On balance

This week from People Nerds: The past and future of UX, how we've found balance in a post-COVID world, and time management tips for UXRs.

A shifting contextual object When Jared Spool started in UX, computers were exclusively used by programmers. He talked with us about the inflection points provoking the field's shifts, where UX has room to grow, and how we can grow alongside it.  READ MORE What "balance" looks like—a year later With our old routines long up-ended, we asked 100 participants what behaviors they've adopted to find "balance." They gave us an honest look at the practices, products, and services that have helped and hindered them this year.  BALANCING ACT Everywhere at once Sometimes pushing for a "seat at the table" can leave you in an endless meeting room rotation. Here's some advice for prioritizing and defending your time as a user researcher—so you can extend your impact while setting constructive boundaries.     TAKE YOUR TIME More we're discussing: Templates have a host of benefits for UXRs, from scaling processes to ensuring rigor across needs. Here's a roundup with examples. Need a business case for mixing methods? Try a beta. We spoke with Abby Hoy Baylen about betas as methods playgrounds for lean UXR timelines. Looking back on our interview with Trisha Wang, and the ever-pressing need to compliment "big data with "thick data." What we're hearing:  Stephanie Wu, from Facebook Research, gave us these 10 rules for crafting an effective research narrative. Use them to tell clear, assertive, persuasive stories. This paper discusses "researcher introspection" as a tool for understanding experiences. As Raghav Agrawal (@impactology) mentioned, its novel in that the approach doesn't advocate for researchers discarding their lived experience. Great piece from A List Apart on inclusive content models and how modeling can be better used as a tool for harm reduction in design.   dscout is excited to be hiring across our product, engineering, CXR, finance, sales, and marketing teams. Check out our open positions here.   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