Proving UX research value in a scale-up: speaking up, uncertainty and right-sized research

Henrik Mattsson · 00:09
Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of the UX Research Rundown podcast. My name is Henrik Mattsson. I’m the CEO of Lookback and the host for this series. With me today, I have yet again… I’m very proud of this track record. We keep having amazing guests, and today is no exception. I have with me today Bretton Fosbrook. Sorry. Who is a principal product researcher at LaunchDarkly. So very happy to have you here. Welcome to the show.

Bretton Fosbrook · 00:46
Thanks so much for having me.

Henrik Mattsson · 00:48
Awesome. And per ancient tradition, we always start with the origin story of our guest. So if you would just like to tell us a little bit about how you got into this field and, yeah, let’s start there.

Bretton Fosbrook’s Origin Story

Bretton Fosbrook · 01:05
Sure. It’s actually interesting. The way that I think about my beginnings in UX research is actually after university, which was many, many, many moons ago. I worked in San Francisco for an organization that no longer really exists. It was like a subset of AmeriCorps called the Digital Arts Service Corps. And it was there that I worked in an organization called the Homeless Prenatal Program, and I ran their computer programs. And so there I worked with low and no income women, formerly homeless mothers, to teach them computers, many of them teaching them computers in Spanish.

Many of the caseworkers there were also formerly homeless mothers. So they kind of trained them up in the program, and a lot of them couldn’t use computers. And so they would go out of their way to transcribe notes in their interviews by hand, and then enter them into the computer after the fact. And I feel like for me, it was a very important piece around how people interact with technology. And that was very formative. I did that for a number of years. I moved to Silicon Valley after that for a while, and then I got a PhD.

I did a PhD in the history of technology and science and technology studies. So I studied a lot of the origins of Silicon Valley, future thinking and strategy. It’s a very weird dissertation, if you want to go there, but we don’t have to. At the end of my PhD, I left and worked at the management school in Toronto called Rotman. And after Rotman, it was kind of serendipitous. I knew that I wanted to work not in academia. I wanted to work probably in industry, maybe a think tank.

I randomly got interviewed by a company called FreshBooks and I had to do a pitch there. It was at the time of case studies, where I had like 48 hours to do a research study. And so I did a research study where I interviewed a bunch of people that I knew that own their own small businesses. And it was actually very strange, because I realized how much I loved it. So within that 48 hours, I did basically a mini research sprint, and I presented them with insights.

Some of the insights were about the relationship between accountants and business owners, and it was very well aligned with their strategy, with what they were thinking. It helped them reframe some of what they were thinking in that meeting. So it was very serendipitous. I didn’t really know what UX research was at that point, but when I went in, I was like, oh, so much of this is about understanding a strategy or a strategic approach, and then trying to bring data or insights to the fore to understand how we might do it.

So in a way, it had nothing to do with interfaces. It was very much a strategic question. And after I landed in that company, I was hooked. I know that was a little bit windy, but I feel like it really helps to understand how I came to how I think about it, and my background as a researcher.

Henrik Mattsson · 04:41
Oh, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, that’s not the most windy story I’ve heard here. This is something that’s always super interesting, and I think it’s great to, you know, same with the conversation we’re going to have about the stuff you want to talk about at Research Week later in June, I think it is. I think it’s great to just bring not a very curated narrative, but more like, hey, this was all over the place. I didn’t really realize that I was going to like this thing.

I just did it as an interview for a job, and then, okay, wow, I really fell in love with it. So that’s usually how it goes. But it can be hard to see that when you’re looking at someone else’s career. It looks so like, okay, first this happened and this, and it all looks like it was all planned out. But that’s just not how it works. So that’s super interesting. Cool. Well, thank you for that. And so, to the main topic of this season, which is UX Research Week: you’re going to be speaking.

Is it at the UXR Conf or is it on one of the special days?

Bretton Fosbrook · 05:45
It’s one of the special days. Colette Kolenda from Google is giving a curated experience. I think that we’re mostly ICs, IC researchers, talking about, in a way, I think the prompt was, what do you wish you would have known when you got started? So let’s think about, what do you wish you would have understood? And, you know, you’ve been here for a while. What does no one talk about, or what do you wish you understood in that way?

Henrik Mattsson · 06:23
Right. Oh, that’s going to be super interesting. We’re not going to give it all away now, obviously. But you can, but then you have to write an entirely different speech for that. It’s okay. No one wants the extra work.

