Research Ops 2.0, Episode 3: Taking a Platform Approach to ResearchOps
If you know anything about ResearchOps, you will know that the past ten years has been a whirlwind. ResearchOps has transformed from an obscure Silicon Valley specialty into a vibrant global profession. My name is Kate Tauzy, and this is ResearchOps two point zero, a five part audio documentary all about the future of ResearchOps. In this series, you'll hear the voices of ChaCha Club members, senior research leaders, and the smart minds behind user interviews. The only solution you'll need to recruit high quality participants for any kind of research.
Kate:This is episode three, a platform approach to ResearchOps. In this episode, you'll learn what taking a platform approach to ResearchOps even means, how to build the skills to become a research platform designer, and why platform design is a pivotal part of the future of ResearchOps. One of the things that often surprises people about ResearchOps professionals is just how interesting and diverse our backgrounds are. I've heard so many amazing career stories. Literally nothing surprises me.
Kate:Casey Garland, who is a major advocate for open research platforms, is no different when it comes to a quirky backstory.
Casey:I'm Casey Garland. I work in AI productivity at IBM. I actually studied art and design. And after school, I was teaching, making art. I worked for a bunch of random people and projects, one of which was called the School for Poetic Computation.
Casey:So it was an art school for programmers and a programming school for artists in the same room. And I've always been at that intersection of art, technology, research. And during that time, I was working as a freelancer, helping people make websites. And I sort of stumbled through my network into working with a lot of researchers who were looking for how to tell the story of their work to a public audience.
Kate:The School for Poetic Computation is still a thing. And as it says on their website, they explore the intersections of code, art, hardware, and theory, focusing especially on artistic intervention, including code poetry. It sounds fascinating.
Casey:The art school that I went to, I was really involved in the school as a system, and I ended up teaching about the school as a system. And I feel like that line of thinking is exactly what I still feel like I'm studying and engaging in. It's really about how to make change and how to more deeply understand this large and complex organization.
Kate:Casey's story is such a great kickoff because his journey from art and design school to arch research platform builder and designer at IBM exemplifies a key evolution. The research ops profession is fast evolving from full service enablement and firefighting to innovative designers and orchestrators of sophisticated research systems. But perhaps you're still wondering, what is a research platform?
Casey:The best definition that I've heard of a platform team is that a platform team builds the building blocks that help other teams move faster and work better. In an engineering organization, you have a platform team that builds the underlying infrastructure, the APIs, the best practices that everything else is built on, and that brings it all together. And if you don't have that platform, you have a mess of things that are not connected and don't work well together.
Kate:Here's Garrett Sukada, the head of Customer Connect UX Research Operations at Intuit.
Garett:When I say platform, really what I'm thinking about is designing an ecosystem built on best in class tools. And what that does for me is it still allows me to leverage best in class tools, whether it's participant management or knowledge management. But I'm able to build up from there. And I think the value that I've been able to see in this is you're no longer constrained by just the capabilities of the tools that you're using, but you can actually centralize a lot of that experience, meaning that my data is no longer just in one tool or two tools. I actually sit on the customer data now.
Kate:The Merriam Webster dictionary says that a platform in the context of computing is an operating system. So a research platform is a system that enables research to operate in a certain way, just like an engine has many parts like a fan belt, spark plugs, and pistons all working together in rhythm. So a research platform might have multiple parts too. A unique combination of SaaS tools, APIs, integrations, resources, and homegrown tools all knitted together to enable a particular way of working or operating. And when you're a platform team, you're often thinking about how systems sit within systems or platforms sit within platforms.
Kate:But what does a platform do or look like? Garrett's about to share a perfect example of this, a tool he's built as part of his wider participant recruitment platform that supports data privacy and ethics compliance. And in true platform style, he starts by explaining the pain points.
Garett:The first thing that we built out with our platform is our validation tool because we wanted to get people into the platform. We knew that they had data, run it through this list or this scrub, let it scrub for consent to ensure that we can talk to these people, scrub for sanctions, and ensure that no one is over $600 Once that data has been cleaned and scrubbed, go ahead and push it into the recruiting platform. You can go ahead and start recruiting immediately.
