Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Jesse Dart on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 16:56:17 +0000

In this Anthro to UX podcast episode, Jesse Dart speaks with Matt Artz about his journey into UX research. Jesse shares his path from anthropology to UX research, highlighting his unique experience studying food and organizational anthropology in tech companies. He discusses his transition from academia to UX research through an agency in Rome, and his current role as a senior UX researcher at Hyatt Hotels, where he applies ethnographic methods to understand the complex hospitality industry.

About Jesse Dart

Jesse Dart is a film photographer, writer, and Italian/American citizen based in the western United States, he frequently travels to Europe. His writing, influenced by his background in cultural anthropology, focuses on adventure, travel, society, and culture. Jesse has contributed to various publications including Monocle, The Guardian, and Vice. As a social anthropologist, Jesse is a senior researcher for Hyatt Hotels, applying his expertise to understand cultural nuances in hospitality. He holds a PhD in anthropology from The University of Sydney and an M.A. in gastronomy from the University of Gastronomic Sciences. Jesse publishes a newsletter of short stories and photos called “Art of the Escape” and his first book “Feeding the Hustle” was released in 2021. He was awarded an Artist Opportunity Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts in 2024 and has appeared on the Anthropologist on the Street podcast.

Key Takeaways

Hotels are complex environments requiring an anthropologist’s eye to understand the nuances of guest experiences and organizational dynamics
UX research in hospitality must consider multiple stakeholders, from guests to staff members who interact with digital products
Ethnographic methods and fieldwork can validate and provide context to quantitative data in corporate settings
Photography and writing skills from anthropological training can complement and enhance UX research capabilities

Key Moments

1:00 Introduction to anthropology through international travel and exchange programs
2:46 Education in applied anthropology in Australia
11:17 Introduction to UX through Fifth Beat agency in Rome
14:39 Transition to Hyatt Hotels as senior UX researcher
19:28 Discussion of fieldwork and ethnographic methods in corporate research
26:06 Integration of photography and writing with UX research career

Sonja Hodgson on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Thu, 05 Sep 2024 13:12:30 +0000

In this Anthro to UX podcast episode, Sonja Hodgson speaks with Matt Artz about her journey into UX research. Sonja shares her path from anthropology to UX research, highlighting the transferable skills from her anthropological background. She discusses her experiences in various roles, including medical interpretation, program evaluation, market research, and her current position as a UX researcher at LexisNexis. Sonja emphasizes the value of anthropological methods in UX research and the importance of continuous learning in the field.

About Sonja Hodgson

Sonja Hodgson is a UX Researcher II at LexisNexis Legal, where she applies her expertise in applied anthropology to drive user-centric solutions in the legal technology sector. With a Master’s degree in Applied Anthropology from California State University, Long Beach, and a Bachelor’s in Anthropology from the University of South Carolina, Sonja brings a unique perspective to her work in UX research. Her career spans various roles, including medical interpretation, program evaluation, and market research, before transitioning into UX research.

Key Takeaways

Anthropologists already possess many of the essential skills needed for UX research, with UX terminology often being a new “language” to learn.
Continuous skill development, including learning statistics and data analysis tools, is crucial for career growth in UX research.
The integration of AI tools in UX research can significantly enhance efficiency and data analysis capabilities.
Networking and affordable online courses can be valuable resources for those looking to break into UX research, especially during challenging job markets.

Key Moments

1:54 Journey from anthropology to UX research
5:57 Transition from market research to UX research at LexisNexis
13:48 Applying anthropological skills in UX research
19:47 Integrating AI tools in UX research processes
22:52 Developing additional skills for UX research, including statistics
26:36 Advice for breaking into UX research in a tough job market

Fatimah Richmond on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 11:00:43 +0000

In this Anthro to UX podcast episode, Fatimah Richmond speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey. Fatimah shares her journey from computer science to anthropology and how she found her passion for human-computer interaction. She discusses the evolution of UX research and the importance of research maturity within organizations. Fatimah highlights the need for researchers to take ownership of their practice, understand power dynamics, and communicate the impact of their work effectively.

Opinions expressed are solely Fatimah Richmond’s own, and do not express the views or opinions of her current or former employers.”

About Fatimah Richmond

Fatimah Richmond is a UX Research Strategist with over 15 years of experience across AI, healthcare, enterprise software, productivity tools, talent solutions, and defense IT. She currently works at Google DeepMind, focusing on strategic research programs for AI User Experience (AIUX). Fatimah has held roles such as research manager, research program manager, and research assistant, executing qualitative research projects targeting large markets and specialized user groups. She completed her graduate studies in Applied Anthropology, Human Factors, and Design at San Jose State University and holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Information Systems from Tuskegee University. Her mission is to empower user research, enable ethical and inclusive products, and document her findings.

Key Takeaways

Fatimah emphasizes the importance of research maturity and understanding the impact of low-maturity organizations on the research process.
Researchers should embrace strategic operations and programs to tell the story of their function within the organization.
Creativity plays a key role in research innovation, and hobbies like poetry can enhance researchers’ creative thinking.
Taking a critical reflexive lens to study power dynamics and organizational culture can lead to a deeper understanding of research practices.

Key Moments

1:22 Integrating Anthropology and Computer Science in Human-Computer Interaction
4:38 Anthropology of Work and the Digital Divide in Silicon Valley
7:07 Evolution of UX Roles and Usability Engineering
9:58 Adapting UX Research Across Different Organizational Environments
16:00 The Evolution and Diversification of UX Practitioners
18:00 Evolving Research Operations and Strategic Integration in Business
24:07 Understanding Research Maturity in Organizations
25:28 The Debate on Storytelling Skills in User Research
26:32 Enhancing Research Operations Through Strategic Metrics and Self-Analysis
34:55 Exploring Research Maturity and Creativity in Emerging Technologies

Tariq Rahman on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 13:10:41 +0000

In this Anthro to UX podcast episode, Tariq Rahman speaks with Matt Artz about his UX journey. He discusses his fieldwork in Pakistan's real estate market and how it allowed him to explore the intersection of anthropology and UX research. He also highlights his UX internships at Zameen.com and Nike and discusses how his strategy consulting internship at ReD Associates has also helped position him for a career in UX research.

About Tariq Rahman

Tariq Rahman is currently finishing his PhD in Cultural Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, where he studied the role of social media and proptech in Pakistan’s emerging $1 trillion real estate market. He recently completed a UX Research internship at Nike and a Strategy Consulting internship at ReD Associates. His expertise lies in using ethnography to better understand the relationship between technology and culture, and leveraging these insights to inform product innovations and strategy.

Key Moments

00:03:00 - Fieldwork in Pakistan on real estate market
00:06:00 - First internship at Zameen.com, a property portal
00:12:05 - Opportunity to work with companies in emerging markets during field work
00:13:48 - Making the case for UX research and its impact in Pakistan
00:15:00 - Lack of practical advice from department, self-learning UX research
00:18:00 - Introduction to UX during Nike internship, bottom-up experimental approach
00:22:23 - Importance of learning and seeking help during internships
00:23:00 - Internship at Red Associates
00:23:35 - Field work on generative AI use cases
00:24:27 - Collaborative research process and analysis at Red Associates
00:25:15 - Team dynamics in a project team
00:26:00 - Differences in ownership and decision-making in UX and strategy consulting
00:26:51 - Learning to speak to business interests in strategy consulting
00:27:44 - Applying strategy consulting skills to make UX research impactful
00:29:44 - Starting early with UX research and internships

Rachel Puvvada on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 00:04:57 +0000

In this Anthro to UX podcast episode, Rachel Puvvada speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey. She first unknowingly discovered anthropology in high school through an ethnography project exploring cultural identity. This sparked her interest in studying people and cultures, leading her to earn a bachelor's degree in anthropology from the University of Georgia. To position her for a career after college, Rachel took on ethnographic projects, created an online portfolio, and landed a UX research internship at SiriusXM. Now, as a UX researcher at Independence Pet Group, Rachel leverages her anthropology background while emphasizing continuous learning and curiosity. Passionate about helping others, she shares her less common path from an undergrad to UX to inspire other anthropology graduates.

About Rachel Puvvada

Rachel Puvvada recently earned her Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Georgia. She is now a UX Researcher at Figo Pet Insurance, leading as the sole member of the user experience research team. Before this, she interned as a Product and UX Researcher at SiriusXM, where she tested product designs, synthesized data, and shared insights with cross-functional teams. As a recent graduate in a new UX role, Rachel is committed to providing guidance and mentorship to individuals entering the field with similar educational backgrounds.

Key Moments

00:00:59 Rachel's interest in anthropology and cultural identity 00:04:20 Rachel's experience in the anthropology program at the University of Georgia 00:07:00 Discovering UX research and deciding on a career path 00:09:30 Considering the need for an advanced degree in UX 00:11:00 Rachel's journey of breaking into the field without a master's or PhD 00:12:00 Building a portfolio with ethnographic projects and real-world experience 00:12:56 Importance of real-world experience and managing stakeholders 00:13:00 Applying to entry-level UX research jobs 00:12:56 Real-world experience and job search struggles 00:14:43 Difficulty breaking into the field with a bachelor's degree 00:15:24 Landing an internship at Sirius XM 00:16:00 Learning usability tests and specific UX research methodologies 00:16:58 Challenges of being a team of one and relying on mentors 00:18:11 Continuing to learn and explore new methodologies 00:19:00 Finding resources through online readings and mentor relationships 00:20:14 Encouragement for job seekers to persevere and stay curious 00:22:37 Joining user research meetups and groups for networking 00:24:39 Translating anthropological language into UX research language

Sydney Yeager on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 13:05:38 +0000

In this Anthro to UX podcast episode, Sydney Yeager speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey. She discusses how she discovered anthropology in college and fell in love with its holistic perspective. Sydney also talks about her involvement with the Digital Anthropology Networking Group (DANG) and the importance of establishing the credibility of anthropologists studying digital spaces. She highlights the value of storytelling in anthropology and how it translates to UX research. Sydney also shares her experience working in product management and UX research roles and discusses her current role at Walmart, where she focuses on providing tech solutions for employees and improving the employee experience.

About Sydney Yeager

Sydney Yeager is a digital anthropologist with a career spanning academia and the private sector. Currently serving as a Senior Design Researcher at Walmart Global Tech, she previously held positions at AcreTrader and Boston Scientific. In academia, Yeager was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Rollins College and remains an active figure in anthropological circles as the co-founder and chair of the Digital Anthropology Interest Group (DANG). Her work consistently aims to integrate anthropological methodologies into technology and product development.

Key Moments

00:01:00 - Sydney's background and how she discovered anthropology. 00:03:00 - Sydney's undergraduate research on health and healing traditions. 00:04:00 - Sydney's interest in digital anthropology and involvement with DANG. 00:06:00 - DANG's mission to establish the credibility of digital anthropology. 00:08:00 - Sydney's interest in UX research and applied anthropology. 00:10:00 - Sydney's early work in UX research and interaction with academics. 00:13:00 - Experience in product management and UX research. 00:18:00 - Role on the Associate Digital Experience team at Walmart. 00:19:00 - Support for tech in the new Walmart campus. 00:22:29 - Observations on building products for customers vs. employees 00:24:00 - Need to translate employee experience into business goals 00:25:00 - Importance of considering end users and customers separately 00:26:03 - Ways to get involved in the digital anthropology group

Julia Wignall on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Wed, 02 Aug 2023 15:10:47 +0000

In this Anthro to UX podcast episode, Julia Wignall speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey. She discusses the value of anthropology in the healthcare field and how she uses design research and service design to improve patient experiences. Julia emphasizes the importance of executive sponsorship and navigating the complexity of healthcare problems. She also highlights the need for qualitative methods, journey mapping, and service blueprinting in service design. Julia provides insights into the intersection of anthropology, design, and healthcare.

About Julia Wignall

Julia Wignall is an accomplished anthropologist currently serving as the Manager of Experience Insights & Design at Seattle Children's, where she brings the principles of social science to guide business decisions. With over a decade of experience in the field, she leads workforce, patient, and family experience insights, employing mixed methods research and service design for strategic innovation. Julia's expertise lies in ethical research practices, ethnography, and qualitative analysis, making her an invaluable asset in driving equity-focused design projects and generating actionable insights that impact product and program strategies throughout the organization.

Key Moments

00:01:25 - Julia's interest in anthropology and migration experiences 00:03:42 - Julia's work at Seattle Children's Hospital 00:04:48 - Transitioning to design research and learning on the job 00:07:06 - The value of executive sponsorship in facilitating change 00:09:24 - Navigating limitations and communicating research findings 00:10:57 - The role of business anthropology in understanding organizational culture 00:12:16 - Perspectives on anthropology and design in the medical field 00:13:42 - Facilitating change and adoption in a collaborative healthcare environment 00:15:29 - Using service design to navigate complexity and solve problems 00:18:00 - Incorporating technology into service design in healthcare 00:21:00 - Recommended skills for those interested in service design in healthcare 00:24:59 - Upcoming events and opportunities for networking in the field 00:25:59 - How to get in touch with Julia

Jason Garrison on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Thu, 08 Jun 2023 12:28:03 +0000

In this Anthro to UX podcast episode, Jason Garrison speaks with Matt Artz about his UX journey. The conversation covers Jason's journey from being an educator to becoming a cultural anthropologist and eventually transitioning to UX research. Throughout the episode, Jason emphasizes the importance of empathy, networking, and relationship-building in UX research. Additionally, he provides guidance on pursuing a PhD in anthropology and delves into the role of research operations in UX, discussing strategic thinking and emotional intelligence. Jason also highlights the benefits of embedded ethnography for understanding research team function and growth and offers advice for breaking into research operations.

About Jason Garrison

Jason Garrison is a seasoned UX Researcher, currently leading projects at AnswerLab, where he utilizes his mastery in mixed-methods to deliver valuable ethnographies and help clients understand their target audiences better. With over five years in the field, his journey has encompassed roles at UX Cabin, Comcast, Rock Central, and Google, each contributing to his unique skill set. His tenure has been marked by significant achievements such as initiating the first user research program for the Rocket Mortgage Mobile app at Rock Central and enhancing internal developer tools at Google. Jason's ability to empathize with users and translate insights into actionable results, combined with his dedication to inclusivity, makes him a valuable asset in the UX industry.

Key Moments

00:00:00 Introduction to the Anthro to UX podcast 00:00:38 Introduction to Jason Garrison 00:01:28 Jason's early interest in anthropology 00:02:25 Jason's practicum in Malaysia and exposure to applied anthropology 00:04:10 Jason's interest in the practical application of anthropology 00:05:57 Jason's discovery of UX during the pandemic 00:07:08 Jason's transition to UX research 00:09:30 The importance of storytelling in UX research 00:11:20 The role of empathy in UX research 00:06:28 Jason's decision not to pursue a PhD in anthropology 00:08:14 Discussion on the value of a PhD for UX research 00:10:00 Jason's view on the practical application of anthropology in UX 00:11:37 Addressing the criticism of anthropology being watered down in UX 00:12:47 Importance of anthropology in understanding business and value proposition 00:13:51 Research operations contributes to good anthropology 00:15:38 Research operations enables researchers to be great storytellers 00:16:58 Research operations facilitates great tools for ongoing research 00:18:28 Importance of intake process and repository in research 00:18:56 Research operations socializes what the UX research team does and inspires towards what could be done in the future 00:19:17 Additional skills for research operations: learning how to speak the language of business, understanding KPIs, and being able to anticipate and intuit what's valuable for a product team 00:23:13 Embedded ethnography is a great way to provide outside feedback on how a research team can grow and where it needs more resources 00:24:33 Encouragement for those interested in research operations to talk to people in strategy and product partners to understand the relationship between research and design 00:26:15 Jason Garrison's contact information

Sarah Elizabeth Yoho on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Wed, 17 May 2023 01:06:21 +0000

In this Anthro to UX podcast episode, Sarah Elizabeth Yoho speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey. The conversation covers Sarah's journey from law to medical anthropology, her transition into UX research during the pandemic, and the importance of translating anthropological experiences into the job application process. Sarah also discusses the concept of impact in research, the role of operations in policy implementation, and the significance of strategy in linking company goals to research and data points. Additionally, she highlights the potential for UX research in financial services.

About Sarah Elizabeth Yoho

Sarah Elizabeth Yoho is a Senior UX Researcher with a focus on strategy, policy and operations, and a specialization in ethnographic research. She has successfully planned, facilitated, and delivered diverse projects with a variety of clients in various sectors, including banks, NGOs, nonprofits, peak bodies, consultancies, and lobbyists. Her professional skillset features an international profile, including work at the Australian Medical Council (Policy Strategy & Compliance), the European Commission (Policy Research) & Macquarie University (Program Development). At AnswerLab, Sarah Elizabeth works in the Financial Services Team where she leverages her policy strategy background and ethnographic expertise to lead strategic UX Research projects, facilitate workshops, and foster client relationships. She holds a Masters in Medical Anthropology & Public Health (MCHaM) from the Australian National University and a Marie Skłodowska Curie PhD in Medical & Environmental Anthropology from the University of Leeds.

Joseph Galanek on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Wed, 12 Apr 2023 12:18:21 +0000

In this Anthro to UX podcast episode, Joseph Galanek speaks with Matt Artz about his UX journey. The conversation covers Joe's journey from being inspired by cultural experiences when traveling to pursuing degrees in anthropology and public health. He shares his challenges in finding a job in anthropology departments due to specific research interests and how he discovered opportunities in consulting agencies that value qualitative and quantitative research. The discussion also explores Joe's work leading client engagements as a UX Strategy Manager at Answerlab and his experience mentoring anthropologists transitioning into business.

About Joseph Galanek

Joseph Galanek is an accomplished user experience researcher and UXR strategist with over 15 years of experience in academia and industry. As the UX Strategy Manager at AnswerLab, he collaborates with ecommerce leaders, designing and implementing customized research that meets partners' objectives and business goals. Joseph's expertise includes qualitative and mixed methods research, scoping, and client engagement. With a strong academic background, including a PhD in Cultural Anthropology and an MPH from Case Western Reserve University, Joseph has held research roles at various organizations such as HireWisdom, EDUCAUSE, and ICF. He has contributed to impactful projects, including CDC health campaigns and national HIV prevention initiatives, and is known for balancing methodological rigor with pragmatic strategies.

Key Moments

00:02:00 - Reflections on a Career in Anthropology 00:06:36 - Exploring Career Opportunities in Research Consultancies 00:08:12 - Applying Qualitative Research Skills in an Applied Environment 00:14:17 - Collaborative Efforts and Demonstrating Value in Anthropology Research 00:16:00 - Moving from Academia to Business: Advice for Anthropologists 00:19:41 - Making a Good First Impression on LinkedIn 00:21:19 - Analysis of Research Objectives and Actionable Recommendations for Development Teams 00:22:48 -Exploring Trends in Cost-Effective UX Research

Rama Vennelakanti on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 01:49:33 +0000

In this Anthro to UX podcast episode, Rama Vennelakanti speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey. The conversation covers Rama's journey from discovering anthropology to her stint in market research and, finally, her landing in the field of UX. It also touches on Rama's willingness to jump in head first and learn something when needed. It is an inspiring example of how one should not be afraid of the unknown and embrace new challenges. Rama's fearlessness has enabled her to explore different areas of research and innovation, leading to her success as a skilled anthropologist and UX strategist.

About Rama Vennelakanti

As an anthropologist, Rama Vennelakanti has become a skilled researcher and UX strategist, currently working as a Senior UX Researcher & Strategist in UXDX Developer Relations, Network, and Edge Group at Intel Corporation. Her role involves utilizing her extensive experience in driving UX strategy backed by research, which has led to a proven track record of positively impacting businesses and their customers. Previously, Rama was a Senior User Researcher and UX Lead at HP for over nine years. During this time, she honed her ability to work effectively with global multi-disciplinary teams and internal and external stakeholders in innovation environments, enabling her to deliver exceptional results across various industry verticals ranging from IT, Telecom to FMCG. Her passion for technology and commitment to driving actionable insights from research has been consistent theme throughout her career.

Victoria de Aranzeta on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 02:01:14 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Victoria de Aranzeta speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey. The conversation covers Victoria's journey from art school to anthropology. She discusses how she combines those skills as a product designer, and how her anthropological study of tools contributes to her work today.

About Victoria de Aranzeta

Victoria de Aranzeta is a multi-disciplinary UX designer and researcher passionate about creating purpose-driven tools and decolonizing design thinking. She is currently working at NCX as a Senior Product Designer, where she leads the design of the Landowner Platform and operationalizes ethical research practices across the company. Victoria has also worked as a founding product designer and researcher at Spora Health, where she led the design vision and research strategy for creating culture-centered healthcare products for People of Color. She established and led decolonizing design and research practices to build people-centered experiences and created processes, research toolkits, and a design system with accessible components. Prior to Spora Health, Victoria was an interaction designer on crowdsourcing software at Google on the Crowdsource team, where she partnered with other designers, researchers, and engineers to create a more ethics-rooted AI. With vast experience in ethical research, qualitative research, UX writing, design systems, and strategy, Victoria is a creative designer and critical thinker specializing in decolonizing design thinking, visual design, accessible design, and interaction design.

Paige Nuzzolillo on the Anthro to UX Podcast with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 22:59:06 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Paige Nuzzolillo speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey. The conversation covers Paige's early research career in participatory action research, the importance of training and mentorship, and how she uses art-based research (ABR) methods in her work as a Senior UX Researcher at Indeed.

About Paige Nuzzolillo

Paige Nuzzolillo is an energetic, collaborative, strategic, participatory, and creative qualitative UX Researcher. She currently works at Indeed.com on the SMB team with 50+ other researchers. She is embedded in a product team building tools to help fast-growing employers find the candidates they need regularly.

