How to think about your career path as a UXer at Shopify

Near the end of 2018, Shopify introduced a formal job levels framework that set forth two parallel growth tracks: the individual contributor (IC) track, also known as the staff track, and the manager track. Prior to that point, Shopify did have a loosely defined “technical” track to complement the better-established manager track, but there had always been questions around what that role entailed and what a long-term career trajectory in that direction might look like. For example, could someone on the technical track one day become a director? And if they did, would they by definition have to take on direct reports?

The new framework aimed to answer these questions, and make the two growth tracks truly parallel and equivalent: after becoming senior individual contributors, Shopifolk could opt to continue their careers along that track, or branch off to the manager track. Job levels would be clearly defined at every rung along those paths, and though the responsibilities at each of those rungs would look a little different, impact on the business would be comparable, and salary expectations identical.

However, even with the staff track being newly formalized, there were very few examples at that point of people actually performing that role. And so, in an attempt to make better sense of it, folks began (perhaps inconsistently) articulating the main difference between the two tracks as the presence of direct reports: if you’re a manager, they said, you have people reporting directly to you. But if you’re a staff crafter, you don’t, and you also probably work directly on projects yourself. Simple enough, it seemed. But was it?

Looking around a year after the introduction of the framework, we saw examples of staff roles who had more reports than some managers. We saw managers working directly on high complexity, cross-functional projects. What’s more, while some managers went on to become generalists leading multidisciplinary teams of direct reports (i.e., UX managers), other “craft managers” maintained their discipline specialization, with only direct reports from their own discipline (e.g. UX research managers, UX development managers, etc.). And while both those roles have much in common, sitting side-by-side on the manager track, craft managers and staff crafters also tend to have many shared responsibilities, particularly when it comes to leading their specific discipline.

So, what’s really in a job title anyway?

When comparing parallel rungs on the two career tracks, the truth is: not as much as you’d think.

Titles are helpful in that they provide some signposts along one’s growth path. But they can be more effective when looked at as fluid or malleable, as guardrails rather than rigid constraints. Our job levels framework was deliberately written to reflect a set of non-exhaustive, high-level examples of what you might want to take on within a particular level of impact (e.g., “Knows when to apply best practices and tools, and knows when to improve them.”). They were not designed to be prescriptive lists of detailed output at that level. (e.g., “Knows how to use tool X at intermediate level and produces Y number of artifacts a month using it.”)

So, rather than consider the primary difference between a manager (whether specialist or generalist) and a staff role as whether one takes on direct reports, let’s instead look at where a given role may sit along (at the very least) three variables: people, discipline, and product.

While they may strive to strike a balance of all three, at any given time in their careers people are more likely to focus on two of them more than the third (and that’s not to say that the third falls entirely out of their purview, but perhaps just becomes more comparatively out of focus). Let’s look at where managers and staff may land through that lens:

These are just a few examples of how people in those roles may structure their responsibilities. If we further think of the staff and manager roles less like endpoints, and more as a spectrum, we can further map individual interpretations of those roles in a even more nuanced way:

So with all those possibilities, how can you tell what’s right for you?

Driving your own growth conversation

With so many nuances and variations, it can become overwhelming to figure out not only where you sit, but also where you’d like to be. To complicate things further, sometimes people have niche skills or teams have highly specific needs that aren’t explicitly reflected within the official job levels framework.

The reality is that we actually have far more say in shaping our roles than we think. At Shopify, impact is more contingent on adherence to a set of values rather than ticking off checklists, and many of those values promote autonomy: Build for the long-term. Thrive on change. Be a constant learner. So, to borrow inspiration from the concept of ikigai, the roles we craft for ourselves would, even should, sit at the intersection of: how we’re interested in growing (not just as workers, but also as humans); what we’re good at or enjoy; and what our teams actually need.

Below is just one example (in this case, for UX researchers) of how you could use such a framework to decide which role you might lean towards the most. The answer to some of the questions were deliberately chosen to be the same, in order to show that, regardless of title, different roles have a lot more in common than we might think:

These aren’t one-way paths

At Shopify, we sometimes refer to careers as “jungle gyms”, and encourage moving across teams, product lines, disciplines, or roles. And yet, one of the most common concerns we hear when discussing career interests with individual contributors is the perception that, if they decide to go down the management track, they will remain there, well, forever. We’ve grown up with the idea of “career managers”, or folks who remain on the management ladder until retirement. And while that is an absolutely fine, if not aspirational, path for many people, others balk at that type of commitment.