Bretton Fosbrook · 06:37
It’s for you. You can help me brainstorm, so that we can work on some ideas together.

Henrik Mattsson · 06:43
Perfect. That sounds great. So, you told me a little bit when we were talking before. What I took away from it was basically you’re going to talk about, in your experience, how UX research can be the calm in the chaos of fast growing, rapidly changing organizations that go through all the craziness of a unicorn startup, and how you can somehow be the memory of the organization, or something like that. Did I get that right?

How researcher’s can be the memory of an organization in a fast-changing startup

Bretton Fosbrook · 07:12
Yeah. That’s one way to think about it. I mean, honestly, when I pitched this talk, it was something I was struggling with myself. I think the title we landed on was something around adapting to organizational or leadership changes in a fast paced scale up. But the other one that I had played around with was proving your value, like understanding your value while proving your value, basically. Like kind of like finding value while driving can be valuable, because I find that tension that so many researchers have, where there’s this general anxiety about the field, or how much it’s changing.

And a lot of times people are questioning their own value in that organization. And so part of it was kind of a pep talk for myself at the time, and for other researchers, to help them understand how much value they can bring to the table, how much research does have a place and does have a function to play, and trying to develop empathy for the people around. I talked about this a lot, how a lot of it is that we feel like everyone is kind of out to get research.

But I was talking about, in my triads, or when I’m working with a VP of product or a VP of engineering, trying to understand how much everyone feels anxious, how much anxiety there is in this uncertainty for everyone. And embodying that kind of mentality has really helped me not feel like a victim or that anyone is out to get me, and that sometimes we’re just not aligned on what’s important, but that we can do that collectively. I’m in a very different spot now. I don’t feel as anxious as I did when I wrote this talk.

But I just find that a lot of my friends who are in the research field are either getting laid off or are feeling very anxious, or new leaders are coming in. The value of research feels so determined by your leaders. And so if a leader doesn’t care about research, it can feel very challenging to understand how to be in that organization. Right? Because there are organizations that have a research function and there are organizations that don’t. And so, trying to puzzle through that. And we can talk about some examples if you want.

Henrik Mattsson · 09:59
Oh, yeah. No, I’d love that.

Bretton Fosbrook · 09:59
It was meandering there. I don’t know if that resonates with you, but I find for a lot of friends it resonates.

Henrik Mattsson · 10:07
Oh, I know for sure. I’ve seen this more as a stakeholder of research. I’ve seen a bit of both. I’ve seen how refreshing it can be when a researcher breaks free of that and just brings the research mindset. For me as the CEO, I just love it, because I think about so many things that I don’t know. I just need information. And when you have a researcher that just comes in, not trying to prove the worth of research or something like that, but just like, what do you need to know?

What are the unknowns that you’re thinking about right now? And then they go off and find some answers. I mean, that’s so refreshing. But I’ve also seen the flip side of that coin, where this anxiety is really getting in the way of this approach, because then, instead of actually providing value, it’s very easy… And I’ve been there myself too, as a manager or something. Instead of actually doing the thing that would provide value, you’re thinking too much about how you can show your worth, show up.

And that’s not the same thing, you know? So that’s what I came to think about when you told me that.

How researchers can demonstrate their value

Bretton Fosbrook · 11:23
Absolutely. It feels like a very common… I was trying to think of something that most researchers in the field share, but it’s not something that you can quite talk about, and to try to make an inroad, even just to say, this is an issue that we all deal with. Because even on my team, or people that I mentor, they’re like, you have it so together, you’re so confident when you go into a room. And it’s kind of a reminder to me that I have my own anxieties that I bring to the table, that I’m fumbling around constantly.

And exactly, what you just said: when you get stuck in trying to prove your value is when you can get into a horrible and horrifying loop of not being as valuable as you could be otherwise.

Henrik Mattsson · 12:14
Yeah, yeah. And it can be hard for people to decipher, whatever the word is. I know this now because of experience, right? I’ve worked with so many people, so I start seeing some of these patterns, and you can tell when people are getting in the way of themselves because of anxiety or something like that. But as you say, some people can come across as so calm. You don’t see that actually… What’s that expression with the duck? Under the water the feet are going, but it looks super calm on the surface.

So I think being able to recognize that, and try to help people to focus, is important. But tell me more about how you discovered this. Was there a moment where you figured it out? How did that happen?

How did you discover this approach?

