Auzita Irani [00:00:00]:
The key is balance. You do want to execute on those short term projects, collect those quick wins, because that's what's helping you build those trusting relationships with your partners. Right? It's not like tactical work or short term wins are not important or shouldn't be prioritized. It's how do you prioritize that and also think about the future and set yourself up for success when it comes to more of those strategic questions.

Erin May [00:00:27]:
Hey, this is Erin May.

Carol Guest [00:00:28]:
And this is Carol Guest.

Erin May [00:00:30]:
And this is awkward.

Carol Guest [00:00:31]:
Awkward, awkward silences.

Erin May [00:00:34]:
Awkward silences is brought to you by user interviews, the fastest way to recruit targeted, high quality participants for any kind of research. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to awkward silences. Today we're here with Azita Arani. She's a research manager at Airbnb. And we've worked together when you worked at and you've worked at Meta and all sorts of wonderful places. And today we're going to talk about doing more with less, which I know is something that is top of mind for all researchers, regardless of kind of role or size of team or where you're working. And we're going to talk about what that looks like in all sorts of different companies and scenarios. So really excited to dive into this super relevant topic.

Erin May [00:01:20]:
Thanks for joining us.

Auzita Irani [00:01:21]:
Me too. Thank you so much for having me, Erin, it's so great to see you again. I'm really excited to talk about this. It's something that I've been thinking about all of the companies that I've worked at, and I know all researchers think about this pretty frequently. It's just a very core part of what we do. And so thinking about ways in which we can maximize our resource usage is always something that would be helpful.

Erin May [00:01:41]:
Yeah. And just to contextualize, too, because I know some folks might hear do more with less, and it's like, I'm sick of, you know, don't burn me out. We're going to talk about it in a healthy way, hopefully. Right. And marry the needs of the business and of yourself to scale yourself, but also to do it in a sustainable way. So, excited to dig in.

Auzita Irani [00:02:00]:
Yeah. And I think you really hit the nail on the head with that one. It's not about just constantly doing more with less. It's about how do you do this sustainably and how do you make sure that you're prioritizing yourself and making sure that you're not getting burned out in the process.

Erin May [00:02:13]:
Yep. Awesome. All right, well, let's jump in. So, as we said, you know, you've worked at a variety of places, large companies that used to be startups, startups that are still very much startups. Now you're at Airbnb. So a large breadth of roles at different types of companies. Where have you seen this kind of concept of doing more with less? How have you seen it play out in these different contexts in your experience?

Auzita Irani [00:02:36]:
In my experience, the ability to do more with less isn't solely determined by the size or the scale of the company, but rather on the culture, the mindset, the specific challenges faced by the team and the organization. So, like you said, I've worked at large companies like Facebook, also small companies, startups like Sprig. And while the environments are very different, the necessity to accomplish more with fewer resources or fewer people or less support is a constant challenge. When I was at Facebook, it's a large company with arguably the most resources. I was part of a team that operated very much like a startup within the company. We were working on a zero to one product, which eventually became Facebook marketplace, and we operated with extreme agility. So doing more with less meant that we worked with very tight timelines, and every project was an exercise in prioritization and scrappiness. But being a part of a large company meant that it was easier to do that because you still had the resources and the support to move quickly.

Auzita Irani [00:03:35]:
So I remember being able to set up a full research study in four days because the research operations team would help with all of the scheduling and setting up the incentives, and I could really just stay focused on the research plan and execution.

Erin May [00:03:47]:
Yeah, you've got the infrastructure. It's almost like, well, you can drive fast when someone built the highway.

Auzita Irani [00:03:53]:
I think conversely, though, at Sprig, which was an actual startup, the imperative to do more with less was even more pronounced. So we had a very lean team, a way smaller budget, and so we had to think outside the box, and leveraging unconventional research methodologies and incentives to gather insights effectively was the priority. As a B two B company, we also had to think deeply about recruitment and incentives because we didn't have the massive user pool a consumer company like Facebook has. So we used our own product to run surveys incredibly quickly. We also built out a research participant panel so that we could do follow up qualitative research or reach out to the participants that we wanted to contact again, and that in conjunction with user interviews, which, by the way, thank you for building such a valuable product. I can't imagine being able to recruit as quickly as we did without it. It just allowed us to have a constant source of participants, which at a B two B company is actually very challenging. I'd also call out that at larger companies, resource constraints often manifest in the form of heavy process and competing priorities.

Auzita Irani [00:04:55]:
It's also a constant challenge to keep large groups of very different stakeholders consistently updated throughout the process. And this is largely what contributes to the timelines being very drawn out. But at smaller companies, or even companies that don't have established research practices, resource constraints are much more tangible. We have limited budgets and very often people, and so it's not uncommon to wear multiple hats. So I think while these are very different challenges and present different problems around doing more with less, I think that ultimately being successful comes down to fostering a culture of innovation, agility and adaptability. It's about embracing constraints as opportunities for creativity and finding ingenious solutions to complex problems.

Erin May [00:05:41]:
Great. As we said at the top, this is something that is top of mind right now, especially for companies. As you're saying, it's a need in really any context, in any company, just how that manifests is going to be pretty different. But given that this is such a dominant sort of theme in the environment these days, where do you kind of come down on, is this a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Does it depend? What do you make of doing more with less is sort of a concept.

