 User research is a key part of service design but often it can be hard to actually do proper user research and there are a lot of reasons for that. In this episode we're going to explore how you can take your user research practice to the next level within your team and organization and overcome some of the most common hurdles. Here's the guest for this episode. Let the show begin. Hi, this is Steve Fortagall and this is the Service Design Show, episode 127. Hi, I'm Marc and welcome to the Service Design Show. On this show we explore what's beneath the surface of service design, what are the hidden things that make the difference between success and failure, all to help you design services that make a positive impact on people and business. The guest in this episode is an author, a speaker and a recognized expert on the topic of user research. His name is Steve Fortagall. It's nothing new that user research is a key part of service design but often it's very challenging to actually do good user research. You don't get the time, you don't get the budget. When you're doing research often it's not the right type of research you want to do and you're doing more validating research than explorative research so there are many reasons why user research isn't yet making the impact it potentially could and sometimes that can feel you left stuck when you're the only one seeing the value of user research while the people around you don't. So in this episode Steve and I decided to have an open conversation and explore what it takes to take user research to the next level and what does that next level even mean? So this episode isn't as much about giving answers as it's about finding better questions. If you enjoy conversations like this that help you to build your craft as a service design professional make sure you click that subscribe button and that bell icon to be notified when new episodes come out. So now it's time to sit back, relax and enjoy the conversation with Steve Portagall. Welcome back to the show Steve. Hey Mark it's nice to see you again. Nice to see you again. Do you remember which episode you were in? No, I had to look that up. I had to look it up as well. It's uh it was episode 52 so that's quite a long time ago like every two weeks an episode it's over two years so it's good that we're revisiting and redoing this. Steve the last time you were on we had a different format we were raising cards we were co-creating things. Things have changed a little bit. I wanted to start with a rapid fire question round but I'm not going to do that yet because for the people who see you for the very first time and have no clue who Steve Portagall is could you give like a very brief introduction? Yeah so if you've never seen me before and have no clue who I am I am an independent consultant. I work outside of the just outside of the San Francisco Bay Area. The you know my professional focus is user research. I've written a couple of books which you can see behind me on user research. I've done a lot of conference talks over the years been teaching people as well as practicing yeah user research for I mean 25 years I guess if you start doing the math. You live eat and sleep user research? Well I mean I eat donuts but I do I do live and sleep user research. Fair enough Now it's time for the rapid fire question round again this is new but it's very easy just answer these questions as quickly as you can. You haven't prepared and that's part of the plan. So the first question is what's always in your fridge? Water. Okay which book or books are you reading at this moment if any? Yeah so of course the titles are on a device or on the side of the bed. I'm reading four things right now. One is a graphic novel is a long series that's kind of a parody of I don't know it's it's it's caught us in this name something like big hard sex criminals and it's it's very silly but it's kind of entertaining. I am reading a book of short stories by an author whose name I can't remember and the title of the book I can't remember again it's on the device. I'm reading an annual collection of science fiction stories from like 2006 that I think is the size of a phone book if anyone remembers what a phone book used to be and I'm reading a book of essays about famous cover songs like re-record an artist does a song and then someone else does it records it later and it's it's it's actually really really fascinating because in each in each story about a famous song we probably know the new one but there's an original one there's all this history why was this song where it was when it first came out and what did it mean and who recorded it and then what did it mean and how did culture change or how did media change when this other version came out so there's these are just amazing essays that kind of teach you about yeah history of the blues or americana and so on it's it's a it's a lovely little book geeking out on music tracks awesome next question is what superpower would you like to have what superpower would I like to have oh seems like we should we should all have like the ready answer to this one I would like I mean my superpower if I could have anyone would be to understand what's in somebody's mind mind reading I guess mind reading ESP or understanding I mean no surprise that I picked a profession where I try to do that because of course navigating life is hard if you can't if you don't know you're always trying to figure that out anyway so that would be a great superpower the other question I have is what did you want to become when you were a kid I thought about being some kind of entertainer like I was going to be a stunt man and I was going to be an actor and I was going to be a director and I was going to be a writer those were sort of romantic kind of aspirations well you you you managed the writing part yeah and