Could you give an example of what socializing across multiple mediums looks like in practice?

At a small industrial design firm with siloed teams, two formats made a meaningful difference: a company-wide research newsletter sharing rolling insights from recurring user segments, and a weekly lunch-and-learn where colleagues could bring questions and hear directly about what research was finding. Both helped people outside the immediate project stay connected to research work.

Is it worth customizing the readout per individual stakeholder?

Customizing for every stakeholder individually is not realistic given time constraints. A better approach is to map stakeholders by impact and reach, then prioritize tailoring for the high-impact, high-reach decision makers whose buy-in most directly affects whether findings get implemented.

How do you get stakeholders on board early, especially naysayers?

Propose the leanest research design you can justify. A tightly scoped study with a defined timeline and clear goals is much easier for skeptical stakeholders to approve than a months-long generative track. From there, keep them involved throughout: invite them to sessions, run midpoint debriefs, and make sure they are never surprised at the final readout. Surprise is usually where tension and disagreement peak.

When your company is a market research supplier, research sitting on a shelf is an even bigger problem. Is there a path to avoid it?

Before conducting the research, establish what level of engagement and follow-through you expect from the client. If findings are not being implemented, do a follow-up to understand where the misalignment was between their goals and what the research delivered. That learning should inform how future engagements are scoped. Sometimes research still does not get used, but understanding why helps you adjust.

At what point would you build in different entitlements, meaning different levels of visibility, for different stakeholders?

Stakeholders with the most decision-making authority and the highest research buy-in should have the fullest visibility. Stakeholders who are more skeptical or tangential still need to be kept in the loop, but the presentation to them should be framed to meet them where they are. Plotting stakeholders by buy-in level and decision-making authority helps clarify who gets what level of access and detail.

Socializing Insights to Maximize Impact

Priyanka Murthy, a UX researcher with experience across industries including industrial design, mental health, and finance, argues that delivering a research readout is only the first step in a broader socialization strategy. She outlines tactical and strategic approaches to getting insights acted upon, and shares practical methods for building research credibility across organizations. The talk also addresses common failure modes, including research sitting on a shelf and stakeholder disengagement, with concrete responses to each.

Key Takeaways

A research readout is one piece of a larger socialization strategy, not the end of the process. Plan for what comes after the report is delivered.
Match your format and depth to your audience's research maturity. High buy-in stakeholders can receive the full technical presentation; skeptics may need to see the final prototype before the research story lands.
Involve stakeholders earlier, not just at readout. Workshops, midpoint debriefs, and interview observation reduce the chance of surprising your audience and increase ownership of the findings.
Find and leverage UX champions. They expand your internal network, connect you to new audiences, and advocate for research when you are not in the room.
Distribute findings across multiple channels consistently. Newsletters, lunch-and-learns, and recorded forums each reach a different type of stakeholder. Create forums if none exist.
Organizational memory is short. Even in research-mature companies, continuing to demonstrate value is necessary to maintain credibility over time.

Questions & Answers

Could you give an example of what socializing across multiple mediums looks like in practice?: At a small industrial design firm with siloed teams, two formats made a meaningful difference: a company-wide research newsletter sharing rolling insights from recurring user segments, and a weekly lunch-and-learn where colleagues could bring questions and hear directly about what research was finding. Both helped people outside the immediate project stay connected to research work.
Is it worth customizing the readout per individual stakeholder?: Customizing for every stakeholder individually is not realistic given time constraints. A better approach is to map stakeholders by impact and reach, then prioritize tailoring for the high-impact, high-reach decision makers whose buy-in most directly affects whether findings get implemented.
How do you get stakeholders on board early, especially naysayers?: Propose the leanest research design you can justify. A tightly scoped study with a defined timeline and clear goals is much easier for skeptical stakeholders to approve than a months-long generative track. From there, keep them involved throughout: invite them to sessions, run midpoint debriefs, and make sure they are never surprised at the final readout. Surprise is usually where tension and disagreement peak.
When your company is a market research supplier, research sitting on a shelf is an even bigger problem. Is there a path to avoid it?: Before conducting the research, establish what level of engagement and follow-through you expect from the client. If findings are not being implemented, do a follow-up to understand where the misalignment was between their goals and what the research delivered. That learning should inform how future engagements are scoped. Sometimes research still does not get used, but understanding why helps you adjust.
At what point would you build in different entitlements, meaning different levels of visibility, for different stakeholders?: Stakeholders with the most decision-making authority and the highest research buy-in should have the fullest visibility. Stakeholders who are more skeptical or tangential still need to be kept in the loop, but the presentation to them should be framed to meet them where they are. Plotting stakeholders by buy-in level and decision-making authority helps clarify who gets what level of access and detail.

