Rosenverse
Expert Panel: The Principles of Research Repository Design

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Expert Panel: The Principles of Research Repository Design

Gold
Friday, March 11, 2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Share the love for this talk
Expert Panel: The Principles of Research Repository Design
Speakers: Ben Davies , Matt Duignan , Andrew Michael and Dr. Emily DiLeo
Link:

Summary

Lots of effort in research is lost after it’s published. The problem is not the value of the insights but that the findings are fragmented across wikis, research repositories, and random folders in the cloud. Hear our expert panel share how they have designed research repositories that have succeeded at scale. Our all-star panelists will spend 30 minutes sharing their insights, followed by a Q&A session in Slack! You’ll hear from: Matt Duigan, Product Manager at Microsoft Andrew Michael, Founder at Avrio Research Repository Dr. Emily DiLeo, Archivist and Repository Designer

Key Insights

  • Repositories must be tailored to the organization's current research program through upfront internal research.

  • Effective research repositories require early stakeholder buy-in and the formation of active user communities.

  • Knowledge management behaviors like consistent naming, organizing, and access policies are critical for repository success.

  • A true single source of truth for research rarely exists; insights are dispersed across many apps and platforms.

  • Integrating qualitative and quantitative data in a repository amplifies insight impact and drives better decision-making.

  • Repositories need distribution strategies that embed research outputs where users already work, not just centralized storage.

  • Human cognitive biases favor immediate rewards, making it difficult to motivate researchers to contribute reusable insights.

  • Incentives and rewards must be designed to encourage deferred impact contributions and recognize long-term value creation.

  • Content quality management roles, such as content PMs, are essential to maintain tagging, updating, and freshness of repository data.

  • Setting validity periods and tagging content as evergreen or transient helps manage repository content longevity effectively.

Notable Quotes

"Your repository design needs to be guided by people and process, and internal research should be your first step."

"Everyone should know where everything is all the time — that’s the archivist’s motto for knowledge management."

"Research repositories aren’t single sources of truth anymore; data and insights live in hundreds of different apps across companies."

"It’s not enough to build a repository and expect people to come; you need a distribution strategy to put research where users are."

"Bringing qualitative and quantitative insights together creates more impactful decision-making across the organization."

"The hyperbolic discounting bias means researchers prefer immediate gratification over deferred rewards from reusable knowledge."

"You have to push against 200,000 years of evolution to encourage researchers to contribute to long-term repositories."

"To maintain tagging and freshness, you need content PMs with expertise, supported by robust content management processes."

"Tagging content as evergreen or setting validity periods helps automate cleaning and maintaining the repository over time."

"Building incentives and celebrating deferred impact rewards researchers and drives behavior towards reusable knowledge creation."

Ask the Rosenbot
Kara Kane
Theme One Intro
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Wendy Johansson
Be a Product Boss!
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Nina Jurcic
The Design System Rollercoaster: From Enabler and Bottleneck to Catalyst for Change
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Jackie Ajoux
Leveling-Up: A Single-Player’s Guide to the DesignOps Team-of-One
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Shahrzad Samadzadeh
What Is My Value? Two Takes and Some Mistakes
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Jim Kalbach
Jazz Improvisation as a Model for Team Collaboration
2017 • DesignOps Summit 2017
Gold
Ross Smith
Breaking Barriers with Empathy
2017 • Enterprise Experience 2017
Gold
Tina Weisser
When AI Agents Meet Reality. Service Design Lessons from a Pilot
2026 • Rosenfeld Community
Christian Rohrer
Insight Types That Influence Enterprise Decision Makers
2015 • Enterprise UX 2015
Gold
Kristen Guth, Ph.D.
Out of the FOG: A Non-traditional Research Approach to Alignment
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
JP Allen
Navigating the UX Tools Landscape
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Ed Mullen
Designing the Unseen: Enabling Institutions to Build Public Trust
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Dan Willis
Enterprise Storytelling Sessions
2017 • Enterprise Experience 2017
Gold
Joshua Noble
Casual Inference
2023 • QuantQual Interest Group
Uday Gajendar
Theme Four Intro
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold
Liz Ebengo
The Burden on Children: The Cost of Insufficient Post-Conflict Services and Pathways Forward
2024 • Advancing Service Design 2024
Gold

More Videos

Surya Vanka

"There are 8 billion creative humans on planet Earth, far beyond the number of trained designers."

Surya Vanka

Unleashing Swarm Creativity to Solve Enterprise Challenges

June 10, 2021

Patrick Boehler

"The biggest shift is the power moving from supply side to demand side in media."

Patrick Boehler Madison Karas

The service shift: transforming media organizations to create real value through design

November 19, 2025

Andreas Huebner

"Leadership buy-in now means we get to focus on bigger, generative research questions instead of just tactical usability studies."

Andreas Huebner Amy Takata Craig Brookes

What Is It Like To Be Part of The UX Team at Compass?

March 11, 2021

Patrizia Bertini

"Leaders spend a lot of time on operational work, which does not allow design strategy to mature."

Patrizia Bertini Alexandra Mengoni León

Pushing DesignOps’ Influence into New Global Markets

September 9, 2022

Phil Gilbert

"We decided to make it an opt-in program and that accelerated early wins and self-selected positive outcomes."

Phil Gilbert

A Consistent Culture of Design

May 14, 2015

Yulya Besplemennova

"I wouldn’t leave AI tools to juniors because it’s crucial to have your own experience to evaluate outputs."

Yulya Besplemennova

[Demo] Stress-testing GenAI in user research synthesis

June 4, 2024

Sarah Rink

"We recruited 50% more than we needed because no-shows are incredible in remote sessions."

Sarah Rink

Remote User Research: Dos and Don'ts from the Virtual Field

June 11, 2020

Mujtaba Hameed

"The core thesis is that saving time with AI and reallocating it into research itself unlocks the true potential of the field."

Mujtaba Hameed

The new horizon of ethnography: using AI to unlock the full potential of in-person research

March 11, 2026

Sheryl Cababa

"Involving stakeholders with lived experience empowers design and enriches domain knowledge."

Sheryl Cababa

Living in the Clouds: Adopting a Systems Thinking Mindset

June 6, 2023