients.
Detaching from some outcomes can be hard, especially for stakeholders who might already be invested (in a prototype design, say), but having that editing eye, that discernment shows you see the larger picture, which is always valued higher up the organizational ladder.
When Stacy is teaching students or consulting clients, she likes to focus on ideation. Too often, she says, ideation sessions don’t allow enough time for alternative ideas. It is in those moments of creativity, however, that new ways of approaching a problem surface.
Although project timelines can make this difficult, Stacy believes it’s important to prioritize even a small ideation session. “Our first ideas are rarely the best ones! Allow time for the ‘bad’ ones, too…they might turn out to be more useful than you think.”
What about research-specific skills? Are there methods you really insist students develop and strengthen?
Michele
Live interviews are a big part of much of my training and workshops. In addition to being a fundamental way to source actionable user insights, talking with a user or customer live is something I’ve found to bring a host of other benefits.
They help us develop our improvisation skills. As anyone who has moderated an interview or focus group knows, they rarely proceed exactly as planned.
"Being able to think in the moment and adapt our question guide or research plan helps to not only maximize time with participants, but keeps us open to new solutions or opportunities."
Without improvisation, we might force them down a set of questions that might not be relevant to them…and that’s missing opportunities for insight and action.
This goes back to being comfortable with question development. The combination of question development and in-the-moment flexibility keep a researcher nimble, creative, and open to new potentials. With a strong research foundation, you can identify gaps in a tool and either work against those or choose a different tool entirely. If you only have tool-specific knowledge, then those gaps are outside of your awareness and you’ll likely miss opportunities.
🎓 Our Research 101 for Non-Researchers course is perfect for teammates.
Stacy
It’s not so much a method as an approach to methods. Clients can often have a method in mind because they think it sounds innovative or will—by dint of simply doing it—create unique insights. But as research professionals we have to resist that and start with the why. Why are we here? Why are we running research? Why do we need these insights or data?
"Having exposure to and familiarity with multiple methods makes you the best partner to your clients you can be, so that if they come to you with a method, you can be ready to challenge it, confirm it, or do some combination of both."
That’s really the value of online learning and development, too: staying sharp on when to use which methods and for which questions. Clients hear something and think it’s what they should be doing, and you need to be ready to explain why something else might be a better use of time and resources.
The client isn’t wrong (and I wouldn’t recommend framing it that way). There are simply other ways to approach the question or opportunity space. This or that method might get us some of the answers, but this other one—or a combination of this and that—will be even better.
This episode of Awkward Silences shares tips for training product teams in UX research skills ⤵️
What pitfalls should UX folks be aware of?
Michele
I go back to the over-indexing of tools I mentioned earlier. So often I see folks limit their skill development by anchoring to the first tool or platform they became proficient with. And that’s not to say becoming proficient with a tool isn’t important. You should know how to use a survey testing tool or a quantitative analysis program, but it should not be all you know.
I’m always coaching folks to stay open to new tools or to not be too precious with the ones you’re already using. Check in with yourself on the skills it takes to use those tools well—whether it’s survey design or otherwise—and make sure you’re feeling confident and proficient to meet the evolving challenges of your company, client, and question set.
With that foundation, you can evaluate a tool more easily than if your only knowledge of a core research skill is from using a tool. In that case, you’re limiting yourself and what you can bring. And again, there might be a better method to answering a question that you’ve overlooked because of a focus on tooling alone.
Now, I want to share an important caveat. I’m talking about UX researcher skill sets here.
"Knowing a tool can be a helpful way for non-researchers like product managers and designers to get user insights for their work."
Because of their workflows, it might not be feasible for them to have these research fundamentals I’ve been discussing, and that can introduce significant risk. Being a career researcher often means stepping in to help non-researchers if and when they might be misusing—unknowingly—a research platform or tool. And it’s that tool-agnostic research foundation that helps you step in, advise or coach them, and provide the context as to why you’re making the recommendation
📋 Read the 7 Habits of Highly Effective User Researchers
Stacy
Tools are very much the shiny thing for students, especially early in their career. Badging, micro-credentials, and tool certificates are often more important than the fundamentals. And yes, job postings do mention tools, but they also (or at least should) mention the skill sets behind those tools: project management, research analysis, insight share outs, etc.