when I published the first book I realized oh this is a childhood dream realized but not in the way that I thought it was going to be but yes thanks for recognizing that yeah um and the final question which you did already answer in episode 52 but in case some people forgot including me what is the first time you got in touch with service design it's the first time I got in touch with service design um you know I think service design started finding its way into design conferences especially because service design is kind of anchored in you know has maybe more especially historically you know more prevalence in different parts of the world so I remember going to conferences I don't know if I could put a date on it and this is a design conference and maybe you've got some UX people like a new word that's getting thrown around or um uh and there would be some service design people there or they would throw that word into their description of what they were doing um and I think a few years later there was a like an international service design conference in San Francisco that I went to and you know lots of the same people talking about lots of the same things but kind of under the the umbrella of service design so I can't give you an exact date but that's sort of the narrative form the conferences uh yeah cool so that was it for the rapid rapid question rapid question fire round that's not the thing I wanted to say I wanted to say something different but never mind um let's dive into the topic of today I uh I'm I'm really interested in this topic this is really going to be an exploration we're going to verbally prototype where this can lead us um I hope that at the end of this this chat will have better questions rather than having answers so let's see if we can find some better questions around user research maturity right because that's the topic you sort of suggested that we might dive into and I'm curious what makes you interested in user research maturity at this moment I think it's an interesting lens to look at the practice you know or what what we do how user research is being done because there's so much success numbers of people numbers of job descriptions numbers of you know open requisitions for employees to become researchers and join a team number of conferences number of books you know podcasts whatever it's clear that there's a lot of people doing it wanting to do it learning to do it we're teaching each other at the same time as all this growth and and and evolution is happening there's a lot of dissatisfaction that I hear and that I observe that I experience myself with you know how research is being practiced so a lot of people seem kind of stuck there's a lot of agitating or really you know advocating for more and better and so I think you know you when you put the word maturity out there kind of to me it says um you know let's look at where we are and where we want to go it starts to suggest evolution over time um and and maybe having those discussions is a way to for any of us that feel stuck at different points to kind of get unstuck so okay um let's let's get into the getting stuck part like what is it that you hear people say like what are the signals or how do these being stuck things manifest themselves in practice yes um and I have definite empathy for for people being stuck and I admit to having some frustration um uh because I find myself um you know at book author and podcast guest type person in some situations like mark it doesn't matter what I'm talking about if I'm in something interactive the questions that come to me are often the same questions um uh so there are things like um uh my company doesn't believe in user research we don't get time to do research we only do the value of research uh too late in the game um you know it's it's these sort of so that's a lot of of being stuck um I think if you have you know deeper conversations with people you hear that um um the the results of research are not uh embraced people do what they want and these are all related right no one wants to ask the right questions no one wants to do the thing that they're they're uh that that we've learned um I think when you go a little further I hear a lot of people I don't know that this is stuck as much uh uh I'm trying to get people unstuck around some of these things um we talk to customers but we don't know what we're doing we don't know how to listen and we ask leading questions we don't know how to ask follow-ups and we just confirm what our own assumptions are um I mean the last one I think is more it's all it's all fixable but I think you just hear people describe these situations where like whatever research is it's not we we know it could be something else but like we're here and no one will give it to us no one will let us and no one will listen to us that's sort of this this deep frustration uh that I often hear that's what I think stuck sounds like and like why are have they always been stuck or have you seen uh progression towards more frustration because at some point they did get hired as a user research or that they they sort of migrated into a user research role and at some point they got stuck right yeah right I mean I think right you and I are talking about kind of everyone out there and of course there's many different kinds of circumstances and there there are so you're asking about within an organization do they go back and forth between how stuck they are and how unstuck they are um as opposed to what's the overall population and are we collectively stuck or unstuck because for sure there are lots of success stories um I mean nobody's perfect but there are lots of examples to look to where things some of these things are not stuck but yeah look at the look at some of these organizations um I think in some cases they were not hired to do research uh you