Auzita Irani [00:06:10]:
Well, as a researcher, I don't think I'm allowed to give you an answer that's not. It depends. But no, seriously, I really do think that it depends. With the current job market being as difficult as it is and just a general sense of downsizing or right sizing, I think it's really critical to build the muscle of doing more with less. So on one hand fosters innovation and creativity and efficiency. All of these wonderful things as we find ways to maximize our individual and our team level output with very limited resources. But on the other hand, it can result in burnout and increased stress because you're tasked with managing that heavier workload, tighter deadlines, and a lack of resources. Also, if you're constantly challenged with being creative to get the most basic tasks done, you're not really going to have the capacity to truly innovate or double down on the most important things, because every little task requires so much more from you.

Auzita Irani [00:07:08]:
The other big concern is that resource constraints could compromise the quality of work. So if you're so time constrained that instead of using maybe a diary study, which would be the right method for a specific question, and you're replacing it with remote interviews, the loss of context or insights over a period of time aren't going to allow you to have the most accurate or complete picture. But if you're cutting these corners because otherwise product might make a decision without the research or we start moving in a direction, you know, that's 100% incorrect instead of 70% incorrect. I think ultimately, whether doing more with less is deemed good or bad depends on how it's implemented and balanced with an organization.

Erin May [00:07:48]:
Right. So it's sort of, it's a thing that exists that you're going to have to respond to. And, you know, maybe as a manager advocating for a team, what you're going to do with that might look different than as an individual. Right. So as an individual, I only have so much time. I'm really going to think about prioritization and making the best use of my time as a person. Whereas as a manager, you might say we're at a point where people aren't healthy and we are doing sloppy research, we aren't getting good results. I really need to advocate for more, for more budget or for something bigger to change here because this is sort of something here is not working.

Erin May [00:08:24]:
And so how you respond to this environment and what you do with that might change depending on your role within a company.

Auzita Irani [00:08:31]:
Yeah, I agree. And I think that's why it's important to a track this and then be also be very honest and open with your leaders, with your partners to say, you know, we're able to do this and we can do this once or twice. But if it starts becoming a recurring theme, maybe that does warrant a conversation about how do we fix this, right? How do we get more resources, more support, more whatever it is that needs to happen to allow us to do good work. So I think if you have very supportive leadership and a good manager that understands what you actually can and cannot accomplish with the resources you have, you have a clear set of priorities and you're able to manage your workload to avoid burnout. I think it can be a great thing. But like we talked about earlier in the conversation, you know, if it's leading to overwork or significantly diminished quality of the research, not only is it going to impact the product, but also the morale, not just for yourself, but also for your team. So my take is that it's something that should be consistently watched and evaluated. It's important to stay scrappy, but it's also important to take stock of, you know, are we really losing sight of the larger picture? And for leaders, I'd say make sure that you're creating an environment that allows for that productive discussion and support so that people feel safe to bring up these challenges and work more collaboratively on solutions.

Erin May [00:09:52]:
Anyone who's worked at a startup sort of knows what that feels like, where we have limited resources, but there's an enthusiasm in the air because we're turning that necessity is the mother of invention. We're turning this into really creative solutions. We're innovating. This is exciting. There's just too much to do and this doesn't feel good. And you want to be obviously in that first camp. And how do we kind of try to stay there and keep that mentality?

Auzita Irani [00:10:18]:
Absolutely. I also don't think that there's ever going to be a point in time where things are perfect or you have the absolute perfect balance. I think it's a very constant, active exercise that you have to keep doing. And especially in that startup environment, you're wearing so many different hats, you're responsible for so many different things. How do you make sure that you're prioritizing the right pieces of work so that you can have the impact that you need?

Erin May [00:10:44]:
Yeah, I think that's why so many people are talking about kind of what's happening now in the market as a sort of correction, right, of the pendulum's always swinging and we're always trying to get to homeostasis, and only for a fleeting moment are you ever in perfect balance as a person, as a company, as a market. So there's been a correction, and here we are, and we'll ride that wave. But I think it would be really helpful for folks if we jumped into some real usable kind of tactics for how to actually navigate these waters and come out successful and strong and making a lot of great impact.

Auzita Irani [00:11:17]:
Yeah, let's do it.

Erin May [00:11:19]:
Yeah. So tell us about what have you seen work well in your experience? Love to hear about it.

Auzita Irani [00:11:23]:
So, before I go into how to solve for some of the resource constraints that we typically face as researchers, I want to propose a framework that consolidates the constraints that I've seen into four major buckets. My hope is that this will allow us to talk about these constraints with a shared language and enable a systematic approach to identifying and addressing challenges with optimizing resource utilization. So the first one is temporal or deadline constraints. This is limited timeframes for planning, conducting, and completing your research activities. So, for example, you need to have the study done in two weeks or a decision is going to be made without research input. There's also challenges in scheduling and coordinating research tasks with constrained timelines. So maybe it's hard to find the exact right participants for the project, especially if it's a very specialized or niche group, or you have to think about more unique incentives to get them to talk to you. I think at larger companies, going through the approval process or even getting support assigned to your project.

Auzita Irani [00:12:24]:
Right. Maybe you do have a dedicated team of research operations that's going to help you with the scheduling activities, but you need to get on their roadmap. You have to get time with them and do it in the timeline that you have to complete that research project. The second one is financial or budgetary constraints. And I think working in a startup, I think both of us have had this experience where you have limited financial resources for research related activities. So you may not have the budget to provide incentives, or you may not have budget to procure the exact right research tool. Right. You may have a shared budget with another function, like marketing, for example.

