[ENG] Antkowiak & Lachowicz | Is Everyone a Researcher? | WaysConf 2025

Speaker A: Thanks.

Speaker B: That's impressive. There's like five people here and the clubs, uh, were actually loud. So we appreciate you. Thank you so much for staying so late. So, yeah, we're Laura and Alicia. We're both UX researchers. As you know. We are both started at Allegro where we are both currently at Zendesk. And despite our amazingly youthful, uh, looks. Sorry. We have actually been in the industry for quite a long time. Laura started in 2017, I've started in 2013. And for the most part of our careers the industry has been growing nicely and steadily. And we kind of grew nicely and steadily with it. Okay, here I don't have light, um, in my face. That's relief. Um, but, but lately we've been feeling like things kind of sped up and got a little bit more complicated. So what drove that? There are a couple of things. One is definitely uncontrolled hiring and then massive layoffs in the industry. It didn't impact the polish, uh, market that much, uh, but still it shapes the way the industry is right now. The second one is, you know the drill. I have to uh, mention AI right in the presentation. Yeah. So generative AI impacts not only the tooling that we are using, but also, uh, the expectations towards efficiency of all the employees. And there is one more thing, but I have to build up to it a little bit so because it comes from something that we've been seeing for a long time and uh, designers indicate that they need research in their work and they do not always get it. And researchers just can't do it all right. Uh, they don't have enough time, resources and so on. And it's kind of a, um, good thing I think, because, uh, it means that research is finally ingrained into it industry and there is uh, actual data demand for it. And it happened a little bit top down because the industry leaders started doing research. So it was a good practice. But also it started uh, to happen bottom up, uh, on the um, level of all the different companies. And it goes something like this. First researcher or first researchers join, uh, the M Company or maybe designer is very passionate about research and they are starting to build trust towards research within the company. They are showing that it decreases risk that it may be impacting something more, uh, than just evaluation. But also, uh, we can do something strategic and then inevitably the demand for research grows and we kind of can't do it all anymore. So there are two ways. Either UX team is growing, which is an ideal situation, uh, in which researchers can still do all the research in all the areas. Although it also means that we might be not doing the most interesting or impactful projects and the alternative is less ideal. UX research team stays the same. And then we either after talking to everybody how important the research is and how we should all apply it, we say okay, we're not going to do it right. The research is not going to happen in this uh, project or alternative is this scary D word that I was building up to. So democratization situation in which uh, not only researchers but also other roles do the research. And I think a couple of years back there was this huge conversation within the industry. Should we be doing democratization? Is it going to lower the quality? Is it going to destroy UX research as it is? And now we have somewhat of a consensus, but not because the research elders gathered and agreed on something but rather because people are just doing research. Non researchers want to know about uh, their users and having dedicated researchers somewhat uh, of the luxury nowadays. Um, yeah, so this was kind of my spiel. Now we wanted to ask you a couple of questions. There are not that many people at this time left so I'm not sure how we're going to do it. But yeah, m. Maybe show of hands if in your organization not only researchers but also other people do research. There you go.

Speaker A: Okay, so despite the huge crowd we see there is nearly a half of you and uh, yeah, this is definitely not the best sample so we won't draw any conclusions from it. Uh, especially that even if this uh, this room was full we are still at the design conference. So uh, yeah it might be uh, the sample might be a bit biased but um, that proves our point. And before we move on to that, let me uh, say a few words of context about Zendesk. If you haven't heard about Zendes, honestly we wouldn't be too surprised because it's a customer service solution platform and our uh, customers are our businesses. So maybe probably you have had some interaction with Zendesk before, uh, but you didn't even realize it. Let's say that your food delivery from Pish, uh Nepal got mixed up and instead of Margherita pizza you got Hawaiian. And uh, now you want to sort this out because this is the wrong order and you uh, are uh, reaching out to customer uh support and that uh, infrastructure behind it, that's Zendesk. Uh, so Zendesk hires around 6 uh thousand uh people worldwide and out of those 15 uh, hundred around, give or take, are interacting with customers on a regular basis. And this excludes customer uh, support Team. So that means that product managers, uh, product designers, uh, people from product marketing go to market teams. They are all talking to customers on a regular basis. Even our CEO regularly goes to our customers and gathers feedback. So maybe you're asking yourself, where does that leave research team? So our research team is eight researchers, eight specialists, one research, uh, uh, operations specialist, and then uh, two managers. So, uh, I don't know how about you, but when I saw this for the first time, I thought, okay, this is the relatively, uh, small team for uh, such a big company. And uh, what uh, does this team do when uh, nearly a quarter of company talks to customers? Does that mean that, uh, Alice and Laura will lose their jobs soon? Maybe. Show of hands. Who thinks we will? Don't be shy. We won't judge. No one thinks that. Wow. Okay. You believe in us.