It’s perhaps more helpful to think of management as a craft, rather than a career, one that entices you to build a new set of skills to add to your toolbox. Amongst many things, being a manager requires you to learn how to listen better. It requires you to have difficult conversations. It requires you to make decisions that take into account both the humans and the business, to manage performance, give feedback, and design teams. And when you look at those as standalone skills, they are all qualities one might aspire to develop, regardless of role, discipline, or long-term growth plans.

So even if you don’t necessarily want to be a manager for the rest of your life, given the opportunity to try it, we recommend exploring the option of taking on direct reports, or even approaching management as a time-boxed skill-building opportunity. There is absolutely nothing to say you can’t jump back to an individual contributor growth path should you choose to do so down the line.

So now what?

You might’ve noticed this piece deliberately refrains from providing an exact formula for how your career should unfold. And that’s because no two paths are the same, nor should they be: people have different strengths and aspirations, and teams have different needs and objectives. It’s impossible to make them all fit in a rigid structure that does away with nuances and individuality. But, by coupling a well-defined job level framework with guidance on how to interpret and tailor it to specific situations, you can have more autonomy and ownership over the decisions that shape a huge proportion of their lives. So use both to start the conversation, have it early and have it often, and carve your own unique path through this thing called UX.

A comprehensive playbook on how to review user research plans, sessions, and reports (including your own)

Over the past few years, I’ve spent quite a bit of my time giving other researchers feedback on their work. In fact, if you were to ask my lead, he’d tell you I’ve spent entirely too much time reviewing other people’s studies. Every once in awhile though, he’d nudge me to think of offloading some of that work onto others on my team. To pass the torch in a way, by teaching someone else those skills and moving on to new challenges myself.

Though I heard (and agreed) with what he said, I didn’t act on his suggestion. True enough, the more time I spent down in the weeds of other people’s research, the less time I had to pull back, see the bigger picture, and tie all their stories together. And the more time I spent reviewing work, the more I was taking away opportunities from others on my team who maybe wanted to learn how to do it themselves. But the problem was I didn’t know how to teach others something I thought came innately to me. I’d been looking at other researchers’ work for what felt like a very long time, and therefore thought I had developed some sort of instinct for weeding good studies from bad ones. “It just comes to me” I’d respond, thinking it probably wasn’t possible to abstract my way of thinking into a teachable skill.

But, as the requests for feedback continued to metaphorically pile up on my desk, my approach seemed more and more unsustainable: I knew something needed to change. And so I began to pay more attention to what was actually going through my head as I reviewed other people’s work, attempting to break down my own process. Eventually, it dawned on me that the answer was far simpler than I imagined: questions. All my brain was doing whenever I looked at research documents or sat in on sessions was looping through a series of questions. In a way, it seems predictable (and fitting) for a researcher to structure their thoughts entirely in questions, and so once I began writing them down, I realized that this skill was easily transferrable.

I know now that being able to give good feedback isn’t fully contingent on having years’ worth of exposure to different types of research projects. It’s not some sort of mystical or innate ability that can’t be abstracted or taught. And it’s not something that should fall solely on one person’s shoulders, but rather a shared responsibility that can help entire teams level up their skills together. And so, we put it all into this playbook.

Today, it’s being used at Shopify, not only by research managers looking to give their reports better feedback, but also by the reports themselves, as they look for opportunities to mentor one another. And, if you look closely enough, you’ll see it also serves as a checklist of sorts: questions researchers should be asking themselves about their own work before shipping it.

As we align those who produce the work and those who review it more closely on a common set of questions, we can tighten the feedback loop and collectively shorten the time to get quality research out the door.

How to use this playbook

It’s pretty simple, really. We’ve broken things down into giving feedback on research plans, sessions, and reports. As you review other people’s work, try to see how confident you are in answering questions from the appropriate list below.

An important thing to note is that, while comprehensive, each list is not meant to be exhaustive. And we do not expect most artifacts that come your way to satisfy all questions within a list. Rather, each set of questions is meant to give you a sense of what to think about and look for when reviewing others’ work, as well as your own.

