Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

How to Empower Your Designers to Do Good Research – And Why You Want To
Gold
Friday, June 10, 2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Share the love for this talk
How to Empower Your Designers to Do Good Research – And Why You Want To
Speakers: Prayag Narula
Link:

Summary

Designers are the driving force in today’s user research landscape. In this workshop, Prayag Narula, CEO & Co-Founder of Marvin, will discuss how good design is a competitive advantage that enhances the customer experience when you embed research into your process. Learn how design teams can use the tools and methodologies of trained researchers so the whole company benefits from a collaborative and repeatable approach to research.

Key Insights

  • Design and research need each other and produce better outcomes when working closely together.

  • Good designers and researchers want to collaborate, but need organizational culture and practical systems to make it effective.

  • Many organizations fit into a maturity model from isolated design or research to research-driven product strategy.

  • There are not enough researchers to do all research; researchers must teach and enable designers and PMs to conduct research themselves.

  • Research teams should shift from reactive service providers to proactive culture builders, leading strategic projects ahead of the product roadmap.

  • Designers need support scaffolding from research teams such as recruitment, research plans, interview guides, and feedback loops.

  • Bias in qualitative research cannot be eliminated but should be acknowledged openly and questioned collaboratively.

  • Designers can and should do foundational research and usability testing; roles between design and research overlap more than commonly assumed.

  • Researchers as note takers and facilitators in design-led research sessions help provide feedback and embed collaboration.

  • Timely, incremental sharing of research insights (e.g. quotes, video clips) is more effective than large final reports.

Notable Quotes

"Design research—they need each other. They are much, much better together."

"Good designers understand you can’t design what you don’t understand."

"Researchers want designers to help them with the research because there aren’t enough researchers in the world."

"Your primary function as a research team is to build a culture of research, not just react to project requests."

"The best teams I know are a quarter ahead of the product roadmap, seeking out impactful strategic research projects themselves."

"You should not be struggling with best practices, recruitment, or documentation when conducting your own research as a designer."

"Unbiased qualitative research does not exist. The best we can do is acknowledge and minimize biases."

"Bring your research team as note takers and facilitators—they make excellent collaborators and help build feedback loops."

"Share your learning quickly and often—don’t wait for big reports. Your deliverable as a designer doing research is the design itself."

"There is overlap between design and research when it comes to different types of research; it’s not a strict divide."

Ask the Rosenbot
Chris Geison
Theme 1 Intro
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Nicole Aleong
What UX research can learn from other research practices [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
2023 • Advancing Research Community
Greg Nudelman
Designing Conversational Interfaces
2019 • Enterprise Community
Luca Rager
Empowering Gaming at Scale: How Xbox Builds Powerful, Automated, and Distributed Design Systems with Sketch
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Prayag Narula
HCI 2.0: Humanity Deserves the Attention that UX Research has to Offer
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Anupama Dhareshwar
From blueprint to bot: Designing resilient AI-powered services
2025 • Advancing Service Design 2025
Gold
Meaghan Waters
Lack of Product Thinking will Doom Your Legacy Modernization
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Sohit Karol
Designing Delightful Listening Experiences: Mixed Methods Research in the Age of Machine Learning
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Nick Lewis
Designing and building low-carbon websites independently
2025 • Climate UX Interest Group
Stephen Pollard
Closing Keynote: Getting giants to dance - what can we learn from designing large and complex public infrastructure?
2017 • DesignOps Summit 2017
Gold
Surya Vanka
Unleashing Swarm Creativity to Solve Enterprise Challenges
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Aleksandra Korczynska
Survey Tools
2026 • Advancing Research 2026
Conference
Edgar Anzaldua Moreno
Using Research to Determine Unique Value Proposition
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Louis Rosenfeld
GenAI for UXers: A Rosenbot Demo and Discussion
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Gold
Miles Orkin
Creativity and Culture
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Alla Weinberg
People Are Sick of Change: Psychological Safety is the Cure
2023 • DesignOps Community

More Videos

Erin Hauber

"Defining teams by shared value — what’s desirable, compliant, feasible, and viable — broke down silos effectively."

Erin Hauber

Design is Not the Frosting on the Scaled Agile Layer Cake

October 24, 2019

Uday Gajendar

"Jenny and Will will take a foundational look at wielding data visualization and product analytics effectively."

Uday Gajendar

Theme Four Intro

June 6, 2023

Sam Proulx

"Confidence is a higher burden in retail because people are giving real money; inaccessible flows cause quick abandonment."

Sam Proulx

Online Shopping: Designing an Accessible Experience

June 7, 2023

Jeff Ephraim Bander

"Only 38% of people actually looked at the company review information, even though it was crucial."

Jeff Ephraim Bander Ariane Rahn Philipp Reiter

Eye Tracking Gamechanger: Why Smartphone Eye Tracking will Revolutionize Your UX Research

March 11, 2022

Susan Simon-Daniels

"You must remember this. A kiss is just a kiss. A sigh is just a sigh."

Susan Simon-Daniels

War Stories LIVE! Susan Simon-Daniels

March 30, 2020

Robin Beers

"A research report is essentially the coffin where insights go to die."

Robin Beers Nalini Kotamraju Andy Warr

Panel: Excellence in Communicating Insights

March 26, 2024

Jemma Ahmed

"I would prefer not to reduce human understanding to shallow sound bites."

Jemma Ahmed

Theme 1 Intro

March 10, 2026

Christopher Geison

"We need to turn our skills toward observing the culture of the companies we’re in."

Christopher Geison

Theme 1 Intro

March 25, 2024

Bianca Jefferson

"Hope is not a strategy, and mandates don’t build culture. What works is scaffolding."

Bianca Jefferson

From Sprints to Systems: Operationalizing Continuous Discovery Through DesignOps

September 10, 2025