Making the Right Impact with UX Research

Delivering impactful research comes down to three things: doing the right research, making sure it gets used, and ensuring the impact is visible. Falling short in any of these areas can limit how effective your work really is, and we all have room to grow in at least one.
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Take the quiz

Find out where you're running into the biggest challenges when it comes to making your research impactful.
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Get your results

Your results will be displayed as a set of bar graphs, and the longer the bar, the more attention that area likely needs.
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Improve your impact

Tap into actionable tips and expert testimonies from UXR leaders like Nikki Anderson, Sahar Chung, and Carl Pearson!

Part 1: Research Impact Quiz

Answer all 13 questions. Choose the response that best describes your current reality, not what you wish was happening.

Part 2: Tips and Testimonies

Based on your quiz results, you now know where to focus your efforts. Whether that’s improving the research itself, how it’s received, or how visible it is. We’ve got your back with practical tips and stories from seasoned UX research experts Nikki Anderson, Carl Pearson, and Sahar Chung to help you make real progress!

Research not impactful Research not used Impact not visible
Research not impactful

Strengthen relevance, clarity, and understanding

Sharpen your research by making sure that you ask the right questions, tell a clear story, and truly understand your audience. Use the following tips and testimonies from UX experts to help you get started.

Hone in on the real question

Don’t try to answer everything at once. Try moving backward in your thought process to find the underlying question that needs to be answered.
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Become an expert on your product

You may need to take the time to understand your product before you make any big research suggestions.
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Find mentors to learn from

Consider your network. If possible, work with more senior researchers within your company who you respect and who can guide you and review your work.
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Align research with real decisions

Partner with stakeholders early to make sure research questions are aligned and product decisions address a real product or business need.
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Invest in stakeholder discovery

Interview your stakeholders to understand what each of them is trying to learn.
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Be strategic with your research time

Prioritize your research requests by thinking bigger, and about the business as a whole.
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Research not used

Boost engagement, influence, and integration

If you’re feeling stuck because your research just isn’t getting used, check out these best practices to help spark engagement, build influence, and increase the chances of your work driving real decisions.

Prepare actionable insights, not just raw data

Take the time to get into the data and figure out how you will analyze, use, and present it so that you share actionable insights instead of just raw data
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Know your audience

When presenting your research results, you should never just give data points and information.
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Make insights easy to find (and reuse)

Use tagging and tools like repositories to make past insights easy to find.
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Facilitate, don’t just present

Use collaborative readouts. Don’t just present findings, facilitate conversations.
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Use stakeholder-friendly formats

Switch up your formats and test different ways of communicating research with your stakeholders in order to find the ones that help them digest information the easiest.
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Balance proactive and reactive research

Make sure that you’re also putting forward research study ideas that you think would be helpful for the teams you are working with.
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Expand the reach of your research

Build relationships within and beyond your core team. Research is one of your tools, and relationship building is your other tool.
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Impact not visible

Track, surface, and celebrate your impact

Let’s make sure that the impact your research is making gets the recognition it deserves. Here’s some practical advice on how to track your impact, talk about your research, and openly celebrate the wins!

Track your research impact

Track outcomes over time and set up systems to follow up on research-informed changes.
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Ask how research was used

Be bold and ask stakeholders about how research findings were used. Don’t be afraid to ask how people used your findings.
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Visualize your research ROI:

Connect your work to strategic KPIs. Even if causality is tricky, show correlations like “Users were 3x more likely to complete onboarding after this flow was redesigned based on research.”
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Celebrate the wins

You want other to know that research is making a difference, so openly share research-driven changes in Slack channels, newsletters, or team meetings
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Turn Insights into Action: How to Keep Your Research Alive After the Readout

This guide is for the moments after the share-out. When the room goes quiet and you’re not sure if anything will actually stick. To close the gap between insight and impact, and keep your work in motion long after the readout ends!
Download the guide

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