Auzita Irani [00:13:03]:
And so you have to spend time convincing that group of stakeholders that this is a good use of that shared resource. And I think this is probably the biggest constraint that I see with smaller companies. The third is information or data access constraints. So maybe you have restrictions on accessing the relevant data sources. Maybe you don't have access to a data scientist that can help you find the right tables. There could be challenges in obtaining timely and accurate information that's necessary for the research. And this could be getting time with your PM or designers getting on their schedule to get the information or assets that you actually need in order to be able to conduct the research. It could also be a very clear lack of timelines or deadlines.

Auzita Irani [00:13:47]:
So you don't even know the constraints that you operate under.

Erin May [00:13:50]:
Unknown unknowns.

Auzita Irani [00:13:52]:
Exactly, yeah. And then knowledge gaps. And this is maybe because priorities shift really rapidly, or maybe you're working across multiple different areas or domains and you just don't have the time to delve deep and create that domain expertise that might be needed for a project. And then finally, technological and operational constraints. So you don't have access to the right research tools, right. Maybe you have inadequate or outdated research tools or technologies. Maybe you don't have access to a diary study platform or a tool that can help with qualitative data analysis. Also, reliance on digital platforms for collaboration, you know, with teams spread across the world, just like participants, having and knowing how to use the right platforms and technologies becomes more important than ever.

Erin May [00:14:41]:
Fantastic. So, to review, it sounds like the four categories of constraints that you typically will find, and I imagine they manifest differently into different degrees and different kinds of companies, right? You've got your kind of tech, operational process, sorts of things. You've got your information, knowledge, access to information and knowledge. I'm thinking about bureaucracy, I'm thinking about, but that could happen anywhere. Money, budget, obviously something we all think about when we think about constraints and time. Time and money, two of the biggest, right? What do they say? You can have it on time or under buddy pick too. What is it? Right. So time, money, information and tech and process.

Erin May [00:15:23]:
So let's dig into more of them and how you've seen those play out and working around those constraints.

Auzita Irani [00:15:29]:
So I'll just go through them one by one and we can talk more about active strategies or ways that you can deal with them. So for temporal or deadline constraints, I think the most common thing I've seen is the product or design team coming to research and saying, hey, we need to make a decision about this in three weeks. Do we have any research or can you set up some research? And while you can set up an accelerated research project on an ad hoc basis, sort of depending on how often this happens, I've actually found that having a rolling or rapid research program at either the team or the level has been really useful in mitigating this. So these questions, they're typically tactical in nature. They can be quickly answered by a more general participant group, and so it's easier to plan for this upfront. Having a more continuous research program also allows you to take in more of these requests and position yourself as a strong collaborator, as an active partner to these functions, without having to set up very dedicated or specialized research studies for the smaller or tactical projects. I think outside of this, staying close with program and product managers to have a very clear sense of the upcoming timelines and priorities just allows you to plan ahead and make educated guesses about the kinds of questions that the team is going to have with planning ahead. I used to write up queries to find very specific groups of users that were typically used, or the questions that product managers would typically have so that I could recruit them faster instead of spending time trying to find the right tables and get the right sets of access or permissions when I would ultimately need it.

Auzita Irani [00:17:04]:
I'll share a very quick story about my time working on Facebook Marketplace, where we were working on a new feature and the designs would change rapidly daily, and I mean daily. So we set up a rapid research program that allowed us to run research every single day for two weeks because we rotated the researchers on the team that were conducting the research, had each researcher run sessions for one day, and then, you know, hand off to the next researcher, and designers would drop in questions, the relevant assets, into a specialized folder we created for this one day ahead of the sessions. And then there was a designated lab where all of these rapid research sessions would happen so that anyone on the team could pop in view, participate, and if we didn't have enough questions from the team, we would use the time and expertise that we had about the product to answer questions about the general experience and sort of consolidate those to help inform more of the strategic work that we were doing. I think if you don't have the resources or the time to run a program like this, prioritization is your best friend. So really think about what are the most critical questions to answer. If I can't get the exact right participants in time, what's my next best option? What tool can I use to reduce the amount of time that I'm spending on this? And when you've had a chance to catch your breath, ask the most important question, which is, how do I make sure that I get more of heads up next time? Is there a conversation that I need to have with the PM? Is there a need to build a stronger partnership with my designer? How do you make sure that you don't have to deal with this constraint as often, maybe just like less frequently?

Erin May [00:18:46]:
You mentioned a couple of times, really just building those relationships with collaborators and stakeholders, which I imagine for all of us, when you're pressed for time, it's like, oh, I don't have time to build these, really, but it's so important, right, that we're all in this together. And what's it going to cost you to give me a little more lead time? Maybe nothing. Maybe it's just knowing that this is really going to help someone help you if you can give some lead time and they don't know. If they don't know. Right. So we can work better with you with whatever constraints we've got, with a little more lead time, and not being shy about sharing that information, probably go a long way.

Auzita Irani [00:19:23]:
Absolutely. I've heard a lot of researchers describe our work as coming in waves. So periods are very intense work, and then there's periods where things settle down a little bit, they're calmer. And I would say instead of worrying about that calm time or the lull, you know, in your very rapid environment, maybe use that as an opportunity to start building those relationships or strengthening those relationships that you have, because that's going to serve you well when that next influx of demand or questions come in and you're in a place where you're able to approach it with more planning or preparation.

Erin May [00:19:58]:
Another thing maybe you could do with that time is build some of these programs and processes, assuming you have people and budget to do them. For example, the continuous research. Right. I'm just imagining the person who would really benefit from having that set up but doesn't have the time to set it up. So maybe that's something that can fit in that downtime as well. Right? Setting up some of these systems to help your future self.

