Elizabeth Rankin on Navigating Stakeholder Engagement with Research

Alex Smith: Design Leader Insights is brought to you by Fuego UX. Fuego UX is a leading UX research, strategy, and design consultancy. Hey Liz, thanks so much for joining the show today. 

Elizabeth Rankin: Yeah, thanks for having me. 

Alex Smith: To get started, can you tell us a little bit about your background in UX research? 

Elizabeth Rankin: Yeah, it's quite a background, right? I think everybody's is, everybody has a different kind of journey and path, right? I've been all over the place in terms of working in consumer packaged goods to big corporate research to now I'm in ed tech in research, and I've been in different roles and wore different hats. And I think that that is what makes someone get into UX research because you have the business side of things. You have the strategy side of things, you understand product development and design, and at the end of the day, I'm really just curious about humans behaviors and how to, you know, help a business be profitable, and that's where you land is in UX research.

Alex Smith: A few things I'm curious about with research, one specifically that I see. I think there's a perception of, oh, this researcher is going to come and give me like a 500 page report and like, who's going to read that, right? Like, so I think the first question I have is how do you actually get stakeholders and, and other people that you want to see this valuable research that your team's done to see it and use it?

Elizabeth Rankin: Really it’s is about understanding the other person, you know, that's across from you. What is your product manager, what do they care about? What are they accountable for? What's motivating them? And then ladder that all the way up to what does the VP cares about that they're reporting into? What is our corporate strategy? What does that even look like? Because all of that, all those things are connected. And before you even get to all the data and all the research and all the questions that you think we have to answer, you need to fundamentally understand those people, what their motivations are, what do they care about? And then how can you bridge that gap from where you're coming from with your big book of research? 

Alex Smith: Yeah. 

Elizabeth Rankin: Our methodology is our tactics, our tricks, because we have a lot of those. And then figuring out how you can incorporate that into their world and meet them where they're at. That's when you make the magic happen. That's when you get the buy in that we hear so many people talk about, is when you meet them where they're at and understand how they're motivated. And how our research can actually help support them, help them learn, help them prioritize things, help them make decisions or help their VP make decisions. That's where you become an invaluable part of their world and how you get people to start to look at, I'm not going to say big body of research, but start to understand the stories you’re trying to tell. 

Alex Smith: I think that's like, yeah, I think that's genius. You're actually doing personalized UX on the individual. What do they care about, right? I think those are some intimidating stakeholders for some people, right? For, probably like a, you know, some people on your team, I imagine. How do you get your team to interact with VPs or CPOs and things like that? How do you kind of demystify the stakeholder, I don't know, intimidation factor?

Elizabeth Rankin: Yeah. Yeah. And, and you're right. Like those titles can seem scary sometimes for, for folks or, you know, I'm just a researcher of one and, and I've never even spoken to a CEO, like, how do I? How do I effectively communicate, or how do I get over that intimidation factor. At the end of the day, we're all humans, and we're all there to work together, and we collectively as a team, we want the business to win, right? And once we both have that clear understanding that at the end of the day, we want to help people,  we want the business to win. No matter what type of stakeholder you're speaking with, as long as you can meet them where they're at and speak their language. So bringing in, you know, things that they're caring about, like whether that's customer satisfaction or conversion or you know, optimization rates, things like that. That's when you can really demystify and kind of get over that intimidation factor. The other thing we talk a lot about on my team too is with the stakeholder communication or the, you know, talking to a VP if you never talked to one before. It's keeping things simple. And I know that sounds goofy and people probably say that all the time, but, but like, what does that actually really mean? It means throw your jargon out the window. 

Alex Smith: Yeah. 

Elizabeth Rankin:Throw the methodology, terminology, all the ologies, throw them out the window and just speak to me like I am your friend. Speak to me like I am your neighbor. You know, your, your colleague. Sometimes going back to like keeping, keeping it simple is putting them, and I'm not going to say put them in the shoes of the users, putting them in an experience and where they actually are using your products. Give them three or four simple tasks that you think anybody in the world could do and watch them do those things and have a live discussion around that. You want to evoke that emotional tie from them into what your users are actually trying to do. Once you can make that clear, like, aha moment for them that they're like, oh my gosh, I have no idea where I would find this piece of information on our website. Like, where would I find this? And you have 10 people from your leadership team all saying the same thing and realizing having that aha moment of like, oh, we've, how did we not even think about that? And it's been so simple. That just is overlooked because we're so focused on, we have to have this brand new AI thing or we, you know, whatever. And it really does play an impact into how you as a UX researcher, again, going to how you get that buy in. How do you get people to appreciate and see the impact of your work? And it's simple things like that. 

Alex Smith: Let's switch gears to like scaling and putting like a process around research within an organization. How should teams think about that? 

Elizabeth Rankin: Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of talk about operationalizing research again, another big, big buzzword out there. And, and it's a topic at the moment and what that in practice means, so really getting, as we talked about earlier, like understanding and meeting your stakeholders where they're at and building that fundamental trust and fostering that relationship, showing the impact of the work that you're doing. That's step one, right? Because that gets you a seat at the table. You're a crucial and valuable part of the team now, right? 

‍Alex Smith: Yeah. 

Elizabeth Rankin: And now everybody wants it. Everybody wants UX research. Everybody wants a research team over here. How do you actually deliver on all that at a quality and rigor to where you obtain more resources for your team? You need to put into practice a program that you can scale across other business units, other, other areas within the organization. And what that looks like is a very clearly defined, step by step, not always linear, process to what your team delivers on. Duplicating that effort, whether that be templatizing it, whether that be making sure you have the right processes and procedures in place to where you can say, hey, listen, we need three website redesigns. This is the standard UX program. Here are the standard UX metrics that we deliver on. All that's already built because we've done it so well so many times in other areas across the organization. You can give that to, you know, your researcher on your team and a designer, a team said go.

Alex Smith: Yeah.

Elizabeth Rankin:Not a lot of legwork. to start from scratch. And so it's really about building the different components that you need to deliver on different types of UX work that you're going to do. 

‍Alex Smith: Liz, what advice do you have for people trying to break into UX and UX research today? 

‍Elizabeth Rankin: Yeah, there's a lot of advice out there and I listen to a lot of podcast thought leaders a lot of who have been on this show, and it is really understanding that you, well, we all really care about UX a lot. We all really care about research a lot. It's not our job to make other people care about it as much as we do. 

‍Alex Smith: Yeah. 

Elizabeth Rankin: Our role is to understand how we could help users and people in the world and make an impact on that, and then how we can help the business win and show that our research makes impact on that. My advice, in general, is always keep that top of mind and keep it simple and be authentic, you know, speaking to someone just as you would speak to, you know, a neighbor or a friend. Another piece of advice, especially for, you know, researchers or designers or anybody that's trying to showcase their work, what you're sharing and showing with your stakeholders or your audience. It needs to be memorable. It's got to be actionable because at the end of the day, what do we remember from, you know, being in our childhood? We remember the stories that we were told. What was the last thing you remembered at a party you were just at? A really funny story you were just told. When was the last time you remember someone rattling off a bunch of random facts or like bullet points to you? Never. So you, you have to bring the work that you're doing, whether you're a product manager, engineer, researcher. You need to bring that to life and tie it in to what the audience cares about the most and make sure that it is actionable as well. 

Alex Smith: That's so true. Yeah. I like it. When's the last time you remembered the intricacies of a PowerPoint? Never. So, yeah, I think that's a great, great point. Well, thank you so much for the discussion today, Liz. 

Elizabeth Rankin: Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for having me. I thought it was a pretty fun chat. Hopefully it's helpful to folks out in the world.