Episode 1: UX Research for Global Markets with Jia En Koh, UX Researcher at Tripadvisor
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Hi everyone, I'm Dalen, founder and design educator at Curious Core.

Welcome to our Working in UX Design podcast series where we interview a UX design leader in the industry on their experience in this emerging field. We've had UX professionals from Grab, AirAsia, Google and more join us previously and we're bringing you more exciting interviews this year. Stay tuned for this week's interview with our special guest who is working in UX design.

So a very good evening to all of you over here tonight. Welcome to Curious Core's weekly webinar.

And we are here tonight with Jian Kou from TripAdvisor, and we are going to have a deep dive into research practices in the global markets. We're going to talk specifically about user experience research. We're going to speak about her experience changing careers as an advertising planner into research. And at the same time, we're going to talk about certain technologies

practices and basics that you need to have as a junior UX research person or even as a product manager. Once again, tonight we're very lucky to have Jia-An share her experiences. So maybe Jia-An, let's start with your current role at TripAdvisor. Tell us a little bit about what you do on a day-to-day basis. Yeah.

I think on a day to day, it's actually easier to say what I do on a week to week basis because I'm part of a product team. So our cadence is kind of on a week basis. So every Thursday night, I have catch ups with the beta product team. And then Tuesday and Thursday mornings, I have catch ups with my core product team to see what's the updates on, you know, research, design and any other sites. So

So I think the work is kind of structured around that. In my day-to-day, I can be doing things such as planning the research or setting it up. I can be working closely with the designer. For example, if it's an exploratory phase to brainstorm new features to test, whether through concept testing or through a survey or prototype testing as well. I could be analyzing the results, speaking to stakeholders, and then reporting it and sharing it back.

I think what I also do is I think I'm quite collaborative in nature. That means in terms of like gathering data, I would ask, you know, the data people what they know or ask maybe some of the people who've worked on it on their previous research and their take on it. And for the report as well, I would give a sense check with my designers to see like, does this make sense? And to help you find a story, because I think maybe what is interesting to me as a researcher might be the nuts and bolts, but they're more, they might be interested in something else or something could be more actionable for them.

Yeah, I think I also do have a lot of like one-on-one catch-ups over coffee with my PMs, especially to find out like, you know, what their needs are, fellow researchers and my team. So yeah, that's my life as a researcher. It's really much depending on the phase of the project.

So you spoke about working at TripAdvisor and your design team being based in TripAdvisor. So for the Asia Pacific design team for TripAdvisor, how many markets do you cover and which are some of the markets that you cover?

Oh, I think for that, because right now we've structured the portfolio such that me and my other two designers in Singapore are actually working on global product. So that means we're not only looking at the APAC markets or global markets, for example, we are looking at the core product. We do have our market prioritization that we have refined last year and this year, which APAC has taken a lead to make on, but I don't think I should share which are the key markets yet.

or how many markets it is. What I'll say is that TripAdvisor is a very international company, but we are quite more like American-centric. So I think what the APAC office can offer is bringing a different perspective based on the competitors that we see, or have a different perspective on maybe even from a research point of view, like how some things might translate into different markets. Yeah.

Well, that's a good point. And I think...

For the benefit of some people here who are a little bit new to the UX design industry, what is the difference between a UX researcher and a UX designer? What do they do differently? Why is there a specialized UX researcher? I think when I was in advertising, a bit of a side note, creative directors said it best of what a strategic planner is. He said a strategic planner is a creative who cannot draw, who cannot write. Right.

And I think that sums it up. As a UX researcher, I do know the basics of UX practices, but at most I can draw on pen and paper, but I'm not really good at actually sketching it out. But it is my job to know, for example, what's information architecture, what's wireframes and the nuts and bolts of that. The value that I provide is making sure that what we create connects to what people want.

So in the usual design thinking speak, there's that three concentric circles of is it desirable? Is it viable? And is it feasible? Desirable, like do users want it? Viable, does it make money? Feasible, can engineering make it?

So my job is to make sure that we put "is it desirable" first to make sure that users want it in the first place, that they find it desirable, that they have utility in using it, and that they are able to use it. Otherwise, we're going to create something that has no value. For example, the Segway, when it first came out, it was like, "Wow, you know, such a great innovation!" But where's Segways now? It's only used for like certain events in Sentosa for fun because it's not a usable product versus an e-scooter.

