Mansoor Siddiqui | Unlocking Success Through User Research

Apr 25, 2023Dianne Eberhardt

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Dianne: Hello everyone. Welcome to the Pixelated Perfect Podcast. Today I have with me a special guest, Manou. He is a user experience researcher. And so most of the people on the podcast have been designers. And so I'm really excited to kind of introduce and talk to a researcher a little bit more. And so a little bit about him, a little intro about Mansoor is he is a user experience researcher at I B M right now, which is super awesome. And he's really passionate about providing information necessary so that all designs make sense with the user and with the research conducted. He also has a background as a designer. So I, I'm excited to kind of talk and we were talking about this a little before the podcast started, about your background, where you come from and kind of being that designer background and how that influences the research side of things. So Manso, thank you so much for being here.

Mansoor: First of all, hello everyone. Hello. Thank you so much for the opportunity right now you are giving to me. Yeah,

Dianne: Of course. We're super excited to have you. So, let's just hop into it cause I have so many questions for you. So to kick it off, I would love to ask what does being a designer mean to you

Mansoor: For being a designer or being a designer? Design means like to create, it's a process of envisioning, or like creating something valuable for the user, which makes our life easy. So for me, design is that.

Dianne: Yeah, I I love that. I agree. I feel like sometimes so many people go into all the details of design and what it means, but at the end of the day, we really just want to make users' lives as simple and easy as possible so they don't even like to realize there's any friction or there could be friction. Everything is just rainbows and sunshine. So I love that. I think that's powerful. And now can you explain what a role as a UX researcher is? What is your role as a user or UX researcher?

Mansoor: Yeah. For, first of all, being a user researcher is a bit hard these days because you don't, because people don't know the exact, what is the importance of is mostly our clients. So first of all, user work, user to user, actually understand what the users need, sorry, designer actually, or researcher understand what the users need, conduct research to gain insights into the needs, references, and behaviors of the users. So first of all, like user researchers don't only get the data, but it makes the data into valuable insights. That is the anatomy of insights, right? So by understanding the end user's expectations and pain points, user research provides valuable information to the designers helping them create product data, user-centric, and meet the needs of the target audience. This helps ensure that design is relevant, useful, and usable for the end users.

Mansoor: Second thing is identifying the design opportunities, like user researchers identify opportunities for improvement in existing products if there are some existing products. So where are the opportunities we can make it more valuable, right? They gather data and feedback from the user, analyze it and identify the patterns and trends and the areas where the design can be optimized. This information helps designers identify areas for innovation, inform the design decisions and create products that better align with the user's expectations. Third is that our role is like testing and validating design ideas. When, you know, that is a collaborative, collaborative process, right? So when we are making some solutions or we are making some prototypes after that, testing and validating is more important for that so that our product will not fail right at the higher circumstances. So user research researchers conduct usability testing, user feedback sessions to evaluate the effectiveness of design ideas and prototypes. And one other thing is that collaborative cross-functional things like user research collaborate with the designers, product managers, developers, business analysts, and other stakeholders to ensure that user research findings are integrated in that design process.

Dianne: That's

Mansoor: Awesome. These are the main roles of the user research.

Dianne: Yeah. And so some questions about that. I love how you kind of broke it out into the main, like the role of a UX researcher and you talked about collaboration, especially at the end. So how do you personally work with teams and designers? Like, because it's interesting because that role is a fine line, right? Between designer and researcher, because you guys all need the same data or the same insights. So how can you divide and conquer and how do you work?