Auzita Irani [00:20:21]:
Yeah, I would say spend time thinking about what are some of those important questions that might come up? How can you help set up the tables or the queries that you would need to find the right participant groups that you think is going to come next. Right. Maybe you want to brush up your diary study skills, make sure that you've stayed up to date with the latest unmoderated research platforms so that you can very quickly set up a study when you need to. So use that time to upskill build relationships and then also plan ahead.

Erin May [00:20:54]:
Awesome. All right, so those are some time management tips dealing with the constraint of time, financial constraints, money constraints.

Auzita Irani [00:21:01]:
Oh, it's a fun one, right. I think the big one here is getting the right participants to talk to you and to do it for cheap or ideally free. Right. When it's a consumer focused product, your pool of users is much larger and usually much easier to access than if it's business focused. With business focus, there's also the additional constraint of ensuring that they're in the right role. So you don't want to talk to a salesperson. If you're trying to understand the product development process, you're also not usually incentivizing the individual, which makes it harder. So for this one, there's two things we did at Sprig.

Auzita Irani [00:21:38]:
One was to be very proactive. So we'd use Sprig to ask people that use the product or came to our website to fill out a very brief recruitment survey so that we could start to build out a participant pool of our users. And the second was to use personalized incentives so we would work with a customer success team to think through options of what would be the most appealing to get the users that we wanted to talk to. Maybe it was additional support, maybe it was a free study. It could also be accessed to be beta testers for a new feature for consumer companies. You can be so much more creative. Set up at a coffee shop and give people a $10 gift card in exchange for walking through a prototype with you, find online communities of people that are already interested in the product and go to them for feedback. Think about ways that you can insert yourself into a place or sort of be around the people that are using that product or experience that you're interested in and find ways to engage with them.

Auzita Irani [00:22:35]:
It doesn't always have to be pulling a list of users and then sending them an email to participate in your research study.

Erin May [00:22:42]:
This is interesting. It's not something that I've necessarily thought about explicitly. So when you think about your research budget and the different line items, is it that the incentives for participants ends up being one of the largest ones, or is it that it's one where you have an opportunity to maybe cut back and still get good results? Right, because your technology costs are maybe fixed or you've already committed to those. How do you think about how you can sort of play with that budget of incentives and still get good results?

Auzita Irani [00:23:12]:
Yeah, I think technology cost still stays the biggest budget item. And then I would say the second one is probably if you're using vendor to conduct part of your study, for example. Right. Incentives aren't as big unless you're doing quite a few research studies. And then also if you're looking for experts in a field, that's typically going to cost you a lot more than if you're trying to talk to a consumer, for example. So I think that incentive cost varies considerably depending on the use case. I think the real cost, though, is finding the right people to talk to, and that's what matters the most.

Erin May [00:23:49]:
Right.

Auzita Irani [00:23:49]:
And so I think ultimately it comes down to, do you have the sort of access you need to the people that are important for the kinds of projects that you're doing? And if not, how do you make sure that you're setting up ways for you to get access to them, whether it's creatively or whether you just budget more in terms of incentives than you do for technology?

Erin May [00:24:10]:
Sure. Yeah. And there's another one where building those relationships and trying to get ahead of things can really save you both time and money, where you've built some of those queries for finding the right people, you've built the relationships with CS to find the right people. And kind of thought about my future self is going to need these hard to find people. How can I make it faster, cheaper, easier for me to be able to do that?

Auzita Irani [00:24:32]:
Yeah. Also, I think in a consumer environment, right. Thinking about what are some of those spaces, online spaces where these people are accessible for us, it was sometimes Facebook groups. Right. Here's the set of people that engage or are interested in the topic that we would be interested in. How do we make sure that we can connect with them? What would that look like? How do we set up more creative incentives so that they're interested in talking to us and then also thinking about physical spaces? Where can I go to find sort of the people that might be interested in the experiences we're building and give us good feedback?

Erin May [00:25:07]:
Yep, absolutely. Yeah. We were talking with Nadina about healthcare a week or so ago, and she was saying, you know, it can be so hard to find that first really niche person with like a niche, you know, health condition, but then they know somebody, you know, and then you get the snowball going. So, you know, once you find that kind of first person, then it can really take off from there.

Auzita Irani [00:25:27]:
Yeah, I think for very niche use cases, snowball recruitment is wonderful, right? You find one person and then you ask them to connect you to the next person. And you just keep doing that until you have that pool of people. And then once you build that and build relationships with them, maybe there are people you can go back to over and over again. Maybe you can build an expert panel or a community or an advisory board with the people that you're engaging with because, you know, they have such specialized knowledge or interest. And that's one way that you can get that recruitment going.

Erin May [00:25:59]:
Great. Awkward interruption. This episode of Awkward Silences, like every episode of Awkward Silences, is brought to you by user interviews.

Carol Guest [00:26:08]:
We know that finding participants for research is hard. User interviews is the fastest way to recruit targeted, high quality participants for any kind of research. We're not a testing platform. Instead, we're fully focused on making sure you can get just in time insights for your product development, business strategy, marketing and more.

Erin May [00:26:25]:
Go to userinterviews.com awkward to get your first three participants free. Okay, so we've talked a little bit about time, talked a little bit about money. Let's talk about information constraints.

Auzita Irani [00:26:37]:
Yeah, so this is a new one for me, but I've actually been using AI tools to help me quickly search for or synthesize past research, whether it's internal or external, to really quickly get up to speed on a specific area or topic. One of the fastest ways to get information you need outside of that is to build and cultivate relationships. So not just with your product team, but with other researchers. Know what each person works on. Stay updated on the collective research. Build strong, trusting relationships so that people are looping you in proactively and make sure that you're a visible and active part of the product team. So this means attending those design reviews, going to product sinks, ensuring that research is put into whatever artifact is being used to communicate with other stakeholders. So, you know, for example, at Airbnb, we put our research findings where the design is, where the conversation is happening, and just generally ensuring that you're up to date with what's currently happening and what's coming next.