Kate:If you've worked in research operations or research for any length of time, you'll know that it's not unusual for people who do research, like PMs, to nurture their own little black book of potential research participants, a personal list that's often stored locally in a spreadsheet. But this makes it impossible to make sure that sanctions, etcetera, are looked after. The obvious solution is to give everyone access to a recruitment platform like use interviews. But PMs often still want to recruit from their own lists as well. I speak from firsthand experience.
Kate:This is where Garrett's tool, which is one part of a wider recruitment platform, is so smart.
Garett:When you talk to customers, you have to think about customer consents. There's things like sanctions, right? There's even thinking about what are the compensation thresholds that we can have so they're not, you know, being, we're not having to issue a ten ninety nine for them in The US because they participated so many times.
Kate:It's worth taking a moment to unpack the technical bits. In The US, IRS ten ninety nine forms are a group of tax forms that are triggered by payments above $600 a person or business that typically isn't your employer. If research participants earn more than $600 during the year by taking part in research, this can become an administrative pain point for the participant and your organization's accounting team. Similar rules apply in other countries. And if you're wondering what sanctions are, I asked Garrett to clarify.
Garett:Sanctions is a non negotiable in that there are just certain people and certain countries that you cannot contact. And there's no give to this. It's very much a law that we are accountable for and that we have to ensure this is followed 100%. If I asked a team or a company to go build me that tool, they're gonna probably say, Garrett, that's not really within our scope to go build a tool like that. But when you have a platform, you can actually build out more of these experiences.
Garett:And that's exactly what we did.
Kate:Many recruitment platforms will monitor these kinds of details, but that requires that everyone recruits only from the list in that tool, which is rarely the reality. So this is a capability that Garrett needed to build to meet Intuit's precise needs, free up the compliant use of customer data, enable people to keep moving, and all of it integrates with their participant recruitment capabilities.
Garett:If I asked a team or a company to go build me that tool, they're gonna probably say, Garrett, that's not really within our scope to go build a tool like that. But when you have a platform, you can actually build out more of these experiences, and that's exactly what we did. But in doing so, we're actually able to support not just our requesters, but we're keeping our customers in mind. You know, we're working with our accounting team. We're working with legal team, but it's it's a it's a win for everyone.
Garett:And something like that wouldn't normally be seen in just, you know, tool integration.
Kate:So that's one example of a platform approach to research. You're not just buying an all in one research tool or a suite of best in class tools and administrating it all. You're building an ecosystem on top of best in class research tools, like use interviews for participant recruitment, and then you're building integrations, processes, and perhaps in house tools, like Garrett's Scrubber, to meet the exact needs of your organization. Here's another example of a platform approach to research ops. Casey shared a story about their insights platform at IBM.
Kate:Again, you'll hear the words integration, reuse, systems, and scaled up impact.
Casey:So When I first arrived, the team that I joined, ResearchOps, had already created a research repository. And it was really a registry that helped answer the question, who is working on what right now? And over time, we've been able to evolve the research library, that we're tracking at the insight level. We're integrating every insight into product planning, so we can track the impact and the delivery, and how research translates into actual product development. And we're also starting to make the research available much more with an eye on reuse.
Casey:So traditionally, you might do a research project with one team, but we're all using the same design system. So the insights that you get can actually benefit thousands of people in a large company and hundreds of products. But researchers are moving from one project to the other. They're really oftentimes focused on the here and now, and what's next, and how to solve an immediate problem for the team. So I think the platform approach in action is that we're able to build in this contribution mindset, where everything that researchers are doing through the systems that we're building is creating an impact long into the future and far beyond their immediate team.
Casey:Everyone is able to find that research, reuse it, and you may never meet those people, but it has this much larger impact.
Kate:Both Garrett and Casey s examples point to something incredibly important. A platform approach can significantly boost the impact that research operations research can have, which is the very point of research operations. This is where you can truly scale the value of research. Unfortunately, many research ops teams aren't working in this way, or aren't being given the space to work in this way, So they're not seeing this kind of extrapolated impact. But in a ResearchOps two point zero world, that will change.
Kate:Here's Casey to drive the point home.