Episode Transcript

Please note this transcript is an automated transcription and may have some errors. 0:00:00.7 Matt Artz: Welcome to the Anthro to UX podcast. You will learn how to break into UX within anthropology degree through conversations to competing anthropologists working in user experience, you will learn firsthand how others make the transition, what they learned along the way and what they would do differently. We will be discussing what it means to do UX research from a practical perspective, and what you need to do to prepare a resume and portfolio on your host, Matt Artz, a business anthropologist specializing in design anthropology and working at the intersection of product management, user experience and business strategy. Let's get started. How everyone will come back. A matter it. So the entry podcast, I'm here today with Paige Nuzzolillo and Paige is a senior user experience researcher at indeed previously a senior user experience research here, Delta Dental of Washington. So page, would you mind by town everybody, a little bit about your origin story... 0:00:58.2 Paige Nuzzolillo: Yeah, thanks so much, man. Yeah, my last name is a hard one to pronounce, I actually just got married and I'm still not gonna change it, I'm still gonna torture myself, I guess. So yeah, so I've been working in UX research for about five years now. But we've been working in research for a lot longer, and so I will say that my anthro origin story really started probably just with my really strong desire and wanting to travel and my family, not traveling anywhere really ever... My first time on a plane ever, I was in DC, I went to DC from Connecticut, very short plant, and I was 16 years old, so I hadn't traveled really outside of New England for a really long time, so I was always really, really interested in traveling, and I also just generally grew up with really a big hunch knowing that there's not one way of living, and I felt just really open-minded as a kid. I think part of that is also probably having a very strong European influence, my grandparents were immigrants from Italy, and so I grew up around them and just essentially immersed in European culture, they came to the US when they were both around 20. 0:02:20.6 Paige Nuzzolillo: So my grandmother was also one of my primary caregiver, so yeah, definitely really immersed in just living in other cultures, and then on top of that, I also worked a lot with my mom as a kid to learn about history and archeology. I actually went on an auricular dig with her at a historical site, she did a lot of marketing and event coordination for different circles in Connecticut, and so I just grew up in museums as well. I had a birthday party where I took a bunch of my friends to the Noah Webster house, as in the no, Webster Dictionary. And we all put bones on and made cake by the heart and played colonial games, so that was my idea of fun when I was 10 years old, so they were a little different, but overall, I think I just really learned at a young age that... And I was also just really drawn to a young age that there's really not one right way to live, and I think that a lot of people also talk about how anthropology is a mindset. I feel like I hear that a lot when anthropology comes up in conversation with other anthropologists, and I think that... 0:03:30.4 Paige Nuzzolillo: It's absolutely true. I think that I had that mindset as a young kid, and eventually when I found anthropology, all the concepts of cultural overall Tevis and open-mindedness and being non-judgmental, all these things really just fit really nicely, but really just how I lived my life for a very long time. And then also I ended up traveling, so I ended up going to ER of backpacking with my best friend. I hated Spanish when I was in school, I felt really devoid of context for me, it was my worst class, and then when I went backpacking with my best friend... I ended up falling in love with Spanish. We spent a lot of time in Barcelona, Madrid, and basically I decided that I was gonna go back there. And so I ended up teaching English and Spain as well. So I had a really immersive experience living in Spain for nine months, and also six months studying abroad, I was about a year and a half total. And I was contracted by the Spanish government when I was teaching in a Spanish secondary school. And I was living with Spanish roommates that didn't speak any English, and same when I was studying abroad, living with a family that didn't speak in the English, so definitely put myself in situations throughout my life that really encouraged me to learn about other cultures, both in school, when I ended up learning more about anthropology and actually switching my major from English, Anthropology, and then also just these other experiences that I had was studying abroad and then after school also teaching. 0:04:54.3 Paige Nuzzolillo: So yeah, so I think that overall, that's why I talk about travel, just because I think that's what really instigated me to actually go ahead and actually study anthropology in the first place, and... Yeah, so then from there, I ended up... I ended up actually sitting in a career and research panel at the University of Connecticut, and that was right when I had switched my major from English to anthro, and I ended up meeting researchers that worked at a community-based research institute in Connecticut, and I ended up working there for four years as an intern, and then I also worked there as my first full-time physician and a school as well, and I was involved in community-based participatory action research in multiple different topics from substance abuse prevention, STI and HIV prevention, and also substance abuse prevention as well, so it was involved in a lot of really amazing work with researchers that were also a PS, an anthropology that were also professors as well, so I had a lot of really great exposure to research as well when I was in Applied Anthropology, when I was actually in school as an undergrad too. 0:06:09.5 Matt Artz: Then you said that you graduated and you didn't... You worked in research for a while before getting to us, so... What did that journey look like? 0:06:18.6 Paige Nuzzolillo: Yeah, so that's when I would say so working at ICR at the Institute for community research, I first was an intern there, so I was involved in an NIH-funded study that was around female condom acceptability and accessibility for those at high risk of HIV STIS and Hartford Connecticut. And so I worked on that study for a long period of time, I was involved in qualitative data analysis, coding interviews, transcribing interviews as an intern, and then also actually conducting interviews myself in Spanish and English, which was really awesome. As an undergrad, it was amazing opportunity to have that ability to do that kind of work, and then also I was collecting data in inter-surveys as well, where male and female condoms were sold, so I really got a sense of what data collection was like as an intern, and also just what it would be like to actually go into the field and work on some of these more sensitive topics as well, and then... So I worked on that project for a period of time, and then I ended up getting my first full-time position, and that was when I actually worked on two participatory action research projects, where I was involved in teaching youth how to actually conduct research themselves on topics that were of importance to them in their communities as all... 0:07:49.2 Paige Nuzzolillo: Partier action research is all about change in a community and basically using research as a tool for community organizing, and so I was involved in actually teaching youth that were part of these programs all about qualitative and quantitative data collection, and brought them through trainings on how to conduct an interview, how to do a simple survey and also ecological modeling and things like this, and then we actually would take all this data that they gathered on various topics in our case, that was food justice and substance abuse prevention related issues, took all this data and then package it in a way that we could then present it to the community, and this is where I started to also get a taste for more arts-based research methodologies as well. So one of the things that we did for Substance Abuse Research, that project that we did specifically, we took the data and then worked with the teen researchers to actually storyboard that data into a story, and then actually filmed them... The team researchers starring in the video that was informed by the research that they had actually done, presenting their stories that they had gathered through doing this research with their peers, and then presented those short psas essentially presented those to a large community in gathering. 0:09:16.5 Paige Nuzzolillo: So we had a prevention-related town home meeting, and that was where we showcase these videos and had a panel discussion with experts in the community related to substance abuse prevention, and really we're able to show that the data informed these stories, and also through that, through that exercise actually trained these teenagers in how to actually conduct their own research as well, so just incredible opportunities in learning about data collection directly from Applied anthropologists myself, and then also being able to provide the tools of research for community members as well to really help promote change positive change in their communities too, so that's a really incredible exposure to... Yeah, to really using research as a tool for change early on, and that I would say is the foundation of how I conduct research as a user researcher as well, and I have a really strong background in design thinking, methodologies and ideation techniques and things like this, so always encouraging my team to actually take the research that I have done, but actually do something with it, really make sure that it's going to be something that's going to be integrated into the product and figuring out how we can do that together as a team. 0:10:39.0 Paige Nuzzolillo: So really big foundational, I would say methodology, theory of how I conduct my research and now how I work. 0:10:49.2 Matt Artz: So I definitely wanna come back to some of how you bring some of these participatory sort of concepts into us, but... Let's get there first. So how did you discover us? And tell us a little bit about how you ended up at indeed. 0:11:05.7 Paige Nuzzolillo: Yeah, so this was really... I think it was a very winding path for me, so I eventually left ICR, the Institute for community research. I had started kind of dabbling in social media and marketing and also event coordination, and I ended up getting a job at Yelp, and so that kind of started my journey in Tech, I worked part-time at Yelp and then also worked in an event coordination for a bit, try that out, really didn't wanna do event coordination anymore, I liked the experience at Yelp, but I needed it to be more full-time, so I ended up then transitioning into marketing communications, and that really started to be more digital-focused as time went on for me, I worked at the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation in York at the headquarters, and so it was always kind of involved in health or always was drawn back to health and mission-oriented companies as well in organizations. And so I worked at Judo for a little while, and then eventually I said, Well, maybe I wanna do web development. So then I did a General Assembly program, learned front on web development. I had all these various positions, communications, marketing, I even dabbled a little bit in UX design, I also did project management later on, front-end web development, however, it sounds like their scatter, but all of these roles actually had really brought me to exactly where I needed to be... 0:12:37.3 Paige Nuzzolillo: And all these skills, maybe minus the really specific things about CSS and HTML, I really don't need to know that now, but I'd say that all of these various positions that I've had have really helped me in UX research and being a UX researcher, especially project management, marketing communications and also being able to communicate with developers, being able to communicate with our designers, being able to have also actually even been a junior product manager before I even working in product management too. So eventually I ended up, I was working in product training for a little bit for a graphic design-focused company, and I ended up actually getting laid off from that role, and I decided that I needed to make a change and really I wanted to transition into UX I had really gotten a great exposure in that position to what us... What even was in the first place, and so I decided to do a mentorship program through hexagon UX in Seattle, and through that program, I had a mentor for three months... We met bi-weekly, I think. She was absolutely amazing. She looked at my resume. At one point, I told her, I said, I don't know if I want to do design or research, I really am not sure. 0:13:58.4 Paige Nuzzolillo: And she looked at my resume and she said, You've done research for a long time, like why not do research, it seems like it really matches well with your background, and so then I ended up getting some pro bono projects, and I ended up getting some clients, I built a portfolio, I did some research, and then I ended up getting my first full-time position, it was a contract role to start at Del ideal of Washington, they were looking for a lead, essentially lead researcher. There was no other researcher at the company at that time, so they were really looking for someone to build the research practice there, and there were other experts in product and design thinking that were there, but there was no dedicated researcher, so I really came in as a contractor at first, but then I ended up moving into full-time in that role, and I ended up... Yeah, being there for quite a while, did a lot to build their research capacity and teach the company about research, but super happy to be at indeed. Indeed has been an absolutely incredible company to work for, not only as a mission-driven in terms of our mission is to help people get jobs, but also the work that I do is just extremely fascinating, and the team that I work for is also incredibly supportive and also just extremely ambitious, intelligent, very diverse in terms of skill sets and backgrounds in terms of researchers, so that's been amazing to learn from other researchers who... 0:15:29.8 Paige Nuzzolillo: I came from that experience at Delta Dental, Washington, which was great and very different than what I'm experiencing now, but the key difference really being that I was the Solo researcher at Belden to Washington, so really a team of one as opposed to... And indeed, where I work with about, I think, 100 researchers now across our various organizations, so we have job-seeker, small, medium-sized businesses, and then Enterprise, and then we also do have a social impact team, and there's actually a few others that... I'm sorry, I'm not totally remembering right now, I think it's internal platforms is one, so apologies. But I work on small, medium-sized businesses, and so I do research specifically with employers, and that doesn't mean know that I'm only able to do research with employers, I'm translating a lot of data as well with various other teams, with job seeker and with enterprise as well. So yeah, so it's been great, it's just a really, really complex ecosystem to be working in, and I feel like I'm just constantly invigorated by the work that I do. 0:16:37.4 Matt Artz: So you said a few things in there that I wanna just have some quick follow-ups on one was that you... You did some pro bono work. When was I used a mentor and one that is that you took a contract role, but how do you think those paths were for you? And do you recommend them? You know, I know you can't universally recommend them to everybody, but now, what did you guys maybe learn from those three experiences? 0:17:01.7 Paige Nuzzolillo: Oh, yeah, definitely. So I will say, first of all, first of all, I know that being able to take pro bono work is a pre-lunch in the first place, so to first start out by saying that I was actually taking unemployment benefits, and I ended up being able to do some projects on the side and help people out and really also increase my own skills, so that really worked well for me. Financially, I was in a position where it just made sense... Contract role as well. I think the contract positions can be really, really incredible for someone just starting out, and also for someone that is just in need of a more flexible working environment or situation as well, like new parents, for example, the contract role can really help give that flexibility of not having to work over time necessarily, is working like a strict 40-hour work week or less potentially, and then also, you know, if you don't like the job of, you can leave, we can always leave our rules, I guess, but I think that it's a little bit more open in terms of when your contract's done, if there's no work after the contracts done, then you can move on to another position. 0:18:19.3 Paige Nuzzolillo: So I think the contract rules are also just really great if you are the type of person that likes to have different projects on a regular basis and likes to be exposed to different types of companies or things like this... So for me, that was amazing. At that period of time in my life at this point, I really appreciate the stability of having a full-time role as a senior UX researcher, but I think that contract rules, especially when you're starting out, can really just give you the exposure that you would not get really easily otherwise, and pro bono work, I think is great too, but it's really not a long-term solution, it's really just something in my mind to be able to get your foot in the door and get something in your portfolio and get some experience, a contract role can pay you. And I think that, yeah, it's just great for really starting out because I do think it can be more challenging when you're starting to get that full-time salary position, so if you're trying to transition into UX research from another previous role, and then mentor... So I absolutely am such an advocate of mentorship, I'm an advocate of mentorship across every single level of your career. 0:19:39.9 Paige Nuzzolillo: I was just mentored in fact by a lead UX researcher, and indeed, I believe she mentored me for like three months or something like that, or two months for pretty much the whole summer. That was amazing. I also have mentored other folks and indeed as well, and that's also been an incredible opportunity, I just wrapped up a nine months with someone who's a mid-level researcher, and I also have been mentored not only through that Huston UX mentorship program, which really gave me that impetus of even doing UX in first place, but I've also been mentored actually when I was at Del didnt Al Washington, because I was a solo researcher there, I actually used an educational stipend through the company, which is an incredible opportunity. I always have utilized as much as I can, the educational simonds that have been provided to me, and I'm incredibly grateful for that opportunity at my various companies, I don't think I would be where I am today if I really hadn't been given that opportunity of having those educational stipends. But so when I was undulating ton, I was a solo researcher, and I really just... I saw it, there was a gap in some of my support in terms of... 0:20:57.0 Paige Nuzzolillo: I was pretty new to UX research. I was in a senior role to start out, and I had the experience of working in many different companies prior to that, but was a Senior in UX research, I would say it was a lot more... Like mid-level junior. So for me, I really needed some support as a researcher, and so I actually worked with Nikki Anderson, who's based in Jersey now. She used to be based in Germany. But Nickerson is absolutely incredible. She helped me for nine months, and I use my educational stipend, and I met with Nikki, I think bi-weekly then too, and I actually got permission to be able to share with Nikki some of the work that I was doing. And so she was able to give me some really tangible feedback, and that just made me just an incredibly better researcher, and I still have a relationship with Nikki, and I'm just so so grateful for all the opportunities of mentorship, both that I've provided for others and also that I've been provided with two. So I am a huge advocate of mentorship really at every single level of your career. 0:22:09.6 Matt Artz: So now back to indeed, how do you bring in the the street of your participatory action research into the work you do there? 0:22:17.6 Paige Nuzzolillo: Yeah, so I like that it's really... It's almost like going back to what I was saying in the beginning, that Anthropology is like a mindset, obviously it's a lot more than a mindset, but I think that similarly, when I think about conducting UX research, part of my work is really... It's a mindset that I'm always thinking about how to really tangibly create change. So it's not enough for me to just do the research. Especially if it's a more generative research that might be a little bit harder to translate directly into product changes, I think that that's where there really becomes a lot of opportunity for creativity and for that participatory aspect of the work, where you can really work with your stakeholders to figure out how to take that research and all that data, all that work that's gone into collecting that data, how to really take all those insights and actually translate them into real product changes or improvements or something entirely new, maybe a completely new feature or tool or whatever it might be, that did not exist before, prior to the research, really helping to uncover those insights as to what would be helpful for people... 0:23:35.1 Paige Nuzzolillo: And so I have been trained through the Nielsen Norman Group. Again, super grateful for all of my companies to give me educational stipends... It's made this possible. I'm actually two, two classes away from getting my Masters certificate through NG, so I've taken a lot of courses with them, and my favorite ones are the Design Thinking ones, and so I've just had a lot of very tangible ways to translate insights into actual ideas or actionable, things that actually enhance the product, so I would say I try to run an ideation session actually, especially if it's a generative research study, if it's more of a evaluated study, which actually I don't really do a ton of a value of research anymore at this point, we have a rapid research team at indeed, which is incredible. And they support a lot of that work. They're actually also contractors, so they're all new in UX research and transitioning into it, so great opportunity for them for starting out, so just to go back to what I was saying before about contract roles and really how amazing that is to start out... So when I'm doing a generative study, I will always follow up with some sort of ideation session, normally I'll produce as part of my read out and part of my recommendations, some form of How might we statements to really get the team to start thinking about what are some of the opportunities here and how can we take these questions, these targeted yet also meant to be not limiting questions in our thinking and really get the team to think creatively about What can we do here as a result of these learnings? And so I run... 0:25:30.1 Paige Nuzzolillo: What I've done mostly because I am working fully remotely now, what it mostly is, is a pretty standard post-op type activity, really just with how might we statements and using Mira, which has been great. I absolutely love Miro, but basically using Mira to have the team, and that means product, UX, design, engineering and potentially other stakeholders as well outside of that core team, really have them just think of various potential solution ideas that really help address those... How might we questions? Those, how might we statements... And so that's what I've done mainly. I have done some more involved ideation, brainstorming, cross-team across various GMs, so across job seeker, enterprise and SMB at indeed as well, so there has been a little bit more complex type of ideation exercises that I have done, but typically with my team, I just really try to make sure that it's a concrete part, that's also an expected part of my process, so we road math every quarter, and when I plan study, I always make sure that my team is aware that we're going to have... Especially like I said, if it's a generative study, but we'll have an ideation session of some kind, exactly what it will look like is... 0:26:53.1 Paige Nuzzolillo: Gets determined a little bit later. After the research is done. But really make sure that they know that, Yeah, this is part of what we do. This is just part of our process. So it's worked really well for me. I normally scope out a week, so I don't go by a ton of time, that can mean that as I'm wrapping up my redo and developing my presentation, I'm also working on in getting my ID and session materials ready, but it tends to be enough time for me especially that I've used kind of a similar template, so it's been easier and easier as time goes on, 'cause I'll kind of just reuse that previous template and just tweak things as needed, so it's really become part of just my regular process, and I would advise researchers that are not doing this and that are involved in more generative work to definitely think about how can you actually make this and expect it and regular part of your process as well. 0:27:47.1 Matt Artz: So you're speaking a lot of that design thinking, obviously you're an advocate, you've also talked about other skills you have, you have some design experience, product management, so obviously all of those can contribute, but if somebody was looking to upscale in a particular thing, is there anything that you think has helped you the most? Yeah. 0:28:09.7 Paige Nuzzolillo: So I would say that the courses that I took, so I started... Depends on where you are in your career. If you're just starting out, I think that both mentorship, like a really structured mentorship, like I did with Nick Anderson on a bi-weekly basis, where I can really get structured feedback directly from my mentor, I think that that's a really incredible opportunity for someone that's just starting out, I also do think that a lot of the Nelson Norman Group courses that are part of either the US certificate, which is five courses, or the master certificate, which is 15, many of them are also, I would say more beginner to intermediate. Some of them are also geared towards managers, but I haven't really taken any of those as an individual contributor, but I think that... I think those are really two of, I would say some of the best way is to up-skill, find someone that you admire, that you're really interested in the work that they do, it can be someone that maybe isn't a formal mentor and you could approach them and ask them. I personally recommend trying to find someone though that actually does have a structured mentorship program, 'cause I do think it can be a little bit harder to kind of get regular feedback that you might need if you're just starting out. 0:29:36.3 Paige Nuzzolillo: I think if you're a little bit further on in your career, then I think having a more less structured mentorship is totally doable and then Nelson Norman Group courses. Yeah, I just think they're amazing. I think you can also choose specifically the ones that are in the areas that you feel like you need to up-skill in, so there's a really wide variety of courses that they have, some or more stats-focused, some are more design thinking. Some are more UX design even. Some of them are specific methods, like ethnographic methods and diary studies, also usability testing, so there's a lot also that are specific to methodologies that can be super helpful too, and then there's also some that are more, I would say, potentially more senior in terms of influencing stakeholders, I took one, I can't remember exactly the name of it, but something similar to that where it's actually about influence, I was actually... I think it was called Designing influence. So yeah, so I think that there's just a wide variety of courses you can take, and I also think, you know... Like I said, I think taking a contract, I think is just a huge way to get your foot in the door or break into the industry on, and also just get some project experience if you don't have any yet, and even if you do have some... 0:30:56.2 Paige Nuzzolillo: It's still just such a great way to build your portfolio and to get paid while doing it, and to also build your connections too, so you're constantly getting people from each contract that you go to, you're building your network, people are starting to know your work, and I think that's just an excellent career move in general, so... Yeah, so I would say those are probably the biggest things. I do think that having a portfolio in the first place is critical, so figuring out how can you get a portfolio if you don't have one yet, what are some of the stuff you can take to really create one? And I do think that having a contract role and also pro bono work or two ways to do that. 0:31:35.2 Matt Artz: So in a portfolio is something that's debated a bit, how do you think researchers should approach a portfolio? 0:31:42.3 Paige Nuzzolillo: Yeah, I think this is so difficult. Actually, I'm glad you asked. I actually know if I necessarily have an answer to this, I struggle with this. I'm involved in interviewing it indeed, and it's just really hard, you... By nature, research might not be as flashy and visually appealing as a UX design portfolio, so I think that's something that we can potentially struggle with as researchers also, there's probably a lot of sensitive data that we cannot share, so under NDA, there's just certain things we can't talk about... That also makes it really challenging to actually really flush out the story. I think what I've stuck with is mainly sharing my process and trying to share as much as I can, as in death as I can about my process, so how do I approach a question that's been posed by my team, how do I take that question during a kick-off call that I've had with my product team, with my design team, and how do I take that question and translate that into a research question that's answerable as well by research. So do that work, so show how you're doing that potentially, if that's part of your process, and then what are the tools you're using, what are specifically different artifacts that you produce throughout the entire process, do you have a road map that you do... 0:33:17.7 Paige Nuzzolillo: Do you plan a roadmap quarterly with your team that can also showcase some project management skills as well, and scoping projects in general. Do you have a kick-off document that you use, where you have the list of stakeholders, where you have the research questions, where you have notes from the kick-off, things like this, and obviously you can't share all that stuff, but can you show in The Soliton of it... So really just showcase how you would approach a research question, and then also, I think whatever images you are able to share or also visuals you can create on your own, which really demonstrate your process, I think is also a really great way to handle this. I do think that, you know, when you're interviewing, interviewers really are not going to be spending likely a lot of time looking at your portfolio, they're going to be scanning it and trying to get the most important information quickly at a glance, because they're looking at many of them... So I really think that trying to make things as visual as possible and as succinct as possible while also conveying the most important information that's critical, it's critical also just in presenting data as well and presenting insights. 0:34:36.6 Paige Nuzzolillo: So I think actually, I think it actually is a lot harder than including tons of detail... It's something I still am working on. I tend to be very, very stuck in details, and I do think it's a lot harder to look at the big picture, have all those details and to really see the big picture, and I think it's a critical... Absolutely critical skill for UX researchers, and not only when you're interviewing and developing our portfolio, but also as you're actually in the job too. 0:35:08.0 Matt Artz: Great in... So one last thing you're on, Indeed, I know you're involved in helping to spread the good work of all the researchers at indeed, and so would you tell us a little bit about the committee you're on and what you're trying to do to publicize some of that work? 0:35:25.1 Paige Nuzzolillo: Yeah, yeah, so I am on the editorial board for the indeed design blog, and the and design blog showcases work the researchers, designers, content folks, anyone in UX basically showcases the work that they've done at indeed can take the form of case studies can take the form of interviews with various people at indeed, lots of different kinds of articles and overall, if you're interested in working at indeed, are interested just in the work that we do and learning more about it, or as interested in general about what does it really mean to be a UX researcher and what does that work look like? And what are the kinds of things maybe that I'd be doing also, there are a lot of career articles as well, you can also... I just talked a lot about my career story, but there's a lot of other kinds of articles about that as well from other perspectives, but I think that overall, the design book just does a really great job of presenting the work that we do, and also potentially you know how people got to where they are. And so yeah, so I am writing an article that will be coming out soon, hopefully in January, but it's actually on design thinking and it's on exactly what I've talked about today a little bit, which is that foundational concept that really guides my work just around using research to create change and how can we do that? How can we create impact and how can we also utilize the tools of design thinking to really create change, to really instigate that change and really make sure that our team is really integrating the research that we've done in the product. 0:37:13.6 Paige Nuzzolillo: And not just letting it sit on a shelf, and so the article that I'm reading is going to have some tangible resources as well and templates that people can use to run both synchronous and asynchronous ideation sessions, specifically with their team to really have... You have your team really dive deeply into the insights and come up with solutions that are really graded in those insights, but yeah, so the design plug, lots of articles, and there's way more coming out as well as a dimension minus, but there's tons more that are in the works right now. So definitely have a full pipeline coming up for all these articles, so yeah, just stay tuned, but also they will be a lot more as well from a UX research perspective too. 0:37:56.7 Matt Artz: And if anybody wanted to get in touch with you... 0:38:00.1 Paige Nuzzolillo: Yeah, so you can contact me on LinkedIn, just Paige Nuzzolillo on LinkedIn, actually Paige Elaine Nuzzolillo, middle name Elaine. And also, my portfolios PaigeNuzzolillo.com. Also one more thing that I should mention too is that I did write an article on Medium, and I can try to make sure that it's posted on my LinkedIn so people can access it, but it does include insights from 12 UX researchers anthropologists and discussing how UX research is potentially a viable career option for those that are in the anthropology, and so I did primary research with 12 UX researchers and have a background in that, and that grew out of just really immense interest that was... That I saw when I was at the career expo for the American Anthropological Association in 2019. I had a table at that conference for the career expo, and I just had so many people coming to the table, and I really wanted to provide just a little bit more of a tangible resource for folks, so that article... I think it was written in 2019, I think, or 2020, but still very applicable, so I'll make sure that that's also available on my LinkedIn, so people can access that too. 0:39:23.4 Matt Artz: Page next. For coming on, I really appreciate your time. 0:39:25.5 Paige Nuzzolillo: Yeah, thanks so much, Matt, thanks for having me. 0:39:28.1 Matt Artz: Thank you all for listening to The Anthro to UX podcast. To learn everything, you need to break into UX, AnthroToUX.com. There, you will find all the podcast episodes and career coaching resources. Please like, share and subscribe. See you next time.

Eric Cunningham on the Anthro to UX Podcast with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Thu, 26 Jan 2023 14:06:15 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Eric Cunningham speaks with Matt Artz about his UX journey. Eric discusses his recent transition to being a Senior UX Researcher at Crossover Health. He shares how he learned to tell his academic story and business terms and how his training as an ecological anthropologist supports him in understanding the relationships between people, places, and things.

About Eric Cunningham

Eric Cunningham is an ecological anthropologist working at the intersection of UX, research strategy, and service design. He is interested in understanding how humans think about and interact with larger systems. He is passionate about evidence-based design that makes people happy, keeps them engaged, and helps businesses grow.

Eric enjoys discussing critical theory, capitalism, political ecology, complexity, and imagined futures. He also enjoys spending time outdoors with the little beings I live with (an 11yo corgi and a 3yo human).

Jamie Sherman on the Anthro to UX Podcast with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Tue, 13 Dec 2022 03:10:48 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Jamie Sherman speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey. Her story began with a cold call to Ken Anderson at Intel for an informational interview and matured into a career researching emerging technologies at Intel, Netflix, and now Atlassian.

About Jamie Sherman

Jamie Sherman is a cultural anthropologist and a senior researcher at Atlassian. Previously she was a senior product researcher at Netflix and a senior research scientist at Intel. Past work focused on emergent technological practices, from quantified self to virtual reality and the future of entertainment. Her research has developed usages and driven strategies for video game play, media creation, and online toxicity. Jamie holds a PhD in anthropology from Princeton University and was co-chair of EPIC2021.

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Matt Artz — Tue, 29 Nov 2022 00:16:31 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Vanessa Whatley speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey. We discuss how a degree in human factors complemented her anthropology degree and how it prepared her to work at Google and now lead research at Twilio. About Vanessa Whatley Vanessa Whatley is an anthropologist and Head of Research - Data & Growth at Twilio. Previously, she was a UX Researcher & Strategist at Google, where she worked on improving the advertising experience for small and medium-sized businesses. She studied Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, and went on to get an MS in Human Factors in Information Design at Bentley. Vanessa believes in a human-centered approach and is passionate about helping companies gain a deep understanding of people to create products that are useful and relevant. Recommended Links

Vanessa Whatley on LinkedIn

Sara Hefny on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 14:09:07 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Sara Hefny speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey from studying anthropology at Brown to working at Hotjar as a Senior Product Researcher. About Sara Hefny Sara Hefny earned a PhD in anthropology from Brown University and has since gone on to become a UX researcher working for Hotjar. As a qualitative researcher with nearly a decade of work across multiple continents and languages, Sara brings a much-needed anthropological lens to digital product research.

Raised between Seattle, Washington and Alexandria, Egypt, Sara has called multiple cities, countries, and continents home and brings an intrinsic talent for cooperation and building bridges to all areas of her work.

In addition to her work with user experience and product research, Sara is a highly-requested speaker on qualitative research best practices, conducting research with international populations, working with vulnerable people, and transitioning from academia to industry.