Bretton Fosbrook · 13:15
Yeah, I honestly think it was a piece of feedback that I received. Part of what made me very successful as a researcher and in my jobs is being able to work with my product managers. I work with engineers, and especially the most research skeptical ones. I was very much able to contort myself in a way. I’m not an abrasive person. I mean, my partner might say that’s not true. She might have a different opinion.

Henrik Mattsson · 13:54
I believe you.

Bretton Fosbrook · 13:56
But in general, I tend to be a little bit soft spoken. And the way that I was able to get research through at other companies was to help the product manager… I think it was their idea, to help the product manager kind of embody this. I felt like there was always this big gap between who I was and what I believed behind closed doors, like, this product sucks. I wouldn’t go into the meeting with the CPO and be like, this product is going to bomb, I think it’s a terrible idea.

That was just never an approach that I had. It would always be trying to contort myself in a way so that I could help to say, oh, I think this is interesting, or help the product manager or the leader believe what I wanted them to say and believe. But over time, I got feedback from one of my leaders that it was a bit disingenuous, and that in a way I was selling myself short, because I was not properly inhabiting my expertise. I think that was very interesting feedback to receive.

It was like, you’re short selling yourself here. And for me, when I looked at it, I was like, at the end of the day, it wasn’t about me. It’s about the business. I want to make the right decisions for the product. Honestly, at the end of the day, if I believe we’re running afoul in the wrong way, or I believe we need to make a certain decision, I don’t believe that I have the power or authority to make that call, and someone else does. And it took a leader helping me grasp that for me to say, oh, there’s something weird here in my own thinking.

I’m being very generic so that I don’t, you know, rob any leader. We can talk about some examples if you want. But I think part of it was understanding that that was me not properly valuing myself in the organization, and that in a way, it was very successful for my career and very successful for the business, but maybe not very successful for me, if that makes sense. So, moving from that, I’ve been trying to play with how… But at the same time, I work in a very culturally Silicon Valley company.

LaunchDarkly is in San Francisco. It’s very much the world where being loud and opinionated and very strong willed is a virtue. And I struggle in some ways, because I think that I’m pretty strong willed, but I’m not abrasive. I don’t always need to be right in that way. And I also think part of it was feeling like, oh, am I a mismatch for these tech organizations? Because I love it here, but I feel I need to be that. If I’m not loud in this particular way, or, in a large meeting, I don’t just open my mouth.

I’m often taking things in. So with those pieces, I was like, oh, I imagine that what makes people good researchers doesn’t always translate into these worlds. And so maybe this is something that resonates with others. I don’t have a solution for it. It was more just like, oh, maybe I’m not alone here. On the one hand, I love working in tech. I love my job for the most part. I think these problems are interesting. And a lot of people are like, oh, this isn’t for me, and then they move elsewhere.

But for me, I’m like, okay, I am who I am. I’m pretty far cooked. My personality is not going to dramatically change. I think I’m valuable to the organization, but I also need to know that and show up in a valuable way. So I think it’s just… I don’t have any answers. And maybe that’s the joke here, that I’m just giving these talks because I don’t have the answers. And oftentimes, when I don’t have the answers, giving a talk is useful, because I find the answers.

Henrik Mattsson · 18:38
But it’s also, I mean, it’s information. As someone who is responsible for bringing the best out of everyone on the team, I mean, that’s why you’re there, right? Someone hired you to give your absolute opinion and perspective, and who you are. Bring yourself to the table. Otherwise they could have just had someone else. You know what I mean? We want people to be who they are, right? I often think about this with some people I work with, and they know this, and it’s not sensitive, but they’re very different.

They’re all very passionate about their respective roles. And it’s taken a couple of years for me to figure out how I can help everyone be in a place where they can bring themselves as they truly are, you know? And that’s how you unleash the power of your team. Otherwise you have some people that are not really there. They’re there, but their contribution isn’t really there. And for someone like me, my job is to look at a bunch of people, hear what they have to say, and then try to make a decision based on that information.

Otherwise I’m not working with all the information that I could be having. So that’s super worthwhile. And it’s interesting, what you’re saying about that. Part of what I hear you say is, well, perhaps this is related to your personality, but perhaps there is some sort of standard researcher personality type too. You’re a good listener, and you can build rapport with participants, and not impose your preconceived ideas on them about the experience they’re having. To be a good researcher, you have to be a little bit like sitting back and observing.