Session Notes

Why Socializing Research Matters

Completing a research project and delivering a report feels like a finish line, but for many teams it is actually a starting point. Research gets shelved, stakeholders move on, and recommendations go unimplemented. When a project is revisited two years later, the original work often has to be redone, which costs time and money. A deliberate socialization strategy is the mechanism that keeps insights from getting lost.

Socialization also builds the organizational credibility that makes future research easier to fund and execute. Stakeholders who know who you are, what you do, and what value you have delivered are far more likely to approve work where the impact is not immediately obvious.

Tactical vs. Strategic Research and Socialization

Drawing on a framework from Jared Spool, the speaker distinguishes two research modes and applies the same lens to socialization.

Tactical

Focuses on whether the product is being built correctly for users.
Clear problem, clear methodology, clear business value.
Easier to obtain stakeholder buy-in because impact is measurable and near-term.
Socialization is project-based and reactive, with a specific audience and a defined readout.

Strategic

Focuses on whether the team is even asking the right questions.
Addresses holistic user experience and long-term product direction.
Impact is harder to quantify immediately but can shift product strategy significantly.
Socialization is longer-term: pulling themes across multiple projects, reaching new audiences, and expanding the research brand beyond existing stakeholders.

Most organizations default to tactical research because stakeholders want immediate, visible returns. Robust socialization helps move organizations toward higher research maturity, where strategic work is understood and supported.

Structuring the Readout as a Story

A strong readout follows a narrative arc similar to a story plot: problem, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution. Concretely, this means covering:

The initial problem and its negative impact.
What made it relatable and what blockers existed.
How the research was executed.
What insights were found.
What you are recommending.

Creative data visuals and revealing quotes make the story engaging. The format should be driven by the audience, not by the researcher's preference.

Matching Format to Audience Maturity

Audience maturity should shape both the content and the timing of a readout.

High maturity, high buy-in stakeholders: Deliver the full technical presentation. They are ready for depth.
Low buy-in or skeptical stakeholders: Consider waiting until a prototype exists so they can see the complete arc from research to design outcome. This makes the research's contribution concrete and harder to dismiss.
Presenting to skeptics before there is a visible output can make research feel abstract. Letting the full story develop first is not a failure. It is a strategic choice.

Involving Stakeholders Before the Readout

Stakeholders who participate in the research process are less likely to be surprised by findings and more likely to feel ownership over the results.

Keep stakeholders updated on progress throughout the project.
Invite them to observe research sessions.
Include them in analysis or debrief sessions.
Run stakeholder workshops, for example proto-persona exercises, to surface and align different mental models of users.

"I honestly thought this workshop would be a waste of my time but I learned so much from everyone else in the room and was able to articulate a more accurate picture of the user."

The quote above, from a product manager after a proto-persona workshop, illustrates a common dynamic: stakeholders often believe they already know their users. Bringing them into the process can reveal gaps in their assumptions without requiring them to be told they were wrong.

Expanding Your Reach: Tactical Socialization Methods

Find UX champions. These are colleagues who already understand the value of research, advocate for it internally, and can connect you to new stakeholder groups you have not yet reached.
Create regular forums. Research roundtables and lunch-and-learns give interested colleagues a low-barrier way to engage with your work. If these do not exist at your company, create them.
Use multiple channels. Different people consume information differently. Email newsletters reach some; recorded sessions or live forums reach others. Distributing findings across channels maximizes overall reach.
Move from the inside out. Start with UX and your direct product partners, then expand to tech stakeholders, then to business stakeholders and beyond.
Build informal relationships. Attending social events at work creates connections that make it easier to propose research involvement later. This is particularly true for reaching colleagues in adjacent functions like sales.

