Lucy Denton - A Stakeholders Point of View on Engaging in Research

Researchers often struggle to engage stakeholders in research. As someone who has been a stakeholder myself, I also want to be engaged in the research so I can use it as an input to make design decisions. If both parties have this common goal, why is stakeholder engagement such a challenge? In this presentation I'll share a stakeholders point of view of how to make research outputs impactful.

Transcript

1. A stakeholder’s point of view on engaging in research Lucy Denton, Product Design Lead, Dovetail @lucinda_denton @hidovetail
2. Researchers struggle to engage stakeholders
3. Researcher “I find it really frustrating when people aren’t engaged in the research. Either they just don’t care that it’s happening or they don’t want to observe or they don’t care about the findings.” Researcher “As a researcher, you’re doing research for other people, you’re not just doing it for yourself. I spend so much time thinking about how to make research engaging… it’s always on my mind, so it’s frustrating when people don’t seem to care.”
4. Story time…
5. Management Researchers Stakeholders
6. Pulling apart the problem
7. •Boring and time consuming •Don’t encourage action •Overwhelming •Research becomes lost in reports Reports suck for everyone
8. A stakeholder’s POV of engaging in research
9. Understand the perspectives & priorities of stakeholders
10. Decision makers Informed Designers Product management Engineers Head of Product CEO, CTO Head of Design Sales
11. Build partnerships
12. Involve decision makers in your process
13. planning ❌ " # $ % recruiting execution analysis reporting follow up Sharon, Tomer. It's Our Research, 2012 (p.103)
14. Involve stakeholders in your process Planning •Collaborate with decision makers •Identify knowledge gaps •Researcher drives the study
15. Involve stakeholders in your process Recruitment •Define participant criteria together •Select participants together
16. Involve stakeholders in your process Execution •Decisions makers must have significant and engaged face time with participants •Decision makers should attend more than one session
17. •Observe all sessions in person •Observe all sessions remotely •Ask some follow up questions •Slack questions •Note taking •Ran some interviews •Debrief with researcher and other observers Involving stakeholders in the execution phase
18. Involve stakeholders in your process Analysis •Affinity mapping, tagging, spreadsheets •Post-session debrief
19. Involve stakeholders in your process Reporting •Atomic research •Invest in your research repository •Research is pull rather than push •Decision makers help create or review •Decision makers can back you up
20. Involving difficult stakeholders
21. Help close the loop
22. Educate stakeholders
23. •Understand the perspectives & priorities of stakeholders •Build strong partnerships •Involve decision makers in every part of the research process •Bring skeptical stakeholders along to get their buy-in •Get involved in next steps and help close the loop •Educate decision makers on how to run their own research Engaging stakeholders in research
24. Thank you! Lucy Denton, Product Design Lead, Dovetail @lucinda_denton @hidovetail
25. Try Dovetail free for 60 days! https://dvtl.link/dr2021trial