The researcher’s personality type

Bretton Fosbrook · 20:35
Well, I think part of it too is just having so many leadership changes. In a lot of the organizations I was in, including where I am now at LaunchDarkly, the person who hired me is gone. The whole leadership team is gone. So that’s why it’s in those moments of transitions. Because as a tech organization changes, right? A very small startup, and I haven’t been in a lot of those, is very different from a scale up. And I’ve been in a lot of the scale up to that pre IPO period, where you have to grow up in a lot of ways, and what worked for the first 500 million doesn’t work for the next, or whatnot.

And so I think that’s where researchers are actually quite adept, precisely because of what you were saying before. They’re really good at listening and taking things in. I’m pretty adaptable in how I interact with people and how I make decisions. I’m scrappy in that way. So of course researchers would actually be really great at that next phase, where you don’t need just pure executors. You don’t need pure strategic thinkers. You need people that are like, what do we need right now? Do we need to go fast?

Do we need to be very thoughtful? And so researchers are good in that spot, and we just need to recognize that. And I think part of it is being like, oh, this is a really good place for a researcher. This is a really good time to be in this transition. In a way, it’s super painful for a lot of PMs. A PM in a 50 person organization is very different from a PM at a thousand person organization.

Henrik Mattsson · 22:31
Oh, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. That’s interesting, what you said. I never thought about it like that, but I think it’s a good point, that the researcher mindset or approach, or whatever we want to call this thing… Obviously everyone is different, but there are some interesting group characteristics here. I think researchers, if they’re good at their job, will be very adaptive to different situations, because you can’t be too shocked by reality, because then you won’t listen to what reality is telling you. And as there is change, you’re able to navigate that change.

I think a lot of people that are very loud, or that have success at a certain stage in an organization’s growth journey, bring their playbook, and it works there, but they’re incapable of changing it. I’ve seen this when you have a startup and you’re like, we’re going to get a salesperson from this big company, and they just can’t do it, because they’ve never been successful in a startup. They could sell for millions in a, whatever, 100 to 200 million thing. But they can’t even sell a couple of hundred thousand in a startup.

Right? It’s because they have their playbook, and that’s what they know.

Why you need a different playbook in small versus large organizations

Bretton Fosbrook · 23:59
Exactly. So it goes. Well, we could say this is a personality thing, or how you interact, the soft skills. But I would actually say it can be applied to the research toolkit as well. And I feel like I learned over and over again that that is the case. I was at Wealthsimple for a number of years. I was on the UX team for a while, then I moved to the data science team. Incredible data platform, incredible data scientists. I worked with an economist, one of the best people I’ve worked with.

So fun, so data driven. We could do behavioral segmentation. And I was like, oh, this is the way to do research. You don’t just do five interviews. You do a behavioral segmentation, you slice, slice, slice. We would cut up our customer base, and then from there we would do a deep dive. And I was like, oh, triangulation, that’s the way you do it. Then I moved to my next company. My next company is a data platform. It’s not B2C, it’s B2B. Everything is different. And there, some researchers would just hit a wall and be like, oh no, I don’t know what to do.

Actually, the toolkit you need, even how you recruit, is different. Before, I was like, you know, the gold standard: you run the behavioral segmentation, you do a survey, then you do your interviews. This is why I felt very rigid. I mean, I thought it was incredible. But then, moving into the B2B world, you can’t send a survey. I work in developer tools. A developer who is forced to use a tool by their company is not going to want to fill out your survey or tell you anything.

And so how you think about how you recruit becomes very different. And in a way, that’s why I continue to love it, because now, in the B2B world, you have to befriend everyone on the revenue and sales side. You have to befriend the frontline workers, because those are the people that are deeply connected with the developers. And that to me is more interesting, to say, oh, I can actually make use of ten interviews, or a focus group even. Speaking of that, we had a company kick off.

There were a bunch of speakers there, and impromptu, we threw a focus group. We gathered all of the speakers into a room, and it had been so long since I’d done in-person research. There was no discussion guide. We had a couple of prototypes working, and we set up a circle of computers around us, and we sat them all down. And the designer and I steered three different prototypes we were working on. And we went so fast. But in a way, it was just because we were methodologically curious, to say, oh, we have an opportunity here to get information.