So yeah, my job is to make sure that what we do is, number one, like, is based on what users actually want. And the exciting thing about that and how it relates to exploratory research is that because I see what users want and what they need, I might be able to find opportunities that are not currently here based on how users are hacking things together. Yep. So, yeah, that's what I do. I understand users. I know UX design, but I cannot draw.

Thanks for sharing. We have our first question for tonight. So I'm just going to surface the question. Thanks, Michael, for asking. Have you had to work remotely because of the pandemic? If yes, how has that changed your approach to research?

So we're talking about remote research here. Okay. I think thankfully my research team has a good setup of the tools that allow us to work remotely. For example, we use usertesting.com a lot, which allows us to use both remote unmoderated as well as remote moderated.

tests and this can be either usability tests or they can be interviews and so we have like prepaid that and we have that arrangement it has been a lot easier to still continue using it i think the challenge from more of a covert thing is a budget perspective because budgets have been slashed that would mean that more

expense-heavy research such as recruiting for face-to-face interviews, recruiting for quantitative surveys. Those, you know, it's essentially like nothing for maybe a long period of time but we had to rely on more remote means through usertesting.com. So again, I'm really thankful we have usertesting.com. You can find your equivalent tools. There's also UserZoom and other ones that allows you to do remote testing.

Yeah, so have you actually been working remotely before COVID? Or has this been something that caught your team by surprise? I think I remember the result, the announcement came to work from home right after our team had a Happy Friday session of karaoke. So it's like...

a high of having fun together than like, okay, we're not seeing each other. But so with my own direct team, we haven't had that chance to work remotely. But since I work a lot with HQ, which means a lot of night calls or a lot of morning calls, I think TripAdvisor does have a good setup with Slack, with video conferencing to work remotely as well.

We were speaking about how it is a responsibility for a user researcher to bring in insights and wisdom. So can you maybe share a little bit about what constitutes an insight and what is wisdom in this case? You know, it's funny that you say it's a responsibility of the UX researcher. I would kindly disagree with that. I would say that it's the role of the UX researcher

to help to craft insight and wisdom but everyone has the responsibility to care about who your product actually goes to who's buying your product who uses your products

at the end of the day. So maybe it's just like role versus responsibility thing. And I guess it goes to what we were talking about yesterday about like how data versus knowledge versus insight versus wisdom, right? I think the role of a researcher or a strategist is to actually help to piece together the puzzles to say, you know, like what is salient? What are the core themes? Or like what is the overall like mental map? And then what's the way forward?

And I think it's quite a luxury.

For me, actually, for someone to be so curious to get paid to be capo and to bring things together and make sense of things. I think you can see the bits about decision and risk. I think the point of research and why we synthesize things to a level of insight and wisdom is that with information, you still don't know what you do. You might have information paralysis. You have bits of data floating everywhere, but you're like, so what?

But when you're at the level of knowledge, where it's synthesized, you can make sense of things and you can start to see meaning or patterns about it. I think an example is, for example, in TripAdvisor we have a segmentation and with that segmentation, I'm then able to look at certain behavior and say, "Oh, that falls into this segment A."

or this falls into this other segment. And then I can lay it on top of a behavioral segment of how they use a certain product feature, and then it gives me a lot more area to understand it and to repeat the knowledge that I'm able to look at a certain pattern and immediately sync it up into where that might fit in the mental map.

So I think that's the area of knowledge. Oh no, but maybe it's called wisdom because it's a pattern. But then I think the bit about wisdom is like having the core thing to say like, okay, if this is your framework, if this is your maybe six segments based on what we know and what the opportunities are, like this segment or like, you know, this feature, this opportunity space is the one that we should go big. And actually all of this in terms of

understanding context, meaning and insight, sometimes it does take more of a leap and that needs to be trained over time, which is something that

I've learned from really good creative directors in advertising because you know to see the titans at work they're able to synthesize like the signal versus the noise really quickly and and you can learn from like that and be amazed by wow how did you get to that so quickly yeah so let's let's talk about that like you you spent some time at ddb uh you were an advertising planner and

What did you learn from advertising that you're still using today as a UX designer? Actually, I went into strategic planner because being like a business major, I went into PNG because that's what every marketing person wants to do. So I did an internship there. But then I was disappointed that the marketing function and the research function sat separately. But because I wanted to be at the intersection of both, I wanted to both understand users and create the actionable impact.