Mansoor: So first of all, first of all, this is collaborative. Like in ibm, we will provide our own process of research and design and the whole process of loop, right? So first of all, like us, researchers will collect the data. We collect the data and we analyze that data and we make insights from those data. We, we don't provide the data will provide the insights from that data, right? That insight, like for example, a user wants to drink, soft drink or he wants some juice or only water, right? So how he will know, like a user wants to drink in glass or a wanting bottle. So first of all, we provide that insight on the basis of that designer will know that we want to make a glass or we want to make a bottle,

Dianne: Right? Yes, totally. Yeah. And I think that's a, I think you for the example, that's a good way to, to distinguish it. Yeah. And I guess like how in this cross-functional team, is it, is it basically like every, do you guys work in sprints or how do you work to be able to get to that finish line or to iterate? Is it like every week you guys have a start of the week, this is what you're gonna work on, these are the insights you're gonna gather, you're gonna give that feedback to the designer, the design designer's gonna be building it out the next week. What does that kind of structure look like? So,

Mansoor: So there are the playbacks of everything. So first of all being a researcher, we don't know, like, there are different things. First of all, like sometimes we get a healthcare problem, sometimes we get a banking problem, sometimes we get an AI problem. So first of all, being a researcher, it was our duty to understand the ecosystem, right? What is the existing ecosystem? So first of all, we'll work in the playbacks where there are project manager, different team members, right? Developers sponsor users, different stakeholders, and product managers that we call zero playback. And in that they make us understand what the existing ecosystem is. And then we'll do our research. And in every step we'll do the playbacks with those teams so that we understand whether we are on the right track or wrong.

Dianne: Interesting. Okay. Yeah. I love, I love that you have a name for it to play back. So that's interesting. And then piggybacking off of that, I guess is your, your background. Maybe we can talk about your background cuz you have it in designer and other things. So how has that played into how you conduct user research?

Mansoor: So first I did my bachelor's in computer replication. That was totally apart from design research. I completed my bachelor's in computer application from Kash University in India, the most beautiful place after Switzerland, .

Dianne: Ah,

Mansoor: Love it. Yeah, yeah. After that I got to know about the Dell UX, UX design. First, I got to know about UX design. Then I started surfing on Google and all that. What is this course about? And I was totally interested in that. Then I did my master's in user experience design, and at that time I found out that my research part is more strong, so I indulged in that research part.

Dianne: Interesting. So

Mansoor: It is not like, yeah, my background is not completely a designer, but half is as a developer, half is as a designer, right? So people have the myth that they can't do design or research because they don't have a background in design. So it is just a myth. Yeah,

Dianne: Yeah. And how, yeah, that's, that's interesting. And , a couple of things about that is do you feel like having that knowledge of like computer science, the dev side of things, and then having some knowledge about the design side of things helps you in your US research? Yes.

Mansoor: Yeah, sometimes it helps because you, you already I said like, you are working in a collaborative manner. So sometimes you are working with the developers, you know, what is the technology , what are the protocols? Like if you are making a solution, which is, which can't be done into that technology, which is proposed by the developers or engineers. So you have to keep that in mind, right? So on the basis of those things with coding and all that, that helped me a lot, like the knowledge of that.

Dianne: Yeah, that's great. And I've, I've talked to quite a few designers on the podcast, podcasts in the past that have like a developer skill set, and I do, I see the value of that. Like if I relate to myself, I don't have that, and I definitely feel like that's something missing. And so I think that's really great that you can pull from like this, your existing studies, like what you've done in the past, what you've learned to be able to kind of like, relate and collaborate better with, with your team. At,

Mansoor: I think that's at least, at least you should have the basic knowledge of what the flows are like. Like we are also designing, we are also doing the task flows, right? Or information architecture, right? Right. In the same, in the same way. We are also doing development, there are task flows and different things. Like we have to understand that. So these are the basic things we can do, for example, the sea programming I don't think so. No one knows sea programming these days. Like even the kids like to have sea programming, right? So it's not hard. Very, that mountain climbing thing, like you can't do, everyone can do like start at the sea right now. You should have the basic knowledge of that. That's it.

Dianne: Totally. I think that's really great feedback. For anyone that's looking to get into design research, the UX field is like knowing, doing the upfront work of understanding the different players in the game will add a lot of value to you, . Yeah. Yeah. Okay, perfect. So my next question for you is I would love to understand your perspective on researching for maybe more of a startup type of company versus doing research for a large company. So obviously you work for b m, so that's a large company. I'm sure you do lots of research there, but how, what's the difference between if you were to try to research for more of that startup space?

