Research Operations: The Path to Efficient User Research
How to make user research more efficient in organizations? One way is Research Operations (ReOps) – a specialized area that helps improve both the level and quality of research. In this interview, our UX researcher Zuzana Tancibudková explains exactly what ReOps entails, what benefits it has for companies, and when it is appropriate to consider its implementation. We also discussed practical advice on how to start ReOps processes in a company, what tools to use, and how artificial intelligence can help in UX research.
Can you explain what Research Operations is?
I understand Research Operations as a very broad area that includes all activities that allow researchers to conduct and scale research more efficiently within an organization. Many people see it primarily as respondent recruitment, but it can include, for example, the selection and management of research tools, the implementation and maintenance of research standards, ensuring quality and ethics, and researcher training.
Another key role of Research Operations is the preservation of research results so that other members of the organization have easy access to them and can work with them. I personally consider building relationships between researchers and other people in the organization to be very important. Research Operations can act as an advocate for research, constantly explaining its role and contribution to the overall development of the organization.
What will this bring to my company?
Researchers who often face pressure to deliver results quickly will be particularly pleased with a Research Operations specialist. This pressure can negatively affect the quality of research. In addition, researchers don't have time to regularly remind and teach people in the organization what research is good for and how they can use it.
The introduction of Research Operations should primarily improve research efficiency, allowing researchers to conduct research faster without compromising quality. Increased efficiency is fairly easy to measure.
It is also important to strengthen the design culture within the company, where people make decisions based on user data, not just intuition or circumstantial pressure. Measurement in this case may be more complex, but certainly not impossible.
When should I use an external firm for ReOps, and when is it better to build my own team?
It is generally recommended that a Research Operations specialist is worthwhile when an organization has 5 to 8 researchers. With 12 researchers, it is almost essential.
Regardless of the number of team members, the organization should start considering Research Operations, for example, when researchers spend more time on research operations than on research itself, or when (unmanaged) democratization of research is taking place in the company, where data is collected not only by researchers, but also by other people in the company. Other signals are that researchers are not keeping up and there are no plans to add more to the team, or that the research team leader has to deal with operations because they have no one to delegate them to, so they have no time for leadership.
An organization can function with an external ReOps specialist for a very long time. However, they must spend enough time with the organization to understand how it works. Ultimately, it's about the price-performance ratio. An internal person will certainly be cheaper than an external specialist. However, finding someone who specializes in Research Operations on the Czech market is quite difficult.
The best strategy may therefore be to hire an experienced external specialist who will also be tasked with training an internal successor.
How to Start ReOps Processes in a Company?
A Research Operations specialist is essentially a designer of research services within an organization. Their customers are the researchers who deliver the research, as well as the people who use (or could use) the research. Research Operations will look different in every company – it will involve different activities with different priorities. At the beginning, it is essential to thoroughly map out how research is conducted in the organization, what works well, what problems it faces, and what challenges it faces. It is important to clarify roles and mutual expectations with the researchers. Since they previously had ReOps activities under them, it may happen that you interfere with their work and misunderstandings will arise.
In my experience, it is good to start with things that will have an immediate impact – such as creating research templates or straightening out the recruitment process. And gradually move on to long-term activities – such as building relationships with business and product people or training.
Are you interested in the topic of user research maturity in companies? Also read an interview with Ondřej on the topic of UXR maturity.
Do I need any paid tools? Can you recommend any specific ones?
One of the roles of Research Operations is to provide complete equipment for researchers, including both software and hardware. It depends on the capabilities of each organization and the data collection methods they commonly use.
For me, a good foundation is a tool for collecting quantitative data (questionnaire tool), a tool for online moderated testing (this can be Teams or Google Meet, which the organization commonly uses, but also paid tools like Lookback, which are great for testing on mobile devices), a tool for evaluating qualitative data (allowing, for example, automatic speech-to-text transcription), and a tool for managing research results (such as Condens or Dovetail).
How do you think artificial intelligence will advance or change UX research?
Artificial intelligence will not replace researchers yet, but it can significantly facilitate their work with research preparation and evaluation. I personally use AI chat as an assistant that helps me write a script for an interview, create questions for a questionnaire, or suggest what a summary of the most important findings from a research report for various roles in the organization might look like. I take the AI outputs only as inspiration and always elaborate on them further based on my knowledge and experience.
Many research tools are trying to integrate AI to make researchers' work more efficient. For example, tools for analyzing qualitative data can automatically transcribe audio recordings from interviews into text, divide the interview into thematic parts, or suggest data categorization. They won't do the work for the researcher, but they can make it much easier and faster.
You also provide ReOps training in companies. What kind of feedback do you get on the training?
The feedback so far has been excellent. Before each training session, I discuss with the companies what works and doesn't work for them in terms of research. Based on this information, I select the topics we will focus on in depth. For some, it may be recruitment; for others, building relationships with stakeholders.
We don't have standard training, but you can simply contact us at our email address. We have prepared it primarily for research and design teams because we have found that Research Operations often aren't firmly grasped.
Research Lead, Tipsport
“Overall, the training with Zuzka was great. We appreciated her presentation; she is positive and a pleasure to listen to. She delivered everything excellently and explained it sufficiently. The most useful part was the examples from Zuzka's practice, i.e., illustrations of specific examples of relevant problems she solved and how. Overall, we most appreciate having the opportunity to discuss real problems we face with the trainer during the training. For some of us, there was a lot of theory in the training, especially in the morning. In the afternoon, when we got to the “more concrete” topics, there wasn't as much energy left. Paradoxically, however, the afternoon parts were the most useful. We would also appreciate some practical exercises.”
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