So which is why I went into strategic planning and advertising and I knew that I wanted to do strategic planning specifically for that reason to bridge insights and strategy. I didn't want to do any other role in advertising. So that's why I went into advertising. I think what I learned from that is firstly to create the brief and

So in advertising, there's two briefs. There's the project brief, which the account executives create, and then there's the strategic brief, which us strategic planners create. What it means is that what the account executives create is directly from the horse's mouth, from what the stakeholders say they want. But my job is to find out, okay, this is what the stakeholders say that they want, but this is what they actually need.

and this is what they're actually implying. And bringing that to in-house, sometimes stakeholders, they tell you a solution because they'll think it'll shortcut you to get to where they want to go. But then me as a researcher or someone in a UX space, I'm able to say, okay, you actually wanted something else. This is a better way to get you there. I think one example was that there was this project that

the stakeholder said like, okay, just create these like three mock-ups, like hi-fi. But then I think what she actually wanted is to say that, okay, she saw these three as like a representative template. And then how can we create one, but also do a content audit in order to better understand how this one template can be used across the different ones. Is this the one with the hamster example? Oh no, that's another example. Okay.

I think in advertising, clients will tell you the most ridiculous things like, I got a great idea. You know what? We need a hamster. And you're like, hmm. So you learn not to take what clients say so seriously, but you help them get to what they want at the end of the day, which is their KPIs. Yeah. Yeah.

And I relate to this experience from a certain level working as an account servicing person very, very early on in my career where I actually took stakeholder requirements and crafted it into a brief for the creatives. And as I look back and as I reflect back, I realize that process, if it's complete, if there is a strategic planner in the process, there is a process of analysis of the data over there. So I realize in smaller agencies, there's

a lack of analysis in that process. So without that analysis, without that insight, the creatives actually work with a very rough brief or a very bad brief and actually are not able to deliver on the best ideas in the market. So this is just me like reflecting back on my advertising career and I just realized, okay, how important research and analysis is as part of the creative process.

which is not done sometimes, or many times in certain situations. So we do have a question that I think is quite related to what we're talking about over here. This is someone who has previous academic research experience, familiar with QUAL and QUAN methods and analysis, and have been practicing some specific UX research methods and analysis.

which is in a case study. So he or she would like to know, in your opinion, how does one know whether they are ready to apply for a UX research position? Like, how do you tell? In terms of capable or ready,

Maybe if we can flip the question a bit, it's more of like, what does someone with an academic skill set need to learn in order to transition to UX research? So it's more applicable. I think the key differences is, number one, the timelines, number two, the output, number three, the stakeholders. So in terms of the timelines,

If academic academic research is usually that really long timelines that in house, we don't have the luxury to have if only we did. So I think what I would be looking for is like, you know, their flexibility to not be so if I may call it purist on like what is the ideal scenario, but be able to be like flexible methodologies.

and to find proxies as needed. You know, it's not about cutting corners. It's about like with this given time and budget, like what is a good enough proxy that would get them, get us the insights and decision we need. So that's a timelines thing. Okay, stakeholders and output. So in terms of the output, I think in academic research, we pride ourselves on thoroughness. And by we, sometimes me as a researcher, even like building my own craft, I know I want to be thorough. I know that I have analyzed the results properly. But sometimes,

what stakeholders are looking for, they're like, okay, what's the so what? What's the bottom line? And they maybe need just those five slides. I'm still in the process of working up to it because as a researcher, you would know that we have to synthesize information from the ground up, from the weeds to get to that level, but they're looking at that like...

So it's also about how much we're able to communicate at that level and know what the stakeholder is looking for in order to present it in a way that they are more receptive to it rather than maybe a fixed method of like, you know, a hundred page report or a hundred deck slide. I think that would be my answer. If you show flexibility in that, then yeah, you will be ready.

