Don't Try to Sell People on the "Value" of Research or Design

For over two decades, the design and research community has been writing articles and giving talks about how to pitch our value, how to get that mythical "seat at the table," and how to convince stakeholders that our work matters. Yet here we are, still facing layoffs and downsizing whenever budgets get tight. Maybe you'll get lucky with a supportive manager – but then they leave, and you're back to square one.

The Problem isn't Understanding – it's Incentives

I get it. It’s frustrating when you pitch an idea to make your product better and save the company money but it still doesn’t get implemented. It can feel like people don’t really understand but it’s not that they don't “get it”, the real issue is that continuous research and design processes fundamentally conflict with how most organizations work.

Predictability is the number one KPI for most middle managers. Nobody wants to have to go back to their boss and explain that the product or feature they promised will be late and needs more money. But good research and design requires iterations and flexibility to explore different directions. If you aren’t pivoting based on user feedback, you’re not doing it right.

When a product manager’s, or any functional manager's, success is measured by shipping on time and within budget, asking them to embrace an open-ended design phase isn't just uncomfortable – it's actively misaligned with their incentives. At what point do you stop exploring? After the business case? After the design phase? After the first few iterations? While they logically understand that it “probably” will result in better outcomes it will directly hurt their career and bonus.

Stop Selling, Start Enabling

Instead of trying to convince people to change their metrics (which they won't), we need to work within existing constraints. If time and cost are critical measures, then show what can be achieved quickly and cheaply.

In all software development we encounter the Iron triangle; Time, Cost, Scope and Quality. You get to choose three of the four items, but not all four. We know that Time and Cost need to be as low as possible. This means that we need to reduce either quality or scope. And the truth is that we are going to have to compromise on both.

Reducing scope

The product space in infinite, but we need to focus our research attention where it is most needed. To do this we can use the context shared by the product team: the product vision, the product strategy, the way in which scope has been separated between teams (the approach) and our teams’ current objectives.

Using these guardrails we can more effectively target our research activities where they can make the most impact.

Reducing quality

"Bad research is worse than no research."

This is a common objection, but it misses one important fact: quick research does not need to be bad. Most product features aren't wildly off-target. If we can help teams get just a bit closer to user needs through lightweight research methods, that's valuable progress. Perfect shouldn't be the enemy of better.

Different research methods have different levels of quality ranging from the statistical significance of academic research to directional insights of surveys.

When we’re dealing with great uncertainty, every piece of information has high value. But as our uncertainty reduces, the value of each piece of new information diminishes. This means that we can get a lot of high value information quickly and cheaply.

Different research methods have different levels of quality. For example reviewing product analytics gives us fantastic data about user behaviours and actions, but it does not explain why things are happening. Interviews allow us to ask the questions to uncover why things are happening but they lack the data volume of analytics.

Fortunately we can merge multiple methods together. We should do the desk-based research like reviewing analytics, user reviews, social media, user ratings etc. But then we should complement that data with regular short interviews to try to uncover the “why” behind the data.

The Path Forward

We will not succeed if we keep trying to sell people on the value. We need to figure out how to support people while sticking to the same time and cost constraints that are not going away.

Find the teams where someone wants to do some research. Help them to find relevant data sources. Support them to run even just one interview per week. Get the full team involved in the interviews so they can get first hand insights.

It’s not easy and there will be objections but change doesn’t happen by convincing people of the value. It happens by getting people to act the way you want and then they will start to come around.

As L. David Marquet said in “Turn the Ship Around”, he wanted his sailors to be proud of their ship. He asked his managers what behaviours would they expect to see if people were proud and then they made people act that way. Culture is a difficult thing to change but KPIs drive culture. Marquet had the luxury of changing KPIs; we need to work a bit harder and smarter to get people to adopt research and design. And making it quick and easy is the way.

Make it easy, make it quick, make it valuable – and the rest will follow.