Why Ongoing Socialization Matters Even in Mature Organizations

Organizational memory is short. Value demonstrated in one year can be forgotten within a few years.
UX roles are often among the first cut in layoffs. Continuously demonstrating impact is a form of protection, though not a guarantee.
New technology initiatives, including AI-driven products, create fresh opportunities to center user research at the start rather than as an afterthought.
Regular socialization keeps research aligned with evolving business and product goals across teams that often have competing priorities.

After the Readout: What to Do Next

Ask each participant to share one key takeaway. Knowing they will be asked improves attention during the session.
Send an abbreviated summary (roughly two pages) covering the key points. Full reports rarely get re-read.
Push findings consistently across every channel and forum available.

Handling Common Readout Failures

Stakeholder says "So what, I already knew this."

Validation has value even when it confirms a hunch. If the stakeholder's assumption had been wrong, the research would have saved the team from a costly mistake. Confirming they were right means the team is pointed in the right direction.

Stakeholders want a prototype, not a research deck

Go to the prototype and demonstrate the direct line from the research findings to the design decisions that were made. Use the finished artifact to tell the full story retroactively.

Low engagement during the presentation

Treat it as a learning opportunity. Consider whether the presentation format was sufficiently engaging, and also account for external factors like scheduling. Not every flat session reflects the quality of the work.