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Matt Artz — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 02:39:43 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Jo Aiken speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey from studying applied anthropology at UNT to working at NASA and now Google. About Jo Aiken As a business + design anthropologist, Jo Aiken helps leaders innovate, create, build, and launch transformative technologies and practices. She applies ethnography, user experience research, qualitative and quantitative methods, and human behavior theories to help high-performing organizations solve people-related challenges. From change management strategies to designing spacecraft, she has advised and coached CEO-level executives through a myriad of organizational and technical challenges. She uses her skills in anthropology, design research, and human resources to help teams collaborate, departments innovate, and leaders build strategies based on a deep understanding of their customers, employees, and stakeholders. Recommended Links

Alexandra Mack on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 22:41:12 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Alexandra Mack speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey from studying archaeology to her current role as Managing Principal Researcher at Ad Hoc. Along the way, the conversation touches on her time at Bitney Bowes and reflects on the shifting practice of research and design. About Alexandra Mack Alexandra Mack is an anthropologist and Managing Principal Researcher at Ad Hoc. Her passion for understanding people, what they do, and why they do it has led to a career at the intersection of customer-centered design, innovation, market research, opportunity identification, business planning, and cultural change. As one of the first anthropologists hired at Pitney Bowes, she established frameworks for research and analysis and developed a program of work practice research. She also facilitated opportunity identification, designed end-to-end client experiences, and worked closely with internal stakeholders to orchestrate the execution of new ideas and processes. Recommended Links

Kathi Kitner on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Mon, 29 Aug 2022 22:00:53 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Kathi Kitner speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey through multiple anthropological professions to her current role as Lead UX Researcher at Google. The conversation covers the state of research in tech before UX and how the profession has changed over time. About Kathi Kitner Kathi Kitner is a Lead UX Researcher at Google and holds a PhD in cultural anthropology and Latin American Studies. She brings strong expertise in the fields of sustainable development, ecological and human adaption, public policy and social impact evaluation to her current work on information communication technologies (ICTs) and social change. She is currently researching broadly how people around the world pay for things online and off, how money flows through cultures, and how the "larger intersections" of class, ethnicity, race, gender, shifting national politics, and technology adoption all influence people's economic behaviors. Recommended Links

Frank Romagosa on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Mon, 08 Aug 2022 19:14:31 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Frank Romagosa speaks with Matt Artz about his UX journey, from starting at E-Lab (Sapient) to his current role as Senior User Experience Researcher at CloudSort Corporation. The conversation covers the earlier days of design research, the maturation of UX, and why surprise is helpful when presenting insights. About Frank Romagosa Frank Romagosa is ananthropologist, a design and research strategist, and a brand and business builder, based in New York, USA. For over 20 years Frank has worked with designers and product leaders from a broad range of Fortune 100 enterprises to young and nimble startups to build new products, platforms, services, and user experiences. Frank has helped major banks like CitiCards, Wells Fargo and Chase seize new opportunities that impact the lives of ordinary people while delivering new avenues of sustainable business growth. Frank has also helped start-ups in financial services and related hybrid industries push through the messiness of their potential customers’ everyday lives to prioritize new features in the early days of business creation. He is currently a Senior User Experience Researcher at CloudSort Corporation. Recommended Links

Melissa Krug on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Mon, 18 Jul 2022 19:50:15 +0000

In this Anthro to UX podcast episode, Melissa Krug speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey, linguistic anthropology, finding her way to UX during the pandemic, and her role at AnswerLab as a Qualitative UX Researcher. About Melissa Krug Melissa Krug is a linguistic anthropologist. She earned her Phd from Temple University and works at AnswerLab as a Qualitative UX Researcher. Her academic, consulting, and teaching research projects have included interviews, observations, survey design and analysis (quantitative and qualitative), and ethnography and have spanned over 12 years. Trained specifically in linguistic anthropological methods, Melissa is able to use common conversations as data and draw insights about concepts like identity construction, power dynamics, sentiment, and engagement. She has analyzed stories, gestures, translation practices, natural conversations, print content, social media, and recorded interviews to understand how people engage with different situations, other people, brands, and themselves. Recommended Links

Olive Minor on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Tue, 17 May 2022 22:00:00 +0000

In this Anthro to UX podcast episode, Olive Minor speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey, working in global health, and her current role at Anthro-Tech. Olive earned a PhD in anthropology from Northwestern University. About Olive Minor Olive is an applied anthropologist and UX researcher working at the intersection of global health and technology. Whether in global health or tech, Olive uses her research skills to understand the needs and experiences of vulnerable groups and translates their insights into practical recommendations that improve policies, programs, and products. Olive earned her PhD in Anthropology and Masters in Public Health (MPH) at Northwestern University in 2014. Her dissertation research explored how transgender people in Kampala, Uganda, balanced visibility, and risk in the context of Uganda’s 2008 Anti-Homosexuality Bill. Olive’s MPH thesis examined barriers to HIV prevention and treatment services for transgender Ugandans. One of her proudest accomplishments was in 2014-2015 when she carried out fieldwork with Oxfam’s response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa sparking key changes in their community engagement strategies. In 2016, Olive was awarded an ACLS Public Fellowship to conduct research and evaluation with the International Rescue Committee. At IRC, she collaborated with research and design partners to identify and find solutions to barriers that refugees face when resettling in the U.S. In 2019, Olive pivoted to design anthropology in global tech, and has carried out research with companies like Google, Facebook, and Etsy. At Anthro-Tech, Olive continues to craft her career from the things she loves: seeing new places, talking with people, and trying to make the world a better place through User-Centered Design. When she’s not working, you might find Olive cruising around Seattle on her e-bike, playing in the park with her daughter, reading fiction, practicing the piano, or practicing French vocab on Duolingo. Recommended Links

Gigi Taylor on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Tue, 26 Apr 2022 00:49:49 +0000

In this Anthro to UX podcast episode, Gigi Taylor speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey, working in advertising, and the pivot to product. Gigi earned an MA in applied anthropology from the University of North Texas. She was a partner in the Practica Group and is currently a Qualitative UX Researcher at Indeed.com. About Gigi Taylor Gigi Taylor is a cultural anthropologist working as a qualitative UX researcher with Indeed in Austin, Texas. As a research practitioner, she conducts cultural anthropology research for business. As a scholar, she conducts anthropology research of business. What distinguishes her applied and academic research is that she uses a cultural anthropological lens to study business—advertising, consumers, brands, consumption, users, products, digital experiences, and organizations. She embraces the idea that consumer and user experience insights informed by a cultural analysis can serve as the muse and inspiration for all aspects of product and brand strategy. The magic of cultural analysis is the theory of interpretive and symbolic cultural anthropology (Clifford Geertz and Victor Turner). She was a partner with Practica Group, a consumer anthropology research consultancy where she conducted ethnographies, focus groups, interviews, diary studies, and observations. She started her research strategy career as an Account Planner at Publics & Hal Riney Advertising in San Francisco and has owned Luminosity Research, a qualitative research consultancy, since 2006. She has a PhD and MA in Advertising from the University of Texas and an MA in Applied Anthropology from the University of North Texas. Her published academic research has appeared in both advertising and anthropological journals. Recommended Links

Peter Leykam on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Tue, 05 Apr 2022 11:52:56 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Peter Leykam speaks with Matt Artz about his UX journey, cryptocurrency, and working in emerging tech. Peter is an anthropology PhD candidate at UC Santa Cruz and holds an MA in anthropology from Hunter College. He is a User Experience Researcher at Coinbase. Previously he worked for Alibaba. About Peter Leykam Peter Leykam is an anthropologist working at the intersection of markets and design. He researched design and business strategy in Chinese businesses while doing graduate studies in the anthropology of capitalism and design at UC Santa Cruz. Realizing that design research was more interesting than researching design, he left academia to focus on user research. He has worked in a number of fields, including wearable AI tech, e-commerce, and is now at Coinbase, where he helps build technologies and platforms for emerging cryptocurrency markets. Recommended Links

Racine Brown on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 23:28:05 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Racine Brown speaks with Matt Artz about his UX journey, medical anthropology, and leading a UX team. Racine earned a PhD in Applied Anthropology from the University of South Florida. He has worked for Radiant Digital and is starting a new role at AnswerLab where he will be a Senior UX Researcher. Racine also served a tour in the United States Marine Corps as a platoon leader and staff officer. About Racine Brown Racine Brown is a business anthropologist and user experience researcher with extensive research and leadership experience. Racine’s perspective on people and on the conduct of research is informed by a wide array of roles filled and activities he has participated in over the last couple of decades. After graduating with a BA in anthropology from Wake Forest University, he served a tour in the United States Marine Corps as a platoon leader and staff officer. Racine is well versed in theory and practice in biocultural anthropology from his time in graduate school, first completing a Masters’ in anthropology at the University of South Carolina and then a Ph.D. in applied anthropology at the University of South Florida. His post-graduate work includes research on the association between traumatic brain injury and post-injury weight gain during a post-doctoral fellowship at the Tampa Veterans Affairs Medical Center and pro-bono consulting for a couple of Tampa Bay-area non-profits. Racine’s UX research work includes consulting with startups in the property-tech and fintech spaces and work as a lead UX researcher and research Manager for Radiant Digital, LLC. This week, he will start a new role as a senior UX researcher for AnswerLab. Recommended Links

Nadine Levin on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 14:12:11 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Nadine Levin speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey, mixed methods research, and democratizing research. Nadine earned a PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Oxford. She has worked for Facebook and is currently a Senior User Researcher at San Francisco Digital Services. About Nadine Levin Nadine Levin is an anthropologist, UX researcher, and writer. A molecular biologist turned anthropologist of data turned strategic researcher, Nadine has been thinking about the social implications of data for years. Nadine started her career by working with scientists, arts and humanities professionals, lawyers, and philosophers on big data practices, open science, and personalized medicine. She then moved on to Facebook as a mixed-methods researcher where she got to play with data to figure out how to make the Facebook experience better for its global user base. Most recently, Nadine moved on to San Francisco Digital Services where she is working to improve citywide systems and democratize research in the organization. Recommended Links

Maria Angelica Lizarazo Tarazona on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 21:47:38 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Maria Angelica Lizarazo Tarazona speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey, product management, and how her information technology skills support her anthropology work. Maria earned a degree in Anthropology from the Universidad Externado de Colombia and works as a UX research lead. About Maria Angelica Lizarazo Tarazona Maria Angelica Lizarazo Tarazona is an entrepreneur and business anthropologist from Bogota, Colombia. She is currently a UX Research Lead at Blackboard-Anthology. She has more than a decade of experience in digital & tech product development for telco, financial and educational markets. Recommended Links

Maria Angelica Lizarazo Tarazona on LinkedIn

Karl Haas on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 14:23:42 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Karl Haas speaks with Matt Artz about his UX journey, ethnomusicology, the importance of effective UX writing, and his upcoming talk at the UX Writers Conference. Karl earned a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from Boston University and works as a UX Writer for the Weather Channel. About Karl Haas Karl J. Haas, Ph.D. is a UX writer and researcher with a background in ethnography and the arts. He is currently a UX writer at The Weather Channel and content strategist for RebelBase, an EdTech startup. An ethnomusicologist by training, he has studied music and culture in Ghana, West Africa, and has taught at institutions such as MIT, Middlebury College, and Berklee College of Music. Recommended Links

Astrid Countee on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 23:09:34 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Astrid Countee speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey, storytelling, and how software engineering skills support her anthropology work. Astrid earned an MA in Applied Anthropology from the University of Houston and works as a UX research consultant. About Astrid Countee Astrid Countee is a UX research consultant and climate, tech, and business Anthropologist. She conducts research and analysis on technology the creates sustainable systems and communities through her organization Missing Link Studios. She is also affiliated with the Organization for Ethical Source as well as the Texas Justice Initiative. Astrid has a background working in data science, software engineering, tech for social impact, and climate technology. Astrid is the co-founder of Missing link Studios, which uses media and storytelling to analyze and share social and cultural phenomena. Recommended Links

Bo Wang on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 01:00:59 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Bo Wang speaks with Matt Artz about his UX journey, his research in Tibet, and what he learned from working side by side with a design firm. Bo earned a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and works as a User Experience Researcher for Best Buy. About Bo Wang Bo Wang is an anthropologist and user experience researcher at Best Buy. He holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an M.A. in Anthropology with an emphasis on history from Peking University, and a B.A. in Sociology from Nanjing University. Previous to Best Buy, he was a senior postdoctoral researcher at the Lab of Cultural and Social Anthropology in the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Bo also worked as a data analyst in Beijing before entering his Ph.D. program. Bo has conducted research in environmental and medical anthropology with a focus on waste and society, aging care, and public policy. His book project, Sacred Trash, and Personhood: Living with Daily Waste Infrastructures in the East Himalayas, examines how cultural concepts of waste manifest themselves through touristic encounters between Tibetan and Han people in the Himalayan mountain paths filled with solid waste and sacred objects. Recommended Links

Charley Scull on Anthro to UX Podcast with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Tue, 12 Oct 2021 02:12:25 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Charley Scull speaks with Matt Artz about his UX journey, visual anthropology, and the value of networking and collegiality in business. Charley earned a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Southern California and works as a Pathfinder for the VR Hardware team at Facebook. About Charley Scull Charley Scull has worked in the consumer insights and innovation spaces since 2005. His work has spanned a range of industries and focal lengths: from the granularity of package design and communication programs to local issues about audience engagement for a botanical garden to system-focused questions in healthcare spaces, global seafood supply chains, and the future of mobility. Charley was trained as a visual anthropologist and that visual sensibility, as well as a cultural framework of analysis, and a continued practice of using video in his work, remain core strengths of his approach. In addition to extensive domestic work, he has also worked in Asia, Latin America, and the EU. Charley is a Pathfinder for the VR Hardware team at Facebook and was previously a partner at Filament Insight & Innovation, and a partner at the Practica Group. He holds an MA in visual anthropology and a PhD in cultural anthropology from USC. Recommended Links

Qingyan Ma on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Tue, 21 Sep 2021 13:36:58 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Qingyan Ma speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey, medical anthropology, and how design research contributes to product development in healthcare. Qingyan earned a PhD in Medical Anthropology from Temple University and works as a Design Research Lead for the Digital Informatics and Technology Solutions (DigITs) team at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. About Qingyan Ma Qingyan Ma is a medical anthropologist and Design Research Lead for the Digital Informatics and Technology Solutions (DigITs) team at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She received a PhD in medical anthropology from Temple University. Her dissertation research is on the transformation of rural public health in Southwest China’s Yunnan Province with a focus on reproductive risk among ethnic minority women. She also received an MA in medical anthropology from Sun Yat-sen University, for which she conducted field research in Guangdong Provincial Hospital of TCM to explore the sociocultural construction of TCM in 2005. At Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Qingyan's research contributes to the development of digital products for clinicians. Previous to her design research lead role, she was a user experience specialist and user experience researcher at Memorial Sloan. Recommended Links

Jay Hasbrouck on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Mon, 06 Sep 2021 22:10:37 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Jay Hasbrouck speaks with Matt Artz about his UX journey, visual anthropology, and how ethnographic thinking can contribute to strategy and new product development. Jay earned a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Southern California, works as a Pathfinder for Facebook, and is the author of Ethnographic Thinking: From Method to Mindset. About Jay Hasbrouck Jay Hasbrouck has over 15 years of experience working as an anthropologist in industry settings, including both in-house roles and consulting. He currently works as a Pathfinder on the New Product Experimentation team at Facebook. Previously Jay was a partner at Ethnoworks, the founder of Filament Insights & Innovation, a senior human factors specialist at IDEO, and a research scientist at Intel. Jay is also the author of Ethnographic Thinking: From Method to Mindset. About Ethnographic Thinking: From Method to Mindset Ethnographic Thinking: From Method to Mindset argues that ‘ethnographic thinking’―the thought processes and patterns ethnographers develop through their practice―offers companies and organizations the cultural insights they need to develop fully-informed strategies. Using real-world examples, Hasbrouck demonstrates how shifting the value of ethnography from simply identifying consumer needs to driving a more holistic understanding of a company or organization can help it benefit from a deeper understanding of the dynamic and interactive cultural contexts of its offerings. In doing so, he argues that such an approach can also enhance the strategic value of their work by helping them increase appreciation for openness and exploration, hone interpretive skills, and cultivate holistic thinking, in order to broaden perspectives, challenge assumptions, and cross-pollinate ideas between differing viewpoints. Recommended Links

Ana Pitchon on Antro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 01:05:18 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Ana Pitchon speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey, ecological anthropology, and how UX research can contribute to policy and strategy. Ana earned a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Georgia, works as a Senior Experience Researcher for Facebook, and previously worked in the commercial fisheries sector and higher education. About Ana Pitchon Ana Pitchon is a trained cultural anthropologist currently working in a technology business integrity role. Her research in this space focuses on identifying strategic opportunities through understanding and articulating relationships through systems thinking. Her research is international in scope to inform product, policy, and strategy. She is committed to a qualitative design approach to finding solutions to complex problems, and she is a highly skilled ethnographer and cultural strategist with expertise in diverse data collection methods and analysis. Her work as an applied anthropologist in academia was focused on the commercial fisheries sector, working on sustainable food systems and communities, social resilience, aquaculture, and marine and coastal policy. Recommended Links

Ana Pitchon on LinkedIn

Nichole Carelock on Antro to UX

Matt Artz — Tue, 27 Jul 2021 01:49:35 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Nichole Carelock speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey, civic tech, and inclusive design. Nichole earned a PhD in Anthropology from Rice University, works as a Qualitative Researcher for Facebook, and previously worked at Ad Hoc LLC. She has also worked with the recent U.S. Presidential Transition team and is on the board of EPIC. About Nichole Carelock Nichole Carelock is a privacy research at Facebook and an anthropologist with 10+ years experience building technical solutions that not only work for people, but with people. Previously she worked in civic technology ensuring the Presidential Transition Teams were equipped with the right Tech Policy, People and Practices to succeed. Her expertise spans from service design for systems with millions of users, to intimate cottage industry ethnographies. She belongs to and serves many communities including AfroTech, User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA), and the American Anthropological Association(AAA). In addition, Nichole is passionate about digital services for vulnerable populations and prides herself on being a "slow thinker" in her world of "failing fast" "rapid iteration" and "disruption." Through slow thinking Nichole works to ensure that innovation, strategies, processes and products are anchored in what matters to people in their everyday lives today and over time. Recommended Links

Ender Ricart on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Mon, 12 Jul 2021 21:02:15 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Ender Ricart speaks with Matt Artz about their UX journey and diversity, equity, and inclusion in UX. Ender earned a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago, works as a Staff UX Researcher for Google, and previously worked at LivePerson, Amazon, and Anthro-Tech. About Ender Ricart Ender Ricart is an anthropologist specializing in UX research for emerging technologies including Cloud and conversational AI. Ender has spoken about creating an inclusive and diverse space in UX and written about how academia has helped with working in UX. Recommended Links

Elizabeth Rodwell on Anthro to UX

Matt Artz — Mon, 21 Jun 2021 23:16:09 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Elizabeth Rodwell speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey. Elizabeth earned a PhD in Anthropology from Rice University. Previously, Elizabeth worked as a UX Researcher for Schlumberger and is currently an Assistant Professor of Digital Media at the University of Houston and the Executive Director of the Houston UXPA (HUXPA). She recently published the paper, A Pedagogy of Its Own: Building A UX Research Program. About Elizabeth Rodwell Elizabeth Rodwell is a media anthropologist who is interested in interactivity, television, emergent technology (in general), and artificial intelligence (specifically). She is also a usability researcher (UX). Her first book Push the Button: Interactive Television and Collaborative Journalism in Japan (forthcoming) examines the post-Fukushima tensions in the Japanese journalism and television industries, and seeks to account for the ways that media professionals are responding to increasingly skeptical and distracted audiences. She also tracks the global debut of interactive television in Japan– a cutting-edge fusion of mediums that represented the most dramatic departure from existing television technology in several decades. She was interested in examining how the concept and practice of participation change as technology evolves the means by which people can contribute. Currently, she is working on a project at the intersection of artificial intelligence / machine learning and user experience (UX). Partnering with UX researchers and designers in companies both in the U.S. and Japan, and she is exploring what it means to think about usability when we’re attempting to replicate human interaction via machine. Recommended Links

Anthony Shenoda on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 02:09:05 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Anthony Shenoda speaks with Matt Artz about his UX journey. Anthony earned a PhD in Social Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University. He currently works as a Senior UX Researcher at HubSpot. About Anthony Shenoda Anthony holds a joint PhD in Social Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University. His PhD research was on miracle narratives among Coptic Christian in Egypt. Anthony also holds an MA in Latin American Studies from the University of Arizona where he conducted anthropological and historical research on the ne-Zapatista social movement in Mexico. He taught courses in Anthropology & Religious Studies before leaving academia to serve as a priest in the Coptic Church. For the last several years he has worked as a CX researcher at REI and UX researcher with AnswerLab where he conducted research for Instagram and Facebook. He is currently a Senior UX Researcher at HubSpot where he leads research for the artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) team. Recommended Links

Lisanne Norman on Anthro to UX

Matt Artz — Tue, 18 May 2021 02:10:38 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Lisanne Norman speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey. Lisanne earned a PhD in African & African American Studies & Social Anthropology from Harvard University and has since gone on to work as a UX researcher at Dell, Visa, and most recently Gusto. Lisanne is also the founder of Black UX Austin and an advocate for inclusive design. Lisanne Norman Lisanne holds a PhD in African & African American Studies & Social Anthropology from Harvard University, where she taught about African American history & education. She has been a UX Research Director & Lead in Austin for the past 5 years working on products as diverse as personal computers to fintech to ecommerce platforms. Her passion to create inclusive, customer-centric products motivates her every day. Recently, she co-founded Black UX Austin, an organization that seeks to provide a safe space for people of African descent in the design community in Austin, while promoting diversity and inclusion within the larger community. Recommended Links

Making Anthropology Public on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Tue, 27 Apr 2021 01:56:27 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, we revisit the 2021 Anthro to UX sponsored Anthro Day event which discussed how we as anthropologists can make anthropology more public. If you weren't able to catch it for the live stream, now you can stream it as a podcast episode! About the Anthro Day Event Increasing the Visibility of Anthropology, an Anthro Day 2021 live-stream event, features five anthropologists discussing their efforts to situate anthropology in the public eye. They shared how they have used new media to increase our public influence and what they have learned in the process. The event featured Amy Santee (Anthropologizing), Gabby Campbell (That Anthro Podcast), Phil Surles (Mindshare), Adam Gamwell (This Anthro Life), and is organized by Matt Artz (Anthro to UX). Watch the Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFnQ3e3f1i0 Recommended Links

Increasing the Visibility of Anthropology Video on YouTube

Laura Musgrave on Anthro to UX

Matt Artz — Tue, 13 Apr 2021 01:15:08 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Laura Musgrave speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey. Laura earned a Social Science Research Methods and Statistics degree from the University of Amsterdam and went on to do further study in cyborg and digital anthropology. She is a Senior UX Researcher specializing in artificial intelligence (AI), data, and privacy. About Laura Musgrave Laura Musgrave is a digital anthropology and user experience (UX) researcher. Her work has always focused on connecting with people. She started out in public engagement, before moving into user research and participatory design. Today, she works in UK and international research for a FTSE 100 brand. She is also a research scholar in digital anthropology and user experience at the Ronin Institute. Her research specialism is artificial intelligence (AI), particularly data and privacy. Most recently, she has been studying the exchange of privacy and convenience in the use of smart speakers in the UK. Recommended Links

Matt Bernius on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 04:31:09 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Matt Bernius speaks with Matt Artz about his UX journey. Matt earned a Master’s degree in the Social Sciences from the University of Chicago and was a PhD student in Cultural Anthropology at Cornell University. He is a Principal User Researcher for Clear My Record, at Code for America. About Matt Bernius Matt Bernius is a design anthropologist and experience strategist. He is a Principal User Researcher for Clear My Record, at Code for America. Previously, he was with Measures For Justice, a non-profit working to bring data transparency to the US Criminal Justice System at the county level. Across his career, Matt has helped a wide range of clients, including Autodesk, Boeing, Google, Honeywell, Mozilla, and PricewaterhouseCoopers, better understand their customers and employees through a wide range of research projects. Prior to joining Measures for Justice, Matt worked with Effective Inc., an experience design firm based out of Denver, Colorado. He began his career at Kodak.com and also spent time as a visiting professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) where he co-founded the Open Publishing Lab. Matt holds a Master’s degree in the Social Sciences from the University of Chicago and a Bachelor’s degree from RIT, and was a PhD student in Cultural Anthropology at Cornell University. For the last three years Matt has also served as the networking coordinator for the EPIC conference. Recommended Links

Lauryl Zenobi on Anthro to UX

Matt Artz — Tue, 16 Mar 2021 01:48:17 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Lauryl Zenobi speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey. Lauryl earned a MA in archaeology from the University of Washington in 2015 and currently works as Principal UX Researcher at Ad Hoc. About Lauryl Zenobi Lauryl is a Principal UX researcher who brings human-centered design to Federal Government agencies. A recovering archaeologist, Lauryl uses her background in anthropology to build empathy with users and improve complex digital services. Check out her book "I want a UX job!", a how-to-guide for a career change into UX research, at iwantauxjob.com. About I Want a UX job! Every researcher started somewhere. Most stumbled into UX from other career paths without any guidance. This practical book will teach you how to translate your past experiences and frame yourself as a budding researcher. Along the way you'll learn how to develop your skills, join the research community, build your research portfolio, write your UX resume, and find and interview for UX research jobs. If you want a career in UX research, this book is for you. Buy a copy here. Recommended Links

Amy Santee on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Tue, 02 Mar 2021 02:39:56 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Amy Santee speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey. Amy earned a MA in Applied Anthropology from the University of Memphis. After school, she worked in UX for a decade at companies like eBay and is now a UX career coach. About Amy Santee Amy Santee is a loud and proud career coach for current and aspiring user experience and technology professionals. From professional branding and confidence building, to job search strategy and interviewing, she works with clients to create a strategy to achieve career goals through an iterative process of exploring, learning, testing, and refining. Recommended Links