Giving feedback on research plans

Giving feedback on research sessions

Giving feedback on research findings

Questions to consider when giving feedback on research plans

On the rationale behind the work:

• Why is this research being done?
• Did the researcher offer a strong rationale?
• Have research or data explorations been done on this topic within your organization? What about outside your organization?
• If there is already existing research, why is this study necessary? What will we learn that hasn’t already been uncovered with past research?
• Which project(s)/initiatives benefit from this research being done?
• Is this research actionable? What decisions are the team trying to make based on the research? How will the team’s decisions change depending on what’s learned?

On the research questions:

• Are the research questions well-formulated? Do they attempt to understand or uncover a process/need/challenge (e.g. “What are the biggest challenges people experience when it comes to doing X?”)? Or are they questions the team should be asking itself after the research has been completed (e.g. “What can we do to improve X?”)?
• Do the questions include leading/non-neutral language that might bias the research?
• Are the research questions well-scoped? As they’re written, is it possible to truly answer the question through research with the timeframe in mind?
• When are the insights needed? Is there enough time to do the study well enough?
• Are the research questions prioritized so that less impactful or less urgent ones can be scoped out if needed?

On the research method:

• Why and how was the research method chosen?
• To what extent is the method suitable to the research question at hand?
• What other methods could have been considered, and how well would they have answered the research questions?
• What advantages does the chosen method offer? What disadvantages or biases might it present?

On selecting participants:

• How were the participants chosen?
• Have all types of users who will be impacted been considered?
• What participant characteristics did the researcher specify, and why?
• To what extent have baseline parameters that define participants been considered?
• How relevant are the research questions to the group of chosen participants?
• How diverse should the participants be?
• Should a range of expertise be considered (e.g. novice vs. advanced users), and why?
• Is a screener question needed to further qualify potential participants?
• Does the screener complement what the researcher might learn about participants through data already available to them?
• What biases might this group present?
• Has the researcher decided on what “thank you” gift might be appropriate for their participants?
• If there are any participant groups with unique recruitment considerations, is there a plan for how to handle the outreach?

On designing participants tasks:

• To what extent do the tasks involved help address the research questions at hand?
• What will be learned from watching participants perform those tasks?
• To what extent are those tasks ecologically valid (i.e. mimic something the participant would actually do)?
• Are there any potential biases associated with the tasks?

On the interview guide:

• Are participants given an introduction that sets the right expectations for the session without biasing them?
• Are all considerations when it comes to ethics, consent, and compensation discussed with the participant at the start of the session?
• How well does the interview guide reflect the research questions?
• Are all questions open, neutral, and non-leading? If a question is not, is there a good reason behind that?
• Does the length of the interview guide seem reasonable? Can it be completed within the allotted time?

Questions to consider when giving feedback on research sessions

On introducing the session:

• How clearly did the researcher go over consent/NDA considerations at the start of the session?
• Did they address any concerns the participant had?
• Did they go over the details of how the participant would receive their compensation?
• How clearly did they introduce the format and purpose of the research session?
• Were they careful not to introduce any information that might bias participant attitudes or responses?
• To what extent did they build rapport with the participant?
• Did they maintain a professional attitude while doing so?
• Were they able to warm up the session without necessarily posing as a friend to the participant?

On the way they spoke to participants:

• Did they ask open, neutral, non-leading questions whenever possible?
• Did they make each question as clear and concise as possible?
• Did they embrace silence when done posing the question, to give the participant room to answer?
• Did they embrace silence when the participant was done answering, to give them room to add any further thoughts?
• Did they keep a neutral tone and facial expression throughout?
• Did they avoid nodding unnecessarily?
• Did they avoid using filler words (e.g. ‘um’, ‘uh’, ‘like’, ‘you know’, etc.)?

On clarity of language:

• How did the participant react to each question being posed?
• Did they struggle to understand any particular questions? Did they ask for clarifications?
• Did they react with surprise at any particular questions?
• Did they seem to think the answer was obvious, or weren’t sure why the question was being asked?
• Were they unsure how to answer any particular questions?
• Did they answer in a manner that indicated they misunderstood the question?
• Did the researcher probe sufficiently behind each answer?

On the flow of conversation:

• Was there a natural progression to the conversation?
• Did the flow/order of the question make sense?
• To what extent was the researcher able to follow their interview guide?
• How did they handle participants going on tangents?

On completing tasks:

• Did they let participants explore tasks or designs without leading them?
• Did they refrain from helping them as much as possible?
• How did they handle participants asking their own questions?

On wrapping up the session:

• Did the researcher treat the participant in a courteous and respectful manner throughout?
• Did they go over any relevant compensation details, final notes, or next steps with the participant at the end of the session?