Transcript

Read the full transcript

good afternoon everyone we are just at the top of the hour and we're going to get started uh thank you for those of you who are rejoining us uh from earlier and for anyone who's new on the conference site uh welcome before we get started I'm I'm so excited to introduce our speaker but before we get started I just wanted to cover a couple of ground rules um we are somewhat subject to our technology and do have storms going on in the area so please for some reason there's a hiccup um we'll be back with you as soon as possible but um you know we have to kind of account for that and we are so excited about this conference um just as an opportunity to network and engage and interact with each other um if you have questions as we're going throughout the presentation please drop them in the Q&A section um we have people from all different levels of organizations attending so no question is a silly question um we want them all and we really just want to learn and understand from each other so now I would like to introduce um Priyanka Murthy very excited to have her here with us today and she'll be talking with us about socializing research prianka I'll let you give your own introduction awesome great thanks so much um should I share my screen yes please I'm going to stop sharing right here we go can everyone see that orber can you see that hasn't come through just quite yet there we go it says socializing insights to maximize impact oh good um awesome okay so yeah I'll be talking about uh socializing insights to maximize impact today uh and I'm also dealing with some technical issues so bear with me um all right so uh a little bit about me and why I'm talking about this today so I used to work in Academia now I am a ux researcher so I've worked in you know both qualitative quantitative research a lot of different areas where we talk about impact in a lot of different ways um so I've had now that I work in ux I've had the pleasure of working across Industries which has allowed me to kind of think more about impact uh in a variety of different company settings so I've worked you know in industrial design uh mental health finance a lot of really different areas um but it's allowed me to kind of think about how we measure and quantify impact in different settings so I think every company in Industry approaching is it differently but also there are a lot of similarities and themes that we can kind of learn from and share um and I think in meeting with lots of different um researchers I think I've spent a lot of time talking about how we measure impact um but also a lot of time talking about how our insights are you know ignored or put on a shelf somewhere uh so I've spent a lot of time thinking about that and I think I don't know if I'll ever stop thinking about impact but it's definitely something that I am starting to kind of shift how I approach it and the ways that I'm trying to maximize impact um so I'm talking about socializing impact today but what does that really mean I think that's really obvious um to some of you yeah we're reading out our insights those are um those are our insights and that's how we maximize impact but I think maximizing impact can often involve engaging a larger socialization strategy to accompany those insights so often reading out your insights is kind of the first step but we have a lot of other ways that we can work on socializing our insights more broadly to make sure that our impact is seen a little bit stronger and a little has like a larger outcome um so we started you know you finished a big research project congratulations I know we we do these giant research projects and it feels like a a huge weight is lifted off our shoulders and you have a big report um that you are going to deliver to your key stakeholders amazing uh you've done your work but what comes next I think for a lot of us it's onto the next project onto the next whatever we're doing um but the reality is a lot of us work in contexts where you know stakeholders might not necessarily believe in the value of research um or research gets put on the back burner um and we are struggling to uh sorry my oh I think just went out okay um yeah so you're struggling to you know talk with your stakeholders about why we need to do ux and sometimes it gets put on the back burner in favor of development I think probably all of us can count on I I don't even think we can count how many times I've been told okay like we're not doing research we're going straight to development um and when research does occur it maybe doesn't feel so impactful because our insights aren't being Incorporated so we're seeing our research kind of be put on a Shelf somewhere um and the reality is sometimes that presentation to your stakeholders is just a small piece of your larger socialization process so reading out insights to your stakeholders might not be enough and you may not start to think about how that fits in as just one small puzzle piece into kind of a larger broader process um so I've started to kind of think about socialization in terms of tactical and strategic research so I if you listen to Jared's school and I think you're probably familiar with tactical versus strategic research so tactical being are we building the product right for our users so this is I think easier to get at buyin for in most of our organizations because those are the projects that have really clear measurable impact um you know there's a clear problem that we're trying to solve we have a clear methodology um and it generates a very clear business value so you know dollar signs for our business stakeholders um but strategic is a little bit more about are we even answering the right questions um so more about the holistic user experience long-term strategy that you might not be able to necessarily measure the impact immediately and it's not so clear what the impact is immediately but there's longer term larger impact that can drastically shift the product strategy of your company and the way that your users engage with your product and I think in one of presentations sh of school was talking about you know we should be doing 85% strategic work and 15% tactical I think some of you might be doing that in your companies and that's great um especially you know like big tech companies like Google that have like thousands of researchers that are able to kind of engage in these different areas but for a lot of us we don't have the bandwidth to be doing such a large amount of strategic research we don't have the Buy in um I think most stakeholders don't really want to invest in res resarch where there isn't really clear immediate impact I think there's very much a short-term look on ux and so they want to see like we're doing this research and it has this immediate impact move on to the next but we need to start being able to move the needle towards being able to have that larger longer term Outlook um so I think socialization is a key part of that and that can help kind of drive your dox maturity towards strategic research because it builds our credibility it builds our brand as ux people know who we are we're so much