Episode Transcript Please note this transcript is an automated transcription and may have some errors. Matt Artz: [00:00:00] Today, I'm with Amy Santee, a former UXR or transitioning out of UX, but with lots of UX experience now turning into a UX career coach. And so we're going to have a great conversation about, not only Amy's experience working in UX, but also all of her recommendations of how you might be able to transition into UX. [00:00:20] And you've worked in companies such as eBay. You have run your own business. Now you're really starting up. Sort of second version of your business, if you will. So you have a lot of broad experience. You want to maybe talk a little bit about that, what first brought you to anthropology? [00:00:36] How did you maybe find your way to UX? Give us a little overview. [00:00:39] Amy Santee: [00:00:39] Yeah, absolutely. And thank you so much for having me on your show. I'm really excited to be here. So yeah, again, my name's Amy Santee and I use she, her pronouns. And I live in Portland, Oregon. How I got into anthropology. It has a really long history. [00:00:53]I knew it as early as age 14 or 15 that I wanted to be an anthropologist and that's because of a computer game I played where in the game I met Dennis. Ethnobotanist on the Amazon trail. That was the name of the game actually. And I just got really curious about ethnobotany and then I, found that was a subdiscipline of anthropology and I got broader and broader The first book I picked up at borders. [00:01:17]I don't know if you remember that store, but it was Napoleon Shannon's book about being in the Amazon rainforest with different tribes. And I know that's actually a controversial book now. But I didn't know that back then, I was just kinda like exploring what was anthropology all about. And I did end up going to get my bachelor's in anthropology, as well as my master's and. [00:01:41] Initially I had that kind of basic simplified understanding of anthropology as studying other cultures and like going off and traveling the world. And, as we know, that's not a, that's really only a slice of what doing anthropology could look like. And so throughout my education especially into my master's degree, which I got at the university of Memphis in 2011. [00:02:04]My, my world expanded, or my view of anthropology expanded to encompass basically answering questions and solving problems that relate to human beings in any place on any topic. And yeah. My program at Memphis was an applied anthropology program. And so we took I took a lot of courses on applied anthropology and the realms of let's say education, healthcare urban development Basically the main topics that you might find in an anthropology program? [00:02:34] I did take a consumer research course when I was there as well, which I think planted the seed of possibly working inside of businesses and non products. And I, but my program was still very academic. Even for an applied program. And so there was just this continued growth and expansion of my understanding of what anthropology is over time and throughout my career. [00:02:58] And I really didn't fully know that until I left school, which is counter counterintuitive. If you think about it, like you want to know that. Before you leave. But there was a lot of had to fig figure out a lot of new definitions and shaping and defining my identity as an anthropologist in different ways. [00:03:16] And eventually not even referring to myself as an anthropologist and keeping that as a, a bonus or something in the background to bring up in the context of being a user experience researcher. [00:03:31] Matt Artz: [00:03:31] Great. Thanks for that. And so a few things in there. So I guess first, where did you actually hear really about UX? [00:03:38] So if you didn't learn about business, the way we apply it, anthropology and business to afterschool, like where, what did you do to find out about UX? Who turned you on to that and when exactly did that happen? [00:03:49] Amy Santee: [00:03:49] Yeah. In 2011, that was at the tail end of the 2008 recession which was a really bad time for jobs. [00:03:58] The economy and all of that stuff, but especially for new graduates, that it's already hard for new graduates to get jobs during a recession, there are even fewer opportunities. And I applied to as many jobs as I could find, regardless of where they were, who they were for as long as they were about qualitative research, because that's really my favorite thing that I like to do. [00:04:21] My favorite thing that I have practice, I get to continue practicing it as a coach in a way, which we can talk about later. But I applied to all kinds of organizations and companies, and I really just wanted to get a job as a researcher. And I ended up getting my first job as a consumer researcher at state farm insurance. [00:04:39] It's essentially like market research. And when I joined the team, I. Happened to start working with people who were focusing more on product development and the business side of things. And really that's the difference. Consumer and market research tends not to be focused on products, right? [00:04:57] It's answering questions about people in relation to products and services and brands, but not necessarily taking that information to infuse that into the development of a product and the interface and how people interact with it. So as soon as I got exposure to user experience, human computer interaction, user centered design, all of these terms that are related to this I just realized that sounds super cool. [00:05:21] And that's what I'm going to go ahead and pursue. And, I came out of school with a lot of really good skills when it comes to research research methods, designing studies. But again, there was a lot I had to learn to fill in the gaps of knowledge. Experience to fully transition over to working in the field of product design and product development. [00:05:44] And so that was just a matter of, understanding. This is a totally different context of work from school. Everything about it, the workplace culture process it's all very different. And a lot of I had to do a lot of. Self-learning and learning on the job by working more closely, as much as possible with UX researchers, with designers. [00:06:05]And as I went on in my career, I got more and more experience with that. So again, my definition of anthropology and role as someone practicing anthropology changed along with that. But it did take some time and proactive learning in order to get from a to B. [00:06:23] Matt Artz: [00:06:23] Yeah. Yeah. As we often do here, when talking to other people, who've made the similar journey, we even in our programs, as you already pointed out about your Memphis program, and I, I went to UNT, both applied programs, we're learning things like design anthropology, but not necessarily like you hearing the term UX and figuring out exactly how to make the connection and certainly not learning other things about. [00:06:46] Yeah, agile development are many things that happen within sort of the space that we operate in. So what what skills specifically did you find that you needed to upskill on? And was there any place that you went about learning those, any particular like certificates or, online training of any sort? [00:07:05] Amy Santee: [00:07:05] Yeah. Like I mentioned, anthropologists or people who study any kind of. Humanities or social science have a really good foundation of. Doing research and thinking theoretically and conceptually about our research and about our work. And that's so crucial. I think that gives you some good advantage compared to other folks coming from other areas who don't have that solid foundation for research. [00:07:30] I find that to be very important. What I needed to learn was how to. Do and speak about these methodologies just in a different context, in the context of design. And so there's different terminology for certain things. Anthropologists talk about ethnography and. People say it's all graphy in the design world. [00:07:50]Th that's a whole other question as to how they're defining that versus how it's traditionally defined. We don't have to go into that. But my point is that you can say things like field work or contextual research, and those essentially mean the same things more or less. So speaking in the language of design Usability testing is something I needed to learn how to do, but it builds off of doing qualitative interviews. [00:08:14]So there are things where I just needed to like, figure out how to talk about it and do it in the context of design. And then I, there was so much to learn though about, what even is user experience. What is human centered design? What does the product development process look like from starting? [00:08:31]With a big question about what's going on out in the world of these people who we want to. Build a product for, to conceptualizing and making initial designs and getting feedback on ideas and prototypes, and then putting a product out in the world for people to use. And there's this whole process that research can fit into. [00:08:49] So learning more broadly about that, learning about and understanding the people that I work with, what do designers actually do? There are lots of different types of designers. There are visual designers, there are interaction designers. And again, there's a whole discussion about these roles and job titles and terminologies out there because user experience is an ever evolving field. [00:09:12]So yeah, learning about that kind of thing. Understanding more about the technology side of things. If you're a researcher and you want to do some usability on an app, Say the eBay app. You can get the eBay app on a website, like on your web browser, on your phone or computer, you can get it on iOS, so Apple and you can get it on Android. [00:09:34] And if you don't understand how those platforms work, generally speaking, and the differences between them and say how you navigate on an Android phone or versus how you navigate on iOS software, Safari, whatever it might be. So I had to. Get bad or better at knowing the things that I was actually researching. [00:09:54]So I could ask better questions. So I think the last part of that too, is the business side of things. And a lot of us get into research of any kind, but especially as their experience, because we want things to be better. We want to improve things and make them more valuable for people. Whatever product or service it might be. [00:10:12]And, but we are there because the business has a business need for us to be there. And so the work we do to improve stuff is in service of business, which is another discussion that we could talk about and something I'm very interested in. But yeah, so you have the whole thing is what's the context that you're working in and getting a clear understanding of who you're working with, the purpose of your work, what it can look like. [00:10:36] Getting creative. So again, it was a matter of, reading a ton of books, going to conferences, going to webinars, networking with people just to consume as much information as I could. And you can do that in other ways you can do training programs. There's a lot of different offerings out there where you can learn and even practice this type of work to build your skills and experience. [00:10:59]And then learning on the job. My first role was at state farm. And I worked with researchers, but the model at state farm at the time for the team was a centralized thing. And researchers acted as consultants with different teams, but at eBay, for example, and in other places I've worked. [00:11:17] Researchers and designers and other people are embedded onto a product team. So working directly with a team rather than consulting to them and going away and doing a study and coming back and telling them what you learned. And I prefer the latter model. I think it's way more effective. [00:11:32]But again, like each place I worked at, I experienced indu type of work working with different types of people. Growing in your role and gaining experience, you get to do like more strategic type work eventually. It's just, you follow this path and trying to take advantage of as many opportunities for learning and growing as I could. [00:11:54] Matt Artz: [00:11:54] Yeah. Great feedback. And so you said a few things in there that I found interesting. One is, knowledging the fact that it's a very, it's an ever evolving field and really it's. In terms of maturity, it's relatively, still, it's relatively young industry that has a lot of, maturation to go, especially in certain firms and particularly oftentimes in a lot of smaller firms, there's a lot more. That, still, you see sort of design, oftentimes leading things and research is being tacked on as a, as a second thought, almost in many ways. And given your experience across the various companies you've worked for in the fact that you've owned your own business, do you want to maybe just. [00:12:37] Elaborate on, why you think anthropology is particularly good at or reaffirm maybe why we are particularly well-suited to do everything you just said, learn the context. You have all these sort of rituals practices right. In all of these various places. Maybe just to help everybody realize that UX is a really great place for them. [00:12:55]Any thoughts on [00:12:56] Amy Santee: [00:12:56] that? Yeah. Totally anthropologists have been working in business and design since 50 years ago and it's just grown and grown. And it's always this perennial discussion of we need more anthropologists in this field. It's been happening for so long and yes we could use more of us in there because we do provide a really good, not just set of skills, but perspective. [00:13:20]As you mentioned, as I was talking about earlier, being able to go into a new context and get an understanding of what's going on and who does what, and the, organizational culture and how you fit into the bigger picture, how to work with your team, how to, educate people about user experience. [00:13:37] All of that. I think anthropologists are well-suited at the same time. We have really strong identities for who we are and what we do and how we do it. So there is a tension between being that person coming out of academia and sh and transitioning over. And that was my biggest challenge, I think, was like trying to stick to what I was trained in and how I was trained. [00:13:58] And I had a difficult time really shedding some of that stuff, not getting rid of it, but just talking to you about myself in a different way. And. Again, immersing myself in this new context, but it's possible. And we're really good at that sort of thing. The other thing I was going to say is obviously research methodologies, like I was saying, that's our, our biggest strength I think is anthropology being a research oriented discipline that looks at people and the way I've always defined anthropology is it's the understanding of the human experience. [00:14:30] That's it? Whether it's past, present or future. And you need to understand people if you want to create things that. They want in their lives, that, that are valuable and useful to them. And that's when you start getting into the user experience, product design stuff, and that's where you connect those things together. [00:14:51]So yeah, and I think too, going back to the organizational culture stuff you were talking about the role of research and design and different types of companies. And there are companies out there that are. Design led or they have a high level of design or user experience maturity. I would say Google is one of those companies, and then you take a look at a company like maybe some of the ones that I've worked for before and the user experience and design maturity model that you could map to a company like that was really a little maturity or maybe mid maturity in the sense that. [00:15:28] Design wasn't at the forefront of decision-making design was a thing that was being done and talked about. It was important because it is important, but maybe the difference was that design didn't have a quote seat at the table for key business decisions. And then, yeah, you might have super old fashion kind of companies that they have designers, designing their product, but it's just a check box. [00:15:53] And so there's different levels. And. If an anthropologist or let's say just a person trained in anthropology, rather than an anthropologist, if they go into this company, they're going to have to suss out what is the maturity level of of vulnerability of the company to be open, to asking important questions, learning that they're wrong and making changes. [00:16:15]And so I've, I have found that I, and lots of other people have to play that role of being like, Hey, we're, we need to look at these really important things before we make a decision, or how is this decision going to have an effect? How will it affect us today, tomorrow in five years in 10 years? [00:16:32]What are the potential outcomes of this? Especially when it comes to ethics. So we're good at asking questions like those, but we also get we can get a lot of pushback from people depending on how much power we actually have in an organization to impact that sort of thing. [00:16:51] Matt Artz: [00:16:51] Yeah, certainly influences one of the things I oftentimes am talking about here in New York and with various colleagues. [00:16:58] But before we jump into some things around influence, I'd like to maybe just go back to what you said on identity. And so in your intro, so you just mentioned identity last few minutes. And in your intro, you said that you actually moved away from identifying as an anthropologist and presumably to UX researcher. [00:17:18] So what was, that's something that comes up a lot. A lot of people, want anthropologists in their title. And, we often have to advise people that generally are not going to have anthropologists and your title. And why did you move away from it? Yeah. And what did you maybe learn that help you do that, that others who might want that identity should be thinking about. [00:17:38] Amy Santee: [00:17:38] Yeah. It comes down to a personal choice and you're right. It has to do with, where you work. And do people know what an anthropologist does? And I remember at state farm, a guy I worked with he was like, what does that have to do with insurance? And he drew like in some really boring meeting. [00:17:58] I wish I had it. I was looking around for it. He drew me like a little fake business card that said Amy Santee anthropologists agent, or like a dinosaur next to it. And that. You said eight six, seven five three Oh nine, which if you I'm sure you understand that reference, but that was his like understanding of me and what was I doing there? [00:18:17] And that was a pretty profound moment for me early on. And I've even written about that since then on my blog anthropology, rising.com. And I also co edited a entire journal of practicing anthropology, which is the SFAA. Society for applied anthropology journal all about this question of anthropologists working in business. [00:18:38] And that was, I think one of my the title of my essay in that journal was like, what are you doing here? So it was a question to reflect for myself. Yeah. What am I doing here? And what does this actually look like? So there were situations like that early on that just made me stop and think is this useful? [00:18:55] Is it does it make people feel weird around me? How does it come off? And there's been several times where mentioning anther, I'm an anthropologist or I'm trained in anthropology. It just rubs people the wrong way. Or they feel like she knows, she must know everything about like humans and culture and I don't have anything to contribute. [00:19:14] It can make people feel I don't know Yeah. So I just found it to not be very useful for me doesn't mean that you can't do it. It just means you have to pay attention to who you're communicating with. And if you're with a group of anthropologists, that's different than if you're with a group of engineers or people on your team. [00:19:33]And it comes down to how you communicate that stuff. And if they, if there's some place to mention that where it. Is it feels like a diplomatic communication of your background that isn't going to put people on defense then yeah, I think that's totally fine, but you're right. Intel has a whole big history of hiring anthropologists and they retain that title. [00:19:55]Many of them come straight out of academia, they have PhDs. So there's an even stronger link back to that. And. And through line for that, identity sort of label. So I think it really just depends on where you are. I still don't really talk about it. I talk about anthropology stuff a lot, I'll join anthropologists for panels or whatever, but typically it's just a, someone discovers it and they're like, Oh, that's super cool. [00:20:21] Or I'll bring it up if it's highly relevant. [00:20:25] Matt Artz: [00:20:25] Yeah. So related to that then is unrelated to that com the conversation on maturity. So when you're working in an office organization, sometimes we have the opportunity to not just discuss her background, but maybe also discuss some things about our methods or theories, whatever it may be. [00:20:45] And in your experience, And that's another thing that you need to navigate, and you'd understand the organizational culture or your coworkers, then, the norms, all that stuff you need to take, take sense of all of that and figure out when it's appropriate rent. It's not. And so did did you make any mistakes along the way, or did you learn anything about when you should maybe be a little bit more forceful on why, say this is the right method or this is, the way that I'm analyzing this data and why it's relevant and Hey, any thoughts there? [00:21:13] Amy Santee: [00:21:13] Yeah. So you mean generally speaking as like a user experience practitioner, researcher, person. Yeah. Oh yeah. There's so much to learn with that and it really is about communicating it in a way that doesn't come off as I know everything and you don't know how to do anything. And it can come off in that way. [00:21:30] And so yeah, what I have learned is people don't always understand what qualitative research is. They don't know what it's for. They have a Numbers focused ideology that they make decisions based on. And so how can talking to 10 people about something, give us any useful information. So there's, there is education to be done in that in that area that said, more qualitative research happens over time at companies and people are getting more exposure to it. [00:22:00] So I think for some depends on the team in the company, but some people have access experienced that and they know what it is and they will automatically value it when you go to work with them. And he may still have to educate them on some things. Now something I wish I had thought of before is saying, Hey, qualitative research actually comes from the social sciences, like anthropology, sociology. [00:22:24]There's a big history and foundation of. Of this type of work. So tying it, telling the story of what qualitative research is for and what it does, and tying it back to things that will communicate to someone like, Oh, this isn't just like bullshit that people are making up. Being able to talk about the validity of studies. And validity doesn't just come from your the way you analyze data. Your validity in your study is, comes from the entire way that you set up a project. Are you answering, are you asking the right questions at the right time? Are you recruiting the right people to be participants in your study? [00:23:01] And do they have the right kind of experience and perspective to speak from that adds a later layer of validity? Are you talking to the right. Amount of people that adds a layer of validity. Did you select the right methods? So there is a ton of validity baked into studies that. Are because they're systematically designed. [00:23:20] They're not just a Willy nilly let's interview people and summarize what they said. So there's a method to this whole design. And so I think if we can keep that kind of stuff in mind, it gives us confidence in the work that we do. And when we need someone if we're able to talk to them and explain to them and refer to companies that have huge research teams, 50 qualitative researchers at Google or Airbnb or, whatever the number might be. [00:23:47] That is a sure sign and some street cred for why research can be important in the entire product development process or in business strategy. I had the religious learn that stuff by trial and error over time and see how other people did it and integrate whatever it is that helped me into that that process for not just convincing people to do this type of work, but throughout the process get, keeping them on board, getting buy-in throughout the process engaging them so that they were part of a research project as. [00:24:22] Note takers helping design, like all the questions we were going to ask and making sure that they had. That they had decision-making power throughout the process, instead of me doing whatever I wanted and then telling them information and at the end. So there's all these different things that we can do to help make our work more successful. [00:24:41]And therefore the company more successful. And that's the last thing I want to mention with that is speaking to the business goals that people have in mind, because whether we like it or not business goals are again why we exist in companies. They have business goals in mind and people in different roles are part of the team that makes those goals happen. [00:25:04] And if you think about it, business goals are tied to an individual person's income their bonus at the end of the year. And so if we can, Hey, we have these things we want to do. If we can do all these things with the product this year, we're going to get our bonus. And so how can research help. [00:25:21] Move the team towards achieving goals. So that individual people who are looking out for themselves are happy. But then also the possibility that research can question and derail things that people want to do that get in the way of their. Their money. So like you have to think even bigger about all of the implications of your work. [00:25:44] And again, I think anthropologists have this kind of perspective, but they need to be willing to also go work in companies and feel okay with that. And that is totally an okay thing. Again, we were identifying these like bigger conversations that, we can talk about for hours and hours about, is it okay to go work in companies and my sell out and all that stuff? [00:26:03] The answer is no. But anyway, that kind of wraps up. Hopefully that answered your question. [00:26:08] Matt Artz: [00:26:08] Yeah. Yeah. One thing maybe just to comment on there is when you're talking about the validity of the study, I think it's also worth mentioning, reflectivity and, some various other obviously anthropological concepts and us really making, our influence known. [00:26:22]Which is in many ways, very different than what you're oftentimes coming. Seeing coming out of like the quant portion of the house. Not everywhere of course, but in many places where, the data is assumed to be on an altar, the quantitative right. Assumed to be on an altar. [00:26:37] And so I think it's also worth pointing out that, I think that's actually a value add that we are transparent in that way. [00:26:42] Amy Santee: [00:26:42] Yeah, that's a great point. [00:26:45] Matt Artz: [00:26:45] But you're, what you just brought up about the sort of rub of working for business hasn't come up on the podcast yet. So maybe we'll just deviate a bit and just brief. [00:26:53] I know we could go on for a long time. So it just briefly dip into that, the the point that you mentioned about like PM bonuses and incentives, and really like individual goals is really interesting. I've never spoke about that with another person in the UX space, but it's a great point. [00:27:09] And there, there's obviously competing needs there, and in our work influences all of those. And, I agree with you that it's okay to work in business. I've done it my whole life. And I agree with that. I think one of our reasons for being there is to try and. [00:27:23] Influence the product or service as much as possible to achieve the various goals, but also to influence in a way where, we are trying to also make sure that it's say as ethical as possible, as if it's a product, whatever it can be. And I've often said to people that, even if I improve that by some, whatever percentage, just make up a number that I feel better having been there than if none of us were there. [00:27:51]So imagine a world where we didn't participate, where we just said this is evil. This, I don't want to be part of this. It's what would some of these products look like? Is I think something that's