There’s a group of senior leaders here that are willing to give it to us. So that’s how we’ll do it. And maybe not every researcher… It takes a particular kind of researcher to right size for the job, to say, oh, we’re going to make this opportunity, we’re going to extract the data, and not to think it’s worse. Not to be like, oh, the gold standard, which I would have said before, this is the right type of information. But to say, actually, in this context, this data is just as valuable, and we can help make decisions off of it in the way that we need.

Henrik Mattsson · 27:45
Yeah. And I think it goes back to the thing we were saying in the beginning, about how sometimes researchers can get in their own way by not thinking pragmatically about, okay, given these circumstances, how do I provide the most value as a researcher to the most important things in my organization? Right? This goes back to the whole, you know, we can research our stakeholders. We are the product for our stakeholders, and we can use our research skills to understand how they would like to use the research, what they need, what the problems are that they’re trying to solve, where we can help, and everything.

I’ve seen in my career, and I’ve heard a lot of examples of people that were like, well, we’re going to run the playbook of the usability test and the statistical significance. And it’s like you just apply the same thing to different problems. So I guess I was unfair to salespeople who run a playbook. Sorry, salespeople, if you listen to this podcast. This happens in research too.

Decision making under uncertainty

Bretton Fosbrook · 28:51
Yeah. And honestly, I think it’s because the kinds of decisions we’re making have so much uncertainty baked into them, and we don’t like to admit that, because it feels like it will degrade our craft or degrade the expertise. But it could just be that I did an entire dissertation on making decisions in contexts of uncertainty. So it feels very close to my heart. And a lot of what I believe is that there’s so much creativity and intuition that goes into decision making in the context of uncertainty that no one actually wants to admit.

Right? Knowing that that’s the case, you don’t want to just have your CEO or your CTO make up an idea and be like, do this thing. But at the same time, you could say that learned expertise in a field, having intuition in this way that we can validate through experimentation or through other signals, can sometimes be just as valuable, in certain contexts, as running a large scale survey where people do some stuff like MaxDiff, where you’re like, this is how we do it. And then you’re like, we used all this information to build this plan, and then you build a product and the stock market crashes or something.

Henrik Mattsson · 30:28
Yeah. Exactly. Oh, this is so interesting. I have so many questions, but I’ll continue digging a bit there. It goes back, I think, to what you were saying about how it’s easy to think that everyone else just operates with a lot of confidence and a lot of data. But in fact, in building great product, everyone involved has very little data to go on. There are a lot of things that we don’t know. And I think sometimes we’re trying to reach too much, to be too confident in the data before we can start collaborating around it.

I feel like that’s something that can happen too. And just understanding that, actually, coming in as a researcher into a group where everyone is like, okay, well, I know my craft, but I have no idea what’s going to work, what’s not going to work, what customers are going to understand or not, what’s going to be the preferred thing, what’s out there already, what’s important to people. All of these things… It’s perfect for a researcher to come in and create that value, but they have to embrace this complete lack of understanding in the team.

The team has no idea what they’re doing most of the time. They’re going to gradually get data. So there’s something there too, about being confident as a researcher, not because you have a lot of confident data, but because no one else does either. So you’re actually contributing to the whole part, you know.

Reminding developers how much they already know

Bretton Fosbrook · 32:08
Yeah. Even on some of my teams now, part of the value I bring is just coming in… What’s great is that it’s developers building developer tools. And the heart of my job is just to remind them how much they know, because they’re so nervous. On the one hand, to remind them, you have been a developer for 15 years, for 20 years, whatever. You actually have a very good sense of this. And also to say, let’s just get our feet wet, which is a weird thing to say.

Let’s not over test this, or be too worried about showing something, but just do. Sometimes the researcher can just be the one that… Not to say that you should just throw an MVP out in the world, but LaunchDarkly is very big on a ramped launch, where you can start small and incrementally, like a percentage rollout, a small percentage, to reduce the risk. And I really believe in that mindset, to say, how quickly can we put something in production at a small increment, because that is the best kind of feedback.

We’ve had so many projects where we’re like, okay, let’s release this to a small group of early access participants, and if they hate it, let’s give them an escape route. Let’s give them an escape hatch. So they’ll go into the new experience. And we’ve had situations where everyone leaves, and we’re like, well, this isn’t going to work. And we save so much time, because then we pull back a tiny bit, slightly pivot, and then do something else, and then throw people at it. And as soon as people are like, actually, I don’t want to go back to the other experience, then you know that something’s working.