Casey:I think that researchers tried to achieve the kind of network effects that a research library can create, it would take all day because you would have to be out there hawking your insights to different people. And what the platform approach really enables is for your work to take on a life of its own and for others to find those insights and use them on their own. So it's possible that you don't need a tool or a system, but the trade off is really being able to scale it at a massive scale, like in a 3,000 person design organization or in a 300,000 person company. There just isn't time in the day to be repeating your insights in every meeting that would benefit from them.
Kate:At this point, I reckon you are sold on the idea of a research platform. But you might be thinking all of this sounds like a huge technical investment and something only a big team with a big, big budget can achieve. But you can build a platform with really simple tools. Casey shared more about the technical simplicity of their insights platform at IBM.
Casey:At the core, the platform is and can be extremely simple. It really is just a shared spreadsheet of research studies. And the biggest evolution has been adding a second spreadsheet, which is really just a list of insights. So you can really think of it as just those two tables that are shared across hundreds of people. And the place where it gets a little more complex, but also really next level, is integration between tools.
Casey:So we've integrated insights into our product planning tool, which means that they're connected automatically. And in the past, you might have to have a meeting between a researcher and a product manager, and literally look at a list of epics and a list of insights, and ask, you know, what's the status of this one? What's the status of this issue? What a researcher can do now is put their insights into this system, they flow into the product planning workspace, and they can actually get an update proactively when product management is taking action on the insights and something shifts. So the goal and the impact has really been to take the manual accounting out of research impact and allow researchers to spend time on insights, not on status updates.
Casey:So that's probably the most complex thing that we do. But it really isn't technologically, you know, very complex. And I think anybody can start just with a spreadsheet.
Kate:To echo Casey, the focus of research platforms isn't fancy tech. It's about driving for efficiencies and impact through smart systems design. And taking a platform approach isn't just about integrating tools. It's also about fostering an integration between people and their business goals, as well as those of research.
Garett:When we built our validation tool, we worked closely with the consent and sanctions teams because we understood that consent is a non negotiable. Sanctions is a non negotiable. And even when we worked with our accounts payable team to think about the IRS thresholds, that was a significant pain point as well. And the reason why I mentioned this is I'm not just building for myself, but I'm actually able to get the buy in and support for me to go back to leadership and say, hey, I'm not just solving my problems. I'm not just an enablement team.
Garett:But the work that I do actually ladders up to bigger input goals from the company and actually raises where you are within the company because you're seen as not just this functional team that provides research recruiting that may help a team like learn something, but you're actually solving business problems. You're solving Intuit problems. What does that mean? It means that everyone coming through my system 100% compliant. When you think about the edge cases that people are doing themselves, each one of those infractions might be millions of dollars if it's a sanction issue.
Garett:Like, I have saved the company a lot of money by being compliant. And it's our job to go out there and let people know that it's not just about the research, But it's thinking about like the bigger overarching opportunities that we have in a company. And these are things that you don't often see because you're so focused firefighting or just thinking about the recruiting, is that there's other opportunities outside of this that actually raises your value and brings you up the food chain.
Kate:Introducing Karina Cook, the director for design research strategy and operations at Penn Interactive. Karina's collaborative viewpoint echoes Casey and Garrett's points about breaking down the boundaries between research and the rest of the organization.
Karina:Working in different organizations too many times, I have seen duplicative efforts, silos, shared pain points, or just lack of visibility and collaboration across teams to what we all do and what's our end goal. And with all of these, I feel like there are underleveraged opportunities to share resources, share tools, share skill sets, share insights, and also save costs all for the same purpose of supporting the business and growing the business. As an org, you know, we all have the same end but it's thinking about how can we work together to solve this. I like the the the the thinking of, like, everything takes a village and use your village. You know, a lot of people, when you're raising your kids, you rely on your village to help you.
Karina:For whatever your goal is in an organization, use your village. Use the other teams that have similar skills skill sets or completely opposite skill sets to fill your gaps to actually get this done.
Kate:So platforms are about systems design and bringing the right people together. But it's also about how you operate as a research operations team. Many research ops professionals complain that it's difficult to communicate the value they deliver beyond helping people to do research, say by doing full service participant recruitment. It can feel pretty vulnerable to let go of a full service operating model, as Garrett's about to share. But if you're going to become a platform player rather than an enablement team, this is the shift you have to make.
