How to Kickoff the UX Research Process with Your Team for Alignment 2023 | Zero to UX

[@zerotoux]

How do you start your UX process?

[@brocker8617]

You know what you could do? Maybe create this document to send to stakeholders, like a generic example and put the link on the description so people can download it. It will help a lot to understand better what you meant. :)

[@ankursingh4932]

@@brocker8617 you are right, this will definitely help!

[@thinkingaloud7925]

I've watched it once before, and now. I still feel sometimes the goals and objectives will include the motivations too. Overall I like to keep refreshing on this video once a yr at least to go through the basics, very useful for a product designer

[@prasetyo1884]

Thank you, Kevin; because of you, I landed my first UXR job. I hope you keep making this kind of video, especially the best practices and maybe the cognitive psychology stuff in UX Research?

[@TheBumpdjs]

This is gold mate - thankyou

[@tinganlai4539]

This is really good content and should be promoted!!

[@zerotoux]

Help a brotha out 💯 promote all the places!!😍

[@vanganh150595]

Thank you much for the video, Kevin. I'm currently a market researcher. Although I normally work for consumer researches instead, I strongly agree that the kick-off meeting is always a must-have task to to make a thorough, insightful research, which are easier for researchers to design compelling research methodologies/q're as well as meet all stakeholders' expectations and objectives at the end. And yes, this is even more important when different stakeholders usually have different POVs/ objectives. It's really great to have such alignment at the beginning so we would not miss anything at the end. Btw, I really enjoy your videos and find it very useful for my own preparation - from a consumer researcher to a user researcher :)

[@alquinnaa]

wow this was super helpful

[@zerotoux]

Thank you:))

[@valeriemetzger-smith5873]

Your content is coming at the perfect time for me! Please continue with your insight it’s very helpful!

[@zerotoux]

Thank you, Valerie!

[@ty-kv1et]

wow you're working at PS :) congrats valerie, i hope i will find a job too

[@rumble131]

Great video Kevin! The only other thing I tend to add to the kickoff is to go over the project plan. Useful in case stakeholders (who want to view the research) are on holiday or are in sprints on the proposed day of testing.

[@shahahone1705]

This is really helpful and nicely broken down!

[@Justjane2024]

This is super helpful! Would love to hear more insight/example on “success metrics”. What are some common ways we measure success?

[@zerotoux]

Thanks, Jamie! Success metrics should be defined by the stakeholders, but in case they're confused, you can measure things such as: retention rates, adoption rates, download, CTR, session times, task times, user satisfaction, perceived ease of use/usability, you can benchmark these to make sure your metrics are progressing with each iteration!

[@graceok8525]

I love your channel. Thank you so much. You’re helping me a lot with my job search right now

[@jooorence]

“Stakeholders”: 0 to UX. Haha jp brotha great content and starting out my first project using you as a resource! Hyped!

[@zerotoux]

aayyyyeee dope!!! Good luck on your first UX project man! You got this💪

[@jooorence]

Kevin Liang Hell yeh bro! You got an IG too?

[@zerotoux]

@@jooorence yup:) @ZeroToUX

[@TheVishu1990]

totally agree that if you are not aligning with your stakeholder before or during your research work then its gonna be high risk so your steps are really practical and nice way to start your research and reach to the goal and objective. I am looking for that how your script the research question ? and how do you it ? would like to have more insights regarding research method and some practical example.

[@mariceldizon9459]

Thank you so much for this!!

[@lindsaym9551]

This is awesome stuff, Kevin. I've recently found your channel and really love how accessible you make the content. One question for you though ...I feel like this advice sort of assumes that the stakeholders are able to answer these strategic questions. What do you do if your stakeholders are having trouble answering some or all of these questions you're posing? For ex. perhaps they haven't been coached to think so critically about research in the past, or think user research is just equivalent to usability testing, etc etc. For any or all of these reasons, how would you manage that situation? Thanks!!