have you know UX teams of one type type of situations where uh this person is a designer is kind of their title um and they're trying to create change along a lot of fronts for sure they have concerns about how design is being practiced that I'm not hearing about they may feel just as stuck there uh but they're the person that's saying hey we're making decisions that have a lot of assumptions in them and if we don't involve users in these decisions we're gonna waste all of our design and engineering and product and service effort um and there's a person without without the title uh they're assuming the responsibility but they're not kind of given the responsibility uh and so yeah they are stuck right I mean for a certain a certain way um I think you have user research teams that are that evolve where there are researchers and they're doing research but they're not in the position that they want to be so um you know teams without leaders uh or teams with the leaders that uh maybe don't uh I mean teams without research leaders I guess is what I'm trying to say someone that can uh advocate for how research can best perform in the organization like I heard a story from people a few years ago where um it was uh it was like a special projects departments well I don't mean they were very public about it I don't have to to hide who it is it was uh google x like the moonshot factory um and this was like a person with a graduate degree in human factors and they were maybe like a first first year as a researcher um and what they they they almost described like um like some kind of laboratory function where they would receive requests that were like handed to a manager and then were literally just handed to them they would execute on those requests and write it up and then just share a document with somebody so there was no collaboration there was no stakeholder management they had no power to um you know understand the real problem and reframe it and kind of dig into it it was just here is the research go do exactly what we're telling you uh it was a few years ago so I don't I mean google x is not even the same organization that it used to be but I don't think that's super uncommon um so yeah like there's a story about hey we're hiring human factors grads we're doing all kinds of research but if you look a little closer you're like this is not this doesn't seem the right way to kind of get all the value and kind of creativity out of the research that you are doing so you know depending on who you talk to that's a long answer mark yeah that's the right thoughts about good that's why we're here to to pick your brain and so an easy I was looking for so what does if this is a low level of maturity like the all the opposite things of what you just said could be a higher level of maturity but I'm curious like without getting too deep into semantics what is user research maturity to you and I'm looking for how would you define a quote unquote success how would you define progress and again it's not about semantics like just how you see it yeah I mean the word maturity you know comes from these maturity models that uh that go back actually go back to the 70s from Harvard Business School um and they looked at IT rollout and so this so I am kind of stealing the model the maturity model um there's a classic uh you know the the og user research maturity model was something that chris avore wrote a few years ago and and he kind of broke down um into certain categories from like laggard to what I can't remember his exact categories but he he characterized it in a kind of a grid um and I I'm less interested in being as prescriptive like here's my grid and if you're here then this and if you're there then that I I mean if your question is like what does progress look like I think I think it's up to us to assess where we are now um in a little bit more of an evaluative way than you know we can't do anything um but to try to describe and characterize where we are now and to articulate you know where would things be different um and I think you know when you ask yourselves those questions you can say like what's the what's the dream state or what's an increment um so I'm not interested in having people if it if it were to be a grid fill in every single cell in this grid with every everything but just to take a thing that you are stuck on like um you know hey we're not um we're not engaging with stakeholders to to make sure that uh you know the research that we're doing is really connecting with what their needs are uh you know if you can describe that that's less mature can you describe a future state um and then start to plan what would you do to make uh to make steps towards that so it's it's kind of a problem solving and facilitation mindset I guess um yeah mark let me let me stop and let you jump back in yeah so um I think we've seen a lot of maturity models and design space lately um and I totally get where they are coming from I think it's very useful for for people to have like a perspective of what's possible I think when you are at a low level of maturity it's really hard to even come up with a dream state and these maturity models maybe help to give a guide or to show to to help you understand and see and better articulate where the gaps are I don't think like you just said I totally agree that these models should be leading but they can be guiding right so I I do see value in them in that sense how do you see that yes we're just trying to drive a conversation um yeah I mean leading versus guiding that's very interesting I haven't thought about the difference between those two things well the the goal isn't to to sort of level up in the maturity model right that's not the goal that the the the maturity model is is facilitating something else and it helps you to sort of uh find find milestones see yeah it