Mansoor: Yeah, so first of all, I did my internships and I did one year in healthcare as a service designer in a healthcare department that was also a startup company, and I did my internships from a startup company. So India is a hub, hub of startup companies right now. So you're talking about research in startup companies. They follow some lean and agile method because small startups often have limited resources and more and need to move quickly. Lean and agile research methods such as rapid prototyping, gorilla testing, and IT feedback loops can be effective in quickly gathering insights and making informed design decisions with significant time or budget constraints. Second thing is target research like startups have a specific target audience or niche market, right? So research efforts should focus on understanding the needs, preferences, and behaviors of the specific audience to inform the product or the service design.

Mansoor: This can involve conducting in-depth interviews, surveys, or observational studies with the target user users to gain insight. Third is the DIY approach, which mostly startups do. Like small startups may not have this dedicated research team or budget for extensive research founders and team members may need to take on research roles themselves. This can involve leveraging online resources, conducting informal usability testing and using low cost or free research tools together inside and flexible research, mostly startups do startups often and quickly based on the feedback and market change basically. So the research approach should be flexible and adaptable to accommodate change in the product or services direction. So as compared to that large market that has more resources, a budget for research comprehension, a research plan can be developed including various research methods such as usability testing, user surveys, focus groups, and ethnographic research based on the budget cost and all different factors.

Mansoor: Second thing is representative sampling in large companies, like large companies may have a wider target audience with a diverse user segment. So ensuring representative sampling is essential to capture insights from different user groups. For example, banking in India, there are different user groups who are using banking, for example, iterate, iterate, educated, or there are banking. Banking, there are banking for the millennials or there are they, there are banking for the old ones, right? Right. So there are different types of user segments. Then third is the formalized research process. Like every large company has their own research process, right? Large companies have established research processes and methodologies. So research efforts may be more formalized and standardized involving large research larger research teams and specialized roles. Roles such as dedicated UX research, data analyst and research manager. Again, there is the collaboration with the cross-functional teams in large companies. Th 31. Another factor is long-term research initiatives mm-hmm. , like there are some projects where there are long-term research initiatives. Long companies invest in long-term researching initiatives such as longit longitudinal studies, right? Together insights over an extended period of time or monitoring user behavior in the field research, right? And preferences. These initiative can help informing strategic decision and guide product roadmap,

Dianne: Right?

Mansoor: So these are the differences between how large companies do research and how startup companies do research.

Dianne: Right. No, thank you for that. And I think that's definitely super useful for anyone out there listening that is trying to figure out like where they see themselves and where they fit in. So Monso, my question to you is, what part of the UX research process do you like the most? Was there something you really liked about working in the startup space? Is there something you really like about working at IBM m and like that long-term research? What, what to you is most exciting?

Mansoor: The most exciting part is the field research and the user interview because in that, first of all you have to fight with your own. And second thing and second thing is that you understand like the new stories of the book are opened up in those things. So these are the most exciting parts for us, like what our hopes and what our like hopes and what our assumptions are. And sometimes it totally reverses when we do the user interviews and when we'll do the field research or observations.

Dianne: Yeah,

Mansoor: Totally. That's the most exciting part for me.

Dianne: I love that. Do you have examples like field research, user interviews that completely change the way you were working on a specific product or piece of a product?

Mansoor: Yeah, let, yeah, lemme let, lemme tell you, I was doing the thesis on the food supply food, sorry, healthcare in rural areas of India. So I was, I was, I was making the connections between the hospital as well as the patient. But when, but when I did the field interviews and user interviews, what I found was that there are local doctors in every village where we call them rmp rmmp. So it was new to me, totally new to me. Like if someone gets right, he directly doesn't go to the hospital first, he consults the rrn P and then rmp takes that person to the hospital.