Garett:What I realized is that in order to get where you want to go, it's more than just buying access to a tool and thinking about the integration. I mentioned earlier that that is absolutely one platform, but there's different layers once you get to this next level. When we had a full service offering, there's no alignment to the strategy of the company. You're just seen as this enablement team that may or may not have value. As I've built the platform that Intuit uses to drive research, what I've realized is there's partnerships that actually bring a lot of value to what I do beyond just enabling teams.
Garett:And I always like to say that it can't just be a win for my team. As we think about, okay, like, this next level, like, it has to be a win win.
Kate:The users must win. The business must win. And you as a team must win too.
Garett:It was a really hard transition for the team, I would say. And I would say that my team is extremely resilient because we have essentially evolved from people driving the outcomes to leaning into the tools and the platform that's going to enable scale. And to be quite honest, I never would have thought it would happen the way it did, or we would have as much adoption as we do today. And I think that's one of the things that actually prevented me from moving over to platform sooner than that. I had this this thought in the back of my head that if I wasn't the one doing the work, or my team wasn't the one doing the work, then we would have no value.
Garett:We had to essentially transition from a full service recruiting service where you would get people within three to five business days. And now the ask was, please go do it on your own. Here's a platform. And I was so scared to do this because in my head, I just could not justify why anybody would be happy going from in full service to to having to do it themselves. And they know that we know why people come to us is because they don't have time.
Kate:And Garrett's got the numbers and feedback to back up the value that their platform is now delivering, as any good platform operator should.
Garett:And what we have actually seen is, I think year to date, you know, we've recruited something like 50% more people, more participants than we would have as a full service team. And there's still a lot of learnings that I'm kind of like unpacking like every day because it's just so amazing. And what's wild about it too is the feedback that we hear from people in that this experience is fantastic. And it's so much better than what it was before. But we had to do it because it wasn't just the right thing for the company.
Garett:We weren't able to provide the scale, but it was also the right thing for my team as well. Because as a full service research recruiter that's recruiting 100% of the time, they didn't have the ability to grow and develop as individuals.
Kate:If you're in a full service enablement team and you're thinking there is no way that this is going to fly in my organization, keep listening because Garrett's story isn't unique, and I love that he shared it.
Garett:It's it's so hard because I'm like, I understand, but you have to just say I can't. And you have to be able to say no for one, and you have to be able to go in and really focus on what that opportunity is. And I think by doing that, you're actually going to see more opportunity.
Kate:Garrett's story is such a great example of why a platform approach done well is a road to significantly more impact and value delivered to the organization. And it's a whole lot more fun to deliver too. So we've covered a couple of examples of platforms and how they've paid off. But building a research platform isn't a panacea. Like most things, there are pros and cons, and there's a time and a place for everything.
Kate:Here's research leader Lexi Breits.
Lexi:There are benefits and there are costs to centralizing and integrating your tools, right? So if you become over reliant on a very small set of tools and everything depends on those, then you potentially lose negotiation power. In contracts, you become more kind of stuck in what you already have because it would be too much of a cost for yourself and for your business from a disruption perspective to change. So I do think that's a downside. Of course, bringing insights together with fewer platforms is a real benefit.
Lexi:So, you know, if you have the ability to bring together quantitative insights and qualitative insights, for example, that's a huge benefit. Rather than, you know, individuals having to go through and bring all this together, It's automated, it's centralized. That can be really helpful. But I do get nervous about over relying on a small set because, I mean, we've seen it with things like Figma, right? When there's a huge price increase and we're very dependent on a particular tool, it's really difficult for us to decide how to move forward.
Lexi:Right? Are we going to disrupt ourselves a lot, move to a new tool? Or are we going to go back and ask for more budget?
Kate:Lexi's nervousness is well placed. Building a research platform by integrating a selection of best in class tools with data pipelines, spreadsheets and homegrown tools, it comes with risks. As with all things, you need to weigh up the pros and cons, the potential risks versus the potential benefits over time. Make sure you've got the right skills on board and that you're not over engineering or over committing to your platform considering your scale.