yeah it expands your vocabulary maybe if you're already super experienced then you can like that a maturity model becomes less relevant maybe but especially if you're trying to get the rest of the organization interested then showing them like hey this is where we could go or this is where other organizations have been yes I yes and I think I'm interested in like what's the it's not it's not quite a meta maturity model it's like what's the lesson of models and can we just kind of play with that for a little bit so yes one thing is you can show the organization here's what good looks like because you don't know because this is new I think the power the thing that I'm excited about in maturity models is that is the way that they kind of decompose like if we say my company doesn't get research well then we can start to break that down and so if you look at chrisivore's model or some of the things that I'm interested in or any other models they start looking at different components of the user research practice so that you can ask specific questions I think that's powerful because it in your point about kind of guiding it it highlights facets of research that maybe you haven't considered that and of course you know you put it in a grid and it looks very clean I sound like I'm criticizing people using the grid I don't I don't mean that but you know we have models and they suggest something they kind of suggest that like oh these are the things and this is the granularity like what what would get a row in in in in any kind of hypothetical model but if you look at a different way there's you can kind of change the granularity going up and down and going up and down like the example we just had about researchers don't engage with stakeholders like that could be quite far nested in the you know if you sort of take a topic and a subtopic and a subtopic and a subtopic and maybe that's where you want to focus or you know because when you say you know I don't know research goal alignment it's like that's that's a lot well let's kind of go down a level oh that's you know that's this other piece or maybe this other piece and you kind of get to a thing that um you can affect um so you know I think it's up to the people in the organization the people that are trying to drive change whether they want to talk about big problems and break them down with the small problems or start with small problems and maybe ladder up to big problems and it's there's no right way to do this to kind of take these on and work with them I don't think well then that's there's a danger in making it appear as if there was a right way to do it right there is there is like you can you can see it as a compass or show what people have done in the past but there is no guarantee that this will also work for you you mentioned something about people who want to create change within organizations one question I had about um progressing in this user research maturity in whatever shape form that is for you there's always somebody in the organization who is that decision maker who needs to invest in this who needs to uh make time make make budget available what is your take on involving those people how do you open the conversation with these decision makers to start investing in user research maturity I mean I think as with every sort of negotiation and persuasion right it's talking about talking about what they care about so I mean back to the example people who are stuck and they say well like my company doesn't give me time to do user research like well that's that's a practitioner that's the thing I care about as you know a leader or someone who's going to invest that may not be a thing that they care about so asking for process I think can be risky because more likely people who are influencers and decision makers care about outcomes um but again you know that's a general statement I don't know I don't know your your your influencer decision maker so understanding what they care about um and um you know yeah what problems do you have yeah so again here the goal isn't user research maturity that's not the goal it's it facilitates something else and it might facilitate uh faster time to market it might facilitate cheaper service development like those are the things that you're enabling when you start to improve your user research practice and those are the things you should be talking about right that's that's the overall gist I guess that's well put yeah one question I had was with regards to ownership and responsibility now as a practitioner you can sort of start investing in your own in your own professional growth and development and you can say mine becoming a better practitioner as soon as it starts to become a team or an organization on a level uh I'm curious who do you feel or what have you seen um in the organization who owns this who who is responsible and again it differs from organization to organization yeah yeah I mean I think it's really different in in organizations that have a user research leader someone who has that title um where that person does a lot of things but one of one of them is um is think about you know I mean a good leader a good manager thinks about the skills and career progression of their team um and so having having someone who advocates for research in whatever way right if I work at a company and the person I report to let's just say they they get research um uh and they advocate for it and they can advocate for my own my skill development they can create space provide resources um help me as an individual assess and and build um but what I hear a lot of research leaders talking about too is is taking a team view of this and and is what they're trying to it's not just skill development for its own sake but it's back to um you know what you were what we were both saying before what is the company