Summary
Research in many organizations has become all about speed and efficiency, making contextual research difficult. The solution for some is to introduce a ResearchOps layer. Brigette will introduce you to the Eight Pillars – the broad areas that researchers care about. These pillars remain the same, whether you’re just ‘getting organized’ or are doing research at scale. From here, you can start to think about operationalizing research in your organization. Drawing on her experience as a Research Ops specialist, Brigette will outline the journey- from organized to operationalized. Whatever the scale, Ops’ mission is to help researchers do their best work.
Key Insights
-
•
The democratization of research prioritizes fast, light methods but risks undervaluing deep, slow research integral to strategy.
-
•
The Eight Pillars framework captures the core operational areas required to support scalable research: environment, scope, people, context, recruitment, library, governance, and tools.
-
•
Pace layering from Stuart Brand offers a way to see research methods on a spectrum of speed and depth, highlighting the tension and complementarity between fast and slow research.
-
•
Constructive turbulence—that is, conflicts from layers moving at different speeds—actually maintains system resilience and balance in research ecosystems.
-
•
Research ops serves as a systemic map, connecting various research practices and enabling strategic decisions about scaling and resource allocation.
-
•
A mature research org with slower, longitudinal methods often maintains a research library and legal collaboration, while fast-paced tech companies emphasize tools, communities of practice, and agile usability testing.
-
•
Scaling research requires coordinated development across layers: faster methods need tooling and communities, slower methods need recruitment, ethics, and knowledge management.
-
•
Measuring research ops impact is better approached through connectivity and usage of research rather than simple cost savings.
-
•
Research ops leadership is crucial for lifting organizations beyond day-to-day reactive work and building a long-term vision for research integration.
-
•
Recognizing and wielding researchers’ own power and agency within organizations is vital for intentional culture and strategic influence.
Notable Quotes
"You already have everything you need to advance your research and move beyond reactive work."
"Fast learns, slow remembers. Fast gets all the attention but slow has all the power."
"The stories you tell yourself and others hold enormous power in shaping your organization’s reality."
"Ops is not just about efficiency, it’s about creating a map and vision of all research across the whole organization."
"Conflicts caused by layers moving at different speeds keep things balanced and resilient; this is called constructive turbulence."
"Scaling research without ops is impossible; ops lifts the weight from researchers’ shoulders to enable growth."
"Researchers trained to see power often miss recognizing their own agency and potential influence in the organization."
"Measuring research ops impact through how much people use research and close feedback loops is more meaningful than cost savings."
"One ops person for every five researchers is a useful rule of thumb for investment in research ops."
"A centralized ops function provides deep insight into the heartbeat of an organization and enables coherent strategy across research layers."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"You need strong regional players with negotiation skills to navigate the split loyalties in global teams."
Adam Cutler Karen Pascoe Ian Swinson Susan WorthmanDiscussion
June 8, 2016
"We don’t get upset when users say one thing and do another, but we freak out when our leadership behaves that way."
Peter MerholzThe Trials and Tribulations of Directors of UX (Videoconference)
July 13, 2023
"Digital is a system, not a project. It’s there all the time and you have to keep iterating on it."
Lisa WelchmanCleaning Up Our Mess: Digital Governance for Designers
June 14, 2018
"Green spaces in cities can greatly enhance our quality of life and resilience."
Vincent BrathwaiteOpener: Past, Present, and Future—Closing the Racial Divide in Design Teams
October 22, 2020
"The squad model flopped for us after six months but created culture triads that stuck around."
Brenna FallonLearning Over Outcomes
October 24, 2019
"Factory owners manipulated people’s time so much that workers were afraid to carry a watch."
Tricia WangSpatial Collapse: Designing for Emergent Culture
January 8, 2024
"Delivering research in small, lean increments allowed us to iterate fast and reduce bias."
Edgar Anzaldua MorenoUsing Research to Determine Unique Value Proposition
March 11, 2021
"Context-related data gathered through qualitative research is the first to reach our decision-making centers in the brain."
Designing Systems at Scale
November 7, 2018
"Randomization is magic — it evenly distributes confounds so the only difference affecting results is your change."
Erin WeigelGet Your Whole Team Testing to Design for Impact
July 24, 2024