Dianne: Oh.

Mansoor: So that was totally new to me. The whole ecosystem was totally new to me. So I was, my assumption was that it was the same as people getting ill how we get to the hospital and x extra extra, but when I did this kind of research, the whole ecosystem was different. So there was the connection, there was the intermediate between the hospital as well as the patient. There was the r and p, same as that, the pregnant lady, if there is some pregnant lady, so there are the Asha in the, we call them Asha in the village who take those pregnant ladies to a particular hospital and take precautions while taking to the hospital to the patient.

Dianne: Right. So this knowledge, like you had to completely, right, you had to like completely rework what you were building because you hadn't factored in this role, this person. No,

Mansoor: Obviously, obviously same like design research is always a alternative process,

Dianne: Right?

Mansoor: It depends, it depends upon your assumptions and hopes, your context and your validating the things and you getting back to the research if something goes wrong.

Dianne: Yes. That was a great example. I feel like one of the values I always get from doing research is like, I learned something new, I learned something that I never knew before, and it opens this door and it's very exciting and interesting.

Mansoor: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Dianne: I think this is a great segue into this next question, which is how does conducting research versus not doing it have an impact in design? I think we just kind of talked about it with your example but maybe even some data points or some ways to communicate that to stakeholders too, because a lot of people are like, oh, I don't see the value of design, so how do you

Mansoor: Yeah,

Dianne: Exactly. Define it.

Mansoor: So these days, like I already told you, like no one, no one knows the importance of research and for the cost cutting thing, they always cut the research part and they want the rapid thing, they want their product fast, right? And they don't, they don't need this kind of research or that kind of research for stakeholders and clients or have to deal with the product only. That's it. So like conducting research, how research can help, like, first of all, that is user-centric design, like making your, making the product more valuable. Research comes into play, like conducting research allows designers to gain insights into the needs and behaviors, as I already said. This helps ensure that designing is user-centric, addressing the real needs and the pain points of the target audience. For example, if the user wants to drink water in glass and we are providing them water, like both are doing the same thing, but still they, they have the different experience of a portal, right?

Mansoor: So this is most important like how we are providing the insights to the designers. So on the basis of that they make a valuable product. Second is to inform the design decisions. Like design researchers provide designers with data driven insights that inform their design decisions. It helped them make informed choices about design events such as layout, navigation, content and interactions. Talking about the UI design. Without research designers may rely on the work or in institutions or may know the half part of the thing, like if a designer is collaborating with the B, so BA will only provide the business perspective, but what about the user perspective, right? Because at the end product has to be used by the user, right? One more thing is to reduce the risk of design mistakes. Third is like increased user satisfaction.

Mansoor: And the value of research is like more into the market success. For example, research can provide valuable insights into the competitive landscape market trends and user preferences helping designers create products or services that are more likely to succeed in the market. Understanding user needs and preferences can also help identifying unique value propositions and differentiation opportunities, different session opportunities. Without research, there is a high risk of developing products or services that do not align with market demands resulting in lower market success, right? Yes. Third, it is efficient. Yeah. Design efficient design process research can streamline the design process by providing designers the insights and guide their design making decision making. So like research is more into understanding the ecosystem as well as the user and user problem. And then they collect those data, they can, on the basis of anatomy of insights, they analyze those, those data, they, they extract those insights from those data. And on the basis of that they, they, they made a conclusion, right? Yep.

Dianne: Yeah.

Mansoor: Two,

Dianne: Two things you said that really spoke to me and felt really impactful was you were saying like a lot of these companies, they have their business perspective, they come and they know what on a business level they wanna achieve, but they're missing the user perspective, right? And I think that's really powerful because I feel like there's so many people who are like, oh, it's about the business, the goals of the business. And then you also brought up market success and went into the ecosystem. And that's so true, it's like no matter what the business perspective is, if you don't know the trends and you don't know what the users want, your product's gonna flop. And so by not doing those things and not getting that user information and not even user information, even stats about what's happening in the market now, I kind of like, I don't always think about user research in the same way, but of course that's a huge part of it. Like you guys are seeing the trends and understanding what's popular.

