{"id":680,"date":"2012-01-05T07:52:44","date_gmt":"2012-01-05T15:52:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/?p=680"},"modified":"2012-01-04T13:25:18","modified_gmt":"2012-01-04T21:25:18","slug":"the-elevator-pitch-for-user-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/2012\/01\/05\/the-elevator-pitch-for-user-research\/","title":{"rendered":"the elevator pitch for user research"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of weeks ago, I attended Michael’s company’s holiday party. \u00a0I got caught flat-footed by Michael’s boss, when he asked me the basic question, “what do you do?” \u00a0“I’m a researcher at VMware,” I answered blithely. \u00a0“What do you research?” he asked. \u00a0And this is where I made my mistake: instead of the elevator pitch for user research, I instead answered the question as if it were about what products I’ve worked on<\/a>. \u00a0But that wasn’t the answer that he was looking for, which Michael realized more quickly than I did. \u00a0“User experience,” he helpfully pointed out, which at least pointed his boss in the right direction.<\/p>\n

User experience is a term that still doesn’t have widespread understanding, even when you’re standing in a roomful of Silicon Valley software engineers. \u00a0This is more true for research than design, since most software engineers have at least encountered an interaction designer at some point in their career. \u00a0Researchers are more rare. \u00a0There’s only three of us at VMware, so I’m never surprised when someone doesn’t know what a user researcher does. \u00a0Over time, I’ve developed my elevator pitch for what I do as a user researcher, but I somehow didn’t give that answer this time.<\/p>\n

My current elevator pitch is this:<\/p>\n

I study how people use things, and figure out how to make it better.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sometimes I replace “things” with “applications” or even “our products”, but I like “stuff” better because it’s less precise. \u00a0There are words that I deliberately don’t use in that pitch, such as “user” or “usability”. \u00a0I also make sure that I connect the study with the outcome of making improvements. \u00a0It also opens the door for additional conversations, if the questioner is interested. \u00a0But if not, it’s a reasonable encapsulation of what I do and why I do it.<\/p>\n

And next time, I’ll remember to use it, even when I’m surrounded by my fellow geeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of weeks ago, I attended Michael’s company’s holiday party. \u00a0I got caught flat-footed by Michael’s boss, when he asked me the basic question, “what do you do?” \u00a0“I’m a researcher at VMware,” I answered blithely. \u00a0“What do you research?” he asked. \u00a0And this is where I made my mistake: instead of the elevator … Continue reading the elevator pitch for user research<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=680"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":681,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680\/revisions\/681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}