Okay, hope we answered your question, Sana. So I wanted to also ask you a question with regards to something we spoke about previously. So let's talk about the few work that you've done overseas, right? So as I understand in your seven markets, you said you've done work in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Thailand and Laos.

And you've done visual ethnography, you've done cultural immersion and homestay with the Aboriginal regionies. So you've done actual fieldwork on site and you've also conducted a lot of methods as well. So I wanted to just get a sense, you know, like maybe you can share some stories or some things to note when you're doing overseas work.

field work or overseas research work? Yeah, I think firstly, shout out to Dr. Carroll when I was in university, because when I was in university, I did a double major in business and sociology. And he did a course on visual anthropology, which for summer school, which meant that we went overseas to do ethnographic filmmaking. So that was really fun. And I think that got me really interested in it.

because it was just a sense of, you know, doing all the academic research and secondary research of papers, but then going into field and being like completely surprised, but in a good way with like what emerges. And I think that's just a very interesting and eye-opening experience. Okay, back to your question. What was it? Yeah, like tell us the story or what did you do? What should we take note of if we were to go overseas and do research?

I think one key thing is actually to be aware of our positionality and our access. This is especially for more ethnographic research. Because, maybe one short story, this is when I was in university, we were going to do documentary filmmaking in southern Thailand. So we were supposed to go with my team on a certain date, but I just went a couple of days earlier as a solo trip to check out another town called Songkla.

And when I was there by myself, it's a small fishing town. Oh yeah, what happened was that I was walking at night. So I was walking alone at night in this Thai fishing town. And this older lady came up to me and she said, Hey,

What are you doing here? And I'm like, oh, I'm just exploring. She's like, are you alone? I'm like, yeah. She's like, you're a woman and you're alone. This place is not safe. You should not be here. And then later she asked, oh, what are you doing tomorrow? Do you have any plans? If not, why don't you come by and I'll take you to the temple right behind my house because I'm going there.

And this whole conversation happened in Thai because at that time I could speak Thai. So, and a similar thing happened like a few hours later that night, this older woman came to me. She said, what are you doing? This place is not safe. You should not be out here at night. What are you doing tomorrow night? Let me take you out for dinner. So that got me thinking that, you know, if I was not a woman, if I was not out there at night, if I did not speak Thai, I would not have access to

to these different experiences and information that these people are more willing to share. So I think that's my first point, that as an ethnographer, we have to be aware of where we're coming from and what that would mean in terms of the data we collect. I might have access to data, but maybe I'm not the best person to do certain types of data. I remember when I was in advertising, my friend said that someone was running a focus group on condoms, and then it was...

They had like 13 people in the focus group, all men, and the facilitator was a man, and he told me about some of the findings that they found. And I was thinking like, okay, if I ran that focus group, I would not be able to get that level of truthfulness because I'm a woman asking men, and they might be, you know, it would be a different sort of power dynamics.

So yeah, I think that's one thing. And I think you also mentioned during our conversation that it's also necessary to use perhaps local translators because that might actually help. Can you explain a little bit more about that? And what exactly is setting up a studio, a pop-up studio? Yeah.

Maybe for local translators, I would see it as maybe like three different setups, right? For the interpreters. Firstly, we'll want to work with simultaneous interpreters, which are people who can interpret on the spot. So imagine that, let's say it's you and me, Daylan, and we're sitting next to each other, and then a simultaneous interpreter is sitting in between us, and she's translating. As you're saying something, she's translating back.

So that's the case for simultaneous interpreters. So there's different levels depending on maybe your comfort with the language or like the setup. One extreme is to have humility to say maybe I'm not the best person to do this research. I'm going to outsource this to someone else.

And then the other extreme is that I do the whole research plan and interview, but then there's a simultaneous interpreter who's interpreting for us. In one setup I had, we had that situation where it's

the participant simultaneous interpreters and researchers. In another situation, my colleague could speak Chinese because she was from China. So she was the one who was the lead interviewer throughout, but I was the one who was the lead, I guess like leader of the project because I crafted the research plan, the research aims and everything, but she was the one conducting most of the research. Yeah.