Questions to consider when giving feedback on research findings

On providing necessary context:

• Did the researcher include a clear rationale for why this work was carried out?
• Is there a brief overview of the study (so that readers don’t have to go to another document just to understand what was done and why)?
• Have links to relevant collateral been provided (e.g. research plan, notes and analysis, etc.)?

On addressing research questions:

• Have answers to the original research questions been explicitly provided? Why/why not?
• Have root problems been uncovered and described clearly? Why/why not?
• How strong or weak are the themes and patterns in the sample? Is there a need to expand the size to develop clear themes and patterns?

On each individual finding or insight:

• Does this point actually make sense?
• Does it surprise you? If so, why?
• Is it an anecdote, or a fully synthesized insight?
• If an anecdote, has it been carefully positioned as such? And why is it important to mention?
• If an insight, is there sufficient evidence to back it up? Can you determine how the analysis process might have led to that point being made?
• Are there any findings in the document that are in conflict with one another?
• Are there any findings that are in conflict with findings from other research/data/support explorations?
• If so, have those conflicts been sufficiently addressed or explored?
• Are the findings framed in a way that minimizes misinterpretation or misuse of the information?
• Have there been any attempts to triangulate qualitative findings with previously uncovered insights?
• How well does the researcher make the connection between the “what” and the “so what?” Why does each finding matter, and what can be done as a result?

On sensitive information:

• Has personally identifiable information (PII) for participants been removed from the findings?
• If any PII has been featured in the findings (e.g. participant names, faces, videos, etc.), is there a clear rationale and consent for doing so?

On considering one’s audience:

• Who is the audience for this report (e.g. the project team, other researchers, the entire organization)?
• How well is the content suited for that audience? To what extent would they be able to understand it? To what extent would they care about it?

On the structure of an artifact:

• Are the most important points made early enough in the document? Will a reader who drops out early still get something meaningful out of it?
• Is the length of the document commensurate with the breadth of the study? Think: a usability study report vs. findings from a generative/exploratory study.
• Does any of the content belong in a separate document or an appendix?

On next steps:

• Are there clear actions or next steps to be taken as a result of this research?
• Are those actions or next steps clearly marked down? Can anyone referring to the document later clearly find them?

As mentioned earlier, this list is by no means exhaustive. It’s better thought of as a living, breathing document — a starting point to expand on and tweak according to your team’s specific needs.

I hope this playbook can play even a small part in giving researchers clearer expectations of what a reviewer might look for in their work. More importantly, however, I hope it will give researchers more confidence in reviewing each others’ work, taking on mentorship opportunities, and feeling ownership over raising the bar of their collective output.

Big shoutouts to Jen Chow for her massive contribution to this playbook, and to Meghan Yip, Sharon Moorhouse, and Brook Jibb for supporting me in taking it to the finish line.

For those still wondering whether taking all that time to chat is really worth it

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the people who once told me that they’ve never had recurring 1:1s, and didn’t understand why they needed them. I’ve been thinking about the people I know who only ever have the occasional 1:1, and struggle with a general lack of support at work. I’ve been thinking about those who do have regular 1:1s, but hate them. I’ve been reading about how some people don’t understand the purpose of 1:1s, in an age where tools like Slack keep us in constant communication with one another. And I’ve been meeting people who are shocked to learn that I chat with each of my reports for a full hour every week. So how did I get to a point where I realized that doing so was a critical part of my job?

“Is there anything I can do to support you?”

I still remember one of my earliest 1:1s. Fresh into my first job after nearly a lifetime spent in school, my lead at the time asked at the end of our meeting, “Is there anything I can do to support you?”

I was speechless. No one had ever asked me that before. I had spent the last seven years of my life navigating through the existential crisis that is grad school. And during that time, I had simply learned to fend for myself between the long stretches that separated the sporadic (and usually brief) encounters I had with my supervisor.

Not feeling quite sure how to respond, I stammered about how I’d think about it, and let her know.

“How do you deal with awkward silence?”