Mansoor: Let me give you an example, a very good example. Like for example, everyone right now is like no Patsy, right? Pepsi, is that right? Yes. Yes. So for the, you also, you also, you also, you also looked up Patsy ads, right?

Dianne: Yes.

Mansoor: So there is a lot of research behind those ads. Like for example, they are connecting to the people through football sometime through some kinda actor or some type. Why that is because they know what the user wants, how the user is connected with them, and how the user is emotionally connected with the product. So on the basis of that, these are the research insights, right? Which is gathered. So on the basis of that they made those ads. So this is the good example, like why research is important,

Dianne: Right? For sure. It's like understanding, it's like people are like, oh yeah, obviously I need to understand who my users are, but they don't think about the stages to get there. And yeah, like you're saying, the ads are targeted because of all of this background research and knowledge and years of discovery to get to this really simple ad, which is what we were talking about at the beginning. It's like we're trying to create an experience that's seamless for the user. So it feels so effortless, which is great, but you don't know what it took to get there.

Mansoor: Yeah. Sometimes to make something simpler may need a lot of hard, hard work.

Dianne: Yes. I love that. I love that. That's super interesting and fascinating. I think it definitely is like a big point of why research is so valuable in building a process. So I would like to know how you decide which research method to use? So I know we didn't talk about the specifics. We talked about using your testing and gathering that, and we also talked about the analysis. So how do you decide what research to do and how do you present it to the people that are looking for that research? Whether it's designers or stakeholders?

Mansoor: So like the different strategies of doing the thing, for example for print tech, maybe for banking, there will be, my research strategy will be different as compared to my healthcare strategy, right? So there are different strategies, but talking about the research methods, what we need, like for example, we need a research planning first, right? How to do research. So first we'll do the research planning for that. So on what basis we do those research planning. That is a project, what are the project goals? What are the research questions? Who are our target audience? What are the project timeline and resources, research valid and reliability, what are the reliability? What are the ethical considerations? If there are protocols or not? What are the ethical considerations? What is the research budget at the time, right? And are talking about the research that's like we want to work, we have to do, for example, we do, we did some technographic research.

Mansoor: Now what next? Right? So what context we have and what we want on the basis of these two things will make our next step, right? So like for example, the project goals, the specific goals of a project should be considered when selecting research methods. For example, if a goal is to understand user needs and preferences, methods such as user interview surveys or focus groups may be appropriate. If a goal is to evaluate the usability of the product methods such as usability or eye tracking may be relevant, right? Research questions, the research questions that need to be answered should guide the choice of research methods. Different research methods are better suited to address different types of research questions, right?

Dianne: Mm-Hmm.

Mansoor: . So for example, if a research question is about user behavior in a natural environment, methods such as field studies or ethnographic research may be if a research question is about user opinion or attitudes, methods such as survey or interview may be appropriate, right? So there are the different things like how we can, these are the different steps like how we are planning our research methods for the different things.

Dianne: Right? Do you have a research method that you go back to again, like that you use more than any other?

Mansoor: Mostly. Mostly I did the user interviews these days.

Dianne: Okay. So Well that's what you said was most fun for you too. So that's great. , it aligns with what you enjoy.

Mansoor: No, because, because in IBM we have, we mostly work on those projects, like they are also the corporate project.

Dianne: Okay.

Mansoor: So it was a very important administrative project. So it's very important for us to like interviews with those things. What are the different ecosystems or what are the different pain points? Because we don't know, like for example, we are creating something for the hiring, hiring talent optimization team, or we are doing something for the insurance and loan, right? So we don't know about banking or we don't know about hiring or what are the pain points between that.