In response to this trend, I’ve really leaned into autonomy with the tools my students use to apply and digest concept. If we’re talking about project development and ideation, I want them to choose if they use a notes app, a digital whiteboard, or some other tool to do that. What I care about is the process they’re using that the tool is augmenting.
"That’s where I’m spending my time in the classroom: sharpening the core skill set and letting them drive the tool they use (if at all) to make sense of it."
That autonomy is a foundational part of self-determination, especially in a classroom setting, and I think too often instructors can be limited or be prescriptive as it relates to tools. For clients, autonomy looks different. It might be constrained by resourcing, security, etc. In those moments, I strive to pick whatever gets me (and the client) the widest range of perspectives on an issue, or offers us as researchers the most diversity (in recruitment, in data types, etc.).
Another aspect of being tool-dependent is limiting how we actually think about and see our customers. They’re not “just” demographics, for example. Psychographics interact with those demographics, and those nuances might not be captured in our recruitment tool or testing tool. People are not “feature factories” and our research mindset should not reflect that. Too often, however, our research tools do.
I also want to flag a popular habit in the UX research community, and that’s templates. Templates can be great for jump-starting research, but I always urge caution when using them. They’re similar to software tools in that over-reliance can dull creativity and exploration of other options. There’s also the fact that clients don’t want to feel like you’ve templatized recommendations to them. That’s what they’re paying you for! They want customized, personalized, and actionable recommendations. No one wants to make business decisions based on a template, so I’m always urging UX researchers to use those carefully.
🪜 Visit the Professional Growth hub for more resources.
What strategies do each of you use to prioritize professional development? To sharpen your own research skill sets?
Michele
I develop a lot of content and I’m constantly trying to balance the “working smarter” approach—maybe repackaging something I’ve used elsewhere, not “reinventing the wheel”—with creating something that will challenge me and help me to grow. Because if I’m learning and growing while developing something, then there’s a chance others will, too.
The other thing I want to share is that for non-researchers especially, there’s no magic formula or mix of research skills to expedite learning. Becoming proficient with user research is like learning another language: it takes regular, ongoing, and persistent work exploring a range of topics, from recruitment and question building to analysis and share outs. You can’t just learn nouns and know a language. You have to learn all parts of the language—conjugation, sentence structure, pronunciation—in order to have proficiency.
User research skills are very similar. So if you want to improve, know that it’s not going to happen overnight.
"You will have to work at it over and over again. Seeing other phases in action, in different contexts, with different users is the way to that proficiency."
So expose yourself—with research collaborators, for example—to different parts of different projects. And focus on building your skills to conduct live interviews, and gather consistent, culturally-relevant feedback, seamlessly. Once you can do this with confidence, in a variety of situations, branch out and explore “tools”.
☕️ Practice research skills in your everyday life
Stacy
My own development came about from a stale feeling of boredom. I outgrew the questions the marketplace wanted to ask and felt that they were flat and lacking nuance, lacking detail. That’s what motivated me to dive into user experience from more traditional market research. The color and complexity of customers seemed a larger part of UX research thinking than in traditional market research.
That discovery really unlocked a hunger to keep growing in my UX research-specific knowledge. Now, I’m balancing classroom teaching, client work, and my own professional research (including a forthcoming book), so blocking time is essential for my development. It’s not sexy, but it works for me. I have newsletters, articles, podcasts, and forums I consult during this time. I want nothing more than to share what I read, hear, and observe with others. But there are other times where I need to block time to learn a new method or analysis technique, either because it will help my clients or my students.
And that’s one final thing I want to mention: that educating our clients is part of the job, and an important one.
"Your clients might be colleagues or internal stakeholders, but I think it’s important to find small ways to inspire their thinking."
Maybe it’s asking for their feedback on an aspect of a project or having them pilot a part of a study…something that gets them more exposure to the research process.
More from Michele and Stacy
- Stream The Expert Training Series
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