worth pointing out because we even have, at times there's there's moments that we're frustrated and I know you left and started your own business. [00:28:07] And maybe that played a role, but No, even if those moments exist, there is still value to us being there. And, I think a lot of our products would be a lot less human humane if we were not. [00:28:18] Amy Santee: [00:28:18] Yeah. And I want to add to that, like we all live in capitalism. We're not going to get rid of capitalism, but we can try to chip away at it if that's what you care about. [00:28:26] And I say that because anthropology is it's a leftist. Discipline, it's a critical discipline. And that's how I think most anthropologists see things and that's great, but we can, we, and this is what was helpful for me was to shift my perspective and go, okay. I can't like turn around this entire company. [00:28:47] I can't like. Change these big issues going on, but I can focus on the area that I'm working in. Let me just try to help my team think differently. Let me try to, again, chip away at stuff that I disagree with morally or whatever it might be. But you're right. I did leave E-bay and had the same frustration at a lot of places and it, it was. [00:29:08] Too frustrating for me ultimately, and I want to thrive in my job and be able to have impact. And so that is a huge reason for why I left. But yeah I think reframing how we think about things we want to have impact on. The company and the product and whatever it is we're working on in the moment. [00:29:26] And as we work there, but sometimes that doesn't happen until a year or two later. I see stuff come out on the eBay app where I'm like, I worked on that. My research had something to do with that. And it's okay, cool. And, or again, like how can we impact the people that we're working with? How can we make them feel safer to speak up about stuff, and the other thing too, is we don't, it's okay to work in a company and make money and have a good lifestyle and not to feel guilty about that sort of thing. Not to feel guilty that we're not working in directly with a disadvantaged community and trying to improve their lives. [00:30:01] It's okay. If you're not doing that. Plus if you work in a business, if you work in a very wealthy industry like tech you will make good money that you could put into use for those purposes. So there are all kinds of different ways to think about it and hopefully feel good about the work you're doing. [00:30:21]And then, yeah you will probably have a threshold at which you will decide if you want to stay in a company or leave it and go do something else. [00:30:30] Matt Artz: [00:30:30] And the last thing I would add there about the pay, as you said, the pay is good. And for anybody who's thinking of going to your ex that's something that's always worth. [00:30:40] Mentioning because many students today have student debt. And so even if it is just a stop on your way to doing something else like you're doing now, which we'll get into. But even if it's just a stop along the way to to pay down some of your debt, it's, it can be a great means to an end, working somewhere else. [00:30:58] And so maybe to use that as a transitioning point, what did. And, you don't have to give specifics or specific companies, but like specific examples that specific companies, but what made you want to maybe switch and what are you trying to do differently? Or I should say, when you started your business, what did you really want to do differently? [00:31:20] Like what did you want to get out of that experience that made you make the leap? [00:31:25] Amy Santee: [00:31:25] Yeah. Yeah. Just to recap, I have worked at two major corporations. I worked at a startup sort of thing that was housed inside of a not-for-profit, but also healthcare, health insurance kind of thing. I have worked, I worked with a design consulting firm, so I was an employee there. [00:31:47] And then my other jobs at different points have been as a freelancer or as a business owner. And I differentiate freelancers like somewhat a team will hire you to come on and do a project real quick. Or maybe you work through a design consulting firm that has their own client. Self-employed person has, for me, it's having direct clients, myself. [00:32:09] My clients are these companies, rather than like working through an agency or a more traditional kind of contract thing. So I've done that. And at different times between jobs before I got to eBay, I've loved it. I was been successful at it. But I did decide to go back to self-employment because the most important thing for me is my life and my wellbeing and living a lifestyle that I That I enjoy that. [00:32:36]I, I'm not feeling constantly stressed out with I Twitch. So I, I have learned to really understand what I value and impact I value impact highly, and again, different people have different thresholds for what. Kind of impact they want to have and how much is good enough or whatever. But for me, it's extremely strong. [00:32:58] It's one of my main drivers, just in everything that I do in my life. And I decided if I can be self-employed a, I get to pick my clients. I get to choose whoever I work with. I decided I don't want to work with people who don't value my work. So when I have worked in companies before I spent so much time and energy working on stuff that didn't go anywhere that people didn't seem to care about, even if they asked for it and, not having the impact that I wanted to. [00:33:28] And I just, I couldn't do that anymore, but working with my clients if I had a potential client that clearly did not. Understand or value the type of work that I do. I just simply wouldn't work with them because I'm frankly tired of trying to convince people and waste my life doing that. So obviously I feel very strongly about that. [00:33:50] So I had that in my control. I had the type of clients and type of work and products and stuff within my control. And I love collaborating with people with my clients, with teams. Bringing them along for the ride for, with research engaging them, having fun. And so I was able to practice research and practice being a consultant in the exact way that I wanted to. [00:34:14]So that was really the big change for me. And it, it does make a huge difference for me. And then even further into my shift into career coaching now. I ha I can have even more impact because I'm working one-on-one with a person to help them figure out big career questions, make progress in their career. [00:34:33]And it's guaranteed that I will have impact on that person. So then they can go off and do some of their own stuff and, achieve their goals and have the kind of impact that they want to. So I, I feel like I've achieved, I've transcended to the. The deepest level of impact that it can possibly have, which is feels really wonderful. [00:34:54] Matt Artz: [00:34:54] Yeah. That's great. Granulations and so let's dive into that. So tell us a little bit, give us the overview, the elevator pitch of your career [00:35:02] Amy Santee: [00:35:02] coaching. Yeah. My, I, I switched to career coaching almost a year ago, coincidentally, in March of 2020, when the pandemic. Hit the United States. And I have been phasing out my consulting, so I am finishing up my last project right now which is a super cool project with the city of Portland working on our local elections process. [00:35:24]And so that's been really amazing. But yeah I'm my goal is to not do consulting anymore, to do just coaching for people specifically in the field that I've worked in. So I've worked in this field of user experience, product development. For about 10 years. And I know the field really well. [00:35:43] I love the people who work in the field and not just knowing a lot about being a researcher and what that entails, but having gone through the job job search process. So many times, interviewing have a lot of experience with that working with and understanding what other people do. [00:35:59] So what do you user experience designers do? What does their work entail? Helping them go through the interview process too. And there's lots of different roles in business product and technology that I became familiar with. So that's why I've chosen this particular niche to focus on. [00:36:15]And I work with people. There's a couple of different areas that I work in. It's all based though, in understanding your values, understanding your strengths, what you really love to do and doing a lot of that self exploration to set a foundation for making good decisions making decisions with less risks. [00:36:33]Building confidence in making decisions, confidence in your work and the interview process. So there's like a foundation to it. That's part of that process. Some people I work with are S are trying to ask and the answer, big questions about what do I even want to do in this field? What is going to provide me with meaning in my role? [00:36:55]How do I craft a professional identity? That matches with my values. So there's some big questions around that big questions around, like, how do I build more confidence in everything that I do? And talking about ways for building that through taking action, right? And taking action and practicing something is the only way that you're going to build confidence in doing it, whether it's presenting a portfolio in an interview or Interviewing in and of itself, having these conversations with people or doing new things at work. [00:37:27]So that's a theme that comes up a lot with people and then within all of that stuff, and it depends on the person I'm working with. It's very customized to this person. It's very specific things of getting your professional assets in shape. So in my mind, like the F the four pillars, the four most important things for your professional assets. [00:37:48] In design and in tech are your resume, your cover letter, your LinkedIn and your portfolio. And if you have a website, that's cool too. But. Helping people identify and understand what is my professional story? What differentiates me from others? What is my professional brand? How, like reflecting back on your path, your educational professional path to look through the, to look for the through line or the threads through the entire story. [00:38:16] Because that not only helps you get clear in your own mind for telling people your story and being, and feeling confident in doing that, but then infusing that information into your professional assets. If you're looking to make some kind of transition. So I liken it to doing exploratory or foundational research on yourself. [00:38:36] And so I see these conversations I have as. Parallel to doing interviews for user experience research projects. And, but this time I am helping guide people to come to their own insights and then be there to, coach them and give them domain expertise and experience from UX when it's relevant. [00:38:56]And then the other side of that is to do the evaluative research of let's. Let's get your assets in order and then test those, put them into the world and see what kind of results we get. Are you getting more interviews, testing your hypothesis essentially. So I treat it like I treated the same way as a research project or a user centered design process where you're iterating on this over time in order to achieve what it is you're working with. [00:39:25] Matt Artz: [00:39:25] It makes a lot of sense. Now, in, in the way you described that, although it almost sounds did people that you're working with, maybe you're already at the point of applying and they S they need to get those assets in place, but are there, are you working with anybody who's maybe a student and they also have the time to plan to have those assets. [00:39:44] You a properly aligned with their end goal. [00:39:47] Amy Santee: [00:39:47] Yeah. I work with people at all phases of their career at all points of the process of, whether they're still getting trained or getting their education too. Are they trying to get their foot in the door to a highly competitive field, how to do that? [00:40:01]Or maybe they're, a senior designer and they want to move to a lead designer role or a VP role, whatever. So I do get a nice variety of people, but. Yeah. Because each person is different. I have to take a step back just as a researcher would and go, okay. Before we move forward with this, there's some questions we need to answer about, like, how competent are you at this type of work? [00:40:24] What are any gaps that you have in understanding? It's not just about knowing research methodologies and being able to conduct qualitative research. It's how does that fit into product design? Knowing the language, knowing the culture and the way organizations and teams work. So the more of that, going back to that self-education and on the job learning that I did a long time ago, it's the same thing. [00:40:48] Like you, you are going to be most successful if you're prepared with a more holistic understanding of this world. And yeah, it was some people it's identifying if there's anything that they need to learn. Or I meet people who have gone to bootcamps and bootcamps are a controversial topic right now because they don't always do what they say they're gonna do or produce the results they say they're going to do, or help people in. [00:41:16] Meaningful ways. And so people will go to bootcamps to learn about stuff only to realize that they can't get a job. And it's because they were misled into into an understanding of user experience and design that is incorrect. That is not as deep as it needs to be, not as holistic as it needs to be. [00:41:35] And so I, I'll talk with people like that who need to identify like what else they need to do. So yeah it's really anyone at any phase of their career at any point in the process, it's, very different for each person. So a big part of that is. Is deciding like at what, where am I at? [00:41:52] And is, am I in the right place to move forward? Or are there some things I need to do before I begin my job search? For example? [00:42:00] Matt Artz: [00:42:00] Yeah. Great. And just one to build on the bootcamp thing. I've said on the podcast already, but I'll say it again, that a lot of bootcamps are really focused on design and not so much research. [00:42:09] And a lot of anthropologists are obviously interested in research. So for a lot of reasons, bootcamps often aren't the best bet. For an anthropologist. [00:42:17] Amy Santee: [00:42:17] Yeah. And that, that might not be clear to people. I, I meet people who want to be a researcher, but they think they need to take a design bootcamp and no, you don't need to do design. [00:42:27] You just need to understand what it's all about and the tenants of the field and what user experience is all about. But you don't need to do design unless you want to be a designer. And that's something I want to say too, is. There are so many types of roles in user experience. You can be a researcher, a designer, you can be a content strategists were coming up with content for products which, fits into creating a good user experience. [00:42:52]A UX writer, like there are lots of different roles in this world that could potentially work for people who come out of anthropology. Let's say they're like really skilled at writing for mass audiences, which. I don't know, maybe we're trained more for academic writing, but, I, I wager there are people out there who are good at, writing for bigger audiences. [00:43:14] So I encourage people to explore like what are these different roles that I might fit into? And which one is most appealing to me if I know that I want to work in this field and that's the thing, like we do diligence. That's like the most highly used phrase that comes out of my mouth these days is we need to do due diligence in understanding what UX is, what design is all about. [00:43:38] Do I really want to pursue a career in this field? And how do I know? Have I answered all the important questions? And yeah. So that's why it's so important to learn all of this and not take a leap into something unless you fully understand it because you'll set yourself up for, sabotaging yourself or delayed progress because you haven't fully understood something before you've acted on it. [00:44:06] Matt Artz: [00:44:06] Yeah. And just to add to that too, the we recently gave a talk on a triple a webinar where it was about breaking into tech. And so a few of the slides were around really finding the right fit. You set it there. One of them is the right role, right? The right organizational culture kind of, even that related to maturity, are you going to be. [00:44:28] Okay. And maybe a low maturity organization where you have to do many things, wear many hats, don't have much oversight and we needed figure things out yourself. Where do you think you want to maybe try and get into a larger organization with more process where, you have somebody who's mentoring you, right? [00:44:42] Those are all really critical decisions that go into breaking into UX that are far beyond just our research skills. [00:44:49] Amy Santee: [00:44:49] Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. PR project management. If you love the logistics and Oregon, as, highly organized making processes, work for a team and getting everyone to move forward. [00:45:01] Just the, like the infrastructure of that's an option. There's so many different options out there and it doesn't have to just be about research. We can do lots of stuff and bring that perspective of human understanding and critical thinking to any role. [00:45:16] Matt Artz: [00:45:16] So maybe yeah, you want to be respectful of time, but maybe as we're wrapping up here, we could just dive into the four pillars as you described them, or even the fifth, you mentioned the website. [00:45:26] So do you have recommendations for everybody that for those four or five that, that you think everybody should consider? [00:45:34] Amy Santee: [00:45:34] Yeah. And do you want me to talk about people coming out of anthropology, education and training or anyone? It doesn't matter. [00:45:43] Matt Artz: [00:45:43] So of course, from my perspective it's different for a student versus early to mid career and especially, if you have experienced research experience or not, in business or in the field. [00:45:53]So I appreciate we can go in both directions. I'll give you the floor. If you feel that there's specific things that you want to call out for both. [00:46:00] Amy Santee: [00:46:00] Yeah. Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Before I do that, you've mentioned one key thing that I think we should call out, which is experience like get as much experience as you can, even if it's class projects, those count academic experience, applying anthropology to answering questions and solving problems is experience. [00:46:20] It's a matter of communicating the experience in a non-academic. Way to people in a potential job situation. So I like if there's anything people can do before they go to a school that is the most important thing going to these these professional assets. Yeah. So I think of it one way to think of it is like having an online presence that helps people find you. [00:46:45] Evaluate you, know you like you trust you. That's like a common concept for this and then contact you. You're answering their questions proactively there. You're giving them information that they already want or that they didn't know they wanted. And that's like interesting about you, telling them stuff, but you want to set it up so that you don't have to do as much of the work. [00:47:05] You want to set it up so that you're not just relying on, I'm applying to jobs, going through a company websites and, job sites and that kind of thing you want to take advantage of the internet and your ability to be, found on the internet and imagine someone I'll use myself, right? [00:47:21] So I've been on LinkedIn for a long time. I love it as a platform. It's been crucial at every point in my career when I, whether I was like applying for jobs or being a consultant to get clients or doing coaching now. And I get pretty much all of my clients for coaching through LinkedIn. And the reason is because I am find-able on LinkedIn. [00:47:43] I put information out there that people. Find valuable. I engage in the community, so I'm you will find me in lots of different places on LinkedIn. I have a website. I make it easy for people to go, Oh, Amy looks interesting as a person she has a background in UX she's career coach. [00:48:04]That all that put together makes me interested in her. Let me check out her info. Okay. Then I will get in contact if I'm interested in chatting further. It's the same thing for anyone else. So if you're in the more traditional role of like actually applying for a job inside of a company, you can think of it in the same way you submit your application. [00:48:22] You have a top-notch resume that. That covers your jobs and what you've done, but most importantly, the accomplishments that you've made and the impact that you've had at a job and your skills your cover letter, which I highly recommend. There, there are lots of perspectives on cover letters. [00:48:39] Some people want them, some people don't, some people look at them, some people don't. So because of that, I say always do it just in case, unless it's not asked for, then maybe you don't need to do it, but that's a persuasive essay. So you're creating a multidimensional self out of and not just handing them like a piece of paper with like flat info about you like a list of what you've done. [00:49:02] So you're writing a persuasive essay to catch their eye and convince them that you're a highly that you're highly qualified for this role, that you're a good fit and that they should talk to you and take the next step. So have your resume, your cover letter. Your LinkedIn, if you Google your name and you don't have a website, then the first thing that's going to come up is your LinkedIn profile. [00:49:23] And you will get Googled. There's no doubt. I don't know why any recruiter or hiring manager, wouldn't Google you to see what they can find out about you. So you want to have that in a really good place. You want to have it filled out. You want to use it as a platform for storytelling. So not rehashing your resume. [00:49:44] It's cut. LinkedIn is like a combination of a resume and a cover letter and a portfolio put together because you can add your own kind of featured content on there. So yeah, it's these, let's see LinkedIn resume cover letter portfolio. Yes. For people who want to get into design a portfolio is absolutely essential. [00:50:04] And this includes researchers. And the reason is because we need to be able to talk to people about projects we've done and what our experiences and indicate to them that we're competent in not only practicing as a researcher, but in storytelling. And in visually communicating to people what we have done. [00:50:26] And when I say that, it doesn't mean you need to be like, have stellar design skills. There are lots of portfolio templates out there. You can Google for that kind of stuff. I have resources for that, that I share with people. But the reason is because they're going to have to communicate your research, oftentimes in that same way. [00:50:43]Either verbally or through, some kind of visual storytelling about your process and your findings and all of that stuff. So yeah. Those are essential. And website is also great too, the more cohesive and robust of an online presence, you have the better and, your website is whatever you want it to be. [00:51:01]You can put whatever you want on there. And whether it's the same stuff as your other. As the other four pillars or some different things. Just one more thing to show that you're really being considerate about this and that you have a concept and a strong purse concept of your professional identity that you want to communicate to people. [00:51:23] Matt Artz: [00:51:23] Great. And, one thing on the portfolio that I think you touched on it when you said that the design is not super important. And for those who maybe already have some kind of. Visual designs that they can include at the emphasis is not on those, right? Those are maybe there to articulate other points, but we are not designers. [00:51:45]So that's not really showcasing our work per se. It's much more about the way we. Think right. The way we maybe got to the recommendations that led to that visual design, of course, the outcomes of that, it's not meant to show off the the visual interaction or interaction design of somebody else. [00:52:02]Amy Santee: [00:52:02] And you can, yeah. You can do, you can show examples of, a prototype that you're testing or if you're doing something in school, whatever it is that you're working on for a project to tell a story, but you're right. It's about showing people like. Here's what I've done to indicate the kind of value that I can bring to this job. [00:52:19]Again, storytelling, can you walk people through something in an articulate way, talking about your process. Decision-making how you involved people as collab in collaboration with your project outcomes. And on that note, if you, if your project didn't have any outcomes, that's okay. Because that's not always the case, and we have to think of outcomes, not just in terms of we got this many more users or, whatever it can be that had an impact on the design of some marketing materials for this nonprofit that you worked with, whatever it may be. [00:52:52] So thinking, yeah. Thinking broadly about what it is that you did. And again, communicating. How that's relevant to the job that you're applying for. [00:53:03] Matt Artz: [00:53:03] Yeah. Great. All right. Wonderful. Amy do you want to maybe tell everybody where they can find you as a career coach and maybe mention anything else that you wish to plug. [00:53:12] Amy Santee: [00:53:12] Yeah. You can go to Amy santee.com. You can go on my LinkedIn and I love connecting with people on LinkedIn. Like I said, I'm on there a lot because a it's a really helpful for running my business, but B because I love engaging in not just the design and user experience community, the anthropology community Social justice community on LinkedIn. [00:53:34] So there's a lot of cool people that, you can connect with on there and learn from. So I love that part of it. So definitely LinkedIn and yeah, I think that's pretty much it. I would also mention my blog. It's the 10 year anniversary of my blog this year. Anthropology.com. Yeah. And I, I started that blog right after I graduated with my master's to think out loud about w what it means to practice anthropology in the world. [00:53:58] And not only did it help me talk about it out loud, but it helped me actually figure it out and process that. As I went on. And there's a lot of documentation of, things that I've done and encountered and thought about on there. And I recommend it for anyone who is interested in, general applied anthropology, but also working as an anthropologist or practicing anthropology in user experience. [00:54:21] Matt Artz: [00:54:21] Yeah. Great. Yeah, that's a great blog. I definitely would. Second that to recommend it to everybody else. I know. Are you going to do anything to celebrate the 10th anniversary, any kind of series or anything planned? [00:54:31] Amy Santee: [00:54:31] No I did a guest post on a blog that a friend of mine has called leaders. [00:54:38]And it was just more of a reflection on. The things I was just talking with you about. So I don't know, that's a nice little way of documenting it. But I, my goal is just to continue posting more stuff on my blog. That's pretty much it. Cool. [00:54:53] Matt Artz: [00:54:53] Hi Greg. Amy, thanks again, really enjoyed talking with you. [00:54:56]I know that the work you're doing in career coaching is great and Hey, we'll help everybody. So if anybody needs help, please reach out to Debbie. [00:55:04] Amy Santee: [00:55:04] Yes. And you as well. I know you do some similar work you should don't be afraid to mention that. Or if you don't want to, then I will recommend that people reach out to you, especially because you focus just on anthropologists. [00:55:15]Which is really awesome. [00:55:18] Matt Artz: [00:55:18] Yeah, thanks. I think both of us don't love the sales process. As much as [00:55:22] Amy Santee: [00:55:22] that, I like to be salesy. Yeah. It's not my style, but that's the whole point. It's let your work speak for itself. And that bringing that back to the people, listening to this podcast today, let your work speak for itself, put it out there. [00:55:35] And eventually you're not going to have to put a ton of effort into gaining new opportunities for yourself and your career. [00:55:42] Matt Artz: [00:55:42] Yeah, said. All right thanks again. Appreciate it. [00:55:45] Amy Santee: [00:55:45] Thanks. Please note this transcript is an automated transcription and may have some errors.