I think some things to take note of if you're gonna be working with a translator and this is what I've learned from experience is

Number one, the best case scenario is to have the same translator throughout so that they're familiar and they use the same language. When I was in Korea, we were swapping translators. We had at least four translators swapping in and out because some of the terms were not translated to the same phrase. It was only later that we realized that they were talking about the same thing, but then they might have used a different phrase for it.

So that was one thing. I think the second thing is know where the translator is coming from and brief them how you plan to conduct the research, not only in terms of the topic but how you ask the question. So I remember there was this one time I was doing the research also in Korea with the translator and I had noted that I wanted, in my own notes, that I wanted to go deeper into this topic because the participant only talked about it like, you know, halfway and I want to go deeper.

So I asked it again and I thought I asked it in a different angle so it was like discreet enough but the translator turned back to me and she said "Oh the person already answered it" and then gave the answer. So later I had to like you know ask and rephrase again but after the interview I said "Oh my intent there was actually to go deeper because blah blah blah blah blah"

So like sharing with them the method then? Yeah, because maybe the interpreters are just saying like, asking like, why are you asking it again? Like we already have this information. Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing. I think that's also like the meat of what we wanted to cover for this specific topic where we're doing research globally. So would you mind explaining, you know, what is a pop-up studio and what does it mean in this UX design process? Yeah.

I think my learnings from the Pop-Up Studio is a lot from Jan Chip Chase, so you can check out his workshops and his books about that. I think a Pop-Up Studio is going to a different market and having the ability to immerse in that space and to have a space for not only research but synthesis and as well as a space for the local guides and fixes to help come in and to improve the thinking in that space.

So when we were doing it in my previous company, what happened is that I think number one, the presence of local guides are very important to get you up to see and to also be a fixer to help set everything up so that when you go there, you can conduct your research more smoothly. I think the second thing is having that physical space where like your whole team is together, where you can live and breathe the research. So what this means is that like we had a war room

with all of the findings on the walls, in the typical post-its on the walls kind of fashion. But there is benefit to it because you are seeing all this data visually, and you get a chance to scan it and put things together very easily. And just the ability to even bring stakeholders into the space to say, this is what we found, this is salient, and to synthesize it on a spot. It's, I think, quite a fun thing. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's also like the additional benefit of the spatial immersion on its own, right? Not just the data being in the spatial environment where you're playing with your hands and the walls, but also the fact that they're absorbing information, right? Just being in a space itself. I think that's really interesting. We might have been to the same workshop. Now that I recall, I met one of your colleagues that

Yeah, it's that short workshop by Jan, right? And he gives you this really thick book. I think when it comes to overseas research, I do recall one thing, which was the importance of speaking the local language of the people there, right? As I recall, when I was conducting research in Hong Kong,

And when I ask someone a question in English, they answer in a certain way. If I ask the same question in Cantonese, they answer in a completely different way and bring in like slangs and stuff like that. So that's, yeah, that's just so much nuance to like something as simple as doing like overseas research. And I think that's definitely something. Do you have books to recommend or anything like that? Like we're just trying to answer the topic over here, right? Like if...

one wants to do research and field work overseas, is there a book you would recommend people to read? I think I would recommend Yan Chipchase's book. I would recommend instead is to, like, if you're planning to conduct it, first...

like learn through experience if you have for example a consultant who has done it before and they can show you the first time then you can get more comfortable to do it subsequent times and that will be a better immersion that's what happened with me because we had a consultant come in with us do it for the first time in hong kong so we then can replicate it and improve on that in other markets yeah did you mean the few study handbook the one that he gave us

Yes, he didn't give it to us, he bought it. It's right in front of me as well. Understood. That's awesome. Omar was asking something related. I think this is just great add-on. Omar asked, what is good synthesis? That's a good question, but I think it takes time to train over practice. One thing that I would say is, there's this graph about research saturation. So imagine your learning goes like this and it plateaus. So I think...