more likely to get buy in for a project that no one really understands the value of if they know who you are know what you do know that you bring impact to your company and are able to trust that strategic work will uncover some larger insights down the line so I've also started to think about socialization in a similar framework that I hope is a little bit easier to to think about since I've kind of mapped it onto a similar framework um I think there are a lot of ways to think about socialization but I separate it into once again tactical versus strategic so tactical socialization to me is very much that project-based reactionary socialization so tied to specific projects you have a really specific audience you've been requested by your stakeholders to conduct this really specific research um and the insights are read out to a very specific set of stakeholders um who are invest in the outcome of This research so this is a reaction to you know your stakeholders have asked or something you're giving it back to them strategic I think is a lot more longer term this is socialization that might look at longer term objectives of your research and kind of the longer term strategy of ux for example if you do 10 different research projects in a year on the same set of users can you pull out larger insights and themes across those projects to you know give out to a larger audience can you maybe meet with broader audiences can you see where they're in points for you to meet with new people who haven't been exposed to your work I think strategic tries to think of the longer term like okay this isn't necessarily related to our project but how can we expand our brand how can we make sure that we're reaching new people and I often like to think of socialization as fixing what I see as a bottle in our process so often times we do our research um we're delivering our insights and then your stakeholders are like great I actually don't care about this and it gets put on a shelf somewhere and then two years later someone asks okay didn't we do research on that product like two years ago and you're like yes I did I put a lot of work and effort into that and it wasn't implemented and we're revisiting it so that costs a lot of money for the business in general because it costed your time it costed the everyone who's working on that product time um so often we deliver those insights and they just sit on a shelf somewhere and socialization can help make sure that we're getting widespread buying for our insights and make sure that our stakeholders are involved in our insights and that they're much more likely to feel engaged with it and much more likely to make sure that they're invested in the implementation of it okay so how do we effectively socialize for impact so where do we start with all of this I think obviously you know we start with our our reading out to our main group of stakeholders and I put together this little plot diagram some of you might be familiar with this this is like the plot of a of a story you know you have your your beginning you have rising action the climax falling action and then a conclusion and I think the way that you tell a story about your insights has to be similar you know you want a concise story that has the goal so what was the initial problem that led you to do your research what was the negative impact that it was having um and you want it to be something that pulls in your audience so you have your problem but you're presenting it in a way that's relatable it's personable what were your blockers what was standing in your way how did you executed so you got through your blockers what what did you do how did you end up doing the research what were the insights that you found and then what are you recommending so I think making sure that you're telling this really concisely but also making sure you have all these key points and creative data visuals revealing quotes all that stuff that makes a story engaging um and I think the one of the biggest lessons I've learned in my career is that you have to let your audience Define your format so I think this is something we all kind of know and it's something I knew coming in I think in a theoretical sense like yeah of course I know who I'm reading out to I want to make sure that I am developing a present that engages them but I think it also will kind of tell you what point of the process you're engaging them in so for example if you're reading out to a really high ux maturity High research buyin uh group such as you know Tech stakeholders who love working with you they know what you do they're really bought in you're going to give them the full gamut you know you have your your presentation with all the technical nitty-gritty nerdy research stuff they all love it um The Crowd Goes Wild um um but then you might also be in situations where you're meeting with stakeholders who haven't really worked with you they don't really know a lot about ux they don't have buyin for research they mostly see it as a waste of time and money um and this might be a situation where you have a much more interactive presentation I mean obviously presentation should be interactive but it's more interactive and you might honestly wait until you have a prototype and you know design has been engaged and there's you're much further along in the process so you have that story of hey like we did all this research this is what we found these were our recommendations this is how it played out and I think this is something I've learned the hard way a few different times where you know you want your research to stand on its own and it can be disappointing when it doesn't but it's a stepping stone you know you wait until the end of the process so they can see the full story so that they understand okay wait this goes back to the research and we got here because of all that research that we did and I think that is like a big proving Value Point um and I think one big thing is that you want to make sure if you can involve your stakeholders in your research um so keeping your stakeholders updated on progress I think that's a bare minimum thing that you do you know you start your research you tell them you're doing it maybe they sit in on some sessions but also maybe they can be part of the analysis can they be doing debriefs with you can you uh do workshops with them and get a little bit more about their takes doing stakeholder workshops that helps them feel more invested in the process and then therefore when you're reading out your insights and your findings they're bought on because they were there when you came to that conclusion um I put a quote that I thought was really funny but also telling from a previous job where I did a workshop with some of our stakeholders we had um we didn't have time to talk with users for a really long time so we were going to do a Proto Persona Workshop where we were you know defining users among like really different stakeholders who had kind of a peacemeal understanding of users put together some Proto personas and then do some validation with users and we pulled all these stakeholders in a room together and I asked for everyone to