looking for us to do or what do we want to help the organization understand that we can do how do we want to provide value in the future so being able to take a look at you know what work is the company doing what work does our team want to be doing what skills do we have what skills do we need to hire for or develop um like when those things all go together the the the products like what is our company producing how are we supporting it with research and how are we equipped skill and and staff wise to support it those all fit together really really well uh but someone has to someone has to own that and care about it and put time into it yeah yeah and I haven't seen a lot of those roles maybe they they are already there hopefully um and I was thinking maybe that's a sign of a maturity level when you have a user research leader in in that position that you've already progressed uh at least more than uh most companies I guess right uh I mean there are more there's an increasing number of user research leaders I mean I think it's part of the the the growth overall in the practice but um you know in in my podcast these are the people that that I've been interviewing over the years um and you know finding finding them in in different kinds of organizations and you know with success stories I think in in uh well being hired like somebody before they were there somebody identified the need that not only do we need this capability but we need leadership in this capability again so they can interface with other functions advocate for the value you know build up teams build up skills that's happening more and more um I'm you know I mean I'd be interested to do a census and kind of say like where are the companies with research leadership and where are the companies where it's a lot of UX teams of one or two that are like oh research we should also be doing research or there is person who has got the title of a researcher but they don't have any they're just on their own it's like one researcher uh without any kind of leadership so I think right we can imagine the pie chart and it's just it's a mix of all of those from the people you've interviewed on your podcast um and the examples case studies you've seen who is doing this well where and um have you identified any patterns of organizations that are actually able to take the user research practice to the next level levels yes um I mean I'm thinking about uh Atlassian is an interesting one um uh and the person that runs research there is Lisa Reicheltz um and uh yeah she's been kind of I've seen her speak at conferences and be critical of the company um and this is you know this is not up to date so I don't I don't want this is things I've heard in the past um but she's talked about I think um uh like a strong testing culture uh and so if you want to make a decision if you the research you would do about any decision would be to kind of I don't know if it's literally A or B but ask someone to evaluate something so I think it's there's an interesting challenge there where you have a company that embraces research but embraces like an an immature version of research uh limited limited version of research yes yes even that's an even better way to put it um and um and I think you know Atlassian is not a new company so they've built like uh here's how we make products here's how we do things uh so research and I've heard this from a number of people who are research leaders research comes in later here's a 10-year-old company with a mature product organization um and then research is new and so you're trying to sort of swim upstream or kind of change the mindset around how we can do this um excuse me so that's a different kind of change um I you know I'm thinking also go ahead well yeah and it makes a lot of sense which is saying I never realized or articulated in this way but um often things like user research and serve design they come in later after people after the people who build stuff who make things tangible have done their work and then it's it takes a lot of effort and uh convincing power to change the way of working because that's what you're asking these people to do they have they have built a successful company or business or service by doing the things that they have done so far and user research or service design hasn't been an integral part of that and now you're coming in and saying hey we should do more of this other thing like that's a tough sell so I recognize absolutely what you're what you're describing there I think there's two variations too or maybe it's just a subtlety to what you're saying that you know and I can't speak as well to service design but research is already happening right it's it's your point about limited so it's not like yeah we're we're bringing in something brand new we're trying to take a thing that exists and and change the way that it's practiced and that that's interesting because it's not like everyone feels like they have a problem that they need to solve oh we already do this we test things I know how to run a test we're good what is it that you're going to do that's different so you've got to got to change some entrenched beliefs and that's that's culture change right that's process change but culture change and and and very hard to do if you don't have the leadership of the company kind of assigning that to someone like Lisa at Atlassian who's that's her mandate she's the leader and she has kind of the upper management kind of giving her that brief if you're an individual contributor at you know some at some uh you know alternative universe form of Atlassian without Lisa in it you can't you can't do that you just can't get make you can't manage up that high and so that's a tough call for those people yeah yeah oh I've spoken to a lot of those people who are very passionate about the thing what they