I still remember that one conversation I had with another lead a couple of years back. I wasn’t a lead yet myself at that point, and I didn’t report to him directly. But he was curious what the 1:1s I had with my own lead were like: how did we know what to talk about? How did we fill the full hour? How did we deal with the awkward silences? I found his questions surprising: I could barely fit everything I had to say into an hour. I’d go into each session and launch into speeches about my work, my life, my emotional state, what I’d eaten that weekend, anything at all that came to mind. I couldn’t imagine struggling to find topics. In contrast, he described sitting there with his reports in silence, waiting for something to come up. By the end of our conversation, neither of us seemed clear on what was broken about his process. I wasn’t really sure what made my 1:1s with my lead different, so I chalked it up to differences in personality and didn’t think about it much more.

“How hard could it really be?”

I still remember my first 1:1 as a lead. I’d been reluctant to take on that new role for a number of reasons, but apprehension around conducting my own 1:1s had never been on the list. In fact, 1:1s seemed like they’d be the easiest part of the job. At that point, I’d been participating in them as a report every week for well over a couple of years. The conversation always flowed naturally between myself and my lead, and we never had a shortage of things to talk about. Plus, as a researcher, my job was literally asking people questions. How hard could it really be?

To this day, I can’t tell if my report saw right through it, but that first 1:1 felt like a disaster. I struggled to fill the time. I wasn’t sure what to ask. We went through an exercise designed to help prioritize her work. Looking back though, I’m fairly sure my goal was to come across like I knew something. At that point, I finally understood what that other lead had meant when he said he struggled to facilitate his own 1:1s. I thought I’d be immune to this: after all, things had gone so smoothly with my own lead. But try as I may, I couldn’t make them so with my report.

And so for a while, I didn’t look forward to my 1:1s, and I wasn’t really sure why. I couldn’t pinpoint why something that came so naturally to me as a report seemed so elusive as a lead. I kept waiting for the problem to go away on its own, expecting to somehow get more comfortable with the whole thing over time. But that didn’t happen on its own.

How do you want your 1:1s to go?

A good 1:1 may seem effortless, but behind the scenes, it takes work. Knowing how to turn a 1:1 from a status update into a time for introspection and openness is not something we know how to do innately just because our title changes one day. And through trial-and-error, a lot of reading, and, most importantly, talking to people who are far more talented at this than me, I learned a few things along the way.

• Be intentional about choosing the day of the week. Talk to your report about which day of the week they prefer to have their 1:1 on. This will usually be tied to what they’re looking to get out of your get-togethers. Some people like them on Monday so they can plan for the week. Others like them on Friday so they can reflect on the week. And others yet like them as a way to touch base and chat through questions as they come up mid-week.
• Adapt the format to their needs. Some reports might want to use their 1:1 to get feedback, while others might seek validation for the decisions they’re making. There are also those who might be looking for guidance as they navigate through new projects, teams, or growth opportunities. Pay attention to what they ask of you, and adapt the format so that they can receive the support they need. Some factors to take into consideration as you adjust things might include: the emotional needs of the report, the relationship you have with them, and their level of experience.
• Keep them regular. In “The Manager’s Path”, Camille Fournier explains that predictability is a key factor in preparing for 1:1s. For both leads and reports, it’s hard to put thought into what you might want to talk about during a 1:1 if you don’t know when they’ll be happening. As a report, I personally find the effect of skipping a 1:1 to be tangible: by the time two weeks have gone by between consecutive sessions, I can sense that urge to get what’s on my mind out in the open getting stronger.
• Get your status update elsewhere. There are plenty of places where a report can effectively share a status update with their lead: email, Slack, Github or Trello boards, to name a few. Written status updates have the added advantages of being easy-to-share with the rest of the team. They can also help you reflect when you’re preparing for growth chats or performance evaluations. By taking care of the logistics ahead of time, you can make better use of the time you have with your report to dive into topics and discussions that are better served face-to-face, like “coaching, mentorship, giving context, or even venting”.
• Keep track of what you want to talk about. Some argue that “setting an agenda” is the report’s responsibility, while others will tell you it falls on the lead. My take on this is that it’s a little bit of both. As a lead, keeping track of what you’ve discussed in prior 1:1s, or a list of tips or questions that may have popped into your head throughout week, can help you ease into the conversation. But at the end of the day, as competent as you may be, it’s impossible to read minds. Your report needs to feel comfortable bringing the topics that are important to them to the table. It’s therefore helpful to set the expectation that this responsibility is a shared one.
• Maintain the focus on your report, and not yourself. There are sources that say that, as a rule of thumb, a lead shouldn’t really talk more than 10% of the time during a 1:1. It’s pretty hard to figure out exactly how much 10% is, so I keep things even simpler by saying: if you catch yourself talking too much, you’re doing it wrong. The 1:1 isn’t the lead’s time, it belongs to the report. As someone who has a tendency to babble on, I try to stay cognizant of this behaviour, and to correct it whenever I find myself slipping into it while meeting with my reports.
• Know the right questions to ask. If you’ve ever experienced the difference between being asked “How are you doing?” and “How are you really doing?”, you might be aware of the impact that asking the right question can have. When it comes to 1:1s, there are a number of questions every lead should keep in their repertoire: “What’s on your mind?”, “What’s worrying you these days?”, “What are you really excited about?”, “Anything at all blocking you?”, and, of course, “Is there anything I can do to support you?” They’re handy to use in the beginning as conversation starters, and at the end to get any final thoughts out on the table.
• Take time for the personal stuff. A 1:1 helps you build rapport, and that rapport can only go so far if it’s only ever explored in a work-related context. You can’t expect someone to share what’s truly worrying them when you don’t even know their kid’s name. Take some time to ask your report how their previous weekend was, or what they’re up to over the next one. Tell them about that brunch you ate the other day, or the new ice cream spot you found in their neighbourhood. Fournier puts it best when she says:

