Expert Talks with Julian Della Mattia: Developing a Research Foundation

How do you build a successful UX research practice from scratch?

Welcome to a new edition of Expert Talks! Today we are joined by Julian Della Mattia, who started his UX Research journey as a solo in-house researcher and overcame many challenges along the way. Now, he shares his expertise through his agency, blog and podcast ‘From Finders to Builders.‘ Discover his tips on essential skills, advice for beginners, and the vital role of ResearchOps in organizations.

Lets get straight to the interview!

UX Research Journey: From First In-House Role to ResearchOps Expert

What have been the key milestones in your career journey that shaped your approach to UX research and ResearchOps? Could you share a challenging project or experience that significantly influenced your growth as a UX Researcher?

In my career, I’ve been the first researcher in an organization multiple times. And when I was not the first one, I was one of the early hires. Each time, I found myself having to build the infrastructure we needed for research to happen effectively and efficiently.

This all started with one of my most challenging experiences: my first in-house role as a researcher. To give a bit of background, I’ve spent the first two years of my career in UX freelancing with a group of Service Designers. I was mostly facilitating design sprints and slowly started incorporating more research.

When I got myself my first in-house job, I was a bit lost. I was used to client work where you would come in, assess the situation, do the work, deliver and goodbye and I had very little idea of what research actually entailed on a deeper level, let alone what it was to build a research practice.

This challenge forced me to learn about recruitment, about knowledge management, about operations, basically. And I was kinda forced to learn this on the fly, as things happened.

I feel this experience changed forever the way I connected with research because later on in my career, I happened to voluntarily choose to be the first researcher. Fast-forward to today, here I am teaching people how to be successful at building a research practice or at being the first researcher through From Finders to Builders, a little universe with its own podcast, blog and agency.

Expert Advice: Progress in UX research is a gradual process, much like running a marathon

What are the essential skills or qualities that make a successful UX Researcher?

UX researchers must possess a range of essential skills and qualities. I believe critical thinking is by far the most important. Critical thinking enables them to analyze complex problems, evaluate evidence, and make connections. This skill is foundational because it allows researchers to navigate the often intricate and ambiguous data they encounter, drawing meaningful insights that can drive user-centered design decisions.

In my opinion, something that is not often highlighted enough is how much companies are in need of people who “make sense” of information. In today’s data-driven world, having individuals who excel at synthesizing and distilling information can be game-changing. These individuals can take vast amounts of raw data and turn it into clear, actionable insights.

Additionally, curiosity, even though it’s not a skill per se, can be a good quality to have. Curious researchers are always seeking to understand the “why” behind user behaviors and trends, they are driven to explore new methods, ask deeper questions, and challenge assumptions.

What golden piece of advice would you give to those just embarking on their UX Research journey?

My golden piece of advice for people who are starting out would be to focus on the basics first and then move upwards from there. Don’t rush it, take your time. Think of this as a marathon.

Build a strong foundation in both qualitative and quantitative research methods, and seek out opportunities to apply your skills in diverse projects. Connect with other people who are in the same situation that you’re in and have patience. You don’t get to step 50 without the previous 49. Things take time.

Another piece of advice I’d give people is to try to understand the context you operate in as much as possible.  Learn what are the things that make a research practice work and take note of how they were set up. Learn how stakeholders think and how they make decisions.

Why ResearchOps Matters

What role does ResearchOps play within an organization?

The presence of Research Operations (ReOps) is inherent to the existence of research. If there’s research, there’s research ops. There’s no way around it.

Research Operations is everything around the research that allows such research to happen. It’s the operative system that makes the research operate.

ResearchOps plays a crucial role in ensuring that research is scalable, efficient, and impactful within an organization. It involves the planning, execution, and management of research processes, tools, resources and everything around it.

One important thing to mention is that you don’t need a dedicated ReOps specialist to “have” ReOps. These tasks are, more often than not, undertaken by researchers themselves.

In the case of the first researchers or teams-of-one, this is an essential part of their work.

What are some common challenges teams face when trying to build a research infrastructure, and how can these challenges be overcome?

The usual suspects are: buy-in, budget and time allocation. And they are intimately connected.

Getting buy-in from your manager, a VP or a C suite to build research infrastructure will unlock the other two, of course. But if you are not fully there, you can still work on making

Budget is a tricky one because I believe you can build a working “research operative system” using only free tools. Of course, if you can afford a good toolkit, that will make your job waaay easier, but you can still be scrappy if that’s your only option.

Time allocation is a not-so-obvious one, but it’s critical. If you don’t have a dedicated ReOps person, your research team is small or even if you’re the first researcher, chances are that you have to split your time between many tasks and projects. And unfortunately, ReOps projects are easily deprioritized because there’s “this one urgent ad-hoc thing….”. So securing time to work on more infrastructural projects can often be quite the challenge.

What advice would you give to an organization just starting to build their Research function?

The way I see it, when you decide to build the function and bring in your first researcher, you have to think of this role as a builder or an orchestrator, rather than someone who just collects data. And it’s important that researchers feel this way too.

Often, researchers arrive in an organization and dive straight into doing hands-on research; they conduct interviews, surveys, usability tests, etc. Which, to a certain extent, I can understand, because that was probably one of the reasons they were hired and also because we tend to default there because we believe that’s the best way we can create value. But there’s so much more we could do, especially being the first one, because you will be most likely outnumbered.

First researchers should be focusing on helping the organization as a whole, learn better about the user, the problem space and the market.

How can they do this? Well, there are many ways and we could really talk about this topic for hours, but for example they could start empowering others and helping them elevate their research game. Is Marketing sending a survey? Offer to check it out. Is Product talking to customers next week? Help them by reviewing their discussion guide.

Another key thing these first researchers could do is start connecting different sources of insights and fostering triangulation. This way organizations can have more confidence in what they are learning through higher insights quality.

Then, of course, you got all the ResearchOps bit, which in the case of a first researcher, definitely falls on the plate. You need to build processes, set up a knowledge hub, define how to reach out to customers, create a toolkit, etc.

When building a research function, it’s not just about going and conducting research, but use the researcher’s expertise in insights to create a scalable system that empowers learning across an organization.

UX Fun Round

Could you share your best knowledge sources that have impacted your approach to UX Research?

When I was starting out, I was lured to UXR by books like Erika Hall’s “Just Enough Research” or David Travis’ “Think Like a UX Researcher”. Classics.

As years passed, I started to go deeper in specific topics and I started consuming other sources, also in different formats, maybe in the form of blog posts, short articles or even podcasts. I’m very fond of Kate Towsey and Jake Burghardt, also folks like Behzord Sirjiani or Dave Hora have a huge influence in how I approach or how I think about research.

Since I started creating content on LinkedIn, I also started consuming other creators. In that case, my favourites are Ari Zelmanow, Ruby Pryor and Odette Jansen, they are doing a terrific job out there.

Given no constraints, what would be your dream UX Research project to work on and why?

As I started to focus more on the building side of things: building a research practice, building insight infrastructure, setting up processes, etc, I became a bit “topic agnostic”.

Honestly, there’s no particular industry or project that I would pick over others, but as long as I’m building, I’m more than happy! So, I’d probably say that my dream projects are those in which I get to help a company build the infrastructure they need to learn more in order to make better decisions.

Conclusion

As Julian puts it, building a successful UX research practice involves starting with a strong foundation, embracing critical thinking and curiosity, and understanding the context in which you work. For more insights, tune in to Julian’s podcast “From Finders to Builders”.

Useberry makes it easier to quickly test and improve your designs. It’s like having a smart assistant for your UX journey, so you can keep your research on track and make steady product progress.