Garett:I think really what it comes down to is you're looking at what is the right tool for the scale that you are trying to solve for. And an all in one tool will work well, but I would say it's for probably like a smaller team, a smaller company where you're able to do something like that. I think the next level above that, which I still consider a platform, is when you think about maybe what are the deficiencies in an all in one tool? What can't it do? You're kind of constrained by what the owner of that tool is willing to do for you.
Garett:So you're like, Okay, the next step is I'm going to go find the best in class tool that does participant management, and I'm going go find the best in class tool that does knowledge management, and I'm going to connect them. And I'm going say, I have a platform. And I would agree, you still have a platform. But there's also challenges with that as well in that what happens if you ever decided to move away from one of these tools, right? You just broke the integration of data between your participant management tool and your knowledge management tool.
Garett:And the reality is you're not constrained by one tool now, you're constrained by two different tools. And you may need something to happen in the knowledge management tool that just is not picked up in the participant management side. So you still have these challenges.
Kate:Let's hold up for a moment. We've been using the terms all in one and best in class tools, but without any clarification. Let's sort that out now. An all in one tool typically offers a single solution for the entire research workflow, from recruiting to moderation to insights management. A best in class tool typically focuses on being top notch in one aspect of the research workflow, like use interviews for participant recruitment.
Kate:Karina adds to the list of things to watch out for when it comes to the platform approach.
Karina:That's where I mentioned I don't think this approach is necessary for everybody and for you know, all teams. It has to do with the size of your team, the scope of your role, the visibility you have across the organization. There can be so much good in this, but also don't overstretch. Another downside is there's also people in teams who don't wanna do this approach and want to focus heads down on just their direct impact and what they need to do, and that's also fine. So you can't force this type of thinking either is something I've learned as well.
Casey:I think the biggest thing to think about in terms of platform is that when you're looking at products on the market, there are these kinds of walled gardens that will do a lot of things for you. But they often come with a pretty strong opinion about what is research, what is an insight. And research really can become trapped in these tools. I've heard this metaphor that I love, which is about a filing cabinet and a water cooler. And the risk is that research platforms become a filing cabinet, where you're just kind of dumping data.
Casey:And anytime you want to find something, you have to go through, you know, these huge impossible stacks. But I think what we're trying to build is a water cooler where insights are being discussed, they're being integrated into planning, and they're something that is taking on a life of their own. And it isn't about having the most advanced technology. I think it's about understanding the shape of the organization and how decisions get made, and then bringing research to the place that decisions are getting made.
Kate:Casey is a vocal spokesperson for the notion of open research platforms, so it is no surprise that he brought up the important topic of walled gardens. If you listened to episodes one and two of the series, you'll know that data orchestration will be a key theme for the next generation of research ops, and even this generation. The future is on our doorstep. Casey and Garrett are right to be thinking about whether the systems they invest in will help or hinder them from making the most of the incredible quantities of data that they have access to and even will have access to in the future.
Garett:I think that being able to own your own data is going to be huge in the future. And I'm already seeing significant opportunities for me to be able to leverage our own customer data in order to build out research tools. And that's something that wouldn't be possible if your data sits in a knowledge management tool or sits in participant management tool. It's just kind of in there. I think as a whole, we underutilized data.
Garett:We think of data as video artifacts that we're going to go into. We're going to transcribe it. And then we're going to say across all of these videos or across all of these transcripts, like, what is the one key thing that we can pull? We really need to start thinking about how do we really have a better idea of what our customers are saying and doing right? Like, a qualitative interview really gets down into the the whys.
Garett:It's like, you know, why are you doing something like this? It's not captured in Serbia. It's not captured in VOC. We underutilized this data. I think that there's so many things that we can do in the future to start capitalizing on its own.
Kate:Key to building a successful research platform and capitalizing on your data, which a research future proof platform can and should support, is making sure that you choose your partners well, which means working with vendors who are engineering their tool and partnerships for long term growth and flexibility. On that note, User Interviews has purposely focused on doing one thing well: participant recruitment. And through APIs and integrations, they're empowering their users to integrate the User Interviews platform into their existing workflows. Here's Basil, the co founder and CEO of User Interviews.
Basel:When I look at the way researchers do research, they are using multiple tools. They are doing different methodologies. So we wouldn't be able to serve them for all of their participant needs if we were only focused on our own tool, right? And would our tool be best in class? Would we be able to keep up with all the new methodologies that are coming?
