Ever feel swamped by administrative tasks, struggling to find research participants, or drowning in messy data? 😫
These are the daily battles researchers shouldn't be fighting. Research operations teams tackle these challenges head-on. Even as the industry faces potential resource reductions, research remains critical for business success.
The reality is, even the most experienced researchers equipped with strong management and training are bogged down by inefficient processes and fragmented tools, ultimately hindering the impact of user research.
When you notice yourself wishing something was automated, or that it could be simpler to do, that's when you should start to think about Research Ops.
Anna LoparevUX Research and Operations Consultant at Fidelity Investments
The good news is, there's a solution to these time-consuming challenges: building a research operations team is the key to unlocking the full potential of user research in your organization.😀
But before we continue, we must acknowledge a hard cold reality about this field. There are legit 5 common spellings of Research Operations abbreviations, and we will use them all, try to accept them in your heart:
Re Ops
ResOps
ReOps
Research Operations
Research Ops
Back to business – a Re Ops team tackles administrative burdens, streamlines workflows, manages logistics, and ensures smooth research execution. By automating tasks and streamlining processes, Re Ops frees researchers to focus on what matters most: uncovering user needs and translating them into actionable insights that drive business success. This empowers researchers to execute a well-defined UX research strategy, ensuring research directly contributes to achieving business goals.
Drawing on industry experience, this guide offers a roadmap for building and optimizing your Re Ops team. We'll delve into key considerations, common pitfalls to avoid, and best practices to set your research function on a path to success.
The Value of ReOps
Whether you're a ReOps team of one or quickly growing into a large, cross-functional enterprise org, you'll be intimately linked to UX Research. After all, ResearchOps' core purpose is aligning research activities with strategic objectives—a support system that streamlines and scales research efforts.
User experience researchers (UXRs) function as the user's voice within a company. Through various research methods, they uncover user needs, wants, and frustrations with existing products or prototypes.
To find ideas, find problems. To find problems, talk to people.
Julie ZhouVP of Product Design at Meta, author of The Making of a Manager
Helping companies build products that are not only successful but also lead to higher user satisfaction and loyalty. In short, UXR plays a critical role in bridging the gap between what businesses think users need and what users truly require for a positive experience.
All The Layoffs: Insights from Dave Hora
UX researcher and product strategist Dave Hora points out the industry has experienced recent layoffs. In this environment, a stronger partnership between full-time user researchers and ResearchOps teams is necessary to maximize their impact.
ResearchOps can identify skill gaps and training opportunities to equip researchers with the skills needed for new methodologies and tools. This helps researchers stay ahead of the curve in areas like data analysis, storytelling, and business acumen. By developing these skills, researchers can demonstrate their value beyond the status quo.
Calling ourselves storytellers instead of researchers only gets us halfway to the goal. In an effort to bring clarity to my presentations, I find ways of building a story.
Natasha Eibich User Experience Researcher at Microsoft
Optimizing research efforts through automation
Also, ResearchOps handles repetitive tasks through automation and streamlining workflows, allowing researchers to focus on strategic analysis, user-centered design thinking, and translating research findings into actionable business recommendations.
Maintaining research quality in a democratized landscape
As research knowledge becomes more accessible, ResearchOps ensures consistency by developing and maintaining research standards and best practices across teams. This is even more important as non-researchers conduct simpler studies.
A unified voice for user-centered design
ResearchOps fosters collaboration by creating a shared understanding of research goals and priorities across departments. Maximizing the impact of a potentially smaller research team on product development and user experience findings.
Hence, alignment is key when building your research ops team and a centralized strategy. ResearchOps fosters collaboration by creating a shared vision. Researchers understand the broader business objectives, while other stakeholders appreciate the value of user-centered design. This minimizes wasted effort and ensures that the research team contributes directly to achieving strategic goals.
Research Operations uncovers tensions, bridges communication gaps, and helps teams be more effective.
Elham AliDesign Researcher at Beeck Center for Social Impact & Innovation
All that sound good? We covered those pesky UXR layoffs and how researchers can better align Re Ops professionals to create greater impact for their org. Now, let’s move on to the deets on how to establish a strong ReOps strategy.
Connect strategy and stakeholder goals
Your ReOps strategy should be the bridge between research and business success. Conduct an assessment to identify your org's research maturity, long-term goals, and existing research practices (even informal ones). How can research help achieve those goals?
Build on existing strengths
Even without a formal research function, other teams likely conduct some form of research. Your strategy should leverage this existing knowledge while pushing the organization towards a more sophisticated research practice.
Customer-centric focus
Evaluate your current customer understanding and identify data gaps. The UX research strategy should focus on closing these gaps and informing future decisions to achieve a user-centered approach.
Prioritize needs
With a clear understanding of your business landscape and UX research needs, prioritize your operational goals for the ReOps team. Are you focusing on efficiency, scalability, or a specific research area critical to business success as identified in the UX research strategy?
