#UXRConf Mini (August Edition): Main takeaways

The UXR Collective selected the key points of the remote #UXRConf Mini (August Edition). The event offered outstanding content from the User Experience Research perspective.

Learn more about your own biases and how you can mitigate their effects through best practices.

We Can’t Trust Our Own Minds — And What To Do About It.

Key Takeaways

• Don’t use focus groups: Social conformity is much more substantial than we think; people change their answers to ‘go with the flow’ or because the group genuinely influences their opinions.
• Be cautious about priming. Double-check your work to make sure you’re not unintentionally priming a specific response.
• Use priming for good. Use priming to improve your research — for example, by priming your participant with stimuli they’re likely to encounter while interacting with your product.
• Collaborate, and avoid inattentional blindness. One researcher can easily miss a lot. Bring in collaborators, and make sure they aren’t biasing each other; have them write down observations quietly and THEN share findings.

Brandi also shared two psychological experiments in her talk; here they are:

Asch Conformity Experiment

Selective Attention Test

UXRC: Learn to develop your team’s UXR roadmap proactively instead of taking all your direction from the product team.

Get Into Your Product Manager’s Head

Key Takeaways

• You need a research roadmap: Your roadmap tells you the priorities of your organization and product managers. Without it, you may end up doing research that nobody was looking for.
• Get buy-in from product managers: Let product managers know what you need from them, what you’re doing, and what value you’ll provide — especially if you’re asking for their time.
• Involve product managers in the process: Ask product managers what research they want, why they want it, and when they want it; this helps them understand and weigh the many tradeoffs involved.
• Build a roadmap with your resources in mind: Consider factors like your team’s skillset and the time investments required so you can build a practical roadmap you can deliver on.

Kyle explores his UXR Salary Survey from February 2020.

Exploring Global Salaries in UX Research

Key Takeaways

• USA vs. Canada, EU, UK. Salaries in the United States were roughly double those in Canada, the EU, and the UK.
• More experience didn’t mean higher salary growth. In the US, EU, and UK, researchers with the most experience often saw the lowest salary growth as a percentage.
• Higher education didn’t always mean a higher salary. Higher education did correlate with a higher salary in a researcher’s early career, but not necessarily in their later career.
• Researches with the most experience often saw the lowest salary growth as a percentage from de last 2 years.

Interested in learning more about this research? You can download the UX Salary Report here.

All the content is available on the UXR Collective platform.

Created by the team who brought you UXRConf Anywhere 2020, the UXR Collective is an online place to get better at research.