First, you have to get to that point in your studies that for in my maybe like 10 participants or whatever, I have reached research saturation on this topic. So then it's okay to start to synthesize. If you know that you haven't reached that stage, then maybe you should be doing more research to plug it before you start to synthesize. Yeah, so that's the first thing. Second thing in terms of what makes good synthesis, I think it's,

when it's very clear and it reaches almost that "aha" state, it's almost as if that model or that line was waiting for you all along. And then when you get there, you kind of get a sigh of relief like, "Oh, okay, I don't need to worry at 2am to get there anymore." Did you mean like a hidden in plain sight moment? Kind of. It's like, you know, it's like something is still eating at you

but when you get it, you can breathe a sigh of relief. I think that's an internal feeling, but externally what that might look like is that maybe a good synthesis is a really strong insight that has a tension in it that can drive direction. An example is maybe non-synthesized work.

would just be like summaries and bullet points but then like number one they don't point to a direction and they're they're not connected or number two they're just data points are just literally like floating in space you don't know where to place them but with the synthesis you have like a

mental model or framework to know where this is so that there's a pattern that you can then make sense of it and you can then use this pattern in different situations because it's to a point where it's replicable and it's like knowledge driving

I think in one of the projects I'm doing now, it was kind of a mixed method. I did a mixed method study where I used like, you know, competitor analysis. I did digital ethnography, like surveys, stakeholder interviews, and then I summarized like these are the key behavior groups on this certain product feature.

And then when it got to that point, then people really caught on to these behavioral segments and they were using some of these terms. You know, months later, they're saying like, oh, yes, I think I am this behavioral segment as well. So, yeah, that's when you reach a good point. Great. I hope we answered your question, Norma.

I think now I'll start asking some of the questions that have been typing in the chat. I'll say there are two broad categories. One would be working, related to working as a UX researcher. And the other would be actually related to career stuff. So I'm just going to cover this one. And Dick was asking on...

How do you ensure that every corner is covered in a short amount of time as a designer or as a researcher? Is there a checklist that you use? Because especially when you're working so fast, is there always some of the things that you always do and check off when you're working super fast?

I think as a product designer, what I will assume is that you already have a project brief. So everyone is on the same page of what's your project aims, metrics, challenges, constraints, resources.

So that allows you to work more iteratively at speed. So what then I'll need to do is work on the research brief. So for my research brief, I will have like, what are the research aims? What are the initial findings that support it? What are the open questions? What are any hypotheses going in? And then I'll have the discussion, the discussion guide that has the key areas that I want to look at.

So maybe this is not so much about having all the corners covered, but is to be more intentional and focused, you know, like what am I actually trying to get?

and then how can I test it? I think one example is to know the distinction between, for example, testing desirability versus testing usability. You can have one prototype for an app, but as a researcher, I'll have a good gauge to say, "Okay, you know what? We don't even know if people want this feature in the first place."

Therefore, I'm gonna suggest testing desirability and understanding rather than go into usability testing, which will only come later if people like this in the first place. So it's not so much about any corner, every corner, but it's like, what does this need at this time? Generally, it's having the right answers, but as a researcher, I have my research plan. And the research plan will be focused with the research

aim areas and questions in order to be more targeted rather than have every corner. Yeah. Okay, got it. But I think in the thing that you said, is there any list that you check off inside your header outside, referring to Dick? I think the

I would also have my own internal framework of like what is the most risky thing in this product right now that we need to test? Like is the most risky thing usability? Is the most risky thing like understanding or desirability? And then that's the one that I would test because it's gonna make or break the actual product. Yeah. That's a sound strategy. And we have another question about working and

Mei Jin wanted to ask, you know, when it comes to research outcome, right, versus the design outcome, have you been in a situation where they are actually different? Yeah. Meaning the vision of success for the UX researcher and the UX designer, the output is different.

Yeah, I would say that that has been the case and it also depends on the setup. I would say that it depends if it's a project or a product setup. In a project team, what happens is like the researcher would come in during the project, as in during the research phase, in a more waterfall setup, and then I might come up with recommendations. Because it's a project, then I would have to like jump off the project to go into another project.

you know, to come up with research recommendations. So in that case, like where the recommendations come might be out of my hand and I'm not fully involved in the project. The difference in a product setting is that we are the same product team, research, design, data, PM, engineering throughout.

