You can just talk to users

One of the best things about UX research abundance is that it makes it almost trivial to talk to users. Whenever you want you can just talk to people! This is an amazing thing, and it opens up a totally new way that UX researchers can add value to their organizations.

The job of a UX researcher can historically be conceptualized as a series of research projects separated by attending team meetings. Your team would have questions and you would spin up a research project to answer those questions. You might talk to 8 users or 12 users, have a structured interview guide, and afterwards synthesize what you learned and put it into a deck. Go back to your meetings until the next project comes along and then repeat. Classic UX research.

There’s nothing wrong with projects – there’s certainly a need for them because discrete research questions related to a particular initiative will inevitably arise.

But be careful to not conflate the act of talking to users with the construct of a research project. Talking to users, especially in the age of abundance, is something that should be regularly happening regardless of whether your team has a particular project-related question. The space in-between projects should be filled not just with meetings but with regular conversations with users.

And what better excuse to miss a meeting than having a call with a customer!