Dianne: Right. Got it. And so do you think that interviewing is the best research method for designers? Like maybe if they don't like where they're starting, maybe if they don't really know much, much about the UX research process, do you think that interviews are a great place for them to dive into?

Mansoor: For me, like, an interview gives you in-depth insights and it is more flexible, right? And it is a more user-centric approach because we are directly approaching, and it's, I try to give feedback like we are interviewing something on the basis of that when it comes to a conclusion and if it fails we can again go back and do some more interviews, do some questionnaires. She can change our questionnaires to gain that. And it is also cost effective. So I think user interviews are more recommended. Yeah.

Dianne: Yeah. and so another question about the research. How do you deliver this research? How do you deliver these insights and suggestions based on the research that you conducted?

Mansoor: So there is something called we pitching right? In the same way I told you about the playbacks also.

Dianne: Yes.

Mansoor: So when it comes to the like insights, when we come to the insights, we come with our sponsor users, we come up with the different stakeholders and we do the playbacks and we present, we pitch our insights in those playbacks. And if there is something like we are not, there is some mismatch between the stakeholders and ours, so they provide other insights also on the basis of our insights. They provide feedback, right? If there are technology constants or technology something, so developers and engineers also, so provide their feedback. So on the basis of the feedback, we'll do more rationing, right? So these insights are provided in those playbacks and those insights can be reiterated on the basis of the feedback by the different elements of the team.

Dianne: That's great. I really like this concept of the playbacks and I think it's, it's also like you, one of the things you talked about at the beginning about being a great UX researcher is collaboration. And so it feels like this is an opportunity for everyone on the team to come together to hear, to give feedback, to say this is misaligned and for you guys to like make decisions of what, to iterate on, what to talk about, what to do next.

Mansoor: Alright. Alright.

Dianne: Amazing. and so one of my next questions, which I think is a great point about this is like, how can researchers and designers work together to val find the value and insights and give

Mansoor: Then again, again, again, their research and our research data insights is not valuable if you don't give it. Like there will, where designers come into play, like we are providing the insights and the designer gives it, right? For example, same like if we are providing like they want people want to drink something into something big and they are providing the glass, there should be they're providing two, three solutions. There should be glass or there should be a bottle. So they're giving a shape to our like, you know, insights, right? So that is where like designers come into play. Second thing is like I already said, like we are doing the playbacks. So like stakeholders, they don't, they don't understand if we'll use some technical term if we'll say like, persona or we did some ethnographic research or, or we did some quantitative data. This is the quantitative data, 20%, this 30% is, they'll not understand that, right?

Dianne: Right.

Mansoor: But if, we'll, but if we will provide our insights into the storytelling day, everyone will understand and empathize with the user at that time. And there were the designers that came into play that visual presentation, storytelling example, data visualization, and contextual relevance. So, it is like that where designers and researchers are both coming together and giving something valuable to the stakeholders so that yes, they can make something valuable.

Dianne: Yes, yes. Well said. I love that. I think it's like showing the collaboration, the teamwork is you come up with all these insights and then what, and it's basically that action stuff. It's like designers take it and design options based on what you're saying and putting it out there and getting stakeholders to see and actually visualize and empathize with those solutions. So it really is like a very collaborative effort. Yeah, which totally makes sense. Yes, just to always think about it that way. Well that's great. That's great. So a couple more questions I think brought about UX research from your perspective are what are some of the misconceptions people have about UX research?

Mansoor: Oh yeah. I want to address that like most of the people or most of our clients or stakeholders think UX research is time consuming and expensive. So to address that, I wanna say, I wanna say that while conducting through UX research can require time and resources, it doesn't always have to be overly time consuming or expensive. There are various research methods that can adapt to fit different project scope and budget, right? So a research approach that allows for efficient research within the project timeline. So it makes more value to your product at the end. You want your product more valuable and you want more sales if talking about the business perspective, right? So like these misconceptions so US research will all help in that. So this is the misconception, like UX research is time consuming and expensive.

