Just like electricity
Electric power works even though you probably don’t know or care how. When you plug your charger into a power outlet in the wall, you don’t care about what’s happening behind the wall or at the power plant. You just want your device to charge, right?
User experience researchers know that it is most likely that stakeholders such as product managers, designers, engineers, and leadership sponsor and act on research insights the more they are involved in and engaged with the research process: Set research goals, affect who will participate, observe and even moderate sessions, reach conclusions together, and present results to the broader team. Heck, I authored an entire book just about that.
What if insights work the same way as electricity? What if all stakeholders need and want are answers to their questions? What if we build a wall that allows stakeholders to plug their questions about existing or potential users, audiences, members, subscribers, guests, or constituents and have the research power plant work hard behind the wall and provide juicy answers? What would make it possible?
Who wants to help me build a wall and power plant?
I’m looking for power engineers, signal processing experts, circuit designers, service coordinators, power generation analysts, enterprise sales reps, and electric power unicorns.
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