Navigating Stakeholder Requests for Changes to Research Artifacts
Ensuring Alignment of Research Artifacts with Business Goals
In the world of UX research, ensuring the alignment of research artifacts with business goals is pivotal for the success of any project. Research artifacts, such as discussion guides, play a central role in guiding research sessions and collecting valuable insights. However, it's not uncommon for stakeholders to request changes, including alterations to research question-wording. This guide provides tips to navigate this situation while maintaining the integrity of UX research.
Defining 'Alignment of Research Artifacts with Business Goals'
Let's break down the term to make it clear for everyone:
Alignment: This means making sure that different parts or elements work together smoothly and effectively towards a common goal.
Research Artifacts: These are the tools, documents, or materials used in UX research, like research protocol or research plan, discussion guides, surveys drafts etc.
Business Goals: These are the specific objectives or targets that a company wants to achieve. For example, a business goal could be to increase user engagement on a website or to improve customer satisfaction.
So, 'Ensuring Alignment of Research Artifacts with Business Goals' essentially means making sure that all the materials and tools used in UX research are designed and used in a way that helps the company achieve its objectives.
Now, let's explore how to handle situations where stakeholders request changes to these research materials while keeping everything on track.
The Significance of Research Artifacts
Before we dive into handling stakeholder requests, let's establish why research artifacts are essential:
Guiding Research Sessions: Discussion guides, among other artifacts, serve as roadmaps for research sessions, ensuring that the right questions are asked.
Consistency and Objectivity: Research artifacts promote consistency and objectivity in data collection, minimizing bias.
Alignment with Business Goals: Artifacts are designed to align with specific research objectives, ensuring that the data collected is directly relevant to business goals.
By understanding the importance of research artifacts and their alignment with business goals, we can better appreciate why maintaining their integrity is critical.
Navigating Stakeholder Requests for Changes
While it's crucial to acknowledge stakeholder input, it's equally important to preserve the integrity of research artifacts. Here's how you can navigate this delicate balance:
1. Clarify Objectives:
Understand the "Why": When stakeholders request changes, seek to understand why they believe these alterations are necessary. What business objectives or insights are they trying to achieve?
Engage in Dialogue: Initiate a constructive dialogue with stakeholders to clarify their objectives. This helps in finding common ground and potentially alternative solutions.
2. Evaluate Impact:
Assess Impact on Research: Evaluate how proposed changes may impact the research. Will the alterations compromise the integrity of the data or the ability to answer research questions?
Explain Potential Consequences: Communicate clearly with stakeholders about the potential consequences of requested changes. Use data and examples to illustrate the impact.
3. Suggest Compromises:
Propose Alternatives: If the requested changes are likely to compromise research integrity, suggest alternative ways to address the stakeholders' concerns. These alternatives should aim to achieve both research goals and stakeholder objectives.
Highlight Benefits: Emphasize how the current research artifacts are designed to meet business goals effectively. Highlight the benefits of maintaining the original structure.
4. Document Decisions:
Maintain Transparency: Keep a record of discussions, decisions, and reasons for accepting or declining changes. This transparency helps in maintaining the credibility of research artifacts.
Provide Documentation: Share documentation that supports the decisions made, such as best practices in research methodology or examples of successful research outcomes using the current artifacts.
5. Find Common Ground:
Negotiate and Collaborate: Seek common ground by negotiating and collaborating with stakeholders. Ensure that both parties understand the importance of the research process and business goals.
Align Objectives: Where possible, align stakeholder objectives with research objectives to create a win-win situation.
Let's illustrate these tips with a real-world example:
Scenario: You're conducting usability testing for a new mobile app. During a stakeholder meeting, the Product Manager requests changes to the discussion guide, specifically asking for a change in the research questions to align with a new branding strategy.
1. Clarify Objectives: You engage in a conversation with the Product Manager to understand their objective of aligning the research with the new branding strategy, which is crucial for business goals.
2. Evaluate Impact: You assess the impact of changing the questions and realize that it might introduce bias into the data by leading participants to certain responses. You explain this potential consequence.
3. Suggest Compromises: You propose a compromise by suggesting that you could include additional questions to address the new branding strategy without altering the existing questions. This maintains research integrity and addresses the stakeholder's concerns.
4. Document Decisions: Throughout the discussion, you maintain transparent documentation of the conversation and the decision to add new questions. You provide research documentation to support your decision.
5. Find Common Ground: By working together, you align the stakeholder's objective with the research goals. The compromise is reached, and the research continues with the integrity of the original discussion guide maintained.
Want to learn more?
Tip: Not upgraded yet? Use the discount code RBM23 during checkout
Recommended Resources for UX Researchers:
Book: "It's Our Research: Getting Stakeholder Buy-in for User Experience Research Projects by Tomer Sharon
Online Course: "Introduction to User Experience(UX) Research" Module 2 by Research Bookmark - Learn how to effectively engage stakeholders and master the creation of essential research artifacts, such as a well-structured research plan and a comprehensive discussion guide.
UX Research Tools: Utilize tools like UserTesting and Optimal Workshop for effective research artifact creation and analysis.
Webinar: Engaging Stakeholders in UX Research' on Research Bookmark. Use the discount code 'RBM23' during checkout to access 'RB' for only $1.99.
Warm Regards,
The RB Team