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.

Research After UX
Gold
Monday, March 25, 2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Share the love for this talk
Research After UX
Speakers: Nalini Kotamraju
Link:

Summary

Moving the research function out from UX can transform how insights influence product-making in an organization. In this talk, Nalini explains how and why she led this shift for her team at Salesforce, as well as the move’s effect on their work and impact. Nalini will also share lessons learned in the process - “the how to’s” and the “absolutely how not to’s” - that may inspire and guide leaders and individual contributors alike.

Key Insights

  • Decoupling research from UX can provide researchers with more agency to frame broader business problems beyond design.

  • Identity work is a fundamental challenge when moving research out of UX, requiring careful leadership attention.

  • Playing the long game through persistent business case building and internal socialization is essential for organizational change.

  • Research teams positioned alongside product management, engineering, and data science gain higher visibility and influence.

  • Measuring research impact becomes more complex but broader, shifting from simple metrics like study counts to influence and strategic involvement.

  • Research operations functions are crucial infrastructure that enable scalable, efficient research beyond UX.

  • Control over budget and headcount advocacy improves significantly when research reports outside UX.

  • COVID-19 amplified issues around identity and belonging for team members during organizational transitions.

  • In B2B companies like Salesforce, much product decision-making happens before UX, necessitating research involvement earlier in the lifecycle.

  • Providing reassurance and support for new research skills helps ease team anxieties during structural changes.

Notable Quotes

"What happens if research does not report into UX? What might happen if we uncouple research from UX?"

"We made this move in January 2020 — our research and insights team moved out of UX but stayed within product organizations."

"Conscious uncoupling is about identity — how one thinks of oneself defines oneself and how others define you."

"I believed we could do more — more for the company, customers, stakeholders, and ourselves if we had more agency."

"Our research practice was perceived largely as design testers, empathy vehicles, and policing functions — a narrow, reactive role."

"After the move, our work had more impact, more visibility, and we're present across the entire product life cycle."

"Research operations is the spine of any successful research and insights group."

"For the first time, I was able to advocate for funding directly for the research function at high executive levels."

"I underestimated how much identity our team tied to UX and how scary that loss felt to many of them."

"Our shift is structural, not because of personalities — it was needed to influence earlier, more business-centric decisions."

Ask the Rosenbot
Daniel Korczynski
From generic to contextual research insights with AI | Live Q&A
2026 • Advancing Research 2026
Conference
Feleesha Sterling
Building a Rapid Research Program
2023 • Enterprise Community
Simon Wardley
Maps and Topographical Intelligence
2019 • Enterprise Community
Rittika Basu
Age and Interfaces: Equipping Older Adults with Technological Tools
2023 • Advancing Research Community
Gabriela Barneva
Operationalizing Inclusive Design in Service Design
2025 • Advancing Service Design 2025
Gold
Erin May
Distributed, Democratized, Decentralized: Finding a Research Model to Support Your Org
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Matt Duignan
HITS, Microsoft's internal human insight system: From research library to living body of knowledge
2019 • Advancing Research Community
Jim Kalbach
Jazz Improvisation as a Model for Team Collaboration
2019 • Enterprise Experience 2019
Gold
Ian Johnson
Latent Scope: Finding structure in unstructured data
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold
Angy Peterson
More Than Technology: Personalized Public Sector Experiences
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Dave Malouf
The Past, Present, and Future of DesignOps: a 2-part DesignOps Community Call (Part 1)
2022 • DesignOps Community
Erin Weigel
Failure Friday #6: 90% of Everything I Do is Either Broken or Pointless
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Gina Mendolia
Therapists, Coaches, and Grandmas: Techniques for Service Design in Complex Systems
2024 • Advancing Service Design 2024
Gold
Shreya Dhawan
Making service tangible: the fastest path to higher performance
2025 • Advancing Service Design 2025
Gold
John Cutler
The Alignment Trap
2023 • Design in Product 2023
Gold
Uday Gajendar
Day 1 Welcome
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold

More Videos

Lada Gorlenko

"Operations tends to be something companies only think about when they are scaling rapidly, but investing early is essential."

Lada Gorlenko Sharbani Dhar Sébastien Malo Rob Mitzel Ivana Ng Michal Anne Rogondino

Theme 1: Discussion

January 8, 2024

Dr. Jamika D. Burge

"At the current rate, it will be 130 years before we reach global gender equality in political power."

Dr. Jamika D. Burge Mansi Gupta

Advancing the Inclusion of Womxn in Research Practices

September 15, 2022

Chloe Amos-Edkins

"Understanding culture means looking at a spectrum from global trends down to intimate communities."

Chloe Amos-Edkins

A Cultural Approach: Research in the Context of Glocalisation

March 27, 2023

Robin Beers

"Great research doesn’t automatically have the intended impact because people may not want their minds changed."

Robin Beers

Beyond Insights: Researchers as Organizational Change Catalysts

March 25, 2024

Courtney Kaplan

"Those first hires establish the tone of the entire design ops discipline moving forward."

Courtney Kaplan

Taking it to the next level: Career paths in DesignOps

November 8, 2018

Indi Young

"Correlation is not causation, and a lot of people in technology don’t understand that."

Indi Young

Paying Better Attention to the Problem with Indi Young

December 12, 2019

Russ Unger

"You aren’t your user, but we are users of this system, so we know what we need to make it better."

Russ Unger

Getting Out from Under Everyone: How to Escape the Paralysis of Getting Started

June 8, 2016

Josina Vink

"Knowing where you are and where you stand is the start of addressing colonialism in embodied practice."

Josina Vink

Navigating the pitfalls of systems thinking in service design

December 4, 2024

Kritika Yadav

"What if we actively taught the model how to break down and analyze queries like a skilled salesperson would?"

Kritika Yadav

Optimizing AI Conversations: A Case Study on Personalized Shopping Assistance Frameworks

June 10, 2025