email me a quick takeaway from their workshop because we rent over time and one of the PMS I put like a little stock photo here but um he said I honestly thought this Workshop would be a waste of my time but I learned so much from everyone else in the room and was able to articulate a more accurate picture of the user uh honestly I was a little offended at first because he said that he thought it would be a waste of my time but I honestly think a lot of stakeholders feel that way about research they don't really think that there's a point to it because they know they're users they know what they want like let's just just go to design and go to development whatever but realizing that their understanding of what happening is not the truth is a huge thing to reveal to your stakeholders and to see that other people have different models in their mind of the users and the research that's being done is really really valuable uh and one big thing that I always recommend is finding your ux Champions so these are folks who they're the ones who understand the value of ux so you don't have to have these fights with them about this is why we do research this is why we engage ux early and often they get it they know how it fits into the product life cycle they're engaging you early and consistently and they're always pushing for ux work when they can so they evangelize ux when they have the opportunity they're always advocating for ux um and in general they're just an ally and you want to make sure that you're engaging them and seeing okay like where are new avenues that I can move into to you know read out my work because maybe you have a set group of stakeholders that are invested in the work but maybe there's another group that you could talk to who would be interested in the type of work that you've done don't know a lot about you know ux and um maybe would benefit from working with you but you just don't know them so your ux Champions can kind of be that connector for you so you should be leveraging their Network and using your ux Champions so yeah leverage your ux Champions networks and then also making sure you set up regular forums to present your work so I think some companies already have this built in a lot of companies I've been in don't so having like research round taes or lunch and learns or whatever where people can just kind of sign up and come hear you talk about your research or any like larger thematic findings you have or even just your regular readout that you already prepared this can kind of help you socialize your findings with folks that you don't already have direct contact with and who might not really know about ux but they hear you give your talk and then they kind of go back to to their team and say wait ux is actually something that we could engage with and maybe we should be because they had all these insights that maybe we can be leveraging um and also make sure to di disperse your findings over multiple mediums I was in a talk last week where someone said this and I thought it was so interesting where I think often we send emails and it feels like we're sending emails into a void because like who was checking their email but he was talking about there is that guy who lives and D by his email like he is checking his email he's reading them extensively so there's that guy then there's the guy who is watching the recordings or the person who's showing up to the the forums that you've put together or the person who's religiously reading newsletters so blasting out your findings through multiple channels helps you maximize that reach okay um and it can be a little daunting to think about okay like why am I going out to share my findings with other groups like I kind of want to stay where I know people and stay with the people who are invested in my findings move from the inside out so you start with ux you're talking to other people who are invested in your research and your product Partners your PMS whoever and then see if you can get a little bit more into the tech space see if you can move out into your business stakeholders see if there are other people and other ways you can kind of Leverage those networks to get word of your work out there and one of the unfortunate findings that I found is that the biggest impact to your socialization strategy can be networking which as an introvert I hate to say it but go to the happy hour at work go to the bowling night or whatever I know like when you shut off at 5 you're like I don't want to see these people ever again um I don't personally feel that way because I love my C but I think having those outside relation ships with folks can really impact the way that they see you in the business like you already you made a friend in business and you reach out to him at work and you're like hey I noticed you're working on this project like we should involve ux and he's much more likely to bring you in because he's already your buddy than you know some random person reaching out so having those networks and expanding your reach casually can also impact your your work within the company and like this is something we know but it needs to be said because I think a lot of times like I go to these things and I'm like oh this is not working for for my job and for you know getting like higher up in the company but also to be able to do your job more effectively for roles where you need to leverage the people you work with Okay so why do we need to invest more time in socialization I this is a lot of effort uh especially in roles where we're pressed for time we are working really hard we're underresourced um but I think one of the biggest things is it moves us towards a user centered approach so I think we've all been in situations where we have stakeholders who have millions of different objectives and goals so you know you have your business stakeholders and your Tech stakeholders and your product stakeholders and they all want different things and they have different opinions and they don't agree and it's frustrating because it feels like okay we're not actually getting anywhere so the best socialization strategies can help align you know those business goals those product road map items um the tech timelines whatever and bring them together and say okay like this is what the user actually wants though and we're increasing empathy for the user and making sure like the product the product road map is built around the right questions and making sure the business goals are aligned with what users actually want and need um and also research is really valuable no matter how big or in the sense that sometimes it feels like you need to be sharing out those really big impressive types of research that you've done that you invested a lot of time in but honestly even the small tracks of research where you just did you know one round of usability testing and you're you know you did like one iteration and then it moved to design and it felt like you just did one little thing that's great because somewhere someone somewhere didn't know that something so small and lean could generate value and that's kind of how you evangelize research within your company