So we should be aligned the whole way and working together. That's why I much prefer working in product teams to be honest because the opportunity for success at the end of the day is a lot greater because you're working consultatively and collaboratively with the designer at the end of the day. You have a better working relationship with your designers. You're on the same page to support their work and they in turn support your work.

So yeah. Yeah, that's probably more shared vision. So I hope we also answered your question, Praveen and Meijin. And it also sounds like it's agreeing at very least what is the vision for success, right, on both ends. I would like to ask in terms of career now, I think there are some questions with regards to career. How do you UX designers work with people

the findings UX researchers bring in? What are the things you guys use to communicate? I guess what are the artifacts that UX researchers produce and how should UX designers use it? That sounds like the question. How should UX designers use it? Okay, there's the best practices or there's a standard way and there's the second way. It's like how I prefer to do it.

Okay, I think in the standard way, the artifact is usually in a deck or in a written report with the executive summary, the key findings, and the recommendations. And how the designer would use it is they'll take the recommendations and then work on it. Depending on different stages of the design, I think that there's better ways to present the data. For example, if it's usability testing, I would prefer to present it in an Excel sheet

that I show like this is like the list of things, this is the severity of like pain point or this is like the volume of how many people felt it was a pain point or even if you're measuring task success then this is tax assess so then the designers will have and the PMs will have a neat list of like these are all the things that I should fix in terms of findings, recommendations and they can do it. I think nothing beats just having discussions with your designers

and just talking through the research and then gelling and coming up with better ideas and better solutions for it. This is why I really love my designers. Shout out to Brandon and Alec for being such good peers because whatever I come up with, like firstly, I think they trust that the intent of it is to serve the design. It's not research versus design. We're all on the same page that we want it to be desirable and work. Secondly, we're able to like

take the artifact and build on the recommendation. So maybe for example, I would give a recommendation to say like, for example, maybe for this segment, we need a tool for organization of da-da-da-da-da.

And then I might give one example, for example this. But then they can build on it to say, "Oh, maybe these are better ways to organize it," or "These are better things," so then they can take it up a notch. And this is what I really enjoy, this collaborative process that maybe I'll point them to, "This is the opportunity space," but they will be in a better place to come up with feature solutions in order to solve for it.

I guess when it comes to insight and when it comes to artifact, how do you know if your artifact is working? How do you tell as an user researcher, like, you've done your work properly? Yeah.

I think when I'm able to share on Slack, like, hey, I have the report, please look at slide three for this executive summary and slide four for the one pager mental model that summarizes it. That's when I know I've synthesized it to a level that this one pager can hold, you know, most of the understandings.

So I see the executive summary as like maybe more of like a text or bullet point way to say the overview. But I would have a mental model of maybe these are the segments or these are the needs and pain points that can summarize the whole thing and then they can deep dive into it. Okay, thanks for sharing. Let's do a fun question that is not so intense. So Yingling from Carozell, UX researcher at Carozell has a personal question for you. She say you're a volunteer coach at Forest School Singapore.

From your experience, how do you think user research can be done with children? Firstly, there's a lot of ethics regarding that. So you have to make sure that you sign your NDAs right or you get legal to approve. Because for most, a lot of research we don't conduct it with people under 18 because they'll need like parental consent and everything. So yeah, that's one thing. Secondly,

The great thing about children is like, number one, they're brutally honest if they like or they don't like it. And secondly, they're more imaginative than any of us can ever be. Okay, maybe not ever, but then most of us adults with a logical brain can be. So there's ways that we can make use of that. They will be really great in co-design sessions. For example, instead of asking them how they feel about something and making it like conversational based sessions,

thing what i would recommend is number one observe their usage of their current solution of like you know the current state observe their usage of your prototype and how they interact with it

And number two, do co-creation sessions with them. By co-creation, I'll, for example, ask like, okay, if you had a magic wand and you can create anything to allow you all to play together without getting tired or something like that, what would you create? And then I give them like coloring tools. I give them Lego blocks. So just allow them to express it in any means they want.