Erin May [00:27:35]:
Yeah, and that'll help too, with these are all interrelated pieces. Right. That should help with time and budget, too. You're not redoing research where insights already exist, and you're getting insights for free just by paying attention and being plugged into the organization and the sort of neural network of insights that are happening. Yeah, and it's great to hear you're starting to use AI to good effect as well.

Auzita Irani [00:27:58]:
Oh, yeah. I would actually say doing literature reviews is such an underrated way of having impact because exactly like you said, you don't need to be recreating the wheel every single time. Right. Maybe there's a study that was adjacent to the topic that you're interested in or your team is interested in. Maybe there are findings from other studies that you can sort of pull together into one synthesized understanding that would help the product team make a decision, use the resources, the information that already exists, instead of constantly trying to do primary research, because that's also going to help you save time.

Erin May [00:28:32]:
Yeah, and there's no extra points for doing it the hard way. Right. Particularly when resources are limited. You got to get the insights, you.

Auzita Irani [00:28:41]:
Care about them, the answers, they don't necessarily care about how you got them, helping them make that decision, whether it's through research you've conducted yourself or whether it's through research five other researchers have done. Ultimately, it's helping the product move in the right direction, and that's what matters.

Erin May [00:28:58]:
Great. Let's talk about tech and sort of operational constraints you might come up against.

Auzita Irani [00:29:03]:
Oh, yes. So at smaller companies, you don't have the luxury of purchasing multiple different research tools. Right. You have to take stock of what the most used methods are. What are the most repeated questions? What is the highest priority need? Right. Is it recruitment or is it serving, or is it incentives? And use that to come up with that prioritized list of the capabilities, the tools that you need access to must have. So if you're able to manage your incentives manually or you have a small pool of participants and you can leverage customer support to tap into and focus on getting a tool that allows you to complete more of the other critical parts of the research process. Having a very clear evaluation framework and recommendation will help you advocate for the right tool or the platform with the budget holder or your team leader.

Auzita Irani [00:29:50]:
If you have the ability to get access to multiple tools, think about how you might use innovative technologies or get access and learn about tools that might be helpful in the future. So plan ahead. For example, eye tracking software or a more specialized, unmoderated testing tool. Consistently keeping your research toolkit updated is going to allow you to quickly pull out the right method and the right platform and help you get to those insights quicker.

Erin May [00:30:16]:
Great. So again, planning ahead and having a framework for your tech evaluations can be a way to make good choices with limited budgets and limited technology to save yourself some time and get some good results. Awesome. All right, so that's a really thorough, I think it's a great framework people can think about, too. And, you know, when, when things can get overwhelming, it's always great to have a framework. So we've got time, we've got money, we've got information, we've got technology, and you can kind of go through these lists and think about where can I find some leverage, where can I optimize some of these things to make my day to day more impactful and kind of work better for me and my orgasm with whatever limitations they certainly must have. Yeah. Awesome.

Erin May [00:31:01]:
Now, so those are some tips from your experience and how to work with doing more with less. Where have you seen like what's failure mode? Where, where can things kind of go off the rails? Or where can good intentions of trying to do more with less not work out so well for people?

Auzita Irani [00:31:17]:
Yeah, there's a couple things, and a lot of them are things that I've experienced in the process of doing this. And I think the first one, and we talked about this at the very beginning of the conversation, it's just overextending yourself and that's going to lead to burnout. I think you have to be very self aware and very realistic about what you can accomplish. Prioritization is extremely important. I cannot underscore this enough to make sure that you're setting yourself up for failure by exhausting yourself or delivering poor quality work. And when I say prioritize, I dont mean do the three most important tasks. I mean pick one or at most two of the most important tasks and learn to let that third one go. Prioritization isnt about doing everything thats critical.

Auzita Irani [00:32:05]:
Its about making those hard decisions about amongst these critical things, what is the most important one to get done? The other key thing I want to highlight is delegation. Trying to control every piece constantly is doing nothing but burdening you with work that you don't have to take on yourself. Can you delegate some parts of your study to a vendor? Can you have someone else help with the recruitment and scheduling? Can you set up collaboration with another researcher and carve out pieces of the research project in a way that allows you both to move in parallel and then bring those insights together at the end? I think the second one is having a very short term focus. So if you're constantly only prioritizing short term wins or needs and not giving yourself that time and space to think more strategically, you're really just kicking the can down the road and that's going to hinder progress in the future. Incremental improvements are great, but what if your team is marching in the completely wrong direction? And I think that's where a balanced roadmap becomes really crucial. So consistently tracking and evaluating whether you're getting both tactical as well as strategic projects on the roadmap and prioritizing them, are you executing on both is really important.

Erin May [00:33:20]:
Yeah. I love how you describe prioritization because obviously productivity has been much discussed and written about, but I still think there's this idea of, I have five things, what's the right order to do them in? But one of the best life hacks is to get rid of four and five, just take them off the list entirely. And obviously easier said than done. You know, we're talking, there's a lot of overachievers in tech and research, right. And just wanting to say yes to everything, whatever the reason might be. But I think there's an inclination there to, you know, try to do everything and just sequence it in the right order. But I think that's one of, one of the best things you can probably do for yourself is just say no, no to that right now. So I love that tip.

