UX Research Is a Line Item Among Line Items

We’ve spent years fighting for more influence. Maybe it’s time to rethink what research is actually there to do.

I’ve spent a long time in UX research, and over time I’ve learned something very important that I think we all need to get more comfortable with to get our profession back on track:

Research is a line item among line items.

That doesn’t mean research isn’t important. It doesn’t mean organizations shouldn’t invest in it. And it certainly doesn’t mean researchers shouldn’t have a voice in important decisions.

It means that research is just one consideration among many.

And I think forgetting that, or worse, never having learned that, has created some unrealistic expectations about what our role is supposed to be, and has hurt the profession significantly.

UX Research doesn’t operate in a vacuum

When we conduct research, we’re usually trying to answer important questions for the business.

Should we build this?
Where are customers struggling?
Why are they struggling?
Which problem should we solve first?
What do people actually need?
How will the business benefit from our recommendations?

Research can bring enormous clarity to those questions. It can uncover needs that weren’t visible before. It can challenge assumptions. It can expose risks. It can prevent teams from spending months building the wrong thing.

So we present our findings and recommendations.

Then reality hits.

The business has many other things to consider.

Financial constraints. Technical constraints. Deadlines. Existing commitments. Regulatory requirements. Competitive pressures. Revenue targets. Staffing limitations. Leadership priorities.

Research, it turns out, is just one small piece of information the business has to consider when making all of the other decisions. It’s data in a sea of data.

In a researcher’s mind, the evidence outweighs all of those other considerations, full stop.

For the business, however, research is not the highest priority.

Not even close.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the organization doesn’t value research. It just means the organization has more to consider.

We’ve confused influence with value

One of the more dominant conversations in UX research that has persisted for decades is about influence.

Specifically, we need more of it.

It’s so prevalent that UX practitioners charge money to teach other UX practitioners how to do it, as if influence is a skill that once learned will change everything.

But I think we’re overselling what those skills can actually accomplish.

Storytelling, relationship-building, and communication can absolutely make us more effective researchers, but no technique makes the other forces shaping a business decision disappear.

Now, of course, there’s nothing wrong with wanting influence.

Who doesn’t want that?

We all want our work to matter.
We all want to feel important.
We all want to believe that our work has value.

But equating influence with impact and the value of our work has created a huge problem, not only for our profession, but also for our mental health.

If a team doesn’t follow our recommendations, we think:

I failed to influence.
I wasted my time.
The team is being foolish.
They just don’t get it.
They are immature.
They will fail.

To counter that, we believe we need to

Become better storytellers.
Build stronger relationships.
Communicate more effectively.
Collaborate more.
Get on projects earlier.
Get a seat at the table.
Prove the value of the work.

Of course, we can all benefit from achieving these things.

But even if we accomplish all of them and deliver excellent research that everyone understands perfectly and is excited about and wants to implement, the organization can, and often does, choose another direction.

And that doesn’t mean failure.

Researchers don’t make the decision

A researcher’s job is not to move mountains. Our job is to understand a problem in ways nobody else can, and provide evidence to support that.

That is the job.
That is the skill.

We take the time to understand people in ways other roles do not have the time, knowledge, experience, or inclination to do.

Researchers think differently.

We look for patterns.
We challenge assumptions.
We gather evidence.
We present business risks with a human cost.
We help teams understand the likely consequences of their choices.

And we make all of that as clear and actionable as possible.

But after we’ve done that, someone still has to weigh what we’ve learned against everything else the organization knows and has to contend with.

With such a strong emphasis on influence, we lose sight of what our job actually is. In doing so, we treat research as something that should determine what an organization does rather than something that helps an organization make more informed decisions.

Those are very different things.

A decision can contradict the research and still be a good decision

Imagine research shows that customers are struggling with an important product feature.

The evidence is strong.
The problem is real.
The design is flawed.
The recommendation is clear.

And it’s going to keep happening if nothing is done to fix it.

Yet, leadership decides not to fix it.

Maybe fixing the problem would require six months of engineering work.
Maybe another initiative has substantially greater revenue potential.
Maybe there’s a regulatory deadline consuming the team’s resources.
Maybe the company plans to replace the product entirely next year.

Maybe leadership simply decides that the problem isn’t important enough compared with everything else competing for attention.

None of that makes the research wrong.
And it doesn’t make the research worthless.

The research did exactly what it was supposed to do.

It made the problem visible.
It exposed the risks.

And still, leadership went a different way.

That’s not failure.

I think we’ve oversold the role of research

For years, researchers have pushed for

More strategic influence.
More executive access.
More headcount.
More ownership.

That advocacy definitely made a difference over the years in terms of awareness and inclusion. Research became a recognized discipline. Headcount increased.

That’s a huge accomplishment that I think has been lost on our profession.

We were granted access into the room and given a seat at the table, yet we wanted more. So we tried measuring research impact. We tried proving that our work made a difference.

Sometimes we could draw a clear line between research and an outcome. Often, that line was much harder to establish. Yet we continued to measure ourselves against something we were never fully in control of: the final decision.

We still believed our work was the most important piece of the story rather than a consideration in a long list of considerations.

A line item among line items.

We were included, but instead of taking measured steps to maintain our position, we continued chasing greater influence and authority.

And that has hurt us.

This doesn’t make research less important

I can understand why some researchers might find this perspective uncomfortable. Saying that research is just one consideration among many can sound like I am diminishing its importance.

I see it differently.

I think understanding our role and accepting its limits actually strengthens our position and makes the value of research easier to defend, and more impactful.

Research doesn’t need to own the roadmap.
It doesn’t need to dictate strategy.
It doesn’t need to win every argument.
It doesn’t even need to prove it was right.

Our job fills a critical gap that helps decision-makers understand risks that, before research, were missing.

Instead of asking: Did the team do what the research recommended?
Maybe the better question is: Did the team make a more-informed decision because of the research?

Sometimes research changes a roadmap.
Sometimes it delays a launch.
Sometimes it prevents an expensive mistake.

And sometimes the organization decides not to act on it at all.

That’s not failure.

That’s clarity where before there was none.

Research provides something incredibly valuable.

It helps organizations better understand people.
It exposes problems before they become expensive.
It challenges assumptions before they harden into decisions.
It identifies opportunities that might otherwise remain invisible.
It makes risks and tradeoffs clearer.

That’s meaningful.
That’s important.

That’s influence.
That’s impact.

Research is important. But it isn’t the business.

Businesses have to balance customers, employees, technology, finance, competition, regulation, timing, risk, and dozens of other considerations.

Research informs those decisions, but research doesn’t own them, and likely never will.

I think our profession would be healthier and stronger if we stopped measuring our importance by how many minds we change and just be okay with being exceptionally good at the thing organizations actually need from us: Helping them understand another piece of information they need to know in order to make informed, and potentially consequential, decisions.

Research is a line item among line items.

That’s not an argument for diminishing our value.

It’s an argument for being much clearer about what makes our work valuable in the first place.

UX Research Is a Line Item Among Line Items was originally published in Bootcamp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.