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
   

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2. Researchers
   struggle to
   engage
   stakeholders
   

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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.”
   

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4. Story time…
   

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5. Management
   Researchers
   Stakeholders
   

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6. Pulling apart
   the problem
   

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7. •Boring and time consuming
   •Don’t encourage action
   •Overwhelming
   •Research becomes lost in reports
   Reports suck for everyone
   

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8. A stakeholder’s
   POV of
   engaging in
   research
   

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9. Understand the
   perspectives &
   priorities of
   stakeholders
   

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10. Decision makers Informed
    Designers
    Product management
    Engineers
    Head of Product
    CEO, CTO
    Head of Design
    Sales
    

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11. Build
    partnerships
    

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12. Involve decision
    makers in your
    process
    

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13. planning
    ❌
    "
    #
    $
    %
    recruiting
    execution
    analysis
    reporting
    follow
    up
    Sharon, Tomer. It's Our Research, 2012 (p.103)
    

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14. Involve stakeholders in your process
    Planning
    •Collaborate with decision makers
    •Identify knowledge gaps
    •Researcher drives the study
    

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15. Involve stakeholders in your process
    Recruitment
    •Define participant criteria together
    •Select participants together
    

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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
    

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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
    

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18. Involve stakeholders in your process
    Analysis
    •Affinity mapping, tagging, spreadsheets
    •Post-session debrief
    

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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
    

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20. Involving
    difficult
    stakeholders
    

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21. Help close the
    loop
    

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22. Educate
    stakeholders
    

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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
    

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24. Thank you!
    Lucy Denton, Product Design Lead, Dovetail
    @lucinda_denton @hidovetail
    

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25. Try Dovetail free for 60 days!
    https://dvtl.link/dr2021trial
    

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