“The bedrock of strong teams is human connection, which leads to trust. And trust, real trust, requires the ability and willingness to be vulnerable in front of each other. So, your manager will hopefully treat you like a human who has a life outside of work, and spend a few minutes talking about that life when you meet.”

• Plan for a full hour: Some people feel like the full hour every week is overkill, and wonder whether half-an-hour might suffice. But sometimes, it can take a full hour for things to bubble up to the surface. As Andy Grove highlights this in “High Output Management”, half-an-hour can confine the conversation to “simple things that can be handled quickly”. But it’s usually after the status update has been shared, and you sit there in silence for a few moments, that you really allow yourself to get to the heart of things. If you schedule a full hour and don’t use it each time, you end up with some extra free time between meetings. But if you schedule only half-an-hour, you risk robbing yourself and your report of the opportunity to get to the meaningful part of the conversation.
• Embrace the silence: As a researcher, I’ve learned to be comfortable with silence, and to give participants room after they speak, rather than interject with my next question right away. This space gives them an opportunity to gather their thoughts, follow-up on something they said, or even volunteer additional information they may not have otherwise shared. A 1:1 is no different: those moments we often tend to interpret as awkward silences can be opportunities to give the more meaty stuff enough room to surface.

Remember, however, that a good 1:1 is also in large part your report’s responsibility. As a lead, I do my best to engage with my reports during the time that I have with them. But as a report, I also try to make the most of that one hour that’s entirely mine: to share what’s on my mind, to vent, to express my concerns, and to (sometimes) inadvertently turn into a therapy session of sorts, if it so happens to be what I need that week.

You could easily rewrite each of the tips above to be read from the perspective of a report, rather than a lead. So, if you’re at the receiving end of a 1:1 you’d like to improve, try them out from that side. You’d be surprised at how taking charge of that time can impact how much you get out of it.

Finally, should you ever decide to become a lead yourself, know that the biggest determinant of the quality of the 1:1s you’ll hold in that role is the quality of the ones you receive today. This makes it all the more critical for you to take ownership of your current meetings are with your lead.

An effective, ongoing 1:1 creates an environment of openness, trust, and transparency. It can make all the difference in a report’s well-being, and the extent to which they feel heard and supported at work. Yes, a lead’s role is to know what their reports are up to, and to hold them accountable for the work that they do. But, perhaps more importantly, their role is also to have as much shared context as possible with each report. Because, on those days when things seem a little bit more difficult than usual, you should expect your lead to be that person in your corner: the one who’ll have your back, and who’ll understand better than most how to help get you through to the other side.

A massive shout-out to my leads, past and present, who’ve taught me by example most of what I know today.

And special thanks to Nic Evans for her help and patience, and for generally being an awesome human being.

In defence of 1:1s was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

And what that means for UX researchers

I think about privilege a lot. I’m guessing it’s safe to say that many of us do: the expression to “check one’s privilege” has shaped a lot of public discourse over the past few years, and not without controversy.

I often find myself going back to a story a friend of mine told me several years ago. We were chatting about privilege (at a bachelorette party, no less), when she mentioned that it had come up during a university class she was teaching. A student raised his hand to make the case that, as far as he was aware, he had no privileges to speak of. Her response was that those who are not aware of their own privilege are the most privileged of all.