Basel:And I think that served us well and served our clients well in a lot of ways. So I've been very intentional about that. On the flip side, you are losing some sort of seamlessness when you don't, when they're in different tools and different companies. So a big focus for us has been building integration. So we have integrations now with a lot of those testing tools so that for the, for our users or clients, they can almost it's never gonna be the same as if it was just one company, but get closer to that, right?
Basel:So you have less of the friction. It's almost as if the tools can talk in a really nice way, but we can work with anyone and not force them into specific methodologies or specific tools. And I think when you look at tech, there tends to be like cycles of like unbundling and bundling of tools in a lot of ways. I think people usually think of that unbundling and bundling as like, oh, we're going from, like, all in ones to point solutions. Think and this is stealing a little bit from the innovator's dilemma and innovator solution, but I think it's more just switching where the integration points are.
Basel:Like, so it's it's less about, oh, we're going to a ton of point solutions or we're going to all in ones. It's okay. These this company will now integrate here and then unbundle here. And I think that's what happens a lot with with kinda, like, different tech cycles. So for us, we've been, like, integrating with the testing tools.
Basel:We're integrating with the other non research tools, Salesforce, Snowflake, building out, like, an open API that people can can use with other tools. And so we're trying to be thoughtful about it.
Kate:So all of this platform thinking means that there is a need for ResearchOps professionals to develop or hire new skills. And the skills listed on career progression frameworks, if you're lucky enough to have one, are changing rapidly. So what are the things you should be learning to keep up with the times? Casey kicks us off with a primary candidate: service design.
Casey:I had a leader of my team at one point who put our entire team through a service design training. And the team was engineers, data scientists, recruiters, operations people. And I do think that every single person on the team needed that kind of approach of looking at the entire journey, the entire system. So if you are coming into operations as somebody that's just looking to get a task done or run a process, it makes me think of a very mature organization where everything has already been service designed, and you really are just operating a very mature system. Otherwise, I would say everyone needs those kinds of skills and thinking to imagine a different way of getting anything done.
Karina:Most basic are cross functional skills, but using them in a way that you have access to other teams, other leaders, other functions to meet with is always going to be beneficial. Having that systems thinking mind and approach in general, the ability to sell something, garner buy in, build partnerships, have empathy, go on your listening tour, understand what are the needs and pain points of the other teams. Do they match your needs and pain points? Is there an ability to work together on something there? And then use all that to dot connect.
Karina:Where are the opportunities? So it's looking at everything like a puzzle or like something that needs to be solved, which I think is a natural skill set for operations professionals. But sometimes using it in a different way beyond that project and thinking of that problem solving approach across an organization, I think is where it comes into play. Thinking about the strategic planning that goes into, okay, what does this system look like? What are the inputs and outputs for this system?
Karina:What is the governance model? What roles does everyone play in making sure that the system operates well? How do we set this system up for success? And so whether that system is a platform, like a tool, a process, a collaboration model, thinking about all those pieces, in my mind, is strategic and systems thinking and design because they all have to play a part in this going well. That also helps with all the next steps.
Karina:Like, what does a rollout plan look like for this? Do we have leadership buy in for the resources? Do we have the ambassadors to support the socialization and adoption of this thing that we are rolling out? All of these things play a role in how successful and manageable it will be over time, and all of that comes from thinking of it as an interconnected system. So that approach in general of using systems design strategic thinking, all lends well to something like a program, a platform, a tool being successful.
Garett:The other thing that I would say, has helped us grow very quickly as a platform team, is you have to be curious. And I think that oftentimes when I see research operations practitioners is it's always the ideas are within the lens of this is what I know. This is what we can do. These are the only tools that we have access to. And that's not the case.
Garett:You don't have to have a builder's mindset, but you have to be curious about what exists out there. And I think that AI is to be like it is a game changer when it comes to builders culture. And the things that I've been able to do in the last couple of months has been amazing in that I feel like I'm coming in as as a PM to know where I want to drive the work. But I have the AI tools to help me design the work as well as the AI tools to help engineer it. So I'm kind of like this quasi product person.
