Rosenverse

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.

One Research Team for All - Influence Without Authority

Gold
Wednesday, March 9, 2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Share the love for this talk
One Research Team for All - Influence Without Authority
Speakers: Joanna Vodopivec and Prabhas Pokharel
Link:

Summary

Research teams are at the frontier of uncovering valuable insights that can inform products, services, and strategy choices. Few researchers in large organizations have the visibility and buy-in to exert influence across all of product, engineering, customer success, marketing, and overall organizational direction. How do you break down silos and maximize the impact of your research? Join us in conversation with Joanna Vodopivec, Principal Design Researcher at Intuit, to learn how she makes her team’s research relevant to colleagues in product, marketing, and services, and the latest initiatives she has led to enable the research team to be truly seen in a large organization. You will also hear the creative approaches Joanna and her team take to engage and influence, even when working remotely.

Key Insights

  • Cross-team collaboration is easier when researchers share methods and goals, allowing complementary study roles and co-creation of outputs.

  • Partnering with market research unlocks access to broader data like long-running surveys and helps interpret gaps in customer insights.

  • Inviting non-research teams into studies, such as customer success and business process teams, deepens findings through triangulation of multiple perspectives.

  • Early involvement of stakeholders including product managers, content creators, and tax experts leads to better buy-in and reduces handoff friction.

  • Proactively proposing new research initiatives can uncover insights stakeholders hadn’t requested but that drive innovation.

  • Using video presentations and video parties makes research findings more accessible and engaging across organizational silos than traditional slide decks.

  • Slack threads and tagging enable lightweight, asynchronous sharing of research insights to busy development teams.

  • Building trust across departments requires consistent relationship-building, respect for others’ expertise, and time investment.

  • Researchers must carefully balance uncovering pain points and acknowledging strengths to align sensitivities with teams that hide weaknesses.

  • Service design thinking gains traction when service delivery teams are involved from the research inception stage, avoiding silos.

Notable Quotes

"Customer obsession is actually one of our key values, which makes my job as a researcher a little bit easier."

"Collaboration with another researcher was seamless because we speak the same methodology language and aligned on goals."

"Partnering with market researchers allowed us to ask specific product questions within their long-running exit survey."

"Inviting other teams into research sessions lets us triangulate findings by combining interviews, observations, and focus groups."

"Bringing stakeholders into the kitchen early helped us learn even before sessions started and adjust designs accordingly."

"We should feel empowered to propose research initiatives that stakeholders aren’t explicitly asking for."

"Video parties allow many teams to engage and observe learnings in a more compelling and digestible way than slides."

"Slack channels with live feeds and tagging let busy developers catch key observations asynchronously."

"Building strong relationships with marketing requires mutual respect and regularly following up on their insights."

"Starting with positives and acknowledging good work helps break down resistance when sharing findings that reveal weak points."

Ask the Rosenbot
Jake Burghardt
Stop wasting research: Create new value with insight summaries
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Robert Fabricant
Industry junctures: Paths forwards for UXR and the critical decisions that get us there [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
2024 • Advancing Research Community
Rachael Dietkus, LCSW
Everything You Need to Know about the Civic Design 2022 Call for Presentations
2022 • Civic Design Community
Lais de Almeida
Designing Data Services
2024 • Advancing Service Design 2024
Gold
Johanna Kollmann
Insights-Driven Product Strategy: Get your Research to Count
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Hana Nagel
Turning Research Ripples into Waves
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Sarah Fathallah
Lessening the Research Burden on Vulnerable Communities
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Greg Petroff
Design is the Differentiator: Bringing New Design Innovations to a Very Antiquated and Very Large Industry
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Barb Spanton
Doing Work That Matters: A Look Beyond The Idealistic Notion of 'Doing Meaningful Work'
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Uday Gajendar
10 Years of Enterprise UX: Reflecting on the community and the practice
2025 • Enterprise Community
Dalia El-Shimy
So You've Got a Seat at the Table. Now What?
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Jack Moffett
UX Metrics That Matter and The Future of our Design at Scale Conference: A Community Conversation
2022 • Enterprise Community
Mandy Drew
What Role(s) Can Research Play in Responsible Design?
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Jessica Norris
ADHD: A DesignOps Superpower
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Doug Powell
Closing Keynote: Design at Scale
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Billy Carlson
Pro-level UI Tips for Beginners
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold

More Videos

John Cutler

"Sometimes leaders focus so much on scanning the river they’re not observing the surroundings—the banks tell you if the river is deep or shallow."

John Cutler

Oxbows, Rivers, and Estuaries: How to navigate the currents of change (without burning out)

December 3, 2024

Darian Davis

"A common toxic behavior is glory seeking, like presenting work as your own when it was a team effort."

Darian Davis

Lessons from a Toxic Work Relationship

January 8, 2024

Dave Gray

"If you’re having more conversation about what the actual question means than answering it, that’s a problem with the canvas we need to fix."

Dave Gray

Group Activity: Making Sense of DesignOps

November 7, 2017

John Cutler

"Quality is value to some person who matters."

John Cutler

The Alignment Trap

November 29, 2023

Abby Covert

"When was the last time that you felt stuck? The one where you feel a sense of being stuck trying to understand something."

Abby Covert

Stuck? Diagrams Help

October 27, 2022

Mark Interrante

"If you want to get faster output, optimize the work and workflow first — not add more hours."

Mark Interrante

Collaboration Flows in Product Development

June 9, 2017

Devon Powers

"We can’t just think technology or innovation will solve our problems; we have to embrace and work with those problems."

Devon Powers

Imagining Better Futures

March 9, 2022

Prayag Narula

"Bring your research team as note takers and facilitators—they make excellent collaborators and help build feedback loops."

Prayag Narula

How to Empower Your Designers to Do Good Research – And Why You Want To

June 10, 2022

Peter Van Dijck

"You can’t just be a designer adapting UX workflows assuming everybody else’s workflow stays the same; everything is changing with AI."

Peter Van Dijck

Hands on AI #3: Claude Code for UX people

October 22, 2025