Define the direction
Develop a clear and ambitious vision for your UX research team. This vision should be tightly linked to the core business goals, ensuring research activities directly contribute to the company's success, and should reflect how the ReOps team will support researchers in achieving the goals outlined in the UX research strategy.
Asking the simple question — how can I best help? — revealed that the scope of the ops role I was hired for only addressed a subset of the team’s needs.
Lucy Walsh Former Research Ops Lead at Spotify
ReOps further amplifies the impact of UX research teams by📢
Empowering researchers: Sourcing the right participants, adhering to data protection regulations, and providing swift and appropriate incentives for participants.
Aligned research: Creating a centralized repository for research findings, insights, and data.
Data-driven decisions: Establishing the best research methods for informed decision-making across the org.
Streamlined workflows: Evaluating, implementing, and integrating tools and platforms to improve data collection, analysis, and sharing.
💎These gems can further guide your strategic alignment efforts💎
Business Goals: What are the company's history, goals, and how can UX research help achieve them?
Current Research State: What research activities are currently happening?
Stakeholder Expectations: What are stakeholders' hopes for the research function?
Initial Focus Areas: What are the top 3 areas to address in the first year?
Communicating Value: How can you communicate the value of these objectives to stakeholders?
By following these steps, you'll build a foundation for your ReOps practice, which is tightly linked to business objectives, and operates strategically and delivers impactful results.
Articulate Your Strategy
Communicate your ReOps strategy clearly to your team and stakeholders. Your vision matters and you’ll need a compelling business case for investment to pass go.
A clear vision statement facilitates communication with stakeholders and fosters a shared understanding of the role and value of research within the organization.
For instance, “empower our team to conduct ethical, user-centered research that delivers insights that guide exceptional customer experiences and propel us industry leaders.”
Team Motivation: inspires and motivates the research team by providing a sense of purpose and direction for their work.
Strategic Decision-Making: guide research efforts towards activities that align with broader business objectives and contribute to achieving strategic goals.
Making the Business Case
A strong business case is crucial to securing resources. Here's what to include:
Quantify Time & Budget Savings ⏳💰
Calculate potential savings by comparing the costs associated with non-ops managing research activities to the projected costs of dedicated ops specialists. This demonstrates the immediate financial benefit of having the right talent in place.
Example: imagine the cost of managing research incentives is currently higher when handled by a non-ops professional compared to a dedicated ops professional. This highlights the immediate cost savings of hiring an ops specialist.
Enabling Strategic Research 🚀📊
Explain how a dedicated ReOps team can unlock strategic benefits by freeing up researchers' time for foundational or strategic research, develop research capabilities within the team, and implement practices that elevate the importance of key research insights.
Example: Expanded Researcher Capacity where less time is spent on operational tasks and more time on strategic activities, such as enabling non-researchers to participate in research projects while maintaining compliance.
Aligning with Company Goals 🎯🏢
Illustrate how ReOps directly contributes to achieving company objectives. While specific goals will vary, customer focus is often a prominent theme.
Example: Many companies prioritize customer-centricity. A well-established ReOps practice positions the research team to champion customer connection initiatives more effectively, potentially exceeding the level currently available to product teams.
Hiring Plan 📋👥
Detail the skills and experience required for your ReOps team members.
Clear Vision: Defining your hiring needs demonstrates a well-defined vision and fosters confidence in your approach upon securing approval.
Key Activities 📅🔧
Outline the core functions and initial activities the research ops team will tackle.
Return on Investment 📈🔄
Estimate the timeline for seeing returns on investment, factoring in hiring, onboarding, and potential internal barriers.
Transparency: Be realistic about potential delays caused by internal approval processes or tool implementation challenges.
Example: Onboarding a new research tool can take anywhere from two months (streamlined process) to nine months (unoptimized process).
Risk Mitigation ⚠️🔒
Highlight the risks of not funding the research ops function, such as compliance risks associated with privacy laws.
Compliance Risks 🛡️📜
Research and data collection inherently carry risk. GDPR and other privacy regulations require serious attention.
Example: Meta's recent $1.3 billion GDPR fine underscores the importance of robust privacy practices.
With a strong strategy in place, you can now focus on the operating model of your ReOps team.
Structuring your dream team for success
Before hiring, understand your UX ecosystem. Research operations (ReOps) are multifaceted and how your team is structured impacts its effectiveness.
You’re always going to want to do everything, but research operations is so many things.
Brigette MetzlerResearchOps Lead at Australian Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry
Exploring the 3 UXR Team Structures
UX Research team structure has a huge impact on how Re Ops is setup. You can ideally be involved in how the UXR team defines roles, responsibilities, reporting hierarchies, and collaboration frameworks. I've navigated through common UXR team structures, each with its own set of advantages and drawbacks. Let's explore three common models: