Summary
In this session, Kelly, Christian, and Chris explore the intricate dynamics of conducting user experience research and insight work within complex enterprise organizations. Kelly emphasizes the importance of starting small with pilot ethnographic projects and securing internal evangelists to build trust and demonstrate value gradually. Christian highlights the necessity of understanding internal decision-makers’ motivations and how insights must balance storytelling with scientific rigor to influence executives effectively. Chris discusses cultural barriers between different organizational tribes, such as data and design teams, and advocates for empathy and shared customer-centric goals as fundamental to bridging those divides. They also address common practical challenges like recruiting participants, packaging insights appropriately based on the audience, and dealing with political aspects of data use within companies. Throughout, the panelists acknowledge that enterprise UX is still maturing but are optimistic about the future, suggesting that more awareness, better communication, and adopting tactical improvements alongside strategic alignment will drive greater adoption and success. The talk includes audience questions on topics including recruiting hard-to-reach users, communicating research results for impact, allocating budgets for customer research, and ensuring data quality and trust.
Key Insights
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Empathy between organizational tribes, such as design and data teams, is crucial for building bridges in enterprise cultures.
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Both design and data teams generally share a deep passion for creating outstanding customer experiences.
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Successful insights require balancing narrative storytelling with rigorous data to influence corporate decision-makers.
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Pilot ethnographic projects with internal evangelists reduce the fear and risk associated with research investment.
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Recruiting participants in enterprise settings is challenging and often requires tiered strategies and executive buy-in.
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Enterprise UX research budgets are often very small, sometimes just a single-digit percentage of total project costs.
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Building trust early with stakeholders makes later challenging conversations and insights more effective.
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Insight communication should be tailored to the audience, varying from informal team-level sharing to slick, impactful presentations for executives.
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Observing how enterprise users learn tools through peer interactions helps uncover networked work dynamics.
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The enterprise UX field and insight practice are still nascent, with many unresolved questions about organizational fit and maturity.
Notable Quotes
"Put yourself in the other person’s shoes. It’s simple, but it’s the core of empathy we preach to design for end users."
"We both tribes really believe in doing awesome for customers, not just to be the smartest person in the room but for a real passion to succeed."
"The stories are the most useful thing for executives, but they also need more scientific support to back their strategy."
"In a large group, break it down into smaller parts and treat each subgroup almost like a small entity to succeed."
"Insight’s weight often depends more on your relationship with power structures than on the strength of your methodology."
"Trust is built over time by genuinely caring about people’s business, what keeps them up at night."
"Data shifts the conversation from I think to I know, but bad data can be dangerous without the right skepticism."
"Quality and integrity in data mean you need to actually go through your process as a customer to validate it."
"Most enterprise products allocate a very small part of the budget to user research—probably a single-digit percentage."
"More awareness and PR about what we do will create pull and make it easier to engage people in insight generation."
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