Summary
Megan Blocker will talk about how to decide where to invest your precious time and attention for maximum impact. In other words, where is it most important for your team to get serious about ResearchOps, and where is it okay to stay scrappy? How can you grow sustainably by picking and choosing your battles? It all depends on your goals, your context, and your priorities. We’ll talk about a framework for making those decisions, and about how applying it worked for our growing team.
Key Insights
-
•
Scaling research in large enterprises requires balancing skill, scale, culture, and leadership buy-in.
-
•
Research skills exist beyond titled researchers, including designers and product managers.
-
•
Embedding research capacity via apprenticeship models can grow organizational skill effectively.
-
•
Organizational culture shapes how research must be approached: hierarchical cultures need stakeholder management, while entrepreneurial cultures tolerate more experimentation.
-
•
Leadership buy-in is demonstrated not just by budget but by proactive requests and advocacy.
-
•
Building a large, engaged global user testbed rapidly can serve as both a research and advocacy tool.
-
•
Gatekeeping access to user participants enforces research quality and method discipline.
-
•
Training product managers with peer comparison data (e.g., how other PMs do research) encourages adoption via social proof.
-
•
Scaling research operations involves evolving from scrappy one-off efforts to formal playbooks and immersive training programs.
-
•
Continuous reassessment of team location in skill-scale-buy-in matrices helps decide next experiments or scale efforts.
Notable Quotes
"I was the only dedicated researcher in the entire organization and had to decide where to spend time for most impact."
"When recommendations weren’t acted on, I realized dedicating energy to unused work wasn’t sustainable."
"You don’t have to have research in your title to do research."
"In hierarchical cultures, you ask permission; in entrepreneurial cultures, you ask forgiveness."
"If you want access to our testbed, you have to come through us and show your research plan."
"We grew a user testbed from 250 to 1,200 in under a week with just one email campaign."
"Peer pressure and guilt worked pretty well in getting product managers to talk to users."
"Our education workshops aren’t just about research basics but about empathy and literacy across product roles."
"Leadership buy-in shows when leaders ask what they can do to support your work."
"No matter how mature you get, you’ll always be asking where to get scrappy next."
Dig deeper—ask the Rosenbot:
More Videos
"We reward people financially rather than rely on sharebacks, as engagement remained consistent without sharebacks."
Wyatt HaymanGlobal Research Panels (Videoconference)
August 8, 2020
"We investigate whether we can skin native components to respect platform conventions while identifying commonalities and differences."
PJ Buddhari Nate BaldwinMeet Spectrum, Adobe’s Design System
June 9, 2021
"Evan spent less than 15 minutes on his essay because he used AI to write it for him."
Sarah GallimoreInspire Progress with Artifacts from the Future
November 18, 2022
"Many product managers got their roles because they know the business or subject matter, but they don’t know how to manage product development."
Peter MerholzThe Trials and Tribulations of Directors of UX (Videoconference)
July 13, 2023
"It will be 130 years before we reach global gender equality in political power at the current rate of growth."
Dr. Jamika D. Burge Mansi GuptaAdvancing the Inclusion of Womxn in Research Practices (Videoconference)
September 15, 2022
"Pair designers so they review each other's work to reduce risk before going to stakeholders."
Amy MarquezINVEST: Discussion
June 15, 2018
"If you remove death in a game like Dark Souls, the game breaks — death is part of the challenge and fun."
Dane DeSutter Natalie Gedeon Deborah Hendersen Cheryl PlatzBeyond the Console: The rise of the Gamer Experience and how gaming will impact UX Research across industries (Videoconference)
May 17, 2024
"Jobs always ask for three references. I think I might start asking for three happy employees."
Zariah CameronReDesigning Wellbeing for Equitable Care in the Workplace
September 23, 2024
"In design Ops, the same ADHD traits—like managing ambiguity and dynamic change—are often strengths."
Jessica NorrisADHD: A DesignOps Superpower
September 9, 2022