do but it's a very hard to scale and to in basically what they run into is limit limits in their ability to influence decisions like like you can do all the research you want you can come up with all the insights you want you can make all the improvements you want but eventually you're just one of the people uh within the operational layer of the organization yeah right and and I don't know this this is not a declaration of truth but it's a it's a get me a question for us maybe maybe that person's effort would be um is about creating demand like demand for a research team demand for research leadership as opposed to hey I'm going to do research make get this product information and insight and hope that you change the product that is limited but maybe if they are thinking about org change again they're still managing up they're still driving change up but can they uh can they create awareness that hey this is a function other teams have it other orgs have it they have leaders this is the this is the result um and start to kind of create the space for that change to happen they still need like that's that's a big challenge I think because if they don't have the power they have limited influence so you know I'm saying what if you could influence this other thing and I think it's still the same challenge for them they have limited influence that's the reality that's the limit well the thing I'm hearing you say here is that when you're in a situation where user research hasn't been established on an organizational level or the maturity is low um and you want to change something about it you cannot stick with just doing user research you have to invest time into building awareness so uh this comes on top of the work you're actually doing I think that's an important thing to realize like in every like every day every week every project you have to spend 10 20 of your time thinking about okay how am I going to influence this for the long term like short term I need to deliver insights I need to do qualitative interviews but what am I doing that will influence and progress this capability of the organization on the longer scale if you don't well don't complain right you'll always be stuck in the situation you are in and there's a great example yeah I'm sorry man no go ahead there's a great example uh uh it's from a few years ago at DocuSign um and they had a leader and they had demand for their research so it's a different use case than we're talking about um but what they did when the demand exceeded the supply and so they filtered projects they would take based on they would basically ask those teams to commit to making change based on the results of their research so if the team wouldn't commit to actually doing something different they didn't take on that project uh if the team said yes you know we we need this research and here's what we're going to do as a result of the research then they got the research um again different situation than you know sort of isolated individuals managing up but think about if you have that amount of influence like if every project you did was one where you knew that there was going to be impact it was going to be visible now your portfolio like your track record your story about the results you're having you don't have any projects that don't have any outcomes because you're not taking those on and you're you're forcing uh because in this case of DocuSign they had some power they had more they had resources that were in demand again if you don't have any power it's hard to kind of flip that around but you can see uh you know making choices in order to create stories that people can tell about successful outcomes uh is that's what it's a really powerful filter and I and I love what you're saying here like it might it's not only when your craft is in demand you should have that attitude like all the time because you're responsible for delivering success and you know what these parameters are you know in which conditions you're able to uh be most successful and you're only doing a service towards the people you're working with when you're very clear upfront about that like listen if you're not going to do anything with the things I will hand you if you don't have resources if you don't have the time if you have no idea what to do with them then it's a waste of your time and it's a waste of my time so we better either reframe this challenge or don't don't do it at all so being more being more critical and being more selective is very important I think there's a lot of optimism in the people that do the work that we all do um and you know I think it's easy to think wow this work's going to be super interesting when they see how interesting it is that'll change their mind like the results will speak for themselves um and that you know maybe I don't want to be cynical I'm trying I'm an optimist as well um but I think you're right like to be critical in the choice of our of the choices we make and maybe that's hard because we know the research is going to be awesome and and and who wouldn't want to you know serve these needs because that's what we're doing that's why we're in this in this field um so you know recognizing I mean it's a little bit of a loss of innocence yeah not everyone's going to get as excited as you are and yeah maybe you don't maybe you choose what to do you prioritize based on uh who's already kind of on board with you and and just setting yourself up for success like if you want to grow your practice your field being more critical still being optimistic and being positive that people will change but knowing that there are things that can increase the likelihood of you being successful and the project being successful everybody being more successful I think that's uh that's a very important thing I'm really curious like um we said that we're