Reflections on doing design research in different roles

Mar 20, 2021

The first job I took after graduation was in digital product design. As a product designer, research was part of my work, so I had actually always been a little curious how a design researcher would operate differently, other than perhaps spending all their time in research. After working as a design researcher in my second job, some of these differences became obvious to me.

Different core purpose

Surprise, surprise! While designers are expected to conduct research at some organisations, there is a reason why we hire dedicated researchers. 🤦‍♀️ This was a major "Duh!" moment.

The two roles do overlap a lot — both need to care for the users, to understand them well, to zoom in and out, and to think strategically about work. Nevertheless, the major difference is that designers and researchers operate dominantly in different parts of the product development process. Researchers learn on behalf of the organisation — acquiring knowledge for the organisation to make better decisions. Designers ensure the learnings get translated into meaningful decisions and actions.

One learns and recommends, one decides.

Zoom in, zoom out 📷

As a result of the different focus, I realised I was also working at a different zoom level as a researcher, as compared to my time as a designer. Researchers seem to spend more time at the big picture view naturally, as compared to designers.

This could perhaps be exacerbated by the fact that I was the only researcher for my business vertical. Nevertheless, when thinking "what is the most valuable knowledge to acquire for the organisation for the time and resources I have?" — the answer is usually "what are the larger bets this organisation wants to make, or should make?" Highest bang for buck, no?

In contrast, as a designer — to ensure that what we ship is of sufficient quality, our focus is a lot more in the tactical and operational realm. Product details mattered more, and since I worked on the product daily — it just made sense that I owned the tactical and operational research, as opposed to researchers who may not need to know the finer details of the product to go about their research work.

Inclusion into decisions

A common observation I've heard from other researchers is that sometimes they feel left out of product decisions, or that insights don't make their way to product decisions — which is sad, considering that researchers gather knowledge precisely for better decision making.

After working as a researcher for a while, I realised this was true… for a certain degree of truth. What I experienced wasn't a case of people not believing insights, or not wanting to be inclusive in decision-making. Rather, because research insights from the dedicated researcher usually mattered more in longer time horizons, it naturally took longer for the knowledge generated to make it into the roadmap. Insights were also at a higher elevation level, so how these insights translated into product decisions were not always immediately obvious, and at times a little abstract. As the "knowledge-finding" person now — I also knew too few product details to make great impact for every single product decision, as compared to the "crafting" designer person who literally decided how the product should work. It would have been a waste of my time and the team's, to pull me into every single tiny decision.

Operating cadence — alongside product teams or not

At some places, both designers and researchers follow the cadence of the product teams. I tried doing the same, but quickly realised that this was more natural as a designer, but did not make sense as a researcher. Again, as the "crafting" designer, roughly following or being aware of the product team's timelines helped ensure that I could be involve in all shipping details, and that folks could always find me for any decisions. As a "knowledge-finding" researcher, I couldn't always control research timelines — matters like research recruitment usually did, and this rarely matched up with the cadence of the team. Because I was also usually running ahead of teams in what I was researching, again, I wasn't blocking anyone from proceeding, so timelines were my own responsibility.

Perception of expertise and role

Before taking up a role as a researcher, I had imagined there wouldn't be much difference between my research skills as a designer as compared to a researcher. 🤔 Just spending different proportions of time on research, no?

No one else seemed to see it the same way. 😅 Right from the get-go, it felt that people now saw me as the "research expert" even though I had basically honed all my research skills working as a designer and was just as good as the team's designers in conducting research. Interestingly, because now I did have a lot more conversations around research, it felt as if my research skills were slowly being sharpened over time just by taking up this specialist role.

On the flipside, I realised that my role came with lower expectations for exploration and play. Research is serious business, whereas design involves pushing the boundaries, lots of creativity and experimentation. One is a straight-laced professional, the other is the explorer. Was it because of our mental associations or stereotypes with the words "research" and "design"? 🤷‍♀️

Everyone's mileage will vary

I do suspect that the differences in my experiences for both roles were also greatly influenced by the organisation culture and the environment. Design / research maturity and size of the teams also likely played a part. What I did take away is realising the importance of dedicated researchers — the difference in vantage point and long-term focus can really be valuable for organisations.

Personally for me, working as a dedicated researcher has helped me appreciate the depth of specialist fields associated in product development, and in fact helped me reaffirm my fondness of working as a designer — not because it is "better," but simply because it suits my personality and impatience better. How different is it for other researchers and designers? At different seniority levels, is there convergence in responsibilities? Given the differences, how should the two roles best work together? 🤔🤷‍♀️