you show there's we're adaptable we can roll with the punches we do all these different types of things it's not just like monthlong research it can be a week-long Sprint it can be it can look so many different ways and that's how you get buy in for future research people see okay like ux research and ux design like they can kind of do a lot of different things and they've shown that they can generate impact so maybe we should engage them in this Future Track and also now that you've kind of started socializing through different mediums and channels now you're getting new engagement areas different people in different areas are interested in engaging you for research but also willing to help you with your research so I think another point that I I've seen in my own work but someone else formalized this for me well was that sometimes sales folks especially in a B2B setting are the best people to talk to because they can tell you some client insights that they have especially if you're not really able to talk to clients like if your clients are you know big hedge funds or like these tiny little companies where there's not enough folks that you can talk to they can help you and they can be kind of a proxy for your clients like obviously this isn't the most ideal situation for research but they can give you what they know and they're more likely to help you if they think that what you're doing is going to help their clients because as salespeople they want their clients to be happy and so even if your company you might be in a company where you know ux is engaged regularly there isn't really a need to keep measuring impact or maximizing for impact um but you should still be socializing and you should still have a really robust socialization strategy because I think every organization I've ever been in has the lowest organizational memory I could ever think of like you might be proving your value in 2020 but by 2024 people are forgetting what you bring to the table you want to make sure that you are building and maintaining credibility so ux research is one of the first I don't want to say one of the first but I mean I think we've seen so many ux folks getting laid off this year because they're considered a luxury or expendable so continuing obviously I'm not saying this will you know prevent that but it helps if you continue to kind of prove that value and you're continuing to show impact especially as you know Tech is evolving and we're having so many different technological advancements showing that UI and ux can impact Ai and like how you know AI is growing we're building all these AI experiences how ux should be the number one thing we're doing with AI experiences and also continuing to Center our users so making sure that our users are at the center of all new technological initiatives um and finally collaboration so we see a lot of differing opinions and goals so making sure that you're bringing people together and you're fostering kind of cross functional team collaboration with the user and your empathy for the user that you're um investing in okay so after you socialize what comes next a few key steps that you want to make sure you're following so having participants share one key takeaway from your presentation that's where I got that quote that I said that where he thought it was a waste of time which was honestly a great learning experience for me so that's how you improve retention of your presentation if folks know that they to tell you something afterwards they're going to listen um and send out an abbreviated version for folks as much as I as a nerd I'm going to read the 30 page report and I think that people are going to want to read my 30 page report no one is reading that report afterwards I'm sorry um so you are going to be the best off if you just kind of make a little summary maybe a two page summary it's a little extra work but with your key points that you want people to take away and that's how you maximize reach and making sure that you are consistently pushing out your work in every channel you can find in every Forum if they don't exist create your own forums consistency is key with this and lastly sometimes your readouts maybe don't go the way that you want them to I think I have been in all of these situations you know where you do a readout and your stakeholder says so what I knew all of this already um or there's a lack of interest in the research and you you know present your findings and they're like okay great like where's the Prototype or no one interacted with you in your presentation some people yawned and left early which I think is rude but it does happen every once in a while um so what do you do if your stakeholder has a so whatat attitude and thinks that you just validated what they said but that's exactly it they had a hunch and you went to the users and you validated that there there's value in that already like if they if their hunch was wrong then yeah your value would have been proven they just happened to be right and so you validated that and proved that we're in the right direction if there's lack of interest in research in favor of a prototype that's okay go to the Prototype and show how your work impacted that and was a direct line towards how we got to the Prototype and if no one interacted with you in your presentation that's okay sometimes it happens and then you learn from it maybe your presentation wasn't as engaging as you thought or or maybe it was after lunch and people are really tired and that happens um but all in all this is kind of the way that I've started to think about you know how are we making sure that we can move the needle a little bit and make sure and it feels like this really long arduous process but once you get the ball rolling and people are starting to understand like okay ux is valuable ux is like the insights that they're having are really impactful this does slow down and you don't need to be working so hard and push pushing so hard for all of this and I think that's kind of what makes it all worth it okay that was it and I will stop sharing okay um feel free to put questions in the Q&A section um I have a a quick question could you give an example of um when you said you socialize across multiple mediums like could you give an example from a project of like more tactically what were some of the mediums that you were able to uh utilize to socialize the results yeah definitely so I used to work in a pretty small industrial design firm but the sections were really siloed so we would meet with our stakeholders um and we would meet with mainly just yeah the stakeholders and the client and we would just kind of pass off findings to to our design partners and there wasn't really a lot of communication there and so I think something that was really helpful was developing a companywide newsletter and saying hey this is these are our updates from research this is what we're finding from users especially because we had certain segments of users that we worked with more often so just kind of having rolling insights going was really helpful and I think a lot of people learned something from it I hope um but and also