😌 Humans of User Research with Louise Bonnamy

Hi Louise, tell us a little about yourself.
I’m a French user researcher now based in Montreal Canada. At work I’m passionate about how user research can help teams being in “the flow” state, oiling the cogs with insights about users. After work I would try anything adventurous and fun.

What energizes you about your career?
I love how user research can be a pivot at any point of the organisation, how our best practices can apply almost everywhere. Are you on-boarding in a company? Get the context, listen and most of all observe people, ask questions to clarify, then make a report for yourself and/or share your insights with your team. You want to have more impact on the company strategy? Observe your stakeholders to get their language and then plant seeds with some insights that could help the company be more sustainable. I often say that I’m paid to observe people and it’s not as creepy as it sounds. Also It’s a job where you are at the crossroads of different crafts, you can learn from the best as if your internship was never over.

What's one thing that can instantly make your day better?
When all the cogs start to work together and I can start making connexions between projects and/or people on specific topics. Having that impression that my practice helps teams being in the flow, that they start talking about users and want to validate the assumptions they are aware about. Also, recently I had a former student reaching out to talk user research with me and it made my week to read that she got interested by user research.

What can people reach out to you about and how can they find you?
I’m foundable and reachable on Linkedin here. I’m always happy to talk about user research, any topics, process, tools, methods, career. If I can help bouncing ideas, I’ll be a happy puppy.

Thank you, Louise!

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🎉 Highlights.

Implementing archetypes at SAP: understanding user behavior
A tool to deliver on our UX transformation at a design-system level. Miguel Hidalgo 08/04

‘I didn’t want to be a manager for the sake of being a manager’
It seems like becoming a manager is a necessary milestone to pass in one’s career. But how do you know when to be a manager or if you want to be one in the first place? Hazel walks through her learning experience to become the manager she aspires to be. Misato Ehara 07/31

Exploring the future of remote user research
In this position paper, Nikolas Martelaro (Carniege Mellon) outlines prior work in remote qualitative user research methods and discusses how this work can help us to (re)design new tools, methods, and frameworks that can enable remote work. With creative development, we can create remote research methods that afford new ways of understanding user experience today and build more environmentally conscious and accessible research practices. Nikolas Martelaro 08/05

🙏 Sensitive contexts.

Keeping survivors safe during UX research
How Jenny H Winfield practiced the trauma-informed principle of Safety, while leading research with survivors of sexual assault. Jenny H Winfield 08/08

Organising playtest sessions to get great feedback from children
How researchers can design sessions that can ‘build a bridge’ between children and adults to unlock a window into their experience. Mégane Lacroix 08/10

👥 Stakeholders.

The A.R.M.E.D. method for presenting UX research findings (@Spotify)
A.R.M.E.D: Attention. Relevant to your audience. What is your key message? Give Examples. What do you want them to do with this information?. Valentina Alvarez 08/03

Five questions to improve your pre-project stakeholder meetings
What problems are you trying to solve? What are the expectations of you in terms of this feature or exploratory research? Who on the team identifies with your hypotheses, and who sees it differently? What deliverables will be most helpful for you and your team to work with? By what date will these insights be too late for you to use in your decision-making process?. Cori Widen

21 reasons research fails (and how to overcome these challenges)
The major categories of UX Research failure are lack of alignment, planning, timing, confidence, and action. Each category is broken out in 21 failures and suggestions about how to mitigate these pitfalls. Michele Ronsen

🎯 Approaches.

Diving into research design
Learn how to apply these different research frameworks to your next big project: 1) Correlational research design. 2) Descriptive research design. 3) Diagnostic research design. 4) Quasi-experimental research design. 5) Explanatory research design. Nikki Anderson

Beyond personas: behavioral archetypes for UX research
Behavioral Archetypes to allow us to focus, reduce complexity and gain insights for strategic decision-making while designing new products or services. Paula Lopez Lanhozo 08/10

🚀 Growth.

Finding a UXR mentor or coach: how, why, and where
A career path in UX can be personal and at times overwhelming—but a mentor or coach can help you achieve your goals. Here’s how to find one. Roberta Dombrowski 08/09

Ask a UXR: storytelling for UX research portfolios
A UX Research lead at Google explains what the common threads are that make for a memorable story when she does portfolio reviews. Preeti Talwai 08/07

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🎥 Video of the Week.

Learnings in UX research over the years
Shrut Kirti Saksena on her learnings in UX Research: on hard and soft research skills and and how researchers move from being methodology gurus to discovery guides. YouTube 08/08

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Audio of the Week.

The UX research lead - Tim Dixon @ Atlassian
Tim tells me about his career journey into UX from academia via experimental psychology and social and economic research, and he shares his views on the differences between strategic and tactical research approaches.He also discusses an unexpected - but beneficial - consequence of COVID-19 in allowing his organisation to rethink some of its UX team structure and working practices. Spotify Apple 08/03

Happy Researching,
🗞 Jan