Larry McGrath on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Tue, 16 Feb 2021 02:16:16 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Larry McGrath speaks with Matt Artz about his UX journey. Larry earned a Ph.D. in History & Anthropology of Science from Johns Hopkins University and currently works as a Researcher at Facebook. About Larry McGrath Larry leads user research for technology organizations. He has taught anthropology, history, and philosophy and currently works at Facebook. At Facebook, he leads a research team. You can find his articles at Aeon and Medium. He's also the author of Making Spirit Matter: Neurology, Psychology, and Selfhood in Modern France. About Making Spirit Matter In Making Spirit Matter, Larry traces the brain sciences' history, focusing on the vexed relations between mind and body in French society over the past 200 years. Why France? The country's not only home to basic discoveries about the nervous system. France is also where the relations of spirit (esprit) and matter (matière) have remained a persistent philosophical problem; even recent advances in neuroscience haven’t been able to explain it satisfactorily. Recommended Links

Watch the Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKnLOMmtYYM Episode Transcript Please note this transcript is an automated transcription and may have some errors. Matt Artz: All right. Hi everyone. Today. I'm back with Larry McGrath. He's a researcher at Facebook and has a PhD from Johns Hopkins University in history and anthropology of science, which is something new for the show. So Larry, thanks for joining me today. Look forward to talking with you. Larry McGrath: It's a pleasure to be here, Matt. Matt Artz: You know, I, I gave a very brief introduction there, but I really like to hear everybody's story from the South. So would you maybe tell us all how, you know, what led you to anthropology a little bit about the academic background and then after that, you know, we'll, we'll get into some of the more employment stuff. Sure. Larry McGrath: Well, before I start on my origin story about how I came to anthropology, I should say that I'm here doing this podcast with you because I think that there is a real business need and value to be offered by the critical research skillset that anthropologists in particular, as well as humanists and social scientists generally can bring to the business world. I think I bring it to many worlds, but I work now in the business world. And that's what I'm prepared to talk with you today. About as for my beginnings, I decided to pursue a doctorate in the history of science from Johns Hopkins University back in 2008, because it was a time when there was massive interest and investment from both the Obama administration and the European union in mapping the brain to do to the brain. What had been done to the human genome back in the 1990s. Larry McGrath: And so I set about writing a dissertation on the history of the brain sciences in Europe, particularly in France, because it was my conviction that for these projects to succeed, cultural contexts needed to be taken into account that although we have the same organ between our ears called the brain, the way in which hits, analyzed, understood mapped is dependent on contingent contexts in different places in time. And so I went about writing a dissertation on the history of the brain sciences in France. People oftentimes ask me why France. And there are multiple reasons. One of them converges with the work we do as anthropologists. There's a fundamental assumption that science technology life more generally is not the same everywhere. That cultural variance is part of what we're interested in understanding. And so there is no universal history of the brain sciences to be written. Larry McGrath: The second reason is that my skill set is in French. I lived there for a long time. And so that's the linguistic training that I have. And then the third is that there's so many parts of our brain that are named after old dead French people, as well as neurological disorders think of Tourette's syndrome that was named after shield Toret. And so the French really pioneering and advancing the brain sciences and helping us understand the mind brain problem. I spent some time in academia teaching the history and anthropology of science and eventually published a book based on my research. You can find it at university of Chicago, press it's titled making spirit matter, neurology, psychology, and selfhood in modern France, but after time, I was no longer satisfied with the state of American academia for a few personal and professional reasons. Larry McGrath: I was teaching at Wesleyan university at the time and had very clever students in my seminars, but I found myself wanting a few things. One was control over where I live. Second was some more money academics don't make a whole lot of that. And third was to be able to do research that had a more material impact beyond just contributing more articles to journals or chapters to anthologies that would be read by an elite meaningful, but ultimately narrow audience. So I left, I did a consulting in the medical world working primarily with companies in biotech doing research on neurodegenerative disorders. And so it was really meaningful to be able to spend time in hospitals and clinics, doing anthropology for the sake of pharmaceutical and medical devices. And I ultimately transitioned to Facebook where I now do cultural research and work with a research team investigating forms of value in ads and business across different cultures. Again, the assumption there being that although plenty of us in the world are plugged into social media and use technology the way in which we use it is not at all the same. And so understanding the role that cultural context plays can really bring about value for companies for Facebook, for whom I work. Matt Artz: Hey, thanks for that introduction. And you know, I'll just to sort of build on that. I know you on LinkedIn, which maybe people should check you out and what we could talk about exactly where they can find you later, but you'd share a lot of interesting content that, you know, I think would be relevant for everybody listening. And so what you said in there, I mean, there's a lot to dig into and, you know, I want to be maybe mindful of time, but your, your background again is a little bit different and, you know, I'm wondering, do you think that particular degree path provides you, you know, and specific you know, specific sort of value add maybe over some other degree paths? I think there are a lot Larry McGrath: Of degrees that offer entrees into the business world. Anthropology is a great one since there is a premium right now on the observational knowledge of people in their local life worlds that can contribute to product design. When I studied the history of science, there was an anthropological component spending time in hospitals and neurology clinics in order to understand how those sciences are actually practiced today, there was also an archival component and that's a skillset that a historian brings digging through materials that are not only published in journal or book form, but also unpublished in the form of letters, margin notes, library records even material objects. And so I think that a historian who can work among such different media and collect such a wide array of data can contribute a lot to the analysis we do in the business world. Just the same. Larry McGrath: I think that people from the literature world, maybe even philosophy or religious studies who are trained in massing textual knowledge, interpreting it very closely and then advancing arguments on the basis of that analysis can offer a lot to the business world. Because I think that the historical moment we live in right now, especially when it comes to tech companies, is that there is a surplus of numerical data big data that fills up the cells of spreadsheets. But that data can't explain itself that we have a SurfAid of data and therefore a renewed need for humanists and social scientists to bring that numerical data to bear on people's lives, to test it against real life experiences in short, as we oftentimes put it to bring thick data, to compliment the big data. And that's where I think multiple disciplines, including, but not just anthropology can contribute to the business world. Matt Artz: Great. And so you also said, you know, you were teaching for a bit, you chose to move on from that environment for the reasons you mentioned, but did you initially, did you always plan to teach? Was that the goal, or did you always think that you might end up in business Larry McGrath: Business was a complete career, one 80 move for me since I was a high school student, I had constructed a picture of me as a professor. I think when I was a young politicized activist, I wanted to be the next Noam Chomsky who would use my position to, you know, speak to America's interventions over the world. And it was a rather romantic picture that I had, but ultimately it was one created in my youth. And when I fulfilled it in my thirties, I realized that it was no longer a picture that I desired as much as I once had. And so I took a big risk. It's a big risk moving on from a PhD because we're so habituated to certain institutions that validate our worth our worth in the form of nuanced arguments, presenting them in front of seminars, conferences, workshops, and the business world was quite unknown. Larry McGrath: But I think the knowledge and skillset that a PhD has is incredibly useful in the business world. The difficulty is that it's a bit opaque as to how to make that skillset translate into a language understood by hiring managers by teammates in the business world, I offer a career transition consulting services on my website, Larry S McGrath. I know you do similarly. And I think that there are great resources out there on both free and paid for PhDs to jump into the business world that help eliminate some of that risk that I dealt with. Matt Artz: Right. So, and we'll link to that in the show notes for everybody who's listening. Tell me when you were. So, you know, you're, you're consulting on that now, but obviously you had to go through it the first time. So what were some of the challenges that you faced making the transition and did anybody help you along the way? Great question Larry McGrath: Challenge that I faced was knowing what's out there when you're an academic looking for jobs, there's a finite number of job boards. That list openings. You also have advisors who are skilled in helping you get those jobs and packaging, your application materials, the business world, and the jobs to enter. It are so much more decentralized. So much more of it depends on non meritocratic means such as networking, such as just talking to people and figuring out what's out there. And so my method was to buy about 50, 50 coffees for people. The summer I realized that I was sick and tired of academia and just get a lay of the land and really that's approaching it much. Like we would as researchers doing my own literature review, seeing what the possibilities are and then narrowing it down from there. Matt Artz: That's great. And then the coffees, you know, you could also basically say, you know, informational interviews, which is something we generally recommend to people. And so when you were doing that, were you already honed in on UX from your, you know, your own literature review, if you will, or did UX also pop out in your, in your coffee sessions? Larry McGrath: I knew that I wanted to do research and the challenge that I faced like many transitioning academics face is whether what they want to maintain a focus on their specialty, or instead pitch their skillsets. Do you want to work with the content knowledge that you've developed or transform it into formal skills? And I still wanted to work in the world of the human sciences, neurology, psychology and their cultural contexts. And I did that for some time in the consulting world. It's not easy for all academics to be able to find that seamless transition, the longer work with neurology and psychology at Facebook so much, it's more traditional ethnographic research, understanding normal people in their living contexts and how they deal with technology. But I think that that's a big question that a lot of academics have to face. I came to U X research only after realizing that there is an incredible demand for research out there. And perhaps this is something that you've spoken about Matt, on your other podcasts, but there is a sort of strange, I think, monopolization of research by UX right now, and it's worth listeners keeping in mind that UX research is one kind of research. And there are other forms of research that inform products strategy and other business functions that anthropologists and social scientists can offer, Matt Artz: Not just other research jobs. And I appreciate that probably many anthropologists want to be in research shops, but there's also lots of other roles that we can contribute to that are very, very meaningful and very important in the, in the business environment, such as strategy roles as you pointed out. So, so you find, you know, you, you end up first in a science role, so you, you got to play on the content knowledge that you had and the, the skills, what made you, and that's a nice place to be obviously, but what made you then make the leap to Facebook where you're giving up some of the work in the sciences? Larry McGrath: Yeah. Facebook does seek out former academics and you get to work on a wide variety of interesting products. Although Facebook is at the end of the day, an ads business, they generate a lot of research using the 3 billion people or so that they have as potential research participants. And so that was very attractive. There are also numerous investments of Facebook in health, in wearable devices that I think are really exciting in virtual reality that offer really thrilling opportunities for cutting edge research. And most of all, I get to work with a diverse array of psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, economists, whose skill sets are immense, and that I admire. And I think both professionally and personally, it's important to surround them oneself with people you admire. Matt Artz: Yeah, that's a great point. So, and it certainly sounds like a nice work environment and maybe pointing out one of the benefits of a larger organization over maybe some smaller startups, you know, oftentimes in the smaller startups, we're a small team or even a team of one. And so for anybody listening that might have a preference, you know, one thing we recently talked about in a AAA webinar was sort of making sure you're finding the right fit for you and not every research role, just because it's UX research or consumer behavior, whatever it may be. Not every role is really the right fit. There's organizational concerns. Yeah. There's a number of them even geographic, as you mentioned earlier on. So I think that's, that's nice point. So, you know, now let's maybe focus on, on the work at Facebook a little bit more. So I forget, did you start pre COVID or did you Larry McGrath: During COVID though? So much of my research has been in the remote work era. Matt Artz: Yeah. So I was wondering how much, you know, in, well, let me back up and say in tech, you know, we might not always get to do as much in context, you know, truly in context, sometimes we're doing it digitally. So what does, what's your work look like on a sort of daily basis? Are you, and I'll say pre COVID, cause obviously we're doing everything virtual right now, but were you doing a lot of really true in context, you know, in the home kind of studies or Larry McGrath: Yes, that's right. In the before times, it meant spending in people's homes, going shopping with them, spending time in people's workplaces, hanging out in front of a mall, for example, and doing fly by recruiting, getting people to spend five minutes with me, hanging out, say in front of a municipal building to get a different context and a community of people involved in the study, all of these different life worlds. And it is far more challenging to capture that richness of context, the naturalness of behavior that an anthropology would typically find in people's worlds in field work. And we try to recreate that using remote methods of interviews, focus groups, I love using diary studies. But ultimately the richness of the field is only partial as we capture it through any of those remote media. Matt Artz: Yeah. And so how have you made that transition? You know, it's one thing I actually, I haven't really talked about yet on the podcast, but what, what maybe have you learned from going fully virtual and what are maybe some of the challenges and any tips for anybody that's listening that might themselves already be working in UX? Larry McGrath: That's a really great question. I don't think there's any clear cut answer. It's an ongoing project for me to build the rapport, to be able to tailor my questions and prompts, to be able to account for not just interview subjects, attitudes, but also their behaviors, which we, as anthropologists are geared to observe. I mean, a fundamental assumption is everyone knows of ethnographic research is that there is a gap between attitude and behavior. And it's so difficult to capture the ladder via video conference like this. I mean, you only see from my chest up right now, you barely have a sense of context. And so it's really important. I've found when doing remote work to ask questions about that context, where are you in the home? Is this where you work? Is this where you play? What is the last thing that you did here? Where did you, where in the home did you come from before being here to get a sense of the transitions? Larry McGrath: I did work for Facebook and early COVID that I published as a medium article, trying to understand how people use technology and social media to introduce structure into the home as an alternative to the external on which we normally rely. We usually would organize our day pre COVID around commutes lunches gym visits. If you have kids then daycare, maybe out happy hours, these are the sort of pillars that would make for pivot points in our day. And now we find that it's all on our own resources to create that organization and fragment the day into chunks. Perhaps we transition from the table to the couch from the big, serious laptop screen, to the small, fun, playful mobile phone screen. And so this is one way in which I think remote research skills can capture some of that context and behavior that we would otherwise normally get by being physically present in the field. Matt Artz: Yeah. I like the pivot point concept. That's great. And you know, I'm wondering, is there anything that you're actually finding to be a benefit from all of this, you know, there are you, do you have greater reach than you might have otherwise? And is that providing any benefit? Larry McGrath: Yeah, that's a good question. I think it's a dual edged sword. On the one hand I've found that recruiting works quite well right now. But that's symptomatic of all the awful things that have happened during COVID. For example, more people are being laid off, so they need the extra money and they'll do a Facebook study. It's less likely for example, that we get drop-offs because people are at home all that's because they aren't going out and doing other things. And so as a result of people's difficult situations, it is easier to get participants into research into remote research sessions. But I do wonder, I wonder about the future of ethnographic research in the corporate world post COVID, once we're all vaccinated in the immediate term. I wonder even when boundaries between countries open up and travel returns, who is going to be open to welcoming strangers into an intimate space, that's going to be difficult. Larry McGrath: I also wonder about it from a corporate finance perspective that now that so many companies have been able to operate lean saving money on travel, doing less field work, will they use the will. They use COVID as a shock doctrine to make these conditions more permanent and say, look, we produce good research with remote tools. Why do we need to spend that money sending ethnographers out into the field? I really hope that's not the case. But it has before with other crises, like the 2008 financial downturn, the jury is still out to see how businesses react to post COVID. Matt Artz: Yeah, sure. And besides that, even just coming back to the office, right. I mean, Facebook has said that at least some larger portion will be able to work remotely. And so that's even also obviously a factor that's playing in, you know, at least for you, but for many of us. Right. And on that point, you know, how maybe it might be interesting to hear, you know, obviously Facebook has a pretty sizable research team. And so how has the dynamic changed as a team of researchers and your interactions as a result of COVID and how are you all kind of handling that? And maybe one, one you know, one question leading up to that, are, are you an embedded model or are you all centralized? Are you embedded in a specific product team or? Larry McGrath: Sure. look, COVID code is a huge blow to team dynamics. There's so much more intention and coordination required now to meet as a team. There's so much less serendipity and a water cooler chat as it were, but that echoes the general world in which we live in the COVID era as a time of coordination and planning. There's such little chance in our social encounters anymore. I live in New York city. I long for the times that my friends would call me late night on Friday and say, Hey, I'm on the lower East side. And I tell them I'm on the upper West side and Oh, we'll encounter at some point it doesn't happen anymore. Everything is planned and reserved in advance. And that happens in a, in a micro form at the office. When it comes to Facebook's model, our research division is enormous. Larry McGrath: I think it's about 550 people right now, and it's both embedded and most product teams do have one to three researchers who do evaluative research that is they test the design of the product and make sure it's, it's good to go live. I don't do that. I'm on a separate research team. What we call an ecosystem research team in other businesses it's sometimes called foundational or exploratory research. And the questions that I tackle are questions of value, especially non-monetary value. What value do people gets out of privacy, for example, Facebook's undergone a immense initiative to craft better privacy products for people. And, you know, I think a very important question, especially in a social media world where people value the concept of privacy yet their actions are oftentimes out of sync. With that, given that they want to share so much of their life online. So what, what value does privacy have? For people as a question that we that my team examines independently so that we can bring understanding and insights back to a variety of teams at Facebook. Matt Artz: Got it. So your work in particular, you know, the more sort of generative work that you're doing is very ripe for the application of social theory and understanding of privacy as a social construct that really differs across the 3 billion plus user base, as opposed to some evaluative type work where, you know, some relatively simple observation can really address sort of 80% of the problems without having to sort of couch it all in, in theory. And so, you know, unlike some roles you, you presumably get to, to really pull in a bit more from our toolkit. And so can you maybe speak a little bit about that? You know, how does theory play in your P in your work particularly, and how is that received within the organization? Larry McGrath: Absolutely. I was trained in some of the rarefied bastions of social theory in America first and the rhetoric department at university of California, Berkeley, where I was advised by Judith Butler, I a gender theorist. And then it, and then at Johns Hopkins which is a, which is a place where French post-structuralist theory had a enduring impact. It was the first American institution where Jacques Derrida presented, for example, back in the 1960s. And those theoretical toolkits have always been very important. They've informed the research that I've done in academia and in business when it comes to business, it's up to us as people who have those skillsets to translate them into terms that are adapted to our audiences, because as we know those those critical tools are oftentimes written in a jargon. That's a bit esoteric for others, and that's why I love them, of course, and I can speak theory to others, but what it's, what it's helped me appreciate first and foremost, in my work with a human participants doing human research is humans are ribbon we're torn through. Larry McGrath: And through that, if you look at the bottom of what we are, you won't find identity, you won't find sameness. You find us pulled in multiple directions, that humans, aren't just one thing. And I think that's very important when doing research and accounting for the different aspects of ourselves, the conflict between attitudes and behaviors, the way we change over time, the way we segment social groups, that if you keep in mind that humans, aren't one thing than research results. That show, for example, how people hate the idea of ads in general, yet actually quite like particular ads that they see no longer appear is contradictions, but very normal aspects of our conflicted life. That coming to terms with what satisfies us personally and what we think is good socially, for example, there are disconnects all over the place and accounting for these things as what my theoretical toolkit has helped with. And that was, are always research insights that I tried to deliver to my teams. And the wider Facebook organization is to show how people are pulled in multiple directions and how we might better design products, that account for the multifaceted nature of humans. Matt Artz: So that's no easy task, you know, that's, that's very different than, you know, a relatively small UI tweak just to, you know, increase some kind of click-through rates. So how do you go about that difficult task of getting others to understand your insights? You know, what, what has worked for you given the complexity of the content and know almost like, you know, sort of it's, you know, it's you know, something like value in and of itself, right? Value is something that is a construct that, you know, can be defined many ways by many different people. I imagine when using that term frequently, you know, even internally, there's just a lot of misunderstanding about maybe what you mean by it, you know, unless you're making sure to, to really operationalize it well. So how do you know, what, what do you do to overcome the kind of problems that you have in your particular type of space? Larry McGrath: Sure. Most people interpret value as dollar cents shackles values, not Mon, not, not always monetary, of course, what makes for a rich experience, but makes for user satisfaction, brings them value. It makes them recurrent users and that ultimately impacts ROI, just not in an immediately monetary sense. One advantage of working at a large organization like Facebook is that the case for more experimental research doesn't need to be made as aggressively as it would be in a smaller organization with less resources at Facebook, we can take on marginal product, marginal research endeavors that might be peripheral to the company's focus because we have the means to take risks and make mistakes. But when it comes to doing value research and communicating to others, that humans are conflicted. As I mentioned before, and that we need to design products, that account for our contradictory sides, I researched what people are already doing as we call it researching for latent behaviors. Larry McGrath: How are people using our products in ways that we might not have already known about? Oftentimes UX research is used in order to help refine products or identify new products. It's important. I think to use re UX research, to understand why you might not want a new product at all, why the current one is perfectly good and why adding new whistles and bells is just going to make the situation worse. In other words, there's a sort of quietest approach to some of my research to help a lay product developers or marketers or engineers fears that we need to add a new button that we need to generate a new product. When in fact people are fully satisfied with what they're doing right now, they just use work arounds and behaviors that we don't have metrics for and weren't able to measure. And that's what an ethnographer can help reveal for the sake of others. Matt Artz: Yeah. Great. And in your particular case are you also, when you have an insight that you think needs maybe some product change, but that's new product, you know, addition to the product, whatever it may be, are you also making recommendations or are you stopping at insights and turning that over to another team and then they're running with it? Larry McGrath: My insights tend to be more strategic let's focus on, for example increasing more seamless experiences instead of asking people for consent at every step the way, because that's going to annoy them. That's one example. So, and when it comes to designing specific products no, my, my recommendations don't take that specific a form. They do. However, my recommendations that is oftentimes persuade people about opportunities to harmonize and eliminate products. When you work at a large organization, especially where research and product development can get siloed teams work independently from one another, without the coordination that's needed in order to generate a coherent experience. And so when it comes to Facebook, there's just so many tools available within the Facebook world that when you log in identifying opportunities to harmonize them, to bring them together potentially to eliminate some of them, I think is a meaningful output of UX research for helping create a more seamless experience for users. Sure. Matt Artz: Now there's also another problem in there which comes up quite a bit, which is not just harmonizing in the way you described it, but also really among researchers that are spread out across product teams or in your case, you know, in your own, and, you know, in this sort of ecosystems world versus, you know, those doing the value of research. And so w and if, you know, I'm not sure if you can talk about this or not, this might be too specific to Facebook, but are you doing anything to make sure that all researchers understand the findings and the insights ultimately, and that, you know, like any kind of systems in place to help for knowledge management, organizational memory, anything in that space? Larry McGrath: Yeah, that's a great question. I'm in dialogue with researchers constantly, the risk of research at a large organization is always duplication. If you're just one of a few researchers at a large organization, you never encounter that risk. So much of what you do with a small company is done for the first time. This is where my historical training kicks in, and I think it's a worthwhile it's something where it's something worth keeping in mind that as a historian, I tend to think that there's very little that's new in the world. My general assumption is that if you have a thought, if you've done something it's probably been thought or done before. And so it's important to understand precedent. I know the word unprecedented, we hear everywhere these days. My general assumption that most things are in fact precedented. And so it's important to understand what was done in the past. Larry McGrath: And that usually is the first step of good research doing a literature of you, understanding what the company has archived, what the institutional memory is. And that's not just going to a central database. It's also communicating with people and at a company as big as Facebook, a large chunk of what I do is just reaching out to other people and doing internal research, understanding who might be interested in a product who's done work on it before and gathering knowledge that way, not just in order to identify a gap in the literature as it were, because not every single project that we have that we do has to be entirely unique. You can, for example, verify past research, see if anything has changed, but ultimately the purpose is to set your research in relation to what others have done and establishing those references, that context within your organization's research community is what makes other people one want to read it and to more impactful. Matt Artz: I agree. And it also just helps, you know, with the team, right. It's just good for team dynamics. So, you know, in your work, you said earlier that the ROI is not immediate, or at least the recognition of that RIS is certainly not immediate. So how do you, you know, many of us like to see that, you know, our work, that the output of our work turned into something. So how do you go about sort of just gauging your own value as a researcher and understanding sort of how you're performing Larry McGrath: Good question. When I worked in smaller organizations, especially in the consult, I mean, in the consulting world, the impact was very clear. I would deliver a report to clients. They would express they were whether they were satisfied or dissatisfied, I would call them up in six months and ask, how has this impacted your team's strategy? Have, where are your sales right now? Where is the new product in the development pipeline? The risk of research at a larger organization is that our output might dissipate into the ether. And it is quite a challenging to follow up and see the impacts. I think one way that you can evaluate impact is understanding the language that people use are people adopting terms that you proposed in your research, even better. Are people using frameworks that you proposed in your research, good UX research, especially exploratory research. Doesn't just make suggestions. Larry McGrath: We need, for example, a new product that accounts for privacy of, for, for children that when children who are being photographed by their parents today in 10 years, gave a sense of self, what are they going to do with it? Okay. That's a nice product recommendation. Good UX research also generates frameworks for helping people think through questions like privacy. How do we reconcile, for example, the gaps between attitudes and beliefs about people's social understanding of privacy versus what they personally want. And to answer your question, I think an indicator of success is whether people, others at the company, especially senior leadership of the company are drawing on those frameworks when making decisions. Matt Artz: That's great. Do you have any thoughts on so, you know, obviously if, if they're using those frameworks if you see your research is being used, that's a good way to maybe gauge your value, but do you also think that there's anything we can do to increase, you know, our visibility as a, as a brand to, you know, get more influenced to get a seat at the table any way you want to frame it? Cause sometimes even though, you know, you still might produce, you know, some good findings, a framework, whatever it may be that has legs and can be used, but it still is not adopted. So what do you think we all can be doing to really improve our, our influence? Larry McGrath: Super important question, because the reality is that at a lot of organizations, research has a plays a peripheral role within within the, within the structure of the organization. And so in order to increase our influence, I think that we shift away from a model that is so driven by pain points. I think a lot of people, especially at tech organizations see research as a bunch of naysayers users have this problem, how do we solve for this problem? Your new product creates so much friction and disappointment. How do we solve for that? Of course we need to address users' pain points, but engineers, aren't very excited to hear about how their new product just frustrates people, especially when those engineers think that they have such a brilliant and novel idea. So it's much like when given criticism generally, any man, any good manager knows this. Larry McGrath: You've got to package criticism with support as well. You've got to Pat it with what people are doing well and not just how they're screwing up. And so I think as researchers, it's important to balance our recommendations for solving pain points, alongside highlights of what a product is doing already well, and using those two in tandem to show how product specifications can be better emphasized to solve for user pain points to, to bring to light. As I was suggesting earlier latent behaviors, work arounds aspects of users, interactions with our products that are going really well and that the organization might not have been aware of before. So in short, I'm suggesting that one way for user research to have a better, a more impactful seat at the table is to also bring good news. Speaker 3: That's Matt Artz: I think we oftentimes forget, right. And it's sort of one on one really in terms of just human dynamics. Totally. Okay. Larry McGrath: No, nobody made me be a naysayer the whole time. Matt Artz: Sure. And so on that point and to maybe kind of connected back to your degree of history and anthropology of science, you know, one of the things that we know, I mean, that's not where I have focused, so correct me if I'm wrong, but there there's a tendency in the sort of engineering space, if you will. And I, you know, come from an it background to really focus on the solution as like the, sort of the means it's almost the end goal in and of itself. A lot of times, like the sort of how we do something is sort of super important for many in that space. Of course, not all. Whereas we're often kind of bringing in the why. So do you see, like, you know, both in your studies of science as a discipline and in your work, like a focus on solutionism and how might like you bringing in like the, why something is the reason why something is happening, maybe help combat that a little. And does that have, does that change the dynamic and the way you get people to to adopt the insights and findings? Larry McGrath: Yeah. I'm just thinking through, I'm just thinking through an answer right here the, the solutions versus answers to why questions. I think that One way of looking at this is that Speaker 3: At tech companies, Larry McGrath: People generally engineers in particular researchers oftentimes think that this is the only app or piece of tech that users use. And so just getting, just getting your colleagues to see what people are doing on Google, on YouTube, on Wikipedia, wherever else I think is a really meaningful, contextual insights that researchers can provide. Just getting your colleagues to take the blinders off as it were to see more than just the water for the fish. A lot of my research is comparative in that sense spending time with users on Facebook, on Instagram, but then on other interfaces where data are exchanged, of course, online, such as Amazon and Google. But those aren't the only places where people exchange data. We give our address and phone number, for example, at the grocery store when getting loyalty benefits or when going to hospitals in order to get personalized medical care when going to a bank, for example. And so helping people realize that practices oftentimes thought to be particular to your own organization are in fact widespread that comparative understanding, I think can help researchers get others to see why the, why answers work alongside the solutions. Great. Matt Artz: Thanks for that. And yeah, the competitiveness is, you know, it's, it's one of our value adds, so it's, it's always worth reminding. And again, one of the reasons that anthropology is really great for this role. And so for anybody who, you know, maybe wants to use their sort of multiple multiple books sort of perspective and comparative skills and really transitioned into this field, is there anything that you would recommend, you know, anything specific any upscaling, anything specific about a resume or a portfolio, anything that you've learned along the way that you think others should know? Larry McGrath: Great question. We already talked about the value of chatting with as many people as possible doing informational interviews when it comes to people like myself and the clients who might consult, moving from academia to industry, I generally don't believe that more schooling is needed. Unfortunately, so many academic advisors could only suggest more schooling because that is the atmosphere in which they breathe degrees courses more education. I think that plenty of academics should think of the work that they've already done as UX. For example, plenty of academics have designed, syllabis have taught courses over a semester, maybe a year long, have iterated on their teaching methods on their evaluation methods, whether it's the length and number of essays that they assign, or their choice to include tests as well. Maybe the media that have been included in the class beyond texts to also, you know, video or whatever other artifacts, there's a lot of product design that goes into creating a good course in the academic world. Larry McGrath: And I would encourage those who are considering transitioning out of it to reflect on their own teaching experience as if it were a product. And they are research on making that course better as UX research. I think it's similar to the case for our academic output when writing a dissertation, for example, there are multiple stakeholders that one has to satisfy one's immediate committee. One also has to speak to your broader discipline. And then when applying for academic jobs, you might speak to people who have zero interest in your domain as a historian, a scientist. I was oftentimes pitching my work to sociologists, to scholars of you know, Egyptology, perhaps we're always translating our work doing so for the sake of a corporate job. It's just one step further in that translation process. A process that I'm suggesting is a lot like what we do in UX research. And so that's why I think that a lot of academics in anthropology and other humanities and social science disciplines have the skill sets already. They just need to reflect on and use the language to make those skill sets understood by peers in the business world. Matt Artz: Great, great advice. Very practical. You know, it's, it's really all about reframing it. They have the skills, they have the knowledge, they have the projects. And I really liked the syllabus example. It's funny, I was on a teaching as a guest on a teaching podcast a few days ago, and I actually suggested, you know, iterating on your, your syllabus as a recommendation and treating it like a UX project. So funny to hear you say that today. So great. I think that's, that's perfect. And, you know, in terms of reframing experience, obviously you help with that. So do you wanna, maybe again mentioned, you know, your website and where people could find you and you know, some of the services that you offer and anything else you wish to maybe bring up? Larry McGrath: Absolutely. I do offer a career transition consulting services. You can check it out on my website, Larry S mcgrath.com. We'll talk about for example, what opportunities are out there depending on your discipline. I cater, as you can tell from this podcast so far to people from the humanities and social sciences help create a portfolio, a LinkedIn page that gets people to dwell for longer, and then to package your work into a lexicon that is understood and persuasive. For other people I've helped a number of clients get jobs at organizations like Lowe's Bressler group plenty of research and consulting institutions. I have a lot of fun doing it. Great. Matt Artz: Well, Larry, thanks for that. Anything else, anything, any other projects, anything outside of, of that, that you're interested in that you think is worth bringing up? Larry McGrath: I think that it's really important for academics to test their value beyond the academic world. I think right now, with the pandemic and the elimination of a lot of academic jobs out there, people are being forced to go into the business world in order to see what's out there as an alternative. I want to encourage people to see that as an opportunity as well. And I see there as being, I have a bit of a political mission to help humanities and social science, doctorate holders to realize their value outside of the academic world, so that when we're all vaccinated and life is better, that academic institutions can no longer justify the meager wages given to their instructors, as well as the wage stagnation that we encounter right now on the tenure track. And there are a number of structural dimensions that need to be addressed, but isn't at an individual level. I think that academics have the power to demonstrate that their value is much greater in the business world. And if there are far, there's a smaller pool, ultimately of desperate instructors who are willing to agree to the meager salaries that colleges and universities offer well, then it's going to be a whole lot harder for them to offer those salaries. And so that's a, that's my mission in doing this. Okay, cool. Matt Artz: Good mission. Thanks for the work you're doing. And thanks for coming on today. I appreciate it. Larry McGrath: It's been a pleasure. Thanks a lot, Matt. Please note this transcript is an automated transcription and may have some errors.

Molly Rempe on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 01:03:12 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Molly Rempe speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey. Molly earned an M.S. in applied anthropology at the University of North Texas in 2015 and currently works as a Senior UX Researcher at AnswerLab.

About Molly Rempe

Having started her career building hardware products, Molly moved jobs to tackle the big question of "what should we build" in a software innovation hub, and now is conducting rapid remote research. Although the types of products, the depth of research questions, and the project deadlines have varied during this time, she has always been passionate about bringing users (and non-users) into the process.