[@zerotoux]

Omg that is such a great question! My first thought is if it's business, people should have a good idea of why they're doing the project. They must have some mission or goal in mind, and it's our job to help them get there. If they're unsure, that's an opportunity for research to shine the light and uncover next steps through more discovery or foundational research. We can then so stakeholders what kinds of open questions they have and we can answer those questions for them. At that point, UXR will be the guiding light for them, andwith these basic questions, we should be able to get the details we need to craft up research questions.

[@EmmaLeyden]

Super helpful, thank you so much!

[@paweenaha4120]

Awesome Kevin, you just nailed what I have been staggering, very useful, thank you!!

[@zerotoux]

You got it!! Thanks for watching!!

[@cazimir668]

Hi ! Thanks for your job, your video are very useful for a beginner as me :) I think it would be very interesting if you could share links to expose your inspiration or to let us treat the subject of the video in depth. Otherwise, your video is perfect. Keep on it !

[@zerotoux]

Hi! Thanks for watching and for your feedback! Absolutely, let me know what things you'd like me to go more in depth with!

[@cazimir668]

@@zerotoux For the moment, I am a little submerged by the amount of information and I don't really know on what I have to go more in depth. But when my ideas will be clearer, I will not miss the opportunity ;)

[@nathalied8569]

Hello ! Thanks for your amazing content ! Can you give us more details about the way you facilitate a kick-off meeting with stakeholders to get answer of each point (6:13) ? Do you just simply ask each questions and wait for the stakeholders to speak up or maybe it's a open conversation ? Do you ask stakeholders to write their objectives or research questions on post it, show it and discuss about it ? Thanks

[@gamma_girl]

Hi Kevin, can you share more about success metrics? The stakeholders aren't bothered much about measuring research impact and it's more of a researcher KPI from my experience. Say if I'm testing a feature with 10 participants I could define that 7/10 should be able to complete the task or the sus score must be above 70 etc. But when I conduct interviews to understand user needs how to define success?

[@SeriousMigs]

Hi!! Awesome stuff!!! Can you cite some sources for the FOG exercise? I'm a new UX researcher and I want to use this method to kickoff a first meeting with stakeholders 😊

[@timurhuseynov8794]

Big big bigger Thank you Kevin. But how about stakeholder interview analysis (specially in start up). Everyone together with post-it notes or by myself

[@zerotoux]

Together would be ideal, but if you can't you can do it yourself then ask for feedback

[@Adam326]

What do you do if the stakehoalders goals are not aligned?

[@zerotoux]

Great question - I make sure to prioritize with them and make sure we will align, and say "of these goals, which is highest priority right now?" If they're not aligned we just discuss it and let them know with this timeline, this is what we're able to accomplish. You can't do research without a clear goal. Sometimes you have to let them discuss it. Provide as much insights into your users as possible to minimize risk and to help them make the best informed decision on what to prioritize. You can also quickly validate and break assumptions.

[@Adam326]

Kevin Liang great answer! Thank you. Aspire to become a UX designer til next year, your videos help alot!

[@stanlim10]

Thanks for your videos. Super helpful and good refresher! Question: Would it make sense to identify the stakeholder objectives first before determining the research questions? Shouldn't the research questions be based off the research objectives?

[@zerotoux]

Oh absolutely! That's the general flow of the stakeholder meeting :D Hope I didn't misinform in the video!

[@stanlim10]

@@zerotoux I was just slightly confused when you said "the document you send out to stakeholders to brain dump research questions" - before this meeting. I am wondering how valuable this is if the team hasn't aligned on the research/business goals?

[@zerotoux]

@@stanlim10 That's a good point - which is precisely why I send it out. So that we can see what questions we all have, then prioritize them in the meeting. Now, you could do the opposite: go into the meeting and just ask what their goals are, then get the questions. Either way is fine to be honest. The former just makes sure that everybody gets a say prior to the meeting

[@sendashish]

Hi Kevin, This is a very well explained process, and it's kind of articulating what we used to do. I want to clarify one thing: Before understanding what we are going to do with the results in Q5, do we need to know the methods we gonna use to collect data? Because I couldn't find if you covered what methods gonna be used in this plan.