planning like that kind of lunch and learn situation where you maybe like once a week people just bring lunch and you talk a little bit about you know this is what we did this is what we're learning um especially for projects that everyone's invested in but you know they maybe don't have a direct line to you so they can ask their own questions and they can learn a little bit about what's happening in research um things like that okay thank you um okay how would you measure the sorry read that wrong [Music] um what are your thoughts on customizing the readout per stakeholder is it worth the effort like you said consistency is key but what about customization right I'm gonna I think per stakeholder is hard especially if you have many different stakeholders um I think generally I would assume you have like a one key stakeholder group and then like other stakeholders who are kind of tangential so I think the best approach is divided based on who are kind of I think there's like a matrix for this but like who are kind of the high impact stakeholders and who are your lower more tangential stakeholders who are still connectors in your space and making sure you're targeting for those folks who have like high impact High Reach and making sure that your insights are most visible and impact and in implementable for them and that you're targeting towards those folks versus you know the other I think if you're trying to customize for everyone you're going to spend maybe like hours just sitting in your computer making different forms of your readout so making sure that you're prioritizing the stakeholders you think will have the most impact the most say in what is being implemented I think is the best approach okay and how do you engage stakeholders early on in the process um you mentioned like workshopping at the end when you're like reading out results and stuff like that but how do you get them to come on board early on um especially those naysayers right um I think the biggest thing for me especially if you have a lot of naysayers who are those key high impact stakeholders who are kind of the decision makers in the space propose the leanest research that you can get away with honestly and I think because when you go into the meeting and you're saying Hey I want to do this two months long long generative research track where we're having hourong in-depth user interviews a lot of stakeholders are not going to like that because they think it's a waste of time and they don't they want to see impact it's like tomorrow and so I think for the naysayers making it clear that this is lean these are like it's really clear what our goals are what we're doing it has a really defined timeline like it's it's more that tactical approach um and also making sure yeah they're engaged from the beginning so maybe at the beginning you're doing a stakeholder Workshop to kind of understand what are their main goals what are they trying to achieve what are they hoping to accomplish and get out of this and then keeping them in the loop throughout your your whole um research process so you know they're invited to all the interviews there's a midpoint where you get to debrief and discuss okay this is what we're seeing this is what we're finding and making sure they're kind of continually in the loop so that they are not surprised at the end I think that's the biggest failing point is that if your stakeholders are absolutely shocked by your findings that's not what you want that's not the outcome you're looking for and that's probably where you're going to find the most uh tension and disagreement so that early involvement and then yeah just keep making sure that they know what's happening and they're on board with everything you're doing another question we have U when your company is the supplier of marketing research the research on the Shelf is even worse is there a path to avoid these cases sorry be the question yeah so when your company is like a market research supplier that um whole idea of research sits on a shelf is like even more daunting right um so is there a path to avoid research sitting at a shelf right yeah I think with research sitting on the shelf especially if you're supplying market research I think that yeah that's that feels like a high tension um and more stressful I think my biggest advice for that is if you're you know not feeling like your research is being taken or implemented I think at the beginning when you're before you're conducting the market research is like making sure that you have the engagement that you want so that you're not engaging in research that you know is not going to be taken into account and then following up consistently but at the end of the day sometimes it just doesn't get implemented um and I think maybe doing kind of like a followup and understanding like where what was the dissatisfaction why wasn't it taken into account so that you can kind of learn from that and adjust for the future so that you also understand what their goals were and how there wasn't an alignment there I think is a key Point okay thank you uh next question at what point would you build in different entitlements for different stakeholders based on information each stakeholder is supposed to see different entitlements for different stakeholders I mean I think kind of going back to this like Matrix of which stakeholders are the most important which stakeholders should have the most visibility I guess depends on kind of their where they sit within your company so obviously the stakeholders who should be the closest to it and have the most entitlements and visibility should be the folks who are you know key decision makers who have the most impact um and also making sure that they are kind of the folks who have the research Buy in I think is my I don't think the folks who have low research F should still be kept in the loop and are incredibly important to be tailoring towards but I think making sure that you are painting a good picture for them versus the folks who are kind of in in it with you and are should have full visibility because they you know they're bought in they're research mature um and I think separating those researchers uh those stakeholders out to kind of like who is bought in who isn't bought in who has you know decision-making privileges who doesn't and then kind of plotting that out and making sure that you're kind of making your decisions based on that okay um that was the last question that we had I'll just pause a moment for anyone else to um have the opportunity to jump in and ask a question um have have learned a lot about socialization in different ways that we um can do that so I really appreciate you taking the time for really helping us understand like the value and the impact why it's so important um so I don't see any other questions so I think we are good to adjourn I want to thank you again for your time and all the work you put into your presentation it was very insightful um what we will do is we will rejoin at the top of the hour um so feel free to grab a snack um answer some emails and at the top of the hour we will start with our next presenter okay than thank you so much