Watch the Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDkX8pBEreg

Episode Transcript

Please note this transcript is an automated transcription and may have some errors. Matt Artz: All right. Well, welcome back everybody. I'm here today with Molly. Rempe, Molly's an applied anthropologist and a senior UX Researcher at AnswerLab, and a graduate of UNT, which I am as well. So you know, we were in a different class, but it's, it's nice to be talking to a fellow UNT students. So Molly thanks for coming on. Really appreciate you being here, looking forward to talking to you today. So would you mind by maybe giving everybody a little bit of background on your education and you know, kinda a little bit of the work career? Molly Rempe: Absolutely. thanks so much for having me on I'm flattered that you thought of me. And I think this is a great podcast for individuals trying to get into the UX field. As you can guess, my background is anthropology. I did obtain a terminal master's degree in business and design anthropology from UNT, which of course is where you and I met. And then from there I actually worked for about three years to help build a research program for a water tech company. So that was very hardware focused and I was lucky enough to get a job right away as a UX researcher. I know that that kind of more linear pathway isn't what most of us end up doing. So I was just very lucky to be able to be placed right away. And then it kind of pendulum from hardware to software join kind of an innovation hub or a software accelerator where we got to explore really fuzzy research problems with a lot of room for exploration. And then for the last year I've been a senior UX researcher at answer lab, which is a research consultancy. And I get to work with large tech clients to help improve their user interfaces. Matt Artz: Great. Thanks for that. Yeah, it's, it's interesting. You know, like you already pointed out, but it's, it's so unusual to hear most, you know, most people go right into that into UX research. And so definitely want to dig into that. Another thing maybe I do want to bring up, so you, you have an anthropology undergrad, right? Yeah. Molly Rempe: That's true. Anthropology and Spanish. Matt Artz: So, you know, some people like myself, they go back to get an anthropology degree. You know, I was working in tech wanting to go back to bring research in. But so you've been on this path of anthropology for maybe longer than some, or at least longer than me, but did you know you want it to be in your X research or like, you know, what brought you there? Molly Rempe: Yeah, I think that's one of the most pivotal points. I loved anthropology. I love the ethnographic toolkit. I love the idea that we could just kind of learn about people as they are without judgment. And that was kind of the seductive nature of anthropology. So that's why I pursued it and undergrad. And then of course upon graduation didn't know how to get a job. And so I interned at a children's museum. I entered at a nonprofit for technical advocacy, literacy advocacy. And I was finding that I could get kind of internships or kind of volunteer positions, but they weren't willing to hire me employers. Weren't willing to hire me into full-time roles with just an undergrad and anthropology. And so that is why I had to pivot and go back to school just to essentially teach myself what I was capable of, but also a lot of it was teaching employers kind of learning the language, learning how kind of brand myself to, to, to employers that I was capable in joining those full-time research Matt Artz: And creative and you know, some people who would go into the UNT program, you know, again, sort of classmates, they didn't have an anthropology background but there was a number of people in there who have since gone into UX. And of course your ex is quite popular at this point. And so it's not surprising, but at what specific point did you sort of learn about UX and start making the transition into that field specifically? Molly Rempe: Great. Yeah. Great question. I think that's an interesting question because we talk about, I think UX is kind of a jargon term that I wasn't aware of when I came to UNT. But I was interested in obtaining my training in a business in anthropology or business and technology, which is what UNT offered and kind of the anthropological speak of UX is design anthropology. And so of course Dr. Susan Squire's and Dr. Christina Wasson at UNT are well known in the field of design anthropology. They were my advisors and they really taught me how to do UX without perhaps the words UX associated to that. And so I think I knew coming into grad school that this is what I wanted to do, but I didn't know what it was called in the real world. And so I don't, I don't quite remember when I came across the term UX, maybe, maybe it was in my curriculum, maybe it was at a conference, maybe like somebody that I admired had that role. But I remember kind of a slow realization is like, Oh, that was the brand that I needed to start identifying with is UX. When it was really just a different costume for a design anthropology. Matt Artz: Yeah. That's a great answer. And you know, I think having taken the same courses, right. I, you know, I don't, I don't recall hearing the term UX in the program. But obviously, like you said, the skills directly, you know, the knowledge and the skills directly led to that, but there are still some other skills, you know, like just understanding like agile development and, you know, other things that happen in software engineering firms that you also sort of need to understand. So is there anything you were doing as you were pivoting specifically into UX, like, you know, getting any additional certifications or learning, studying anything on your own that helped you make that transition? Molly Rempe: Sure. I think my direct answer is not immediately like I said, I was lucky enough to have a company that was willing to hire somebody right out of grad school. And I really learned by doing those first few years they kind of gave me full control of the research program. And I kind of learned by failing and experimenting and learning by from my stakeholders to understand what was working, what wasn't working. So a lot of it was kind of just reading industry articles and blog posts, talking to individuals at meetups going to conferences once a year if I could. But really just trying to implement what I thought was the right practice and realizing if it was kind of tracking or things that I needed to pivot on. And then after a few years, once I kind of felt that I had a kind of not necessarily perfected my, my research at that one company, but but had felt that I had gotten it under control to the point where I could start kind of expanding my practice. That's when I did things like usability statistics, bootcamp through measuring UI or kind of joining specific conferences that were specifically trained for UXR that I could kind of expand the way, the ways that I was thinking. But I didn't immediately after grad school continue my learning. And a lot of it was, as you say kind of realizing, Oh, I need to know what these agile terms were and kind of self self-teaching using kind of what's on the internet and talking to kind of industry experts. Matt Artz: Yeah. Great. And you know, your first role is really interesting, like having to sort of the, you know, just sort of getting into a space where you get to really define the research practice, if you will. And it's, you know, there's a lot to learn there, but of course you also don't have anybody to ask. And so it's really interesting cause I was in a similar position, but the other thing that's interesting about that role, as you say, it was hardware focused, which, you know, most of us are probably doing research with software. You know, I, I come across less people. I mean, of course there's there's products today that are hybrid, right. Software, hardware kind of paired together, but there's what was, were you doing that or was it really just a hardware play? Molly Rempe: I think for the first two years it was really a hardware role. And then the company kind of expanded into software. So I was able to work with that new product for the first year or so and kind of get my feet wet and what that looked like. But I think it actually was a blessing in disguise if you think about it, because I, because of hardware, I really had to be on the ground with actual users to see how they use those instruments in the context of their environment and other instruments. And so it was, it was really easy for me to advocate for the need to be in person with my users which is something that with software is less easy perhaps to convince your employer that you need to be kind of sent out around the country, around the world to see users in context. So I think it was actually a really wonderful thing to be on hardware for my first team, because I could kind of really easily demonstrate the importance of being with my users in person. Matt Artz: Yeah. That's really interesting. So what, you know, what did you learn there, or maybe let's start here. What, what challenges did you have sort of as you started out on your own in this hardware environment? Molly Rempe: Yeah. Great question. I think I think the biggest challenges are everything that I needed to do that wasn't research. I think that was kind of a hard learning process for me because we get trained in how to do research. Well, how to think of research questions, how to create a research program, how to kind of conduct interviews or ethnographic surveys and how to analyze data and disseminate it. Like those are all things that we're really good at. And as researchers, that's what we like to do. It's all the other stuff we don't like to do. Like the evangelism, it's the budgeting, it's the administrative work recruiting as a lot of work, it takes so much time, almost equivalent, I would say to actually doing the research. And so I think one of the biggest hardships that I had those first few years is really realizing, you know, research has only 30% of my role, the other 70%, the most of what I do every week is not research and trying to find kind of the balance there to make that worth my time, you know, make it, so I really enjoyed that work. Matt Artz: Yeah. That's, it's, it's one of the things that I try when, you know, when people reach out and are asking for maybe advice, it's always one of the things I try to stress because, you know, I think it's helpful to know the good and the bad of our role and you know, there's many wonderful things and I'm not saying that like project management or, you know, the admin stuff is bad by any means, right? Those are important skills that we all need in business, but they are not maybe what you think you're going to be doing. Right. So it's just good, I think, for everybody to hear that. So thanks for sharing that. Could you maybe though elaborate more like on that point, so you said 30% is, is research. So you mentioned budgeting, you mentioned recruiting, what other kinds of things besides that might you be doing? Molly Rempe: And that first role I spent a lot of my time evangelizing. So I would go, I was working with the research and development part of the organization. So I'd make sure that I was known and accessible for every single product team that was working within and with R and D in that large organization we did kind of an engagement scheme where we tried to get everyone in R and D involved in research. A lot of it was just teaching people. What is research? Why are we doing it at this company? Why is it valuable to you? Like, why should you care and how can you get involved if you're interested? And so that took up 20% of my time. I was just trying to get other people interested, even like engaged in what my role was. So I got hopefully less blank stares as I like came into her room, you know? Molly Rempe: And then a lot of it was honestly knowledge management. I think one of the, I think probably the critical difficulty that our industry faces is how do we not only make an impact for this study, but how do we take that data and make it like longitudinal, I'll make it useful over time, make it be, make your team aware of it and make it actionable for perhaps projects that we don't even know exist yet. And so a lot of it my time on that first company was building a knowledge management system, a research archive, and then iterating on that system to make it most useful for our, for our stakeholders. And I won't say that it was the perfect system. There was a lot things that could have been optimized, but it was a big learning curve. And I spent a lot of my time just trying to kind of use the data we already had and make it more accessible for our R and D team. Matt Artz: That's great. That's actually, that's one of those kinds of questions that I ask, like, you know, if I'm at a meetup or something, I can just talking to people in the industry. It's so one of the things I commonly ask, because I'm curious to know how other organizations do it. And you know, it seems like everybody attempts it nobody's like perfected it from, from anybody that I've ever asked. The question to everybody admits that, you know, knowledge management, organizational memory is something that needs to still be improved, but I'd like to maybe just dig into both the evangelizing and the knowledge management for a second. Cause those are, those are good areas for, I think, people to learn from like some of them from some of the difficulties. So you mentioned evangelizing in the sense of, you know, sort of selling your value, which to me, I took a sort of like upfront, maybe in the project, but also there sort of like selling the, the insights on the back side of the project, right? Like, you know, here's, here are the findings, here are the insights and, and trying to get those adopted so that they are incorporated into, you know, whatever's being built. You know, did you learn anything from evangelizing in either of those scenarios? Like any methods that seem to work best to help you sell the value of anthropology or, or UX or know? So sell your findings. Okay. Molly Rempe: Yeah. I think three things came to mind when you asked me that question. We'll see if I can remember them as I'm monologue here, but the first, the first thing is that you pointed out kind of upfront work just trying to make sure that your team is aware of you within the organization, hopefully your value within that organization and what you can do for them. And so that upfront evangelism work, trying to just, you know, be present in product development meetings, even if your role wasn't particularly relevant that day. I think that that's a really big thing. People ask kind of, how do you make sure that people use your research? And I always say like the most important thing is to make sure they're along for the ride the whole way. So making sure that your stakeholders want the research ahead of time, you know, not just doing research because you think it's useful or because your boss wants you to do it, but really making sure that the people who want, who should be using that data want to use that data. Molly Rempe: And then making sure that the, the research projects you take on are really addressing the key questions that your, your team needs. And not just kind of smaller questions that don't have basically focusing on the biggest impact and then making sure that they're along for the ride, like inviting them to the interviews or the on-sites and making sure that they have access to the data, if they want to look at it themselves making those transcripts of those interviews and sending them along if they're interested. So I think a lot of that upfront work, both being aware of the role and being engaged in the research is significantly more effective than actually trying to post a research cell quote, unquote, sell your, your data. So I think that upfront work is really important. Then there's also the kind of the knowledge management, I think, is a part of evangelism because it helps bring that research make it, make your team aware that it's there and hopefully make it usable and accessible to them. Molly Rempe: And so I think your stake alerts are a big user group that you need to kind of understand and cater towards. And so a lot of that selling or the research has to do with making sure that your stakeholders can access the data themselves. And so that knowledge management, I kind of consider kind of partially evangelism to making sure like they know how much research you're doing, even if it's not on their specific project. And I said, I had three points and of course I have forgotten that third one. So maybe it'll come back later, but those are at least two that come to mind. Matt Artz: Thanks. And I was gonna ask there in your experience, whether it was that first role or anything since then, how well do you know, do people use the knowledge management systems, whatever form that has taken do you see that they are using them or is, and have you learned anything from that to get people to use them more? Molly Rempe: That's a great question. And I think that's the problem is that I I've helped to develop to knowledge management system and I, and currently I'm contributing into a different knowledge management system in my current role. And I think that researchers use in my experience, researchers use the knowledge management systems very well. But other stakeholders for many reasons are less likely to utilize those. In my experience, even when I think I've built the most impressive knowledge management system possible, they'll still come to me and ask me to go through it myself. And I think there's a lot of factors there, but to answer your question, I think that knowledge management systems, for some reason are built for researchers or, or researchers become the primary user types. And I think that's something that we, as an industry can overcome in some ways. Matt Artz: Yeah, we should probably do a little research on that. Yeah, no, I've, I've witnessed many of the same things. They aren't, most people, I talk to also state the same things. I'm sure you've heard Sam. And so you know, that's I think it's going, it's obviously a challenge it's going to continue to be a challenge, but so since you've worked on three, have you found any sort of models that were more successful? Molly Rempe: Hmm. I think one thing consistently is that there's always this kind of 2020 vision in the future, you know, that I think there's just kind of, I think you need to realize that no matter what system you make, it's not going to suit all of your needs next year. There's going to be things that you've missed out on that you didn't foresee. And perhaps a new project came up that the data's not easily located on this new projects vocabulary, for example. And so it's just not easy to access. So just kind of giving yourself some flexibility and, and feeling okay that it's not going to be an end all perfect system. I think that's really important as you develop your own, but I think ultimately a tagging system of some sort makes the most sense where you can find the tags that make sense for your team. Molly Rempe: Oftentimes it's kind of perhaps recruitment demographics project perhaps features or elements that you're testing methods that you're using and geographies that you're thinking about. Those are often the ones that I at least start with and then kind of expand from there. And then your whole research team needs to use those same tags, which is, I think one of the biggest pain points is that you kind of have to get everyone working within the same system for it to really be longitudinal and useful over time. So I think those are some of the things that we're kind of fighting with, but I think tagging systems is kind of the most basic. And then also, depending on your specific organization, figuring out what t-shirt size you want those findings to be, you know, cause some knowledge management systems I've seen air table kind of management systems that have per finding and then a bunch of tags. And that's very impressive. I've never personally been able to wrap my head around kind of per finding knowledge databases because they're so small and my new I kind of gravitate towards the per study or per project and then tag to kind of give the nuance that individuals might need. Matt Artz: Yeah, thanks for that. It was very detailed and it's refreshing to hear all of that detail. And I think everybody listening will appreciate that. You know, another question that often comes up in like say in New York here in the circle, when we're talking about questions, like, you know, organizational memory and evangelizing is also, you know, how do we demonstrate our value? How do we measure our value or, or, or, or alternately know, like how do our bosses or organizations sort of gauge our value. Right. And so I know it's broad, but you know, any thoughts on how we can demonstrate it, how we can gauge it. Molly Rempe: [Inaudible] Yeah. I think this is perhaps the second biggest question besides knowledge management, I think like kind of demonstrating value is the second biggest or most critical issue that our industry faces and I've, I've done a few, at least attempted a few different ways and here's just some ideas to throw out to our listeners to see if it works for them, but there's of course, descriptive stats over time, like year over year or quarterly. How many projects have you done? How many participants have you talked to? What's the research like time in sessions research hours over a certain period of time, maybe how many teams have you helped to just kind of show the reach. So there's descriptive stats that you can kind of track over time. Those don't necessarily immediately translate to impact, but they're nice to kind of keep, keep track of at least to explain, like we're doing a lot of work over here because oftentimes we, as researchers are kind of in our corner with the designers perhaps kind of working in our own little silos and making sure that our efforts are kind of exposed is really important. Molly Rempe: There's also kind of engagement. So two ways that I can track engagement are if one, how many team members join sessions or join report outs, or actually actively take part in research. That's something that I've done in the past and it's pretty powerful to some of the higher ups to see, Oh, 50% of R and D actually took part in it in a study to see this year or this week. And then there's also like how many, how many team members have viewed your report, which if your, if your system can track that as kind of exciting. So I've actually some of my reports, I feel like aren't super wow or aha, but if there's 150 people in an entire organization, that's viewed it over the last year, that's pretty cool. And you can kind of point to those as kind of some of your biggest successes and then finally there's impact. Molly Rempe: And I find the impact metrics or con kind of quantitative impact metrics. The hardest are for me to kind of grasp, but some things, especially like in an agile environment, how many stories, how many of your user stories have user data behind it to kind of support that it should be highlighted within your backlog or identifying top risks in your product or service and figuring out, or kind of tracking how that risk decreases over time based on UX research. And then of course, kind of the VP kind of your executive like goal or gold star for metric is like how many executive level decisions have been impacted by UX research. I find that one really hard to kind of track, but if you can get that fidelity of data, that's extremely valuable. Matt Artz: Yeah. Great. Related to that again, so, well, do you do anything any of your products touch, like any kind of commerce where you can gauge, you know, ultimately dollars? Molly Rempe: So my current position finally is kind of like a B to C environment where I get to kind of be in that environment where we can see that, that direct consumer. Yeah, Matt Artz: That's good. That makes it a lot easier. Of course. Yes and no. Also, when talking about sort of our value, you know, you often hear like the phrase, like, you know, see it at the table and I think we've had trouble communicating our value as it maybe like as a brand, if you will, sometimes. And it seems like research yet doesn't quite have a seat at the table design seems to be getting it, you know, over the past number of years, you see as far more sort of design leaders at relatively high levels of big organizations now. And I think research is still maybe fighting for a little bit of its share of that. Maybe you agree, maybe you don't, but what do you think we could do to have more influence like, you know, whether that's with our teams or in the broader organization? Speaker 3: Okay. Molly Rempe: Yeah, I do agree with that. I mean, you can just kind of see the amount of higher level titles that have designed in there in their title, which is wonderful that that's becoming more and more normal to have kind of a higher level individual contributors or larger organizations that are designed that are higher up and can be at that, you know product decision level. And research is kind of, we're getting there, but we're not quite there. So I'll say that I, I agree that that's kind of the trend, but hopefully we are seeing kind of an upslope in that I'd say a lot of it has to do with how you want to position research within the organization. Some for some teams it's important to research to be on its own for some teams that makes more sense to be kind of associated with design. Molly Rempe: If that's the case. I think there needs to be a leadership, like a leadership position for a design leader and a research leader. I feel like I'm trying to have kind of an overarching design and Reese or a design research kind of head. It gets a little messy because as you have pointed out kind of design right now gets most of the spotlight when it becomes the two of them. And so having an equal footing, making sure that it's organizationally structured. So it's an equilibrium between design and research is really important. But ultimately just kind of being present within your teams, keeping excited and keeping curious, because that's kind of contagious and keep kind of fighting. The good fight is all I can say is kind of keep trying to expose what we're trying to do. And map that impact to how important it is to be within, to be, to have research. I mean, one of the sad truth is that with COVID researchers have been some of the first roles to be let go. And that was really sad to see at the beginning of this or last year now. But I think that we, by continuing to kind of evangelize and demonstrate our value, we should not be the first ones to go. We should be, you know, kind of core to that product or services development team. Matt Artz: Yeah. And more so essential to sort of reducing risk and ensuring that the right product is being built, that it really is critical sort of underpins everything else. And, you know, aside from evangelism in the way you described it there going back to your earlier comment, bringing people along. Right, right. You know, and to help get sort of, to help demonstrate why we should have influence, you know, as we bring people along and they see what we're doing and sort of the value of what we're doing, it's certainly helpful. Agreed. Okay. So Molly, I know in your previous roles you were involved hiring, so can you maybe just sort of tell us, you know, some common mistakes, maybe people make things that they do well in terms of resumes and portfolios and maybe provide any any recommendations for, for resumes and portfolios. Molly Rempe: Hmm. Yeah. That's great. Actually it's apropos that you asked that question because I was part of a AAA the anthropological association panel in July. And we did a whole webinar about resumes and portfolios. So there's that specific webinar and a bunch of kind of supplementary information is available on the AAA website. And we can link that to the show notes. But what I'll say is that I think a lot of individuals kind of overweight their applicant materials. So what I mean by that is I think it's important to kind of think in terms of the hiring manager, like think of the hiring manager as your user they are going through hundreds of applications and they are trying to kind of figure out the best candidates to forward to their team. And I think that making a resume short and sweet and tailoring a portfolio that's easily scannable and doesn't requiring like reading a novel is one of the most important are probably the, the high, the most. Molly Rempe: The thing that I would kind of stress the most out of everything of really tailor your application materials to think about what the hiring manager needs to see to make a yes, no decision don't kind of dump everything you've ever done and everything you've ever thought on their lap. You just want to kind of give them the most impressive snapshot of your career as possible. So I think that's really important. And the other thing is that I think one thing to keep in mind is I believe that UXers are kind of, we're all kind of a band of misfits. We come from all different types of backgrounds. Anthropology is one of them, psychology law marketing teaching, like we just kind of came together. And so imposter syndrome is real. But I think it's important that you just need to be confident and realize that you are capable of doing the job. Molly Rempe: I think a lot of us kind of start the interview process of like, not really sure if we're qualified and just know that you are qualified and highlight the parts of your resume and your, your experience that demonstrate that. And don't try to kind of backtrack, I'd see that a lot in interviews of, well, I haven't really done this method or I have, I'm not really sure about this. Just own it and say, Hey, I haven't ever done a diary study, but I'm really interested in it because of this and this. But what I really know well is in context interviews because of this and this. So those are things that I would really just hammer home is like you are qualified, were abandoned misfits, and you're welcome to join us. And just kind of own your experience when you come into the hiring process. Yeah. Matt Artz: Great answer. And so is there anything maybe to wrap up anything you'd like to, you know, make everybody aware of anything you want to plug and where everybody find you? Molly Rempe: Sure. So as far as how to get to me, I'm, I'm pretty boring. I'm just on LinkedIn. You can find me at Molly Rempe. And as far as things that I'd like to plug, I do have a few that I'd just like to kind of invite everyone to check out if you're interested. The first thing is my new passion is using my UXR skills to facilitate accessible experiences. So I just got my certified professional and accessibility core competencies. My CPAC certification through IAAP, which is the international association of accessibility professionals. And my next goal is to get my WHAS, my web accessibility specialist certification. So I see that this is a growing need. And I think it's something that we could all really benefit from getting certifications and learning more about. So just wanted to plug that because I think it's a really important thing to do. Molly Rempe: I'm also a mentor for the UX Professionals Association (UXPA). So if you are interested in getting into the field, we have mentee positions available. And if you'd like to be a mentor, we'd love to have you every single kind of region in the U S has a mentorship program available. And then finally I'm not particularly involved, but I really support the work of the UXR Conference that's located in Toronto follow their Slack channel. It's wonderful EPIC Ethnographic Practice and Industry Conference. And of course the Society for Applied Anthropology and the AAA. So those are four organiations that I'd really encourage everyone who's interested in UXR to check out Matt Artz: Thanks for that. And I'll link to all of them. So, yeah. And great. And congratulations on the certification. That's, that's really fantastic. It's definitely needed work. So I'm glad to hear you're doing that. And definitely, I agree that more of a should, should get behind you. So thanks, Molly. Really appreciate you coming on. It was great to talk to you. Thanks for all the advice you provided and hope we can see each other soon. Molly Rempe: Thank you so much, Matt. Great podcast. Please note this transcript is an automated transcription and may have some errors.

Rachel Fleming on Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 00:48:52 +0000

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Rachel Fleming speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey. Rachel earned a PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of Colorado Boulder and currently works as a design researcher at Idea Couture.

About Rachel Fleming

Rachel Fleming is a user experience researcher and PhD cultural anthropologist working in the digital product space. Building on over a decade of experience using qualitative methods in international and US settings, she combines the iterative process of design thinking with an ethnographic approach to complex problems. She uses generative and evaluative research methods with the goal of improving products so they truly resonate with users. She often acts as a facilitator on product teams to focus strategic direction and help a team collaborate more productively.

Watch the Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmTP9jCI3r0

Episode Transcript

Please note this transcript is an automated transcription and may have some errors.

Matt Artz:

Welcome to the anthro to ux podcast, where you will learn how to break into UX with an anthropology degree, through conversations with leading anthropologists, working in user experience, you will learn firsthand how others made the transition, what they learned along the way and what they would do differently. We will be discussing what it means to do UX research from a practical perspective and what you need to do to prepare resume and portfolio. I'm your host, Matt Artz a business anthropologist specializing in design anthropology, and working at the intersection of product management user experience and business strategy. Let's get started. Hi everyone. Welcome to anthro the UX video podcast. Today, I'll be talking with Rachel Fleming, who I'm very glad to have here. Rachel is a design researcher at idea couture, which is a cognizant digital business. And so Rachel really thankful to have you here. I appreciate all the work you've done in this space so far, you know, I've read some of your articles and I know that you're passionate about helping other people get into UX from anthropology. So thanks. And I look forward to our conversation today.

Rachel Fleming:

Great. Thanks for having me. This is fantastic.

Matt Artz:

So can tell me a little bit about yourself, you know, how you sort of got to the role you're in today and a little background on your education and, you know, maybe just a little bit of the backstory.

Rachel Fleming:

Sure. Well, I discovered anthropology way back in undergrad and found it was a good fit for kind of understanding patterns about the world and getting to talk to people, find out what's actually going on. And I kind of hemmed and hawed about going to grad school and took a detour into urban planning. So I wanted to do something a little more practical got very interested in kind of work and the meaning of work and then realized I wanted to go back and study that as an anthropologist. So I ended up in a PhD program at the university of Colorado Boulder and did a project in India on women who are in tech jobs there in Bangalore and Bangalore is kind of the tech center of India. These jobs have not been around for very long. And so I really looked at kind of the generational impact of women having access to jobs that they hadn't had in generations past and what that meant for gender equity and also why their attrition was so high.

Rachel Fleming:

They tend to leave jobs quite quickly. And very briefly it was because of many factors, but partly unexpected sexism and kind of blocks to progress in the office that they didn't think would happen in tech. So during that project and during grad school, I was a little bit agnostic about going into academia. I thought, you know, if it works out okay. It be an interesting job, but I really liked the applied side of research and I knew that there were other anthropologists who've done this before. So I got involved with Epic ethnographic practice and industry conference. While I was still in grad school I talked to a couple of anthropologists who had done this before. I remember very early conversations with Melissa Cefkin and Donna Flynn that kind of set me on this path.

Rachel Fleming:

And even before I did my field work. And so I came back and wrote my dissertation and thought, well, maybe I'll give it a try. By that time, this was maybe four years ago or so the business anthropology world had really become a UX research or user experience research. And so, you know, anthropologists have been studying organizations and business for very long time, but it kind of become more important in a digital product sense to talk to people who are using products. So I jumped off the deep end into UX research did a couple of kind of volunteer projects to get a little experience under my belt. And I can talk more about that later if you'd like and about my first job at a custom software development agency. And I've been going since then.

Matt Artz:

Cool. Yeah. So yeah, talk a little bit more, you know, you mentioned the volunteering project. So one of the things that I, when people reach out to me, they're always asking is, you know, how do I get to have a portfolio? And I oftentimes do suggest, you know, if you can volunteer anywhere for a local nonprofit, whatever it may be, or if you can find a project, even in your own organization, whether that's in school or at your employer, whatever, it may be, find a small project and start there to kind of get some wins under your belt and a portfolio. So how did you find these volunteer opportunities and like, what was your pitch to sort of get your foot in the door?

Rachel Fleming:

Absolutely. Yeah, it was, I mean, it took a bit of a, it was a bit of a slog at the beginning and did not include getting much income in the door, but, you know, I wasn't making much as a lecturer before that. So you know, I w I was able to float it for a few months. So I I started out taking a course through design lab, which is an online kind of program in research and UX research and strategy. And they it's a, it's a four to five week course. They set you up with a real mentor who's in UX. So usually a designer. So they don't really have necessarily researchers, maybe they do. Now, this was a while ago. And you can do like a little dummy project of your own, so that wasn't really a real project, but I had at least exposure, some of the deliverables that would be expected.

Rachel Fleming:

You know, I did an empathy map. I did a storyboard. I did a small journey map. I did a little bit of usability testing just some small things personas. And I so I had, I had some idea of that. And then I started interviewing for jobs and I kept getting to kind of the final round and then not getting the job because I didn't have experience. And I just got frustrated. So I went to Boulder startup week, which was a great opportunity, you know, when things are in person, again, it's a little easier to meet people. There are ways to do it though in a remote world to reach out to people. And I met two female founders of startups who were interesting, and I kind of reached out to them and just said, Hey, could you use some, some work?

Rachel Fleming:

So I did month long projects for each of them kind of concurrently spent about four weeks. And it was so much easier to interview after doing those two projects, because I had something to talk about, you know, I could actually speak to working in this space. So, you know, one was, was kind of, they were dependent on the problems that the startups are having. One was for a study abroad software. And so I talked to students at university, I kind of talked to people who are using the software. I talked to people who are using a competitor software and figuring out kind of like where the gaps were making some recommendations there. And then I learned kind of the, the value of stakeholder interviews during that project, because, you know, half of what you do is research with the people you're doing the project for.