Speaker B: We appreciate you.

Speaker A: I was ready to prepare that someone is secretly hoping for that. If someone votes. Uh, yes, but. Well, okay, uh, luckily it's not that bad. Uh, uh, we hopefully we hope to not lose our jobs. Um, the trend in the industry is that uh, not only researchers conduct research. And uh, actually part of the job description has become that uh, researchers are also supporting uh, other roles in conducting research. So it's not uh, something that uh, is exclusive for Zendesk. It is actually a trend in industry. And that brings us to the evolution of uh, researchers. So back in the day, uh, what Alicia mentioned before, when uh, we were starting our careers, uh, we uh, as researchers were more of a hunters, gatherers, so finders. We were the ones gathering the research ourselves and then uh, doing it with our own bare hands. And uh, the role was pretty straightforward as the clear lines between the roles. So uh, it was um, very clear that we had monopoly over the contact with customers. And uh, that was easier. And as evolution progressed, uh, we are starting to see that we are moving towards more of a producer, builder kind of role. So we are not the only ones producing the insights. We are also sharing the research practices that uh, help other roles do this research as well. And I don't know how about you, but when I was uh, hearing about the democratization, I was a bit skeptical at first and I still am to some extent. But, um, the first thing that came to my mind was, okay, what about the quality of research? What about people who don't have the skill set to do it? Doing that, isn't it risky? And we uh, believe that there are some foundations, there are pillars that uh, if we do it right, uh, we set ourselves up for success. When it comes to the democratization, uh, and create uh, the symbiosis between different uh, species what I mean is roles. So uh, first one is culture, uh, when it comes to culture by that we mean uh, building the culture of understanding that research is important in an organization. So by the time you are introducing the democratization it shouldn't be a matter of question whether research is important for the product process or not. This should be something that is already established that um, different roles need this research and they are hunger for it, hungry for it and they want to learn as much as they can. And that comes with this hunger. There comes a hunger also for the know how which means infrastructure. So the infrastructure is the tool set and the skill set that we provide to different roles uh, to uh, set those roles for success uh, when it comes to research. And then the third one is voice. And by voice we mean the insights and the conclusions and recommendations that help make the decisions. But that voice is uh, something that we would like to um, go more depth in depth. Because uh, this in a democratized world might be a little bit tricky.

