Summary
Lots of effort in research is lost after it’s published. The problem is not the value of the insights but that the findings are fragmented across wikis, research repositories, and random folders in the cloud. Hear our expert panel share how they have designed research repositories that have succeeded at scale. Our all-star panelists will spend 30 minutes sharing their insights, followed by a Q&A session in Slack! You’ll hear from: Matt Duigan, Product Manager at Microsoft Andrew Michael, Founder at Avrio Research Repository Dr. Emily DiLeo, Archivist and Repository Designer
Key Insights
-
•
Repositories must be tailored to the organization's current research program through upfront internal research.
-
•
Effective research repositories require early stakeholder buy-in and the formation of active user communities.
-
•
Knowledge management behaviors like consistent naming, organizing, and access policies are critical for repository success.
-
•
A true single source of truth for research rarely exists; insights are dispersed across many apps and platforms.
-
•
Integrating qualitative and quantitative data in a repository amplifies insight impact and drives better decision-making.
-
•
Repositories need distribution strategies that embed research outputs where users already work, not just centralized storage.
-
•
Human cognitive biases favor immediate rewards, making it difficult to motivate researchers to contribute reusable insights.
-
•
Incentives and rewards must be designed to encourage deferred impact contributions and recognize long-term value creation.
-
•
Content quality management roles, such as content PMs, are essential to maintain tagging, updating, and freshness of repository data.
-
•
Setting validity periods and tagging content as evergreen or transient helps manage repository content longevity effectively.
Notable Quotes
"Your repository design needs to be guided by people and process, and internal research should be your first step."
"Everyone should know where everything is all the time — that’s the archivist’s motto for knowledge management."
"Research repositories aren’t single sources of truth anymore; data and insights live in hundreds of different apps across companies."
"It’s not enough to build a repository and expect people to come; you need a distribution strategy to put research where users are."
"Bringing qualitative and quantitative insights together creates more impactful decision-making across the organization."
"The hyperbolic discounting bias means researchers prefer immediate gratification over deferred rewards from reusable knowledge."
"You have to push against 200,000 years of evolution to encourage researchers to contribute to long-term repositories."
"To maintain tagging and freshness, you need content PMs with expertise, supported by robust content management processes."
"Tagging content as evergreen or setting validity periods helps automate cleaning and maintaining the repository over time."
"Building incentives and celebrating deferred impact rewards researchers and drives behavior towards reusable knowledge creation."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"I try as a product manager to involve them in those UX practices as often as possible."
Brad Peters Anne MamaghaniShort Take #1: UX/Product Lessons from Your Industry Peers
December 6, 2022
"Leadership knew design transformation would be hard, which is why my role was created to help guide that change."
Lona MooreScaling Design Beyond Designers
June 11, 2021
"Typing prompts is not the UX of the future. Integration into the interactive context where you work is better."
Josh Clark Veronika KindredSentient Design, AI, and the Radically Adaptive Experience (1st of 3 seminars)
January 15, 2025
"We’re starting to see the role of the central researcher shift more towards coaching than just doing research themselves."
Erin May Roberta Dombrowski Laura Oxenfeld Brooke HintonDistributed, Democratized, Decentralized: Finding a Research Model to Support Your Org
March 10, 2022
"When I gave the model my list of interview questions, it actually made for a really bizarre participant experience because the model just went down the line of the different questions."
Tara TresselInvestigating qualitative depth of AI-moderated interviews
March 10, 2026
"Continuous adaptation is key; you're adapting to the system as much as adopting it."
Charles Lee Jennie YipBuilding a New Home for the Atlassian Design System
October 22, 2020
"Equipped with the right tools, we can truly meet students where they are."
Kristin SkinnerFive Years of DesignOps
September 29, 2021
"Hoard and reuse your jewels. Those proven frameworks can amplify every hour of your work."
Megan BlockerGetting to the “So What?”: How Management Consulting Practices Can Transform Your Approach to Research
March 26, 2024
"Designers hope to support the public in exercising agency and redistribute hegemonic power in public services."
Shanti Mathew Natalie Sims Natalia RadywylCivic Design at Scale: Introducing the Public Policy Layer Cake
December 9, 2021