Rachel Fleming:

And and then I did another one in the healthcare space. It was an app that was intended to make healthcare more equitable and accessible. So did some research with community health clinics. And it was really helpful. I mean, I was very open to whatever they needed me to do. And it's been, it's been valuable. It was absolutely valuable. And I, you know, there's issues with doing volunteer projects. I think you should get paid for work. You do. But when you're just getting started, it's important to just have a little bit of experience.

Matt Artz:

Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a tough thing to recommend to anybody that they do free work. But somehow you've got to find the work and then you brought up another point in there that is something that comes up with people. I talk to a lot, which is, you know, when it comes to bootcamps or in your case lean, I like the design lab program. Most, like you say, our design focus, you know, very few I've come across a research focus. And so I oftentimes caution to people that, you know, if they want to do one that's, but just keep in mind that probably most things you're going to do are producing designed assets. And, you know, the research component might be one week or, or whatever. And you know, I think that's, it's good to reiterate that just so that people maybe don't possibly spend many thousands of dollars in some cases, you know, if that's not what they're looking for, and it brings up the distinction between UX research and UX design and, you know, just, it's good to always kind of make that distinction so that I think a lot of anthropologists are interested in the research piece and less than the design.

Matt Artz:

So it's, I think it's just helpful to call that out for anybody listening. So aside from design lab, did you do anything else to upscaling? Obviously there's some tech language and business language, you know, some, some basic knowledge that's helpful. Did you, did you look at any other, do you do any other certs online or anything that, you know will help you sort of make the transition?

Rachel Fleming:

Oh, sure. Yeah, definitely. And, and, and the, the design lab course, I liked that because it wasn't very expensive. So I recommend that because it's not, you know, unless you can swing it it's not really worth doing more school after you've already done a bunch of school to switch over, unless you're really interested in design. In which case it bootcamp might be useful. I think that the, the most upskilling that I did was I, I had kind of networked with some local people who were in the UX research space and asked them, you know, where would you recommend? I start? And they gave me some really good resources. IDEO has a lot, you know, on, on iterative design and I started kind of learning about design thinking and how you can use that kind of problem solving approach for research projects.

Rachel Fleming:

And I also just did a little bit of a Google research and when you x-ray search and just try to figure out, you know, what, what are the deliverables that you're expected to produce? How, how should this look? I did a little research on agile product development as well, because a lot of this research goes into a product development process, and you have to kind of figure out how to fit that in. Honestly I didn't really learn how that all worked until I worked in an agile development shop and was working closely with designers and developers figuring out, you know, how is a backlog built? What is a user story? How does research go into these things? How do you build a good prototype and then test that? And those are things that are hard to learn without doing them, but you can learn about them beforehand.

Matt Artz:

Does your first custom software development company where they agile or, or did you start in another environment and move to agile? No, they were at trial.

Rachel Fleming:

So I've been working in that environment since then. That's great.

Matt Artz:

So, you know, obviously there's the agile space is very different than, than academia in terms of the pace and the cadence that we're building and releasing products. So were there any particular challenges there for you?

Rachel Fleming:

Of course, of course I made it that the pace is much faster and you're kind of asked to turn research around very quickly, and I think it's helpful to remember that this is research for completely different goals than academia. You know, academia is a little, you know, you have the time to kind of understand something in a more holistic sense. And these agile product development questions are often very targeted, you know, like what do insurance agents in this particular industry struggle with and what do they need in terms of, you know, something that software can provide them. And it's good to know their context, and it's good to bring that holistic viewpoint. But you do have to turn it around quickly. So as, as I, as I tell people, you know, anything is possible. You can put any kind of constraints on research that you want. There are limitations to what you can produce in a given time with the resources that you have. And so you can, you can say, you know, yes, I can take three weeks to do this, and this is what you'll get out of that. It's good to not over promise always.

Matt Artz:

Do you ever you know, sort of state it as, you know, we can do it in three weeks and you'll get this, or we could do it in six weeks and you'll get this like, and let them pick, or

Rachel Fleming:

I have started to, yeah. Sometimes I do research proposals and kind of the silver gold platinum format, you know, and, and I want them to choose the middle one. So, so you can kind of say, here's the bare bones, here's the like mid range. And then here's all the stops, you know, and the, and then they usually pick the middle. But it's nice for them to have a choice.

Matt Artz:

Yeah. Yeah. I find the same. I, and I you know, I try to always give them the options, let them know what the outcome may be. And then it's, you know, the outcome is their decision. Ultimately, you know, what they want to get out of it. And especially in consulting, right. When there's sort of a fee for service hour to it, it's, I think it's helpful to do it that way.

Rachel Fleming:

You know, you're

Matt Artz:

Obviously we're talking about the pace here of being quicker. Tell me a little bit, tell me some other things about what your day looks like. I mean, you know, you're not researching all the time. There's lots of other duties as a UX researcher, right. There's lots of non-research duty. So what does a typical sort of day, week, month look like for you?

Rachel Fleming:

Sure. So, so most of what I do is not the actual research. But it's always helpful to, under, to remember, you know, no matter what I'm doing, I do feel like I have a responsibility to be the voice of the people who I'm talking to. And that's the way for the organizations to kind of what's going on with them. So that really does motivate me. I think the, I spend quite a lot of time scoping projects. I, I work for consultancy now, so I do business development and writing research proposals kind of figuring out, you know, what should this look like? How much time will this take, what activities should we do? And you can kind of it's hard to get a sense of, you know, what future projects will take and you want it to be a good project for whoever takes it up in the end.

Rachel Fleming:

So it's good to kind of learn about scoping and, and what is needed in a project. So you can do that. I also do a lot kind of after the, you know, research phase is finished, you know, synthesizing data, analyzing, getting insights, and then using that to help the stakeholder team. And we do a lot of workshops with stakeholders. We do a lot of kind of interactive meetings, not just, just read outs, you know, of what we found. So it's really using that research data to make decisions and build, you know, what, what the product's going to look like.

Matt Artz:

And so, you know, in terms of the interactive presentations, do you find that that is helpful, you know, does that lend itself to people sort of really, you know, embody like a, I think really taking on the findings and, and, and helping you or more or less sell it?

Rachel Fleming:

Oh, absolutely. It's invaluable. I think if you give people a chance, you know, stakeholders, a chance to really look at the data themselves and then say, you know, what they think is most important, they vote on things, they move stickies around. We're doing all remote workshops now. So we use Miro a lot and they really get into it. They get invested in it and they have good discussions and they, you know, that's where a lot of the work gets done, I think is, is having them interact with the data

Matt Artz:

And as it relates to scoping. So obviously when, when sort of scoping out a project, you have to decide given, given time cost, all of those sort of variables who like what methods, you know, and they give a need at hand, you know, what methods are we going to use? Can we get X done in such amount of time? So how does your ethical logical schooling sort of lend itself to that? You know, like you find yourself using certain methods more than others in the UX world. You can talk about all of that.

Rachel Fleming:

Sure. I mean, I think I'm of course at home with qualitative methods and interviews, because I've just done a ton of those. And but I, I find that I'm using more and more kind of concepts in those interviews and kind of having people react to something. So if it's kind of a prototype test, but more like a concept assessment so have, you know, do maybe some generative work in the early on in the interview to kind of figure out what they're doing currently and then show them something and say, you know, how would you use this? Is this useful to you? What would you do with this? What, you know, what would you suggest all of those things? And I think that's something that I never used to do in my anthropological work is have them kind of work with a thing. I also have become more comfortable with I, I work with behavioral scientists now who do a lot of surveys, and I think that data can be incredibly useful. So kind of, I I've become more comfortable integrating survey data with my interview data as well.

Matt Artz:

And in what order are you using sort of your call to influence that influence the survey design or your learning from the survey? And then

Rachel Fleming:

It depends on the design of the project. We actually just did one where we used a survey to help structure the interviews and diary studies, and then that informed another survey that we did. So, so it was kind of like a tiered approach which was fantastic. Worked really well.

Matt Artz:

Yeah. Using them together in a very intuitive way is helpful. For sure. So you wrote an article in the American ethnologists that, you know, a really great article that is gold listeners should check out, you know, if they sort of Google your name and American ethnologist will find it, but it's, and we'll put it in the show notes, but in there you speak of anthropological thinking and, you know, and it's obviously there are certain things that we learn in an academic program that, you know, I think we would agree lend itself to that, but, you know, that was a really nice piece of that article. So would you mind elaborating on that and, and sharing with the listeners, what, you know, how you view anthropological thinking?

Rachel Fleming:

Sure, sure. I think it, it, it has to do with kind of an iterative thinking in scale. So we're, we're very used to kind of looking at the details of things and then pulling back to abstraction and we have to do that over and over in doing field work and then figuring out, you know, what does it mean? And we do that also in the reading that we do in an anthropological program, you know, you have to read something and then you have to think about it abstractly. And it, it just it's a skill that I think we become used to, and that's very helpful because often in UX research, you kind of lose sight of what the woods are like because you're in the trees so much. And it's really our job, I think, to get that detail and then be able to put it into a context and say, you know, why does this matter?

Rachel Fleming:

What is the value of this? What is the larger question we're asking? Are we even asking the right questions? And I think anthropologists are skeptics and we're good at that. We're good at saying, you know, you're making a lot of assumptions here. Let's go see if those assumptions check out before we go and do this whole big project. And so I think that helps the UX research process because it's really about making good decisions and figuring out how to spend valuable dollars in developing a product, it takes a lot to develop a product and it's a big pain. If you have to rework something, or if you develop something that isn't use it useful and people don't like it and people are people can't figure out how to use it. So I think we're, we're also very good at kind of listening.

Rachel Fleming:

And this helps us within organizations and in our jobs is kind of listening to people who might use products. But especially within organizations, we can be really good mediators and kind of like negotiate between, you know, the design team and the product strategy team and the developers or the tech leads or the architects, and kind of get everybody onto the same page about why are we doing this thing and what do we need to keep sight of? And that's, that's also a valuable skill. I also think we're very open to kind of ambiguity. A lot of UX research and product development is very ambiguous. You don't know what's going to happen. You don't know what the right answer is. And so I think anthropologists kind of sit well in that space because we're often asking these big questions that don't have real answers, not definitive answers. You know, we're, we're looking at things that are fundamentally, you know, they're pretty subjective. They, they have to do with meaning. They have to do with value and those are hard things to define. So we're, we're good in negotiating those waters. That can be a little difficult

Matt Artz:

Know, so they're hard to define, but there are also sometimes hard to convince people of, I find, you know, in the end. And so, you know, that gets to sort of a topic that I, I asked a lot of people who work in this space and I'm always interested in how are different practitioners essentially systematizing, or maybe not systematizing in any formal way, but how, how are you, what are you doing to preserve your findings for organizational memory? Because I've, I've seen you know, I've done myself research, you know, there's this finding we it's very applicable in the short term, but you know, you're, you're on and people are seeming to forget, you know, the, the previous finding and how that relates to the product strategy and have, so do you do anything personally or organizationally, if you can speak about it that, you know, tries to systematize those findings or tries to preserve them and, or make them searchable anything in that space?

Rachel Fleming:

I think we've where I, when I worked at, I worked at a product accelerator for two years before this position in the consultancy and we did create kind of a research repository there. And I don't know if anyone ever looked at it except researchers, but it was useful for researchers. We created a Wiki on confluence, which was actually, that was more useful because developers use confluence. They love it. And so they could go to our website essentially and kind of learn more about our process, learn more about, you know, what we do. We have like things on there, like how to take good research notes. You know, what we found in certain projects, we did research snapshots where we kind of summed up, you know, how a project went. We did some lunch and learn presentations talking about, you know, how we made impact with different projects.

Rachel Fleming:

So I think, you know, reaching the audience where they are is important in terms of research repository, I have not seen something that works terribly well yet. Although I know a lot of places are trying, I think for me the thing that stays in an organization, and this is true of where I am now is kind of the process, you know, like figuring out, you know, how do you do a project? And we've created kind of an an insights playbook to walk people through, you know, what is how do you start a project? How do you scope it? What do you think about what's the timeline? What are your deliverables like? How do you create them? What's the format and, you know, it's, it's not set in stone. There are a lot of different options of how to do it, but I think those are probably the most valuable assets that an organization can work on to preserve kind of at least the way they approach research.

Matt Artz:

So, you know, one thing that comes to mind when you say all that is there's really a lot of project management sort of activities in there, if you will, or which I don't think a lot of say students, or even early career, early to mid career anthropologist who might not be in tech are anticipating you know, w w as you come into tech, I think we have to take on a lot of that. Enema was pretty quick. And so, you know, I know we already kind of talked about some upskilling, but is there anything that you did particularly around like project management or was it just sort of self study?

Rachel Fleming:

You know, I, I wish I'd done more of that. That would have been super helpful. I think the product management skills that I took in to to this career were designing my own research and running it. And then I did a lot of organizing of conferences of panels of various, you know, group events. And that was sort of like something that I was really involved in, in grad school. And I think those skills were kind of helpful cause you kind of can like put together a program based on a bunch of different people, doing different things and you know, about timelines and you know, about deadlines and can kind of organize people that way. So I think it would be incredibly helpful to take product management classes or do something a little more formal. I know there's a lot of certifications on the web. There are things you can kind of courses you can go through to learn about it. And I, I don't know if it needs to be specific to tech or not. I think that would be useful learning about, you know, agile project or agile product management would definitely be useful.

Matt Artz:

Yeah, I agree. Yeah. So you talked about previous study, you talked about the lunch and learns. So that's, you know, you sort of shopping around the findings, right. And, and a part of that I think is related to that at least is the another big topic that oftentimes comes up in, you know, when I'm talking to UX writers and when I'm talking to just the business anthropology community at large, and that's like the, the general topic, but how do we sort of gauge, you know, the impact of our work? I think in UX that can be a little easier than maybe in like an organizational anthropology or, or anthropologists who are working in branding. It seems like, you know, we, with sort of the analytics platforms maybe have like a little bit more of a concrete way to do that multiple times, but do you have any thought on, you know, like how you know, how do you gauge the impact of your own research or how do you know the stakeholders that you're selling it to gauge that,

Rachel Fleming:

Oh, gosh, it's hard, it's hard to come up with, you know, real measurable indicators of impact. And sometimes it's kind of like you have to think about development effort and kind of like, you know, how, how much effort would this thing have been that we didn't build because research told you it wasn't valuable and that's kind of like how much money did you not spend. And which is hard to measure. I think success of a project can be measured maybe in kind of alignment with the team how, how much they kind of understand about the people who will use the product and kind of how, how invested they are in, in making something that matches those needs. So, so I think a lot of it comes out, you know, rather after the fact but research has done and, and hopefully research is kind of like, you can be part of something long-term and kind of see it.

Rachel Fleming:

But in, you know, in consulting where I am now we don't really see where the product necessarily goes or, or what happens, you know, in this like large digital transformation experience. But we do know that we're bringing teams together that weren't didn't know quite how to do a large project before. And we know that they're able to talk about it and they have a direction and they have a roadmap and they are in a better place than they were before. So I think that that has impact, but, you know, you do need to you do need to bring these, bring these measures up with, with leadership now, and then, and they engineers that I've worked with tend to really like the value to effort matrix. So if you can map a set of features along how, how valuable it is to users and how much effort it would take on the development side. So you can work with the development team to do that. Then you can have a grid that shows you, which features have high impact for users and are high value and are not too much effort to build or a little bit of effort. And that kind of is like an aha moment, I think.

Matt Artz:

Yeah. It really helps for prioritizing for sure.

Rachel Fleming:

Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's in a format that is very understandable and makes decisions more clear. So I think our role is really helping people make decisions in a better way.

Matt Artz:

Yeah. It's interesting. You say that, you know, also when you said earlier about, you know, maybe helping them, helping the organization, not build something that maybe they shouldn't, but in many ways it's sort of about reducing risks in a lot of cases, but you're also saying some things in there that happened to, you know, we would depend on the organization and how it's sort of defined, but there's, you're doing a number of things that maybe a product manager might do in some cases, depending on the size of the team and how maybe mature their, you know, their, their organization is. So how do you work together? You know, in this role or in previous sales, what do you find? How, how are you working with the product manager?

Rachel Fleming:

It depends on who, like what, what role they're they're in at different organizations they play there are various iterations of a project or product manager or product owner, or if there's a lot of different words. And I think it, it comes down to, you know, who, who is responsible for kind of the vision of the project and where it's going. And it really helps when there is a person who is responsible for that. Sometimes project managers play more of the role of kind of making sure all the meetings happen on time and notes are, you know, given and kind of coordinating all the different people. And then sometimes the tech lead might take on that role of, you know, the product vision person and sometimes nobody's taking on that role and it's really tough. So and then sometimes UX research takes on that role and can pull people together around that vision.

Matt Artz:

And it is well suited for which brings up another thing, which is that, you know, your research today, you don't see, we don't quite have a seat at the table in a lot of cases or at least like, you know, higher up in the organization. Research still seems to be sort of nestled under something else, you know, whether it's sort of design or product in a lot of places, not everywhere, of course. It depends on maturity, but in those cases, you know, in our, in your case, when maybe you don't have, you know, somebody who's really taking on the product vision, what do you do to sort of exert your influence and what could other people maybe do, you know, any tips for how that they can really make sure that the research gets you know, has impact ultimately that it gets adopted?

Rachel Fleming:

I think the most important thing you can do is bring people into the research process with you. So, so they are kind of helping make these decisions along with you because that, that can really help with buy-in. And if you just have sort of, you give them, you know, insights or ideas and say, this is where it should go. You know, they, they may not adopt that or be very interested, but if you can say, Hey, can you help me figure out where this should go? And I can help give you these tools and let's figure this out together what this product should be, and then they really get into it and are excited about it. That's great. So,

Matt Artz:

So along the lines of recommendations, yeah. I'd like to maybe pivot and talk about what's you know, what the listeners could do if they want to get into UX. So that could be students could be early career, mid career, whatever it may be whether the, the needs are a little different, right? If you're a student, you have some time to plan and maybe do some upscaling ahead of time, take some classes, you know, whatever it may be. You can serve structure that if you're already working, then it's more a question about maybe how do you reframe your experience to get into tech? So maybe a first for students, you know, is there anything that stands out that you would recommend that they do?

Rachel Fleming:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that gaining some work experience is critical before you graduate, because no one will see anything that you did as a student for like your, you know, if it's a dissertation, whatever it is as work experience. Even if it's applied, even if it's a research project, you know, for a company, if it's for a company, maybe they'll give you a job afterwards, but barring that usually, you know, it's, it's interesting background, but it's not work. So if you can, as a student, you can get internships that are not available once you graduate. So I, I strongly recommend taking advantage of those and your graduate programs, or if you're an undergrad, your, your program will not help you necessarily in finding these. So you'll have to find them on your own word of mouth. You know, a lot of big companies have them.

Rachel Fleming:

And I, I can't stress enough just, you know, I wish I'd had that that would have helped me a lot. And you can also start taking courses in some other departments, you know go check out. It would help. It would have helped me to have a little better background in statistics, honestly. So make friends with your sociology buddies and go figure out what they're doing. Cause it's really helpful to kind of at least know what the quantitative side looks like, so that you can do that. If you, if you need to pull on that tool later, you can do that. There are some programs in, in computer science that are focused on kind of product and agile product and management. The business school might have something related to like, you know, strategy could be really useful. So, so I recommend, you know, get out of your bubble and go see what else is on campus. Design of course a design program might be a great place to start to find something that would help.

Matt Artz:

And how about for those who are working any tips for maybe reframing their experience on a resume and a portfolio?

Rachel Fleming:

Oh, sure. Well if you're not in the UX research space and you want to get in and you have research experience, that is great. I've worked with amazing UX researchers. Who've come from biological science, who've come from, you know, neuroscience or all kinds of business, all kinds of different backgrounds, right. And they all have in common being able to take you know, collect data and then critically think about it. So if you can package up your experience in that way that goes a long way, you know, can you put, can you put a case study on your portfolio that says, what's the problem? What did you do about it? What was the impact? You know, if, if you can show that you did good research that fits that form. I don't think it has to be in the UX space necessarily. But it sure does help to have a few UX type projects on your portfolio.

Matt Artz:

Yeah. And you're on your own website, you know, we try to encourage everybody to look up there's, you know in the FAQ section, you talk about the portfolio and it's, you know, it's a good breakdown of it. You mentioned one of the things in there that I wanted to touch on, which is strategy. So, you know, maybe this isn't you know, maybe this isn't for like sort of a junior UX research role, but as we sort of mature, there's other opportunities for us as UX researchers, we can continue on in the UX research path and, and, and maybe specialize, we could also venture out, you know, I, myself at this time, I'm spending more time in the product management space, but strategy's also a really interesting area. And so maybe, do you want to say anything particularly about strategy, but also about maybe just, you know, sort of career path as a UX researcher?

Rachel Fleming:

Yeah, absolutely. I think that as you kind of get into a, a career, you know, place, you have more choices, you can say, what do I really want to specialize in now? And and there are quite a few more roles coming up that have strategist in the title, or people are becoming kind of UX research strategists or lead strategists. And I think this, this has to do with kind of you know, basically a strategy is choice-making. How do you make a choice? How do you decide how to spend resources? And there are various approaches to this. I took a great course with IDEO on on strategic decision-making or I think it was called design strategy. Roger Martins course, and it was it's a great, you know, framework for kind of thinking about how you make choices.

Rachel Fleming:

And that is pretty much what we do. You know, we, we help people make choices informed by data and it's data that we actually collect, you know, on, on the ground, outside the organization. And so hopefully it's a better informed choice. But strategy is absolutely a direction that UX researchers can go in. I've also seen quite a lot of uptick in kind of realizing that anthropologists and social scientists are good at figuring out kind of ethics within technology. And there are a lot more roles kind of for people who are thinking deeply about the ethical implications of technological decisions. And I think that's a good space for us as well. So I think the technology world is really opening up to what anthropologists can bring and realizing kind of that holistic understanding of human behavior and human motivations is useful in a lot of different areas and not just in, you know, UX research specifically.

Matt Artz:

Yeah, for sure. And, you know, with every company at this point, not just the tech companies, per se, you know, not just the Googles and Facebooks, but with every company really now trying to build digital products. Now the job market is just exploding for us. And so it's a really great place to be. And so, you know, in, in closing maybe I guess one is, you know, is there anything I didn't ask that you think would be good to bring up

Rachel Fleming:

Maybe just to reiterate that graduate programs and anthropology are doing great work by training anthropologist, and then they are not doing great work in helping them figure out what to do with their training. And so I think there's a big space there for graduate programs to think about, you know doing, you know, a hybrid curriculum with maybe a design program or technology, putting something together that fits this space in a way that kind of shows anthropology majors and graduate students, that there is a path there are many different paths and and getting them the training and getting them prepared for that job market, because it is a big market. And so far people are kind of figuring it out on their own. There's a few programs, but not many.

Matt Artz:

Yeah. You know, what would be very interesting in there too, just to maybe to add onto that. I am, I'm personally interested in teaching, like, you know, cross-listed courses across broadly speaking art or design business and social sciences. And I would like to see all those people brought together because not only not only is the subject matter useful for the different players in that space, but begging getting them together early on very much like a product team. Right. And sort of that actual a sort of real applied training of working together across disciplines. So, you know, it's, it's really ripe space, you know, for, for innovation within education. So I hope somebody does it.

Rachel Fleming:

There's, there's a space there for sure.

Matt Artz:

So is there anything you're involved in that maybe you want to tell, tell everybody about?

Rachel Fleming:

Well there, I, I, I'm working on a, an early project for possibly grad programs and I, I really do feel strongly about helping students figure out of means to gainful employment. Because I think they, they, you know, you, you don't need to be poor forever and you can, you can have a job and that's okay. So, so keep an eye out for that. But kind of an early project for that. And also I'd like to just call out, you know, the Epic website, ethnographic practice and industry conference are Epic people.org has great resources on all of these things from getting started to really people who thought very deeply about a certain subject and Ben the Napa designed by anthropologists blog has fantastic resources for people starting out in this space. So I would recommend those.

Rachel Fleming:

There are also a few organizations that help, you know, PhDs transition to industry. So you know there's beyond the professoriate. The professor is an, of course has some resources and from PhD to life is another one. So there, there are a lot of kind of people in this space who can help you move more into industry, or at least in there's a lot of free resources to so, you know, there's, there's a lot of, there's a research project to be done if you're getting started, but they're also people who can help you kind of figure this out.

Matt Artz:

Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing all those in a note on Epic. So just you know, the past day or two, I think it was that they released, you know, all the 20, 20 materials. So definitely check those out. Okay. Where can everybody find you? Okay.

Rachel Fleming:

Well, my website is rachelfleming.net, and I have links to things that I've written and a big, long FAQ's page about UX research, because I thought I should just, instead of repeating myself all the time, just put it on the web

Matt Artz:

And it's a great piece, and along with the, you know, the American ethnologist article, definitely a, one of the reasons I reached out to you first. I really thank you for coming on being the first guest, your great first guest for this. I know you're passionate about the same thing. So Rachel, thanks very much.

Rachel Fleming:

Well, thanks so much for starting this. I think it's needed and it will have a great future.

Matt Artz:

Thank you all for listening to the Anthro to UX podcast, to learn everything you need to break into UX, visit anthrotoux.com. There you will find all the podcast, episodes and career coaching resources, please like share and subscribe. See you next time.

Please note this transcript is an automated transcription and may have some errors.

Welcome to the Anthro to UX Podcast with Matt Artz

Matt Artz — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 13:59:30 +0000

Welcome to the introductory episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, where you will learn how to break into UX with an anthropology degree.

I am Matt Artz, a business anthropologist specializing in design anthropology and working at the intersection of product management, user experience, and business strategy.

I've started this podcast and the Anthro to UX career coaching service because I frequently have people reaching out to me on LinkedIn looking for advice on breaking into UX with an anthropology degree.

In speaking with all of those aspiring UX'ers, I noticed that many recurring themes come up, so I thought this podcast could be a great way to address some of the common questions.

To do that, I will be releasing episodes every other week. Each episode will feature an anthropologist who has already made the transition.

You will get to hear from them, in their own words, about their journey and what they have learned since being in the role.

I hope you all find this podcast helpful, and most importantly, I hope it can help all of you break into UX.