S2E16: Research, Questions, Bias, and Decisions with Carol Rossi

Text Jason @ Leadership Voyage

Carol Rossi has led research teams at NerdWallet, Kelley Blue Book, and Edmunds, where she started the research function from scratch. Carol has more than 25 years of experience in user experience, including a stint as the sole researcher at GeoCities in the late 90s. After 14 years leading teams in-house, Carol returned to consulting in 2022, this time focused on research leadership for orgs that have or want a research function but have no internal research leadership.

Carol holds Master's degrees in both Human Factors and Dance Ethnology. She has deep experience as an educator and loves to give back by regularly mentoring people interested in UX careers. She has taught both UX Research and yoga at community colleges and universities across Los Angeles.

www.carolrossi.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/crossiux/
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Impactful research

• provides insights that change business outcomes
• serves the needs of a customer
• leads organizational culture change
• adds operational efficiency 

Value of research

• scrappy not crappy
  • rigorous but smart and situationally aware 
  • researchers need business acumen
    • help make the business successful by giving customers what they need
• in tech, researchers have faced a disproportionate number of layoffs
• researchers perhaps haven’t done a great job of highlighting its value
• research is meant to inform good decisions
• in academia we’re looking for ultimate truth and in industry we’re trying to get to good decisions

Decision making

• what’s usually missing is measuring the impact of decisions
• evaluating decisions informs future decisions
• what’s the thing we need to know?
  • what do we already know about that?
• identify the different sources of information you have
• bias
  • HiPPO (highest paid person’s opinion)
  • high value client’s need
  • ask question to mitigate 
  • it’s hard to see if insights are tainted and biased
  • people unintentionally introduce bias
    • asking leading questions, carrying assumptions, talking to wrong people
  • decisions are often based on biased information
    
    

Crafting good questions

• go in with learning mindset and sense of curiosity
• what are we trying to learn and what’s the best way to learn that?
• open-ended, non-leading
• we can introduce bias inadvertently by how we ask a question
• “tell me more” is a powerful question
• sometimes it may not be a questions, it may be observing what someone’s doing
• Listen, Observe, Wait and See

Leadership Voyage
email: [e-mail]
linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonallenwick/
youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LeadershipVoyage
music: by Napoleon (napbak)
https://www.fiverr.com/napbak
voice: by Ayanna Gallant
www.ayannagallantVO.com
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