Placebo Vitamins, Not Painkillers
I'd say I've had 4 grownup jobs.
Looking back at them now, a UX Researcher should've been the title of one of my colleagues.
Across all 4 jobs, none were.
Here's why:
Across all 4 jobs, I've been part of a team responsible for managing and improving a digital experience.
And we did. We did improve it. Sometimes we measured it. A lot of times we believed it.
However, the improvements we shipped were often based on HIPPOs rather than actual customer problems and insights.
Not always, but often.
HIPPO = Highest Paid Person Opinion
They're placebo vitamins. Not painkillers.
Deductive Reasoning = Feature Overload
HIPPOs are ones that often stem from valid experience and strategic insight.
But equally as often, the opinions are based on quick observations from competitors, talks with like-minded executives, or just funny ideas.
Many things are copied due to survivorship bias. The reason a competitor does something is rarely the case they're alive - it might as well be the other way around - their alive even though they did it.
I've been a part of more than a dozen big feature launches that moved zero metrics and delighted just as few customers.
Nevertheless, the teams were motivated during the projects because the support from the executives was always there. No one got fired. There were no consequences for launching useless features, as long as they were pushed from the top.
It's easy to assume that the highest-paid person is the one with the best customer knowledge and, thus, one who can come up with the best features to build.
But often, the highest-paid person is the furthest away from talking to customers.
Deductive reasoning causes feature overload.
Get The Outside-In Perspective
At my 2 latest jobs, one of the first things I did was to reach out to and interview customers. Something valuable that I learned the hard way at a failed food-sharing startup I co-founded years back.
I even wrote it down as a to-do several weeks before getting my current job and as a tip for other e-commerce managers to do during their onboarding.
Talking to customers gave me an outside-in perspective that few people inside the company had. It immediately gave me an edge in discussions about how we could improve the overall experience.
In my current role, we're collecting thousands of pieces of feedback every day. Every goddamn day.
Sometimes that feedback leads to direct insights. Opportunities, bugs, or things we should change immediately.
But a lot of times, the feedback is missing context. Context we don't have and likely never will. That's where the UX Researcher comes into the picture.
Hiring A UX Research Intern For An Ecommerce Company
My hope is that I can onboard someone that's as passionate about improving the user experience based on user insights as I am.
A person eager to learn. Existing experience or extensive research knowledge is not required. This is a place where you can come a long way with moderate communication skills and an open mind.
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