And so much of the work feels like that now. Instead of being like, well, let’s spend a year doing competitive analysis. I mean, all of these things are important. But if I spent a year, then we probably wouldn’t have landed where we are today. Because watching people interact and use it, it’s so much easier to understand how valuable it is. No matter if they tell you how likely they are to use this or not, if you see them actually using it, that adds so much more validation than my survey in a different world.

Henrik Mattsson · 34:39
Yeah, 100%. That’s interesting, what you said. I think I’m going to qualify what I said before. I would say that perhaps it’s something like this. You are absolutely correct that a product team, with the different roles and everything, does know a lot of things. A lot of things are known, and there’s a lot of experience and stuff like that, right? And it’s good to remind ourselves of what we actually know. I tell my developers this all the time. It’s like, hey, we’re really good at this.

We’re not going to just all of a sudden forget how we do this, right? And then there are some things, though, that are extremely contextual, and you actually can’t even know. And I wonder sometimes if a researcher’s value is about helping the team navigate the things that are like, very… “No, let’s not spend any time on that.” The things that are unknown, and then think about, well, okay, how can we know? And sometimes you can’t know until you actually ship something. And to guide that process, because I don’t think that’s something that a lot of other people are actually thinking about.

They’re building stuff. But this whole release process can be very long, if you think about it iteratively. That’s a great place for researchers to come in and lead the team through that, I would say.

Bretton Fosbrook · 36:02
Yeah. No. And I love… An assumption slam is always in my back pocket. I love a situation where you don’t have to do that new research until you’re very certain. I love pulling, like, brushing off all the things that we’ve done. I love trying to understand, on the team, what are the areas that we actually don’t know about? Because I do agree with you. There are plenty of new opportunities where we don’t know anything about this landscape. We’re going to try. But at least we can acknowledge that in a way, and say, getting out there and getting our feedback will be much faster.

And maybe that’s what continues to bring me back as a researcher, because that part is very fun. It’s very interesting. It’s hard in a different way. What I did two studies ago isn’t necessarily going to be the playbook that I can apply this time, even if I want it to be.

Henrik Mattsson · 37:13
Oh, yeah. No, for sure. And it’s interesting. I was having a conversation, I think it was last season, where we were talking about the very rapid development of AI being integrated everywhere, right? If you’re thinking about understanding what role your products should play in the AI dynamic, and you’re thinking about that as a project as you’re developing these things, it just won’t work. You need to have this more strategic, ongoing research that is disconnected from the specific projects. And I don’t know if you agree with me on this, but I’ve seen that this can be hard in organizations where no one in leadership, or in the planning of the work, might think about that even that much.

That might be something that has to come from the researcher, to actually run these meta projects about the landscape and the technology and everything. I don’t know what your experience has been there.

The impact of AI

Bretton Fosbrook · 38:21
I actually find that it’s contextual. At LaunchDarkly, we have a lot of developers, and our CTO, who care a lot about AI, and are maybe even ahead of the curve in that way. So I think that’s been different. But I think that’s very specific. I mean, this could be a whole other conversation. At LaunchDarkly, we are all asked to push ourselves into the learning mindset around using different kinds of AI tooling. It’s not only requested, it’s expected. And so for me, I didn’t realize in a way that the industry feels very split over this.

We’re a very learning mindset organization around this. And even myself, I’ve outsourced myself with custom GPTs that designers use to do certain things. And we’re all asked to use Lovable and Vercel to actually build. Even now, I build my own apps for testing purposes, just because I can. When I was doing a research study before, I’d have to outsource the development to the engineers. And now, for certain things, I’m like, oh, I’m just going to build an app, because I can. And then I don’t have to waste their time.

I don’t do it as well as them, obviously, because I’m using Replit or another tool that’s doing that code for me, but I’m doing it.

Henrik Mattsson · 40:02
No, I think it’s great. It’s such interesting times now. And we do a lot of research on research teams, and you can see that this varies quite a lot, from what you’re describing, where everyone is encouraged to jump in and use everything, to people who are like, you can’t touch any of this stuff. There could be good reasons for it. But yeah.

Different approaches to the adoption of AI

Bretton Fosbrook · 40:23
And even on our team… I’m on a UX team now, and the early adopters and the laggards, this could be its own talk. On the UX team, you have such a nice variation in AI tooling. You have people that are like, must do everything, I don’t think anymore, I outsource my brain, I use Granola for all my apps and that’s my updates, etc., to people that are like, I won’t touch it with a 100-foot stick, or whatnot. And maybe this is where research actually comes in.

