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Opening Keynote: Operating in Context
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Wednesday, November 7, 2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
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Opening Keynote: Operating in Context
Speakers: Leisa Reichelt
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Summary

You know that thing where you start a new job and suddenly realize that all those great rules of thumb you thought were almost universally true are either impossible or ineffective in your new organization. Welcome to Leisa’s life. In this talk Leisa will share her experience of completely resetting her idea of best practice, implementing a strategy that is the opposite of what everyone expected, and why so few people do what they think is right. You’ll also get bonus thoughts on how to best set up your research team for maximize effectiveness.

Key Insights

  • One researcher per product team, dedicating at least three days a week, was a key rule at GDS to ensure quality and focus.

  • Setting hard rules with numbers convinced leadership to allocate sufficient research budget and resources.

  • A budget algorithm based on fixed rules (research in every sprint, minimum users including those with access needs) helped forecasting and securing resources.

  • Building observation labs and inviting all team members to witness research creates shared understanding and team alignment.

  • In smaller or distributed government teams like DTA, embedding researchers was impossible; unifying inconsistent agency approaches and focusing on capability building was critical.

  • Empathy walls emerged organically at DTA as a visceral way to share remote field findings and build team empathy.

  • Negotiating boldly for what you truly need works better than self-limiting your ask before negotiation starts.

  • Complex product ecosystems like Atlassian require supporting confident but untrained researchers with craft leadership and pairing to accelerate growth.

  • Shifting focus from feature-specific validation to broader, product-agnostic user goals uncovers deeper insights about users’ needs.

  • No universal ‘silver bullet’ exists for embedding user research; success depends on contextual understanding and adapting practices accordingly.

Notable Quotes

"My kids know everything. They say I know Ma, I know, about everything — from teeth brushing to national politics."

"Uncertainty and the humility that comes with it keeps the door open to learning, and that’s really important."

"Usability testing was widely considered pseudo-science by a respected engineer at GDS."

"You must have one researcher per team, at least three days a week — it was seen as an outrageous luxury at the time."

"Sometimes if you put rules and numbers out confidently, people actually do them."

"Negotiation starts with plan A — show them what you need to succeed, then have plan B just in case."

"There were more researchers than engineers at one point at GDS because we were doing a lot of discovery."

"Empathy walls helped teams bring visceral stories back from field research — it wasn’t the same as a lab but it worked."

"Confidence can be dangerous early in your learning journey; you need to spend time discovering what you don’t know."

"Choosing the right hill to die on is so important and so hard — not my circus, not my monkeys."

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