The attitude of some stakeholders towards research being a "waste of time" is actually an example of correlation being mistaken for causation.
If some of what would have been built is waste, and we use research to find out it's wrong, we prevent waste and save money. Right?
But in an outputs-driven organization, that's not how stakeholders think.
1/4
Output-oriented stakeholders are not accustomed to using leading indicators to attribute impact to any specific change in the product.
The semantic environment within their organizations frames all work as valuable *if it produces any outputs*. The success criteria for every project really is "if we ship" because that's what's rewarded.
The obvious consequence is that anything delaying those outputs (such as user research or design process) is seen as wasteful.
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But there's another factor in play.
When research reveals that the work the stakeholder wanted to do would have been wasteful, they associate *the research* with the waste instead. By doing research, you have transformed their really cool idea into a wasteful idea. Research created waste.
And what's worse, now we have "wasted" all the time we spent coming up with this brilliant idea, and then doing research, only to find out that this effort wouldn't lead to any of those precious outputs.
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You and I know that user research merely reveals waste that was already there - but that's because we are accustomed to learning and measuring each being as important as building.
But in an output culture, *they would have never known* that the work was wasteful if not for that user research.
Sure, the quarterly NPS might go down but in that semantic environment this is not attributable to any one decision. It's something that just happens.
And so - research creates waste.
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@PavelASamsonov Was talking with a UXR colleague who is dealing with a PO that is repeatedly doing and end run around research because "they slow down everything."
UXRs hear this all the time. How we "slow things down." Its infuriating.
We certainly do slow down (and hopefully stop) the progress of shitty ideas.
@PavelASamsonov Maybe we should have one person design the product, write the copy and do all the coding themselves.
Can you imagine how fast you could move without designers, writers or developers to "slow things down?"
Pavel A. Samsonov
ryaninteractive