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Summary
Perhaps no word is more likely to get researchers agitated than “democratization.” The debate about democratization is vigorous, though verging on pointless: it’s here and unlikely to be dialed back. And other research functions are talking to customers, running surveys, and conducting A/B testing. In this community workshop, we take a step back and take a broader look at the field of insight. With viewpoints honed in data analytics, market research, and user research, our panelists discuss how democratization has been made to work effectively in their fields for quite some time, and what we can do to imagine a future beyond the debate. Attend all of our Advancing Research community workshops Each free virtual workshop is made up of panelists who will share short provocations on engaging ideas to discuss as a group, as well as a leader in our field to moderate. If you're looking for discussions that challenge the status quo and can truly advance research, look no further than our workshop series. (P.S. We’ll be drawing most of our Advancing Research 2025 conference speakers from those who present at upcoming workshops—so tune in for a sneak peek of what's to come from #AR2025!) August 7, 11am-12pm EDT Watch Video Theme 2: Collaboration Learning from market research, data science, customer experience, and more August 21, 4-5pm EDT Watch Video Theme 3: Communication Innovative techniques for making your voice heard September 4, 11am-12pm EDT Watch Video Theme 4: Methods Expanding the UXR toolkit beyond interviews September 18, 4-5pm EDT Watch Video Theme 5: Artificial Intelligence Passionate defenses, reasoned critiques, and practical application October 2, 11am-12pm EDT Watch Video Theme 6: Junctures for UXR Possible futures and the critical decisions to move us forward October 16, 4-5pm EDT Watch Video Theme 7: Open Call Propose ideas that don’t match our other workshops’ themes
Key Insights
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Democratization requires intentional programs with education, guardrails, and oversight to avoid research anarchy.
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Data democratization needs both access to accurate data and the ability to generate trusted insights.
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Scaling research democratization demands dedicated roles or teams to provide hands-on guidance and support.
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Defining shared success criteria and KPIs aligned with customer needs is essential to scale experimentation and insight activities.
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Cultural and psychological safety are critical to allow researchers to accept that stakeholders may have deeper context or expertise.
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Technology-enabled guardrails help enforce quality and consistency in democratized research, especially in market research.
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All data has imperfections, so understanding provenance and using frameworks for interpreting data is key to maintaining trust.
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Democratization should extend beyond interviews to a wider variety of research methodologies to truly empower stakeholders.
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Power in insight teams should be shared and seen as facilitation rather than control, promoting distributed knowledge ownership.
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Investment, top-down leadership buy-in, and bottom-up enthusiasm are all needed to make democratization successful and sustainable.
Notable Quotes
"Democratization is not research anarchy where anybody can talk to any customer for any reason with no oversight."
"If you miss any one of access, accuracy, insight generation, and engagement, it’s not truly democratization."
"You need well-defined frameworks and guardrails for experimentation success to prevent chaos across teams."
"Knowledge multiplies the more it’s shared, it’s not a zero-sum game where someone loses power."
"All data has bias, problems, and limitations; there is no perfectly clean data, only varying degrees of quality."
"Stakeholder interviews shouldn’t be the only thing democratized—there’s a whole breadth of methodologies to consider."
"It is part of your role to say no, enforce guardrails, and stop people pleasing when democratizing research."
"Without shared organizational goals and customer-focused OKRs, democratization efforts fragment and fail to scale."
"Holding on too tightly to insights and controlling data flows can make research teams irrelevant."
"Doing democratization properly takes dedicated investment; it can’t just be one bullet on a job description."
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