Transforming Strategic Research Capacity through Democratization
Summary
What do you do when you have 8x more designers than user researchers in an organization? Learn how we empowered designers to conduct local-level evaluative research, gave researchers more time to work on global, strategic research, and transformed our user research delivery practice. We will share what key ingredients made our transformation possible and what pitfalls to avoid when bringing research democratization to your own organization.
Key Insights
-
•
Fidelity had up to 15 designers per user researcher, causing major research capacity challenges.
-
•
Research delivery time averaged 14 days, prompting teams to sometimes skip research entirely.
-
•
85% of Fidelity’s research projects were evaluative usability studies, limiting strategic impact.
-
•
Democratizing research by training designers in a single method—remote, unmoderated usability studies—enabled faster and more distributed research.
-
•
The democratization program combined education with tool access and ongoing researcher support to maintain quality.
-
•
Post-democratization, research delivery time dropped from 14 days to 3 days, saving 11 days on average.
-
•
Empowering designers to conduct research allowed researchers to focus on more strategic projects, increasing strategic research from 15% to 56%.
-
•
Guardrails like research buddies, presentation feedback, and repository checkpoints ensured research validity despite democratization.
-
•
Clear communication and a shared vision among researchers, designers, and product managers were critical for buy-in and success.
-
•
Key pitfalls included running pilots during holidays, overcrowded classes, lack of breaks between cohorts, and underestimating human administrative costs for scaling.
Notable Quotes
"We had one researcher for every 10 designers, sometimes even one for every 15."
"It was taking an average of 14 days from intake to delivery for most of our research projects."
"Some teams were going rogue or skipping research altogether."
"Our program changed trains people to create high quality, unbiased user research."
"Remote, unmoderated usability studies give designers feedback in less than a day."
"After this program, we saw a shift from only 15% strategic research to 56%."
"Designers would often say, I didn’t realize research was this hard or what you go through is traumatic."
"Don’t schedule your pilot during the holidays — our first pilot had one graduate because it went through December."
"By limiting our classes to six or seven students, we could give better quality feedback."
"Democratization is not about researchers losing jobs. It’s about increasing learning velocity and impact."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"This day is focused on me, my job and my specific day-to-day challenges, not on some invisible finish line or senior title."
Bria AlexanderTheme Two Intro
October 3, 2023
"People were taking vacation days just to homeschool or take care of a loved one."
Ariba JahanTeam Resiliency Through a Pandemic
January 8, 2024
"Being aware of the systemic lens is a big first step that changes how teams operate and design."
Cornelius RachieruHandling Complexity: Framing a Scale of Design
June 9, 2021
"We are evolving our design system to incorporate accessibility guidelines consistently as a foundational practice."
Megan Clegg Michael Haggerty-Villa Alexis MorinSpace for Everyone: Reframing Accessibility Through a Wider Lens
June 10, 2021
"Starting a new job with no map felt lost; so I built a new map as my BYO orientation."
Saara Kamppari-MillerCartography for Design Communities
September 10, 2025
"The US digital service ecosystem has grown remarkably, showing we’re not alone in this journey."
Kara KaneTheme One Intro
November 16, 2022
"Studio Thick’s name refers to thick value — qualitative research with more depth than simple messages."
Natalia RadywylCo-Designing New Power in Australia's Public Sector
November 16, 2022
"In India, a cow crossing the road can disrupt Uber pickups, showing the need to design with local realities in mind."
Nancy DouyonWe'll Figure That Out in the Next Launch: Enterprise Tech's Nobility Complex
June 15, 2018
"We invented the ‘prompt deep dive’ technique to spend lots of time on one prompt to deeply understand it."
Peter Van DijckBuilding the Rosenbot
June 4, 2024