Auzita Irani [00:34:03]:
And I think that there is always a good reason to say yes. Right? You want to be a good partner, you want to make sure that research has visibility, you want to make sure that research is included, that you're providing the insights and information that your team needs to make good decisions. And so I think the motivations are always good, but the trade off that you're making with that is, are you able to do the best quality work? Are you able to prioritize yourself? Are you able to keep a long term focus? And I think it's important to evaluate all of these things holistically rather than constantly trying to be that really good research partner and saying yes to everything you're asked for.

Erin May [00:34:45]:
Yeah. And I love your point about the short term focus as well, because again, I do think when resources are constrained, the focus on the short term is kind of where you go and wanting to show impact right away and just focus on quick wins. And what can I get done now? And it can be easier said than done to focus on the long term in that environment. But I think your approach makes a lot of sense of just making sure your roadmap has some balance and it's, again, never going to be perfectly balanced, but making sure some percentage of your time is dedicated to that long term. And what that percentage is, is going to vary, but it's got to be more than zero, right?

Auzita Irani [00:35:21]:
Yes. And I think the key is balance. You do want to execute on those short term projects, collect those quick wins, because that's what's helping you build those trusting relationships with your partners. Right. So it's not like tactical work or short term wins are not important or shouldn't be prioritized. It's how do you prioritize that and also think about the future and set yourself up for success when it comes to more of those strategic questions.

Erin May [00:35:49]:
Yeah. Okay. All right. How else do things go wrong and how do we not do that stuff? Yeah.

Auzita Irani [00:35:55]:
Yeah. I would say not getting enough feedback, you're not asking enough questions, or you're working in a silo, or actually worse, you're ignoring feedback from your stakeholders, and that's going to result in misaligned priorities. So if your stakeholders are coming to you, and this is related to what we were just talking about, if they're coming to you and saying, hey, we need to make this really critical decision and we need to do it quickly, and you tell them, actually, we have this more foundational research project that we're doing and prioritizing at the moment, so we cannot help with that. You're not really listening to your stakeholders. You're not really empathizing with them and trying to understand, you know, what their perspective is or what the need of the moment is. And so I would say be open, be willing to change, be willing to adapt the priorities and shift things around, to be a good partner, to take in that feedback, not just from other researchers or your manager or your product team, even your users. Can you take in feedback? Are you able to adapt and change so that you're taking in all of these new pieces of information that you're constantly getting. I would say keep open lines of communication with all of these different groups and actively seek input and incorporate feedback.

Auzita Irani [00:37:13]:
And I would say call it out. You know, people are giving you time to share feedback and giving you information that's helping you do a better job. Acknowledge that. Thank them for it. I think that that's often overlooked, and it's actually, again, a very critical part of creating those good, trusting relationships with your partners.

Erin May [00:37:31]:
Yeah. Yeah. There's a theme here, right. That's coming, which is your natural inclination. And a lot of these budget time information constrained environments might not be the right thing to do. You might be inclined. One might be inclined. I can't speak for others.

Erin May [00:37:49]:
To not seek feedback when you're in a rush, it's like, who is the time for that? Right. It's sort of similar to back before people were folding research into their product development work. I don't have time for research. I don't have time for insight. No, you're going to waste time in the long run, even in the short run, by not taking that little bit of time to get feedback as you go, so that you know that the work that you're doing is going to be impactful, is going to build those relationships with stakeholders that you're going to need to be successful.

Auzita Irani [00:38:21]:
Absolutely. Yeah. And I think this actually dovetails really nicely into the last point I'll make here, which is, don't be resistant to change. Just because you've done something one way in the past doesn't mean that you have to continue to do it that way forever. And, yes, it's easier because you know what to expect, but is it really the most efficient? So I'll give you an example from my past, which is I used to use Quicktime to create video clips to support research findings. And I'll be honest, it was a horrible and tedious process. I have spent so many hours trying to clip the video the exact right way and add captions and, you know, stitch everything together. And only after another researcher introduced me to descript that I realized, you know, I was spending so much time on something that I really shouldn't have been doing.

Auzita Irani [00:39:07]:
I think similarly with transcripts as another example. I used to be so meticulous about transcribing interviews. I had to get the ands and the buts and the, you know, and just make sure I had everything laid out very clearly. But as the velocity of the interviews that I was doing increased, I had to really sit back and ask myself, is this the best way to do it. And I looked for alternatives, and that's when I started using, you know, automated transcription services like Rev to create a first pass transcription. That's good enough for me to start getting the insights.

Erin May [00:39:39]:
Yeah, no, I think that's great. We get into our rets, and again, I don't have the time to rethink how I do things. I've got my workflows, but there's so much technology happening so fast. I think the AI assisted transcription not only has become such a thing, even in my time working at user interviews, but has come such a long way in terms of the quality and the speed of it. And so find some leverage. Let technology work for you, and it's a good way to connect with others, too. What are your workflows? What are you using? It's fun to kind of geek out on that stuff and get, get some advice from other folks, too.

Auzita Irani [00:40:12]:
Yeah, absolutely. It's such a fun topic of conversation with other researchers. Right. It's like, what is a new tool that you've used? What is something that saved you time in the last week? What is sort of a very repetitive process that you've been able to automate? And I think it's a good way to connect with the research community and just continue to uplevel ourselves sort of collectively.

Erin May [00:40:33]:
Great. So we've talked about how it can go wrong and things to avoid. What are the counter tips to those? How do we keep things moving in a positive direction?