Speaker B: Yeah. So let's talk about the voice. Um, so when we have monopoly on bringing the insights and talking to users and we are the only one who are presenting users point of view, it is like a super comfort situation because our value and our role is pretty clear. And it kind of changes with democratization. Right. Because there are more people bringing in this value and talking to the users. So whatever we do we need to show that what differs us from people doing research that are not researchers is not only the time spent on the research. So we kind of need to have unique voice which means tremendous amounts of brain work and uh, increasing your skill set all the time. So what makes a unique researcher's voice? So in Zendesk for sure one thing is scope. So uh, we are trying to take on bigger questions that are about the whole area or set of areas. Big uh, questions whenever you want to tackle it. You need more time, more skills, more uh, organization as well. And usually when you want to answer the big question, the easiest answer uh, to get is like this vague answer that doesn't really say uh, much to the company or stakeholders. So the second thing that is important in user researchers voice is depth. So really looking at uh, this question from different perspectives, so um, implementing different methods that are maybe more creative or um, looking at different sources of data from industry reports, uh, to um, some secondary research on the uh, quant data from the company. And then the third thing is analysis Level So the easiest thing you can do after the interview is do kind of report, uh this person said this and that and they like this and that and this and that is a challenge. Right, but the problem is ChatGPT can do it. It's not perfect at it, uh, but it still can do it. So we need to look for analysis level that would be useful for stakeholders. Um whether it's about juicy insights or recommendations that are really um, giving a direction, uh, or some models that help uh, bring a lot of insights together and make it more memorable. Uh cool. So yeah with this um, you know researchers voice can still be unique and important and on the flip side we have things that we don't need to do so maybe what to democratize first. So there is no clear answer to that but there are a couple of aspects you can take into account. First for sure is phase of the project. So discovery is the most important uh, sorry most complicated part of the process for sure. And also it impacts the uh, rest of the project. Right. So if you don't get it right a lot of unnecessary investment can be made. So maybe you can lean towards democratizing uh evaluational research which are more straightforward and also some things are easier to roll back uh if needed then we have method. So usability studies again pretty straightforward. On the flip side for example large scale surveys, they go out to a lot of customers, a lot of people would see it. It's really easy to uh, formulate the question in the wrong way so maybe stick to it and then risk and priority. So yeah rule of thumb if you can just work on always the things that are priority. Uh but uh, yeah the low priority, low risk projects are uh for sure the top candidates for democratization. Okay. So yeah we know there are risks. We don't want you to think we are uh the fanatics of democratization. So we listed some. So yeah biased sample for sure. So maybe somebody thinks some, I don't know pm that um, recruitment is kind of difficult so they keep reaching out to the same customers. Right. So in the end we are building the whole feature for the handful. Then we have top of mind concern, uh always poor quality of research. Um so if somebody don't have the right skill set to run the research obviously it might not reflect the reality so it doesn't really lower the risk. And this is a goal of the research. And then we have for example ah chaotic feedback gathering. So this is from the point of view of organization research is there also to build a knowledge within the organization. If there are Reports that in on some piece of paper or mysterious Google Doc that nobody knows about, then it doesn't um, it doesn't help right with building this knowledge. And from the customer point of view we might be contacting people just too often right. If we don't uh, have it organized. So these are real problems. And if you want to democratize obviously you have to actively uh, counteract. So at Zendesk what we do is we have something like DIY UX research training which is a training that we've built. So if you want to use uh our tools, our infrastructure, our budget for research, obviously uh, we are asking you to complete this uh, UX research uh training. We have also office hours. So if you are not sure what to do to do just drop by, we're happy to talk to you and consult anything. Then we have repositories and we have two repositories. One is built within our confluence and it's for more structured reports and research plans. Uh and then we have user voice that is used for more um, atomic insights. So if something comes up in a conversation with the customer or in a ticket or um, elsewhere uh, on the forum for example we put it in there. So repositories are important because they are building this knowledge for the whole company. They are uh also the tools that help you not do the same research again. And also it's so easy to learn from them because you have research plans and reports there. So it's kind of like perfect base of examples. And then we have also standardized recruitment processes so they are ingrained into our tools. So it's physically impossible to for example contact the customer, uh, today's in a row and Slack channel, uh, you can ask UX research anything, either us or the bottom called, what is it called Unleash, uh will respond to you or you can just uh, always you know, message us as well. If you're at Zendesk, every area has their own uh, uh dedicated researchers. So yeah we think that even though there are some potential problems, ah and it's kind of scary, it's still possible to have democratization uh that maintains good quality research uh, and makes the researcher role still stay relevant.

Speaker A: So to sum it up, what does the researcher of the Future or Researcher 2.0 look like? Uh, let's look at the yesterday, today and uh, tomorrow kind of uh, um, distribution. So uh, it started out with Homo questionarius. So the skill set was methods and tool set and ah, the strength was providing uh the research results. So that meant that it was demanded by someone from the team and then the researcher provided it went something along the lines, uh 50% of respondents think X and uh, the threat here was the isolation of the role researcher being in a lone island and then the influence was also limited and then it progressed into today's collaborativus insighticus which means that it moved to skills as collaborating with the teams and then having more of domain knowledge, combining research results with that domain knowledge and sharing it with teams. And the adaptation uh here is being as researcher embedded in the product, in the product team which means that it was a very very close collaboration and right now we are reaching at the stage three or potentially moving into that uh as we believe Strategus Synthesarius researcher uh 2.0 so the skills is not creating insights anymore. It's also connecting the dots, the meta analysis having a uh broader perspective to be able to speed the strategy of products and features uh and seeing those patterns is a very big strength of researcher 2.0. And here adaptation is scaling impact and also building a research culture, not just research outcomes. And we uh want to leave you on a high note. So if you're still feeling a bit skeptical about democratization we want to emphasize that there are some opportunities for researchers uh, that present themselves when it comes to democratized world. The first one is uh scaling. So if you think about it, the huge uh backlog of things and constantly um, looking to meet deadlines and uh, never ending projects that have to be made when it comes to research is not our dream come true. We would love to have some more breathing room into doing the things that we want to uh, we are interested in. So maybe there is some exploratory research that you've been always dreaming about but there is now not really a room for that. So maybe democratizing some of the research and uh, giving the opportunity for other teams gives you that. And with that maybe that exploratory research will give you also a bigger impact in the company and will influence the strategy of that uh, of uh, that company. Also uh when someone uh was when someone is in the field for long enough ah there might be a good refreshment in being in other roles, not only conducting research, so being a product manager let's say of the research, guiding others and um, learning from uh, them getting inspired from the customers. And then there is also a form of engagement of uh, uh our stakeholders which is called IKEA effect. So we tend to overvalue the things that we help build uh, if we engage our stakeholders into doing this research actually by themselves. They might be more keen to listen to those results as well. And finally, uh, it wouldn't be a presentation about evolution, uh, without quoting Darwin. So it's not the strongest of species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change. So we can treat democratization as a threat, or we could, um, look at it from a point of curiosity. And I really hope that it's in our DNAs when it comes to being curious. Thank you so much. And here are LinkedIn. So if you want to reach out.

