Out of the FOG: A Non-traditional Research Approach to Alignment
Summary
Product teams, including those I work with, struggle to overcome the grinding momentum of product delivery timelines to make room for adequate discovery, learning, and application through research. The game of product development becomes fiercer when it's not the first time, but the fourth team assembled to tackle a complex product space. In well-trod territory, strong opinions may abound, and talking past each other and rehashing approaches is rampant. Challenges that face researchers as partners in product development include establishing a sense of shared team vision, separating facts from fiction, and moving the team past hang-ups to establish a research strategy and product direction. This case introduces the idea of "grinding momentum" and outlines a stakeholder engagement process known as a FOG session that helps all team members across functional expertise areas claim voice, hear others, and share in collective aha moments that define next steps. Using a mixed-methods approach, a process is outlined to frameshift the value of existing knowledge spanning many departments within an organization, bring together distinct expertise vocabularies and analyses, and propel product partners to identify true knowledge gaps.
Key Insights
-
•
Research is often perceived as slow but actually enables faster product velocity by clarifying decisions.
-
•
Daniel Kahneman’s System 1 (intuitive) and System 2 (analytical) thinking both complement each other in decision-making.
-
•
Expert intuition requires regularity, practice, and immediate feedback to be reliable, conditions rarely met in novel product contexts.
-
•
Organizations mature in information processing by adding departments: starting with intuition (product teams), then data, and finally research teams for deeper analysis.
-
•
Product teams often over-rely on intuitive thinking, leading to overconfidence and misalignment.
-
•
Grinding momentum is a shared team pressure to move fast without adequate foundational knowledge, risking poor decisions.
-
•
The FOG method (Facts, Opinions, Guesses) helps teams slow down, separate evidence from assumptions, and surface knowledge gaps.
-
•
Facilitated FOG sessions enable democratic participation, uncover tensions, and establish shared mental models for product direction.
-
•
Research should be positioned as a partner in knowledge creation rather than an arbiter of absolute truth, shifting power dynamics.
-
•
Dealing with bad data or assumed facts requires active researcher intervention to analyze artifacts and reframe discussions constructively.
Notable Quotes
"Slowing down with research can help us move faster overall."
"Intuition is knowing without knowing how you know, I just know it."
"Expert intuition can be right or wrong because it relies on cues and heuristics in uncertain contexts."
"Research is the most analytical form of information processing because it involves active knowledge generation."
"Most product decisions look intuitive, but intuition alone leads to coherent stories that can be wrong."
"Research is sometimes perceived as intuitive and therefore dismissed as insufficient for decision-making."
"Grinding momentum is a shared mental model that pushes teams to decide quickly without shared foundational knowledge."
"The FOG method helps teams separate facts from fiction and move past hangups toward alignment."
"The goal is to turn research into a partner in shared discovery, not just an arbiter of truth."
"If a stakeholder claims something is a fact without evidence, it is our responsibility as researchers to challenge and unpack that."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"The future of work is about making the user the hero—humans and machines working together."
Lavy Kumar Kat Temple Shan Sebastian Tara Jensen Jenn ChouFuture of Work
June 9, 2021
"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 BrookesWhat Is It Like To Be Part of The UX Team at Compass?
March 11, 2021
"Cluster analysis will definitely replace personas, the fictional personas of course."
Ricardo MartinsUnlocking the power of advanced quantitative methods
March 12, 2025
"Our mission is to empower everybody to learn; not the few learning on behalf of the many."
Monty HammontreeThe Future of UX Research
December 3, 2020
"Losing design ops led to missed deadlines, bad experiences for customers, and overstretched design leaders."
Benjamin RealShowing the Value of DesignOps by Not Having a DesignOps Team
October 21, 2020
"It is impossible for one research ops person to do all the things expected in job descriptions."
Kate TowseyAsk Me Anything (AMA) with Kate Towsey
April 2, 2025
"Breaking enterprise into small segments lets you apply research methods effectively at scale."
Steve Portigal Chris Chapo Kelly Goto Christian RohrerDiscussion
May 13, 2015
"Accessible foundations are built by involving voices of people with disabilities from ideation to prototyping to launch."
Sam ProulxOnline Shopping: Designing an Accessible Experience
March 28, 2023
"Screen magnification users are a great place to start because your prototypes and tools will mostly just work with minimal adaptation."
Sam ProulxPrototype Reviews, People With Disabilities, and You
October 1, 2021