Auzita Irani [00:40:43]:
I think be honest, right? Be honest with yourself, be honest with your team. Talk about what's working, what's not working. If the problem isn't defined and acknowledged, you're not going to be able to change it. I've had to have multiple hard conversations with PM's asking that they do a better job at communicating timelines in a way that allows for research to be integrated into the process. But I think similarly, I would say ask for help. More often than not, people are willing to pitch in and help, but you need to be okay with asking for it. I've had times where I've taken on way more than I should have and more than I could reasonably handle. And I've asked other researchers to step in and help me with specific parts of a project or just doing more of those tasks that support the research process, like scheduling or analysis.

Auzita Irani [00:41:29]:
And I think it's also a good way to, again, build relationships, collaborate, learn about new tools, work with new researchers, and it's just a good way to connect. I think the last one, I'd say is practice. The more you practice saying no and making hard or difficult prioritization calls, the easier it's going to get. But if you're too worried or too nervous to do that, you're never going to get to a place where you're comfortable doing it on a regular basis.

Erin May [00:41:59]:
Yeah, great tip. And there's lots written on how to say no. You can kind of. Most of it isn't just say no and walk away, say not now, or really understand why it's being asked for. And maybe there's an alternative or something you're already doing that could support or lots of tactics, but the upshot is find a polite enough way to maintain those relationships you've worked so hard to build. But ultimately you're saying, not now, at least.

Auzita Irani [00:42:28]:
Yeah, I think with all of these things, communication is important. You need to be able to put forward why you are saying what you're saying, be able to communicate alternatives, be able to really do it in a way that's diplomatic and doesn't alienate people or make them feel like what they're asking for is not important. Again, the more you do it, the better you get at it.

Erin May [00:42:49]:
Yeah. Awesome. All right, well, so this is a very topical conversation. I do think just about everyone listening is thinking about this, doing more with less. Again, in very different contexts, different roles, different sizes of teams, different sizes of companies. So speaking of topical things, I think we're all also thinking about the future.

Auzita Irani [00:43:09]:
A lot.

Erin May [00:43:10]:
A lot's happened in the last couple of years. What's top of mind for you in terms of what do you see happening in the next year or two in this research space?

Auzita Irani [00:43:19]:
I love this question. I think there's a couple. I don't think any of them are wildly controversial, but I'll let someone other than me judge that. I think the first one is just the shift to remote work during COVID really accelerated the adoption of virtual research methodologies like remote usability testing or remote interviews. And even as the world returns to some semblance of normality, I don't think that the preference and usage of remote research is going to drop. It offers much greater accessibility and flexibility, not just for us as researchers, but also for our participants. You're able to connect with people in remote areas, in different geographies and different time zones. And going back to my earlier point about agility, the time that it takes to set up and conduct remote research is significantly lower than the time that it takes to set up an infield or a lab.

Auzita Irani [00:44:12]:
Study. I want to be very clear though, I don't think that this completely replaces in person research, but rather it should be seen as an effective augmentation or a starting point that allows you to really hone in on what research should absolutely have to happen in person. Great.

Erin May [00:44:29]:
Yeah, I think we're a fully remote company, always have been. We saw something. About 30% of the research that we supported was in person pre COVID, that dropped to 0% pretty much overnight, and we are seeing it come back, you know, in person is happening again, but nowhere near the levels it was before. So tons of benefits. Recruiting is a huge one. You can talk to people all over the world.

Auzita Irani [00:44:52]:
Yeah. And you get different perspectives. Right. And I think that that's always valuable.

Erin May [00:44:56]:
Yeah.

Auzita Irani [00:44:57]:
I think the second one is just the continued rise of AI and machine learning. I talked about this a little bit earlier, but I want to reiterate, I think there's two aspects to this. We need to, one, understand the technology and be able to adapt research methodologies and thinking to influence the creation of these AI tools and processes. Companies across the board are thinking about how do we utilize AI? And research can help by prioritizing the right investments and ensuring that we're doing it in a responsible way. I think two, we need to understand how to leverage AI to help us do more with less. I gave a couple examples with automated transcription, for example. But AI has the ability to automate repetitive tasks to analyze large datasets, help you write queries to find the right participants, clean up your survey data, or even find relevant prior research to inform your hypotheses or support new ideas. So I think as researchers it's incredibly critical for us to spend time really understanding the technology.

Auzita Irani [00:45:59]:
And part of that is just playing around with some of the incredibly advanced AI tools that are available to us today. Like I mentioned, I've used it to synthesize existing research reports in a specific space I'm trying to onboard to learn about. I've used it to clean up discussion guides. I've also used it to write recruiting emails for participants and personalize them without having to spend too much time on it. The more we play around with the technology, the more ideas we're going to have around how we can be more effective and influence the creation of new features and experiences. And this is ultimately going to help us focus on the most important work that we do as researchers, which is influencing and impacting the product. Roadmap.

Erin May [00:46:39]:
Fantastic. Yeah. AI, obviously I think about what is it a year ago, a little more than a year ago when Chat GBT really started to take off and it was one of those hard to tell is this going to be the moment where AI was really born and takes off, or is this a flash in the pan hype cycle? We'll see. And I think certainly AI is here to stay. And what ultimately it looks like and what use cases really are amazing and take hold, and what other ones really are just gimmicky is, I would say jury's still out on that, but people really are starting to find real use cases for it to benefit their workflow, which is awesome. And it sounds like you certainly are as well.

