Who's (not) on your team?

This week from People Nerds: design thinking for diversity and inclusion, writing research proposals, and remote project management tips.

How to win friends and influence stakeholders Research proposals are a lot of work—but when you're struggling to get the go-ahead on a project, they can shift the conversation in your favor. Here's how to writing a winning proposal—whether you're freelancing or in-house.    READ MORE Nothing about us, without us. Black UX designers make up just three percent of the field. If we want design to reflect the needs of our users, we need to improve representation. Here's a case for applying "design thinking" inward at our orgs to further diversity and inclusion efforts.    LEARN MORE Stay afloat while remote While our best and most impactful research happens when we collaborate, that's difficult (to say the least) when we're all remote. As your team, clients, or stakeholders get together virtually, keep these best practices in mind.   FLOAT ON More we're discussing: In-between holiday shopping clicks, check out our conversation with Dan Frommer, who has covered the melding of tech and commerce for decades. Whether it's 2021 planning or a recap of what happened in 2020, the right deliverable goes a long way toward translating insight into action. …speaking of 2021 (and beyond) here's how UX practitioners at NASA designs interfaces that won't be used until a half decade later. What we're hearing:  Three strategies from AirBnB Design for closing the experience gap and architect more inclusive, accessible products for your customers. With polarity mapping, you can finally answer "Should we focus on delivery or quality?" with a resounding "Both!" UX Matters offers the roadmap for starting. Take some time this holiday to remind yourself why you fell in love with human-centered UX with any of these seven podcasts, courtesy of UX Writing Hub. dscout is a company composed of People Nerds working to make context-rich human insight an everyday habit across organizations. The dscout platform—Diary, Live, Recruit, and Express—enables remote qualitative research that brings researchers into the moments experienced and shared by real people. Curious about the platform or working with dscout? Talk to an account executive.  dscout, 222 North LaSalle St. Suite 650, Chicago, Illinois 60601, (312) 880-9715 Unsubscribe Manage preferences

[Free webinar] Remote moderated research made easier

Hi Wanto,

Many of us working in research have seen our approaches to customer centricity disrupted this year.

The loss of individual interviews, in-home usability testing, in-store intercepts, and other types of fieldwork hits especially hard for orgs without access to remote-friendly research tools.

Join us Wednesday at 2:30 Central for a free panel discussion with dscout's remote research experts, to help you adjust to a world where remote moderated research is more important than ever before. We'll talk research strategy and have some examples to show inside dscout Live.

Whether you're looking for actionable ways to get more value out of Live, or you're using another tool for your remote sessions, join us for takeaways that'll make your remote moderated research practice easier and more effective.

Bring your questions—it'll be interactive and we're here to help with what you're working on.

Hope you can join us Wednesday! (And if you can't but still want the content, everyone who registers will get the session recording in their inboxes.)

Ben Wiedmaier
Research Evangelist, dscout

dscout,
222 North LaSalle St. Suite 650,
Chicago,
Illinois

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Refocus the conversation

This week from People Nerds: how to run an ideation workshop, managing unengaged participants, and a primer on grounded theory.

A better way to brainstorm After weeks (and possibly months) of researching and synthesizing, you'll need a good way to make your insights actionable and impactful. That's what makes it a perfect time to run an ideation workshop.    WORKSHOP IT Engage the unengaged We all know how stressful it is when a participant gives one-word answers, doesn't share their full thoughts, or worse: is bored. Here are 14 key tactics to further a productive, impactful conversation when the interview is going stale.   LEARN MORE Make sense of open-ended data Grounded theory helps surface friction points all while providing needed context and framing around data. Here's our recap of our recent conversation with Dr. Rachel Ceasar about how you can best leverage this powerful analysis tactic.    GROUND YOURSELF More we're discussing: If research democratization is a part of your 2021 strategic plans, consult these nine pillars from experts on how to structure it responsibly while maintaining rigor. Need help translating insight to impact? Try a better story. The Moth's Meg Ferril has you covered with these fundamental framing and delivering. Starting putting the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion into action with these tactics from Partner and Strategist Jen Shadowens of Zeus Jones. What we're hearing:  Curious about the interactivity between user and design? A career in UX Engineering could be for you—learn more about this burgeoning role at Xd Ideas. Stop. Counting. Clicks. That's the advice for Interaction Designers from Muzli; instead, strive to reduce complexity, increase control, and optimize for usability. "Simplicity" is a guiding principle for UX and UXR. 52 weeks of UX takes a not-so-simple look at this important criterion in design and experience thinking. dscout is a company composed of People Nerds working to make context-rich human insight an everyday habit across organizations. The dscout platform—Diary, Live, Recruit, and Express—enables remote qualitative research that brings researchers into the moments experienced and shared by real people. Curious about the platform or working with dscout? Talk to an account executive.  dscout, 222 North LaSalle St. Suite 650, Chicago, Illinois 60601, (312) 880-9715 Unsubscribe Manage preferences

Holding their attention.

This week from People Nerds: eye-catching user research reports, DEI minded research tactics, our next remote research webinar.

Spice up your research reports Even if you're not a designer, you can still build an eye-catching (and attention grabbing) user research report. We have a few tips (along with a template) to get you started with building infographics—key to visualizing the impact of your study.    GET STARTED Inclusion isn't a "box to check" Now, more than ever, the principles of inclusivity and equity needs to be built into our design practices. Here's how the team at Zeus Jones leveraged dscout to inject DEI initiatives into the foundation of their study design.    LEARN MORE Scale your (remote) moderated research Moving your 1:1 interviews from in-person to remote requires more tactical finesse than many researchers anticipate. In our next webinar, we'll cover the key strategies that are successful for moderated studies in remote environments specifically.    SIGN UP . People Nerds reads for trying times: Vivianne Castillo talked to us about self-care for UX practitioners and gave us some advice for working through "vicarious trauma."  Here are 4 thoughtful principles for service-minded user research, as described by our panel of civic tech research experts. Here's how we can adjust our research practice to be extra compassionate (to ourselves, and our participants) when the going is tough. What we're hearing:  Interesting breakdown of "attitude-based" archetypes in design (a possible accompaniment to Jobs-to-be-Done or persona work). A look at some often discussed cognitive biases and how to avoid them within your survey designs.  Interesting deep dive on the UX of the popular game "Among Us" and what it can teach us about colorblind-friendly interfaces. dscout is a company composed of People Nerds working to make context-rich human insight an everyday habit across organizations. The dscout platform—Diary, Live, Recruit, and Express—enables remote qualitative research that brings researchers into the moments experienced and shared by real people. Curious about the platform or working with dscout? Talk to an account executive.  dscout, 222 North LaSalle St. Suite 650, Chicago, Illinois 60601, (312) 880-9715 Unsubscribe Manage preferences