Speaker B: Thank you for saying till such an ungodly hour. We appreciate you. Thank you.

Speaker A: Claps for you. Thank you once again. And we have the final opportunity to ask some questions.

Speaker B: Do we have some questions in the audience? Oh, I see questions. Magda is coming to you.

Speaker C: Hey, it was fantastic to see you all put this together, by the way. And I wonder if, if we look at this through the lens of evolution and we think that in the future this is going to be more strategic. What if the trend goes towards what we've seen, for example, in Tom from Intercom's presentation, more towards speed and down to earth thinking and smaller teams shipping things really fast. I wonder if you see the future of researchers within that kind of, those kinds of structures.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that, uh, there is even a conversation I'm having right now with one of the design managers about that. I, um, think that there is some level of agility that, uh, we, uh, have to think about how to present into our work. But definitely communicating what comes in the, in each stage of the research process is something that helps because, uh, even on the early days, we could share, like, some snippets from the research and then, uh, engaged stakeholders. Of course, if, uh, we are talking about having a decent sample, we definitely cannot draw conclusions yet. But at the same time, there are some things that we can share, uh, that could also influence, uh, the way the decisions are made. So if the team moves really fast, I think that we would have to lean towards that fast pace as well, a bit without compromising the methodology. It's difficult, and I still feel like we are trying to figure that out. And I think that we haven't brought that discussion in the broader team, in our research team yet. But, uh, I want to.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that, uh, we can. So, yeah, you're talking about fast pace. Um, I've heard a lot about it. I didn't see too much of it yet. Right. So in the organizations, uh, the, you know, the planning is happening for Quite a long time. And even if the livery speeds up, maybe we can even deliver the discovery part before the delivery starts. And then it doesn't have to be like team comes back to us with each single question. Maybe we have this foundation built beforehand and uh, in terms of um, evaluation, we can do it pretty fast. We're not that slow, you know. So uh, I think we can manage it or we will just retire, uh, by then.

Speaker A: True.

Speaker D: Hello. Um, thank you for this really insightful presentation and um, I've got one question. Um, uh, part of the researcher's identity is work ethos. And my question is how you help um, in spreading the work ethos among researchers, uh, who are not researchers, who are trained to be researchers, but they are people who just join you in this democratization, um, approach to making research. So the question is how you spread and help forging, uh, work ethos.

Speaker B: That's a great question. I don't have a straight answer. I would say that uh, I was a lot of times very positively surprised. Like um, in terms of work it does for researchers, it's for sure like curiosity about people uh, trying to fix their real problems. And I definitely seen that as part of uh, company culture, ah, at Zendesk. So um, I don't feel that I've struggled with it so far. But uh, yeah, I think that we have to put in place some tools to counteract potential future problems, uh, with that. So thanks for the inspiration. Do we have another question? Yeah, there's a question right there.

Speaker D: Thanks for the talk. That was, that was really good. Um, I'm not a researcher, uh, but in my company I'm seeing opportunities to do research. So what advice would you give to somebody who's finding themselves doing research but not as a researcher?

Speaker A: I think there are a couple of uh, good materials in the Internet, some books and uh, you could definitely, definitely reach out to us if you would like to, uh, if you would like to, you know, seek some advice when it comes to starting out, uh, with some basics, uh, so feel free to reach out. And uh, definitely the curiosity part and just uh, just being uh, really eager to find out is very good starting point. So, so if you, if you feel uh, that you have that and you are willing to, to encourage others to embed research, ah, in your process, that's uh, more than uh, great as a starting point. And um, do we have any specific, do you have any specific advice? For starters, I think that with uh, picking uh, customers that you want to talk to make sure that they are represented good representation of, uh, who is using your product and then try to ask as unsuggestive question as possibly. And, uh, these would be the first two that I would say.

Speaker B: I think that it really helped me at the beginning to be kind of humble as well, like know that not everything will go well, have some distance towards, um, the results that I get and trying to evaluate whether or not they are good. Uh, so this was very useful. It was super useful for me to understand that not every, um, session will go well. It was so hard at the beginning. And also when I was starting to interview in English, I was so stressed. And then I realized, well, they don't have to think you are smart. Like, nobody cares about that. It's not the point of the research. So, uh, I think that coming back to this, thinking, well, what's the point of the research? What do I want to learn? Did I learn it? Did I learn it, um, accurately? Uh, I think this was very useful, like doubting yourself. Great advice.

Speaker A: For starters, an awkward silence, a lot of that.