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Bridge Building across Research Disciplines
Summary
Despite all the recent focus on getting the different research disciplines to collaborate, it’s hard enough to simply get them to talk. In this Advancing Research community call, we’ve assembled an impressive group of cross-disciplinary researchers to discuss the challenges of aligning goals, language, and insight across research practices: Jamika Burge, Jem Ahmed, and Chris Geison. Collectively, they represent a variety of research perspectives, ranging from HCI and market research to UX research and data science.
Key Insights
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Cross-functional research requires embracing diverse research disciplines and methodologies with a growth mindset to foster collaboration.
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Organizational maturity to collaborate often matters more than whether research teams are centralized or distributed.
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Clear, shared language and defined research insights facilitate alignment and business impact.
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Framing research as a collaborative problem-solving effort reduces fear and territoriality among stakeholders.
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Mixed-methods research often fails without explicit recognition of differing epistemologies between qualitative and quantitative approaches.
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Creating shared objectives like R-OKRs centered on user behavior unites different research disciplines effectively.
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Research impact is often best observed culturally, through integration into decision-making, rather than through direct measurement.
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Pragmatic sharing of incomplete research results can fuel ongoing cross-team collaboration and iterative discovery.
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Dedicated roles like analytics engineers in insights teams improve data accessibility and insight generation.
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Democratizing research requires balancing rigor with accessibility, alongside educating stakeholders to understand and use research insights.
Notable Quotes
"I think the more that I’ve kind of been in this liminal space, the more I come to the conclusion that it’s a very human journey that people need to go on."
"If you smush all of these things together, you get the perfect whole."
"Framing research as a way for us to work collaboratively and solve problems from its department, not just the UX or design team."
"User research is unfortunately largely evaluative. It’s hard to understand how we contribute to problem solving."
"In some ways the signal of insight maturity is accepting that research needs more than two days and sometimes months to deliver."
"There has to be some connection between our results and how our partners see the value in it."
"The success in insights is when you become viral — when the C-suite claims the insight as their own."
"The storytelling is what ultimately supports actual change more than just data."
"Collaboration is great but we must support teams moving toward a goal, not just theorizing endlessly."
"We’re in the business of solving problems. It really takes a village to do it the right way for the right people at the right time."
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