Garett:And it's been amazing. It's been absolutely amazing. And I really hope that more people kind of embrace that mindset of just because it doesn't exist today doesn't mean that you're out of luck. Like you can go out there and you can build something. You just want to have to just try it.
Kate:If you missed episode two of the series, it's all about leveraging AI for research superstardom. So make sure to catch up. The goal of this episode was to give you a great introduction to the notion of platform thinking when it comes to research. But here's one last nudge. Sometimes it's helpful to understand what something is by exploring what it is not.
Kate:I asked Casey what he thinks the opposite of a research platform is, and he had this to say.
Casey:I actually had to put this into TrackGPT. I was like, what is the opposite of a platform? And it did say, like, the opposite of a platform is a silo, which isn't necessarily what comes to mind for me. I thought it was an interesting answer. I think the opposite of a platform is going solo and kind of being like bumper cars in an organization where everyone is figuring it out for themselves.
Garett:I hope nobody takes offense to this, but it's a lack of strategy. It's a lack of a scalable strategy that's going to address a lot of the pains within a company. And when I hear that, I'm like, you're not on a level where you're thinking about scale because you said the f word, you said fire drill. You shouldn't be fighting fires in your day to day if your focus is on systems and scale. I think it's something that you want to be intentional and mindful of because that's who you're solving for, the people who are going through these fire drills.
Garett:But if you're spending too much time on fire drills, what you're really lacking is that grand vision of this is what's going to solve a significant pain for the company.
Kate:Finally, I asked Casey what the future research ops platform of his dreams looks like, and this is where he really lit up.
Casey:I've thought a lot about this one. I got really excited. I would say that the future research platform of my dreams is open source.
Kate:It
Casey:is composable, which means you can bring together different bits and pieces versus being pushed into a one size fits all approach. And I think it would be something that is really collaborative across companies and industries, because everybody that I talk to is trying to solve the same problems. And there really isn't a networked approach to building platforms or methods. It's really focused on these product teams that are bringing a pre fabricated solution to market. So I really envision this kind of open source collaboration where teams can determine what they need in the product and also work together to share methods, share ways of organizing knowledge, and all kinds of possibilities.
Casey:I would say the other thing that's really exciting is the idea of being able to own your data. Because right now, when you sign up for some of these platforms, you can't actually get your content out. And there is a lot of progress being made in this area. But it's pretty shocking that companies would build their knowledge and their research foundations on a sort of proprietary stack that, if you ever get to the point of not renewing, is just lost or scrambled. So I feel like there's a much more resilient future that could be brought to life.
Garett:Having been in this UX space for, like, thirteen or fourteen years, like, today is when I'm most excited because I feel like there's opportunity and so much potential out there, and we we don't even know yet of of what this is gonna look like. And I think that's the exciting part is being able to know that it's okay if we don't know what the future holds, but just know that we get to build that future. And that is such an exciting part about what I get to do every day is I get to go out there and I get to build for teams. And I can do it in a way where I'm not an engineer. I'm not a designer, but I'm still able to build and deliver value.
Garett:And my team is a startup, and we have a product. And our product enables teams to learn quicker. And my goal is to build the best product out there regardless of who's in the market already. And I like I said, I just love it. Like this is why I wake up.
Garett:This is what I enjoy. But the most exciting time in research operations is today because there's so much we're going to be able to do.
Kate:This is ResearchOps two point zero, a five part audio documentary all about the future of ResearchOps. And if Garrett's got it right, the future's so bright, you gotta wear shades. The next episode is all about how to build enduring research systems when there is constant change, and I think we all know what that feels like. To get this and loads of other ResearchOps goodness delivered straight to your email inbox, subscribe to the ResearchOps review. Find the link in the show notes.
Kate:This series was produced by The ChaCha Club, a members club for ResearchOps professionals. A huge thanks to User Interviews for sponsoring this series. User Interviews is the only solution you need to recruit high quality participants for any kind of research. Finally, ResearchOps two point zero was co produced with Glenn Familton, Jenna Lombardo, and Renata Fenter. I'm Kate Talsey, the founder of the ChaCha Club, a ResearchOps guru, and the author of Research That Scales.
Karina:Three, two, one. ResearchOps
Lexi:two point o, your go for launch.
Creators and Guests