As a researcher, I think it’s such a beautiful thing. And I try to help both of these divergent positions understand that that’s reality, that we’re going to have people that are laggards and people that are early adopters, and neither is wrong. They’re just very different. And they have very good reasons to be eager and very good reasons to be anxious. I wish that we could do more, check back with me later, to work within that, because what I worry about is that the anxious ones don’t get as much support, or they’re not allowed to be as visible as the people who are evangelists.

And I know that if you look at any of the data, even for developers, there’s a lot of reticence towards outsourcing and automation, precisely because you can’t control it. It has the potential to dilute expertise, even in the sense that it can make you faster.

Henrik Mattsson · 42:20
Oh, very good point. Awesome. Well, now I find myself in the same situation I often find myself in here. I got carried away with this very interesting conversation. I just want to have a few kind of… I think that a lot of people in the audience will recognize themselves in what you’re saying, and think, yeah, this sounds like something I… Perhaps there’s an unlock here, you know, that you got some feedback. Maybe they heard this podcast and it made them think about it. For those people in the audience, what are some of the advice, or something to start on this journey?

I don’t know, some practical ritual, some… I don’t know.

Practical advice for researchers starting out

Bretton Fosbrook · 43:00
Yeah. No, I love this question, for myself as well. I think it would be to embrace the learning mindset and try to do things differently. Right? So for me, in that situation, to say, how do you think that you would approach it? And if that’s not working, or you’re feeling your anxiety, just try something different. Just try slightly, whether it’s in your approach, or in how you feel about the research itself. Just embrace that learning mindset. Sometimes we get so stuck. For me too, it’s just been like, oh, I should try something different.

I should try to push a little in this way, or I should try to just say no more forcefully, like, no, I’m not going to do that. I’m just making stuff up here. But I would say that would be a really, really great way to start. We can get so stuck in our approaches and in the way we do things. And it could be anything, experimenting with how you present information. If you usually just do it over text, make a video. If you always speak at your all company and it’s not as successful as you want it to be, I don’t know, do a much smaller group with very key stakeholders.

Just try those pieces, even if it’s just to own your own expertise, to say, my ideas are good and I can come up with ideas that are meaningful. And then even if it doesn’t work, you can continue to try something.

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Henrik Mattsson · 44:54
Yeah, I love that. That’s a great ending. And it makes me think that in this time of AI, an AI can replace someone who is trying to please, or trying to fit in. That’s what AIs do. They understand what we want to hear. They can tell us stuff that sounds believable. So you should be yourself. You should speak your mind. You should do your thing, bring your expertise. And I understand that it’s easier for me to say, with, you know, my career is fine. But I can understand this can be scary.

There’s a lot of risk in it, but there’s a lot of risk in not bringing yourself too.

The importance of finding allies within your organization

Bretton Fosbrook · 45:29
The other thing that I would say is that there are probably allies and colleagues that you should be looking out for if you are in an organization. Just remind yourself that, even if you’re a researcher of one, you’re not alone. Work to build those allegiances and alliances. Not alliances in the sense of talking poorly about your company or whatever. But just to say, there are people at your organization, whether it’s 20 people or 10,000 people, that can probably help you navigate some of this uncertainty, and you should find them.

Try to seek them out. And I just constantly remind myself of that in my own organization. The developers that I work with are some of my favorite people in the world, and I love to go to them. And so many of them are critical. Maybe it’s just that developers are critical and stubborn and super smart and savvy with doing things that I don’t know. That just makes it feel easier to be a researcher.

Henrik Mattsson · 46:49
Awesome. Love it. On that note, if you want to hear anything more, you have to come down to San Francisco for Research Week, or log in online. I’m certainly going to come down and listen to all of these great talks. But for now, thank you so much for coming on. Is there somewhere, if people want to reach out? Are you on social media? Do you have some?

Bretton Fosbrook · 47:13
I’m not on social media. I hate to say LinkedIn, because I don’t like LinkedIn, but if you’re interested, if you want to talk more… I talk to a ton of researchers that I don’t know. So that’s where to find me. Just add me and we can… I’m happy. I know that many of us are out there alone in the world. So happy to commiserate together, or scheme, or strategize. So that’s probably the best way.

Henrik Mattsson · 47:39
Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Thanks everyone for listening, and happy researching, and see you next time. Bye bye.