Auzita Irani [00:47:21]:
Yeah, I definitely spend a lot of my time thinking about how can AI help us as researchers? How does it minimize sort of those repetitive tasks that we do on a very regular basis. And then, like you said, I think AI for a very long time was this like very far away, futuristic vision, but no one really knew how it would directly apply to our work or how it would integrate into our daily lives. And I think that's starting to become more and more apparent now.

Erin May [00:47:48]:
Yeah, yeah, same. Exciting. It'll be fun to listen to all these podcasts way back from 2024 and ten years when this has just developed so much, and it'll all seem very quaint, I'm sure. What else, anything else you're excited about in the future? Things going to happen?

Auzita Irani [00:48:05]:
Yes. I think it would be a mess on my part not to acknowledge the shifts that we're seeing in the job market. So teams and companies are not growing at the pace that they used to. I think now more than ever there's this emphasis on really demonstrating and being able to effectively communicate the impact that you're having on the business. Unlike other roles within the product team, researchers don't use direct KPI's or okrs that are tangibly tied to product outputs. Right. We're not creating artifacts or designs, and there's no output in the actual product that can directly speak to the influence that we're having. So collaboration and communication, it just becomes even more important because you have to do a better job at getting other disciplines on board and really work together to make sure that research insights are landing.

Auzita Irani [00:48:55]:
I think the days of doing the research and hoping that the insights get used in shrugging and moving on to a different project or a different stakeholder if they aren't, are gone. We need to really double down on streamlining the research process, putting more of an emphasis on impact. And that means starting, like I said, with prioritizing the right projects, meeting our stakeholders where they're at. And yes, sometimes that means taking on not as interesting tactical research projects and then tailoring our insights to different functions and needs, and ultimately following through on ensuring that these insights have a clear impact on the features and experiences that are being invested in tracking those and using that to start conversation with stakeholders and getting them to acknowledge that the research has had an impact on the way and the direction and thinking of the product.

Erin May [00:49:44]:
Yeah, obviously we're all talking about impact a lot too, and this very much fits in with the doing more, with less conversation, and with not necessarily seeing huge growth in researcher headcount in the immediate term, but the ability to do more with AI and the ability to do more with people who do research, taking on some of that workload of doing the research. And we talked about how sometimes you have to think long term, not just short term for the benefit of the long term, but sometimes the best thing for the long term is doing some of those quick, tactical hits. So it's a really, you got to be practical about what's going to make an impact, I think is a key there, too.

Auzita Irani [00:50:23]:
Absolutely.

Erin May [00:50:24]:
All right. Anything else in the last. Yeah, yeah.

Auzita Irani [00:50:27]:
The last thing I'll add is just that as the boundaries between physical and digital spaces blur with things like AR technologies, UX researchers will need to adopt an even more holistic approach that considers the broader context in which user experiences occur. I recently worked on a project with a researcher on my team where we used eye tracking during an infield research project to really understand how users were navigating the back and forth between the tasks on their phone and then the physical space in which they were completing them. I think learning to leverage new methods and technologies that's going to help us better understand and solve for these kinds of interactions is going to be critical.

Erin May [00:51:05]:
Yeah, definitely agree, though. This has been such a fun, insightful, useful conversation. We're just gonna. If you have another minute or two, we'll just close with a quick, rapid fire. So what is your favorite research question or method? If you have to pick one, okay.

Auzita Irani [00:51:22]:
It has to be co creation. It combines two of my absolute favorite things, collaboration and innovation. So you're really bringing together these diverse perspectives, you know, not just from your users, but also your stakeholders, and really pushing on finding creative solutions and not being, you know, boxed in by what we've predetermined as right or possible. I also really love that it cultivates a sense of ownership and buy in from our participants and stakeholders, which ultimately leads to more impact and user centric solutions.

Erin May [00:51:50]:
Love it. Co creation all right, a few resources that have been useful to you that you would recommend to others.

Auzita Irani [00:51:57]:
I'll share a couple, I think right now, with AI being the hottest subject in the tech world, I found myself going back to Google Spare, which is the people plus AI research guidebook and tools pretty frequently. I really love that it's a multidisciplinary team that's really bringing together research design frameworks, case studies, that's promoting responsible AI development and showcases how research and design play such an important role in that. I'll also recommend the book design products. People love how great designers create successful products. I'm usually recommending it to non designers or researchers because it walks through that product creation process and really emphasizes how critical understanding your users is.

Erin May [00:52:36]:
Wonderful.

Auzita Irani [00:52:37]:
I have one last one that I'll add. Okay, so at UX, which is the user interviews conference last year, I gave a talk on scaling yourself while avoiding burnout, and I think that that's very relevant to everything that we've discussed today. It just really touches on that topic of how do you do more with less. And so I'd recommend checking it out and let me know if there's anything you would add to it.

Erin May [00:52:58]:
Oh, wonderful. And we will link that in the show notes as well as all of the resources you mentioned. And speaking of letting you know if folks have other tips, how should they do that? How can they find you?

Auzita Irani [00:53:10]:
My LinkedIn is Azita Irani. I'm fairly responsive on there, I think, so if you have thoughts or questions, I'm really more than happy to chat. I love connecting with other researchers and I found it incredibly important to have a community that you can reach out to and think through challenges. So I'd love to continue fostering that.

Erin May [00:53:27]:
Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for joining us today. This has been super inspiring and useful. I'm sure people will get a lot out of it. So thanks so much.

Auzita Irani [00:53:35]:
Thank you.

Erin May [00:53:36]:
All right, thanks for listening to awkward silences brought to you by user interviews theme music by Fragile Gang hi there, awkward silences Listener thanks for listening. If you like what you heard, we always appreciate a rating or review on your podcast app of choice.

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