[@TheChristineVan]

Can you do a video on how ux researchers work with ux designers?

[@zerotoux]

I have one actually!! How UX research work with UX designers with Raphael Hyde!! Check it out

[@praizux8100]

In my experience, many stakeholders do not have the time to sit down with you and ask these questions. They tend to always have this busy-busy thing and do not value the time spent with you to help facilitate the research.

[@zerotoux]

People MAKE time for things they care about. If they don't have 30 minutes to talk to you about project goals and objectives to do your job right, then they most likely are not invested in research, and you can't get your job done efficiently. In which case your job now would be to start evangelizing and showing the value of research to them. It's an excuse - I've encountered this many times before. If they really don't want to sit down, then you start your documents and tag them in it as well as other stakeholders involved. Make an effort to show that you tried to include them (with other people being able to see this, too). If they try and blindside you after the project is done "oh, you didn't tell me about this" then they have no excuse. But if you're talking about stakeholders sitting down with you during the research sessions, I understand. I never expect my stakeholders to be present for all of my sessions, but I encourage them to show up to at least 1-2 and observe, even for a portion of the time.

[@danielna7904]

I just made a whole new document with all the questions for my kick-off meeting completely based on your video. Thank you so much! This was really helpful. However, would it be a good idea to share this document with my stakeholders for them to be prepared beforehand? Or would that make them overthink? It literally has everything that I will be asking during the meeting. Should I just keep this to myself?

[@zerotoux]

I'm glad it's helpful!! 👍 For anything new, you may want to start of by explaining why you will ask these questions, and sit down with them to discuss these questions with them. So yeah, feel free to share. And overthinking is not a bad thing! The onus isn't on us to make them feel comfortable, these are innocent questions and important ones toget aligned on the right problems!

[@danielna7904]

@@zerotoux That makes sense. Thanks again! One more question. What's the intention of discussing target participants during a kick-off meeting? Is it to make a user persona? What answer am I supposed to get through it? I'm a bit confused because my understanding is that you build a user persona after user interviews.

[@joshuamoran4894]

What if you don't know who? What tips do you have on deciding on who your Key Persona might be? I'm guessing stakeholders haven't done a field study and won't know exactly who :/

[@zerotoux]

You don't pre-define who your personas will be - you define them based on your research. First step would be to identify certain segments (based on demographic data or online behaviour) and then dig deeper. So for example, if I'm doing a study on music listeners, I might first look at quant data to see if there's any major differences in demographics (age, gender, location, income etc...) and then another look at behaviours (how long they listen to music for, what time of day they listen, what they listen to etc...). This will give you a first glimpse into who you want to segment your users, then dig deeper through qual interviews to find out why they do what they do. Does that make sense?

[@joshuamoran4894]

@@zerotoux, you're truly amazing. Thank you for the response

[@designtothrivestudio]

For the brainstorming document do you usually send this individually or include a shared document where everyone can collaborate? In teams I have worked with in the past the collaborative tools do not jive well with everyone and they prefer to take their own notes privately and then share individually. What has been your experience?

[@anthonycheu8732]

If your chain of management is primarily your project manager is it still worth it asking to schedule a meeting with stakeholders and upper management to make sure your research isn’t going to be a surprise to them/it will be accepted? Or can you rely on your PM being the spokesperson for them.

[@zerotoux]

Yes, whoever needs to know about the research, invite them, at least for kickoff!

[@bling0rb007]

What is a stakeholder?

[@adityakharial1798]

Hello Rupu, A stakeholder can be an investor, client, customer etc

[@bling0rb007]

@@adityakharial1798 little bit confused. I understand stakeholder by the definition that you explained but what does it has to do with users. Sorry, I'm super new to this.

[@adityakharial1798]

@@bling0rb007 Okay so why this is important because Stakeholders provide us the information we need so that we don't do something irrelevant or wrong. Let's say if you are doing a Banking project then you have to ask why we are doing this, what value it will provide to the users etc. I don't know if i cleared your doubt :)

[@bling0rb007]

@@adityakharial1798 I get it now. Thank you.