I think this will be a far better solution. Another thing to know about kids is that their own preferences is also very shaped by their social group. So how I interact with this will be very different when how we interact with it in a social scenario with my friends versus with my parents. So I also observe those different scenarios when they're interacting as well. Now you make me want to do a

doing more research with kids. It's an interesting one. For our UX career accelerator, we actually had the opportunity to do research with kids for this client called Aya. And yeah, they just deal with kids a lot and teenagers. So I think some of the points you mentioned was also something that the team found out as they were doing their research for the very first time. I'd like to ask you some final questions about...

career, right? And I think if someone wants to prepare a portfolio as a UX researcher, how should they go about doing it? Or is there any example they should look at when doing so? Okay. Assuming that you're not a UX researcher now and you don't have any existing case studies, what I recommend is to use the world around you for opportunities.

For example, when I first started getting into UX research, I started by volunteering with a friend who is doing a facilitation job to first find out what it is, like, what does it look like? I think the two areas that I recommend that you can volunteer to help is number one, if there's any like social good companies that you're working with a social impact space, help them out because these people are so focused on their domain that they might not have the best

branding or color palette or font or like you know UX design like for example for a school which I mentioned when I told them that I'm a UX researcher at the lunch table then they started like saying like oh my gosh the website is a mess like why are there two menus like I cannot find anything um so yeah um then I told them like you know I'm happy to offer my services to help you in any way

So that's one avenue. The second avenue is your friends. So many people are doing their own site projects, your own home bakery, your own thing. I think how I have honed my skills is because I have friends doing that. And then I'll say like, hey, do you want me to give feedback to your site? I just did this a couple of weeks ago and I told her...

Then I just listed it like, hey, I love the concept, but number one, your call to action is not very clear. I'm a bit confused because you're using different terms. Number two, your Instagram tiles and your product tiles look too similar. People are going to get confused and going to click into the wrong place. Number three, and just list it out. And maybe you can even use that to build on your portfolio.

And do you have, say, a specific reference in terms of a UX researcher's portfolio that you might take reference to? Or do you have your own, I don't know, like publicly available? Mine's quite private. I don't have a good reference at the top of my head. Okay, that's fine. Yeah.

But I would say that the main thing is to actually show the case study in terms of, for example, the project background, methodology, findings/insight and impact, and then to show, for example, screenshots or photos of some of these key ones.

Because the point of these portfolios is to show your thinking, the types of experience in your work. And what I'll be judging is actually to see their thinking and the critical thinking through it. Yeah, sounds good. And I guess a more general question would be, you know, what is the future of...

user researchers and Chuning was mentioning in some teams the ratio for UX designer versus UX researcher is like 1:10 or 1:5 or sometimes there's no specialized role in it. How do you see this role evolving in the future?

I see it as two ways. Number one, specialisation within the team. And number two, growth of methodologies as a UX researcher. So firstly, in specialisation in a team, I think Singapore is still not as mature in UX design and research. So that's why we have designers, research, even these other specialties like content strategists.

and UX writers are not as many. But I think as the industry matures, we're going to see more specialization and people are going to move from being more generalist to specialist as well. Secondly, in terms of the future of user research, how I see it, I don't know how much of this is grounded versus how I hope it is. But I think like number one, there's more talk about design for ethics and

which is really good, but the question is who's the one in charge of it? Whose responsibility is that? In some cases where we don't have money to hire Tristan Harris to have a design philosopher or tech humanist, I think the user researcher can take up the role and to synthesize or present things

with the perspective of how this might look like in terms of long term, what might be the ethical implications. To do that also would mean take up more different skill sets that we don't traditionally do right now, specifically systems thinking and maybe more like futures or long terms and organizational design. This is because I know the limitations in terms of user research is that we look at groups of people as if they're the same, but when people are interacting with each other,

or when it's a long, a different timeline, it's going to be very different. Like more is not the same. So this is something that I'm also doing in my own career. I'm picking up systems thinking, not only to future-proof myself, but because I think this is the way it can and probably hopefully will go, that we'll start looking in terms of more like societal impact and long-term considerations of the work that we do. All right.

Okay, this is awesome. And thank you so much for attending. Feel free to leave a thank you message. All right, awesome. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please let me know what you think. Get in touch with me over email at mail at curiouscore.com. I would love to hear from you.

Do also check out our previous interviews and other free resources at CuriousCore.com. And until next time, I'll see you on the next episode. Take care and keep leaning into change.