Mansoor: Second is that UX research is only for large companies or complex projects. So I already told you how startup companies do their research and what is the most efficient way of doing the research in less cost or like less time, right? Second misconception is that research is only about usability testing. No, it is about understanding the users and their pain points and their behavior with the existing product or with the problem, right? One more bus, one more thing is that ux one misconception is that UX researcher is only for identifying problems. So while addressing that, like while UX research can help identify usability issues and pain points in user experience, it is not limited to just finding problems. US research also aims to understand user behavior preferences, motivation needs, what are the user perspectives, what are the business perspectives, what are the protocols and to generate insights that inform the design process. It is important to communicate that using seu research is not focused on identifying problems, but also on uncovering the opportunities for innovation and improvement.

Dianne: Yes,

Mansoor: Those are, these are the misconceptions.

Dianne: Those are great. Those are amazing misconceptions. And I feel like I've had conversations with our customers and they've named all of these as why they don't wanna conduct research and they're misconceptions because all of that is false. I think that the big point about, and we talked about this at the beginning, is that time and money, they're like, oh, it's gonna be expensive, it's gonna take too much time. But what they don't realize is by not doing it at this stage, that there's the potential that they're gonna be spending way more money and wasting way more time when they build a product that doesn't make sense. So

Mansoor: Yeah. Yeah. Even, even I'm doing more user interviews, but people always says like, user researchers only do user interviews but they don't know, like user research can involve various research of involves various kind of things like qualitative, quantitative methods beyond user interviews such as contextual inquiry, field study, survey data, and like Right. So people don't know about that these days. So it is very important for us to make them understand what is the importance of research,

Dianne: Right. To

Mansoor: Make something valuable.

Dianne: Yeah. And I also, I really love what you said about the researcher's job is not just to identify problems. Cuz I, I feel like we do have that mindset of like, oh, they're gonna find out what's wrong with it, but they're gonna find out what's right and they're gonna find out opportunities like, oh, this is super interesting that I've gathered Yeah. Insights from all of these tests. Like, we should be thinking about this. And that's, that's like invaluable, that's yeah. Invaluable content. So exactly. That was great. Awesome. So I have one final question for you. The question is, what advice would you give to designers who are just starting to work with UX researchers and what should they expect from that collaboration?

Mansoor: First of all, like to the designers who recently joined with the researchers, like they have to be patient, they have to be they have to keep patients like to help them in providing the insights to the stakeholders in more storytelling way first, like if researchers are providing insights to them or they're finding some insights on their own. So it is very important to have a regular team up with the researchers to understand at what hill they are, hill means at what path they're right. Secondly, the second thing is that like designers, if designers and researchers are working together, so designers expect, like he, he can always researcher also can visualize the thing or they can make the visual designs and all that, so it is very important to also empathize with the researchers. Also, if you are empathizing with the users, it is very important to empathize with your teammates. Also, as well as the researchers all also have to keep patients. They'll always provide insights in that manner and if they should have the level to digest the feedbacks,

Dianne: Right? So yeah.

Mansoor: Right. That is more important.

Dianne: No, that's great. I think this last point was was like how to work best with the team and to understand, and I think you brought up a good point is like while you personally do have a design background, you, you got your master's in, in kind of the UX design, but your expect a designer's expectation should not be that a UX researcher is going to be able to visualize the solution. Like it's more of coming with that data and like brainstorming or taking it in, taking those insights and doing something with it. So it's, yeah, empathizing, understanding the research or understanding their data points and

Mansoor: Yeah,

Dianne: Discussing from there Yeah. Is powerful. Patience. For sure. For sure. Yeah. Thank you. Well, awesome. Thank you so much. Those are all the questions I had. I feel like this was super insightful from a designer standpoint of how you go about research and how we should be thinking about that relationship between a team and a researcher, and also how to better communicate to stakeholders and people what the value of research is and why every single person, every.

Dianne Eberhardt

Dianne Eberhardt

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