exploring this topic here which questions do you still have around this topic what are some of the things that we should be asking ourselves that maybe we aren't asking enough I am interested in um uh like a super set of axes of maturity so we're you know we haven't we had didn't make a bold to listen to this conversation but we've talked about things like leadership we've talked about things like influence we've talked about you know what kind of work gets done um you know we've talked about those things but then we've even gotten to these little more granular ones like um relationship between researcher and stakeholder um I'm not saying we should make this super set anyone should because it might be an unnavigable thing but um I guess I'm there are other other aspects of maturity that we haven't talked about and that probably I am not even considering um so I guess I'm interested in collectively as a field um starting to think about many kinds of right those those maturity models have like six or seven things but there might be 70 or there might be 800 I don't know what I don't have a number in mind but I have blind spots and I think the reason why coming up with more of them is important is that I think any one of them like the thing that you're excited about or that you're feeling pain about like that's a hook to make improvement so I can say like influence and impact and you can say I don't get to meet with my stakeholders like well the thing that you have said that you've identified where the maturity can evolve like that's where you should work you know so um I think the more kind of ways in we have to talk about yeah here's the state today here's a future state that we might want to work towards the more of those we have the more we can get unstuck because I can say I can give you five questions you should ask yourself and you could just look at me like I don't care about any of those but if you can come up with you know one or two then we can work on like how to move it forward um so yeah I think the longer list is a again I don't need this I said superset but I don't really think it's that it's it's kind of a mindset of asking questions of ourselves of what are the aspects of our maturity that we can identify that we want to improve mm-hmm mm-hmm yeah makes a lot of sense and uh I mean I'm surprised that this or that this is there to a very limited extent for the field I would expect that I don't know one of the big research companies would already have done some research on this but maybe it needs to be crowdsourced and a community led inquiry one question that I feel is pretty obvious here is how do you know that you're sort of not on the level that you want to be so how do you identify a lower level of maturity because usually that that translates to okay that there's potential for for growth yeah so I think if you have researchers in the organization there's no problem identifying those things right even a junior researcher is like oh we're not doing this we're not doing that um I know you have organizations where you have people who do research and they don't know what they don't know um I mean it's interesting it's exciting to see like product management as a kind of professional community getting excited about research because you know speaking very broadly like they love talking to customers and many of them have uh you know have the humility to recognize this is not an expertise so I feel good about these other disciplines the people who do research starting to recognize their limitations and again I think the researchers know um and even if you even if there's a part of your maturity that you don't know that you don't know like that's all right like you don't have to know every possible thing that you could do better you have to know like what is the thing that you're complaining about what is the frustration where are um where are you making mistakes with your product or you know discovering too late that something was wrong uh or that you had a wrong assumption um yeah you know that's like how you and I would do it and then there's how anybody else would do it in their in their kind of real context um and I guess I'm just back to what I said before like whatever you can identify and improve is an improvement it doesn't have to fit into you know any of these models yeah it's just an evolution yeah so that's your beef with the models that people uh tend to uh overemphasize them or over uh yeah see them as as very rigid models where things have to fit in otherwise you're not doing it the right way rather than a starting point for a conversation which might expand and adapt and be flexible and I mean I don't want to beef with the models like I am I think Chris of Bore's model is amazing there's a de-scout model which is uh an evolution it's a little hard to parse but they have a certain way of thinking about it um I mean I really like how you put it though those models are um serve to illustrate that there's more um but I think in terms of kind of facilitation and kind of self-directed uh the models the fact that there is a model is a starting point and like now we have to build our own um you know and and think of them less as kind of grids and more as like a continuum where we just want to we want to know where we are and we want to hypothesize where we want to get to we want to make some strides towards that so it's more about the progress that that we can drive than kind of you know fleshing out the model so let's uh heading towards the end of the conversation let's let's look at the maturity on a meta level so now a lot of people in the field uh feel stuck for whatever reason um not feeling that they are making the impact that they potentially could um where will we be in three years what will we be in five years like what's the what's the dream state yeah uh I mean I think I think we can where are we well it's like who is we um I think there's lots of I think this is we're sort of describing like the problems of like technology companies or capitalism or of the workplace um or of you know research and services design kind of being still being of you know new practices so I think this is going to continue to get replicated um and I you know it's uh uh will the if again that pie chart we sort of hypothesize will the pie chart look any different over time um yeah I don't know and I can't say in three or five years we're going to be completely different um I think you know a more modest goal for me would be to empower change makers um to make them you know feel more confident or with some direction um so that if you when you say I'm stuck there's some things you can start to do um but yeah I think there's just a lot of systemic reasons why things are the way that they are um so yeah I mean I'm hopeful but I'm also cynical I don't so I don't know if I have a dream state in five years um I think it's just about making steady incremental progress sure yeah dodging dodging your question well well that that's uh that's still a valid a valid state I don't know if it's an if we would describe it as a dream state but that's still progress and a valid state I was imagining um like that there's a more uh mature vocabulary and that there's uh more of an idea of a road map I don't know if road map is the is the right word because you might get the feeling that you have to follow the road map but um at least uh see routes and alternative routes towards finding solutions to like you mentioned being stuck and getting unstuck and doing better work can I take another shot then do it so so you know I think I mean what I what I'm intrigued by in the discussions about you know maturity is that um it's kind of an umbrella for a lot of work that I see people doing people that are you know uh here's a workshop I've got I'm gonna publish it on medium um uh talk that at a conference like this it's a lot of sharing in the in the practice I mean podcast where we discuss things like like you're doing um uh but I feel like uh this is not quite the right thing um you know if we had an information architect they would say this better you can imagine uh sort of the maturity conversation is sort of an index and I'm I want to be that's maybe not the right word but an index to tools that already exist or tools that are being built um right well one uh one one aspect of maturity might be um how do we even pick what methods we should use to solve something well you can go look at christian roars paper uh from 2014 uh when to use which user experience research method which probably many people who have seen it's an almost ubiquitous reference there's a section in that document that says if you're doing this use this method if you're doing this use this method um so when we talk about maturity like it can be a way to and this is sort of what you're saying right if you can identify the gaps that you have there's potentially already a solution there um but christian roars paper is sitting over here and you know um docuSign filtering is kind of over here I'm kind of playing with yeah kind of an umbrella or an index as we think about these things can we find I mean maybe this is my dream I don't want to articulate it as a dream because I don't know if it's the right thing but I mean imagine sort of an an index or an uh an expert system that you could query that kind of talks about you know hey here's the maturity that we're looking at um there is like a paper a resource a podcast a tool a workshop you can run a best case a best reference um that you can apply to start moving forward and right now all that stuff is sort of scattered like our expertise as a practice is diffuse um and so maybe what I'm doing is a little bit of kind of aggregating and synthesizing that yeah all right that's kind of my that's that's an audacious dream but that is sort of my dream that we had a way to kind of you know come with a problem and walk away with uh with a next step and and do it with less effort faster and more be more effective because you know when we when you synthesize these things make them more accessible uh we can actually spend more of our time doing the work we want to do and last time looking on google trying to figure out which resource we need to have right that's that's I guess the the big benefit here yeah yeah and there's a lot of smart people doing a lot of smart work and you know most of us haven't heard of most of it so how do we connect to that if uh what is the thing you hope what is the one thing you hope people will remember from our conversation in episode 127 um well it's a it's a combination of a couple of things well okay if I had to say one thing it's um focus on what's important to you okay I gave a short answer mark you weren't prepared for that thank you no I wasn't I wasn't and now one thing is as all we need uh focus on what's important to you sure I uh I couldn't agree more Steve I know we could have talked for another hour and maybe we should do that in a in a future episode but for now we're going to wrap this up I'm going to thank you uh for diving into this topic of user research maturity let's say let's see where uh will be where the field will be in uh in about three years and how this one contributed thanks again thanks mar awesome that you're still here at the end of this conversation I hope that you enjoyed it and if you did take two seconds to click that like button because that will help youtube to get this conversation in front of other professionals who might enjoy it as well and while you're here click that subscribe button if you haven't done so already to get notified about new conversations like this thanks a lot for watching and I'll see you in the next video