That story really struck a chord with me. And it seems like she was really onto something, as a quick Wikipedia search will yield this interesting little tidbit:

Some academics highlight a pattern where those who benefit from a type of privilege are unwilling to acknowledge it.

So I think of the personal privileges I’m aware of, and worry about the ones I’m not. I particularly think a lot about what that means within the context of my work. As a UX researcher, I’m in a position where talking to people is probably my most valuable source of insight. In order to do this effectively, to really connect with people, to help them open up and share their stories, I ask questions. Actually, I get to ask questions. Lots of them. And therein lies the privilege.

In his book on the power of inquiry, A more beautiful question, Warren Berger questions how social structures play a large role in our approach, and even ability, to ask questions. Quoting a study by Indiana University sociologist Jessica McCory Calarco, Warren states that:

[S]tudents from families with higher incomes were more likely to be encouraged by their parents to ask questions at school, whereas children from modest backgrounds were encouraged by their parents to be more deferential to authority — and to try to figure things out for themselves, instead of asking for help.

Worried that they may be perceived as ‘less smart’ or even get in trouble for asking, students in the latter group thought it safer not to ask. And if you think about the social status of the two groups described in Calarco’s study, it becomes apparent that questioning and privilege are inherently related. But the way I look at it, it’s not just that certain privileges give you the predisposition to be comfortable with asking questions. Rather, it’s that to ask questions is a privilege.

So what does this mean for those of us who’ve made careers out of asking questions? What responsibilities do we hold towards those to whom we pose those questions? And towards the answers they offer in return? How do we check this privilege?

As I question the concept of questioning, I’ve attempted to find some answers by unpacking my experiences into some insights that are by no means exhaustive.

Be aware of the implicit power structure.

Just the act of asking someone to put aside time so you can ask them questions (the very basis structure of an interview) is establishing a power structure. You’re implicitly leading a situation, you have the upper hand. This structure may be unspoken, but it exists: from the interviewee’s perspective, you are the expert who likely possesses vast knowledge on the subject you plan to discuss. The reality though, is that you’ve set up the interview to learn from them, that you view them as the expert (and if that’s not the case, you might want to reconsider the purpose of your interview). Being aware of this allows you to shift those presumed roles, and and let your interviewee occupy the rightful role of expert.

Embrace your participant’s worldview.

In Interviewing Users, Steve Portigal stresses the importance of mirroring your participant’s language, embracing their worldview, and refraining from presuming that they share yours. This isn’t just a matter of making your interviewee comfortable: it goes back to the idea of setting up an environment that shifts the power balance back into your interviewee’s favor. Doing this allows them to open up, and helps you gain far more in the end.

Treat every opportunity to ask questions like it’s your last.

Someone has agreed to take time out of their day to speak with you, to partake in a process that, as far as they’re concerned, benefits you far more than it does them. This is an incredible opportunity. Every. Single. Time. It doesn’t matter if you’ve spoke to multiple people about this subject, you still need to treat each interview with the respect and care it deserves. Let your interviewee know this or, better yet, help them feel it: that the time and knowledge they contribute to your work truly matters.

And so it’s with real privilege and awareness that I ask: what would you add to this list?’

Interested in asking questions? Come work with us at Shopify, we’re hiring.

Big up to Distil Co for her help with this article.

Like it was our job. (Literally.)

During Shopify’s quarterly Hack Days, employees get the chance to work on whatever they want, even if that means wandering around the neighborhood and eating all the food.

On this glorious Hack Days #15, members of Shopify’s Montreal UX team took on the challenge of contributing to On the Grid, a “designer’s guide to neighborhood gems”. With over 177 cities having been claimed internationally, On the Grid offers lists of neighborhood must-sees, as curated by local design agencies. A sort of travel guide for creative types, by creative types.

With the Shopify office being located in Old Montreal, we went on a mission to discover all the hidden gems our hood had to offer. Check out our On the Grid page to see what made the list.

Wanna do cool shit like this? Come work with us, we’re hiring!

All photos by Alexandre Deschamps and Guillaume Granger.

A little while ago, a fellow user researcher on my team received some pretty intriguing feedback from a participant who was tired of feeling like part of a ‘crowd sourced’ software solution:

“I realize people are happier if they have the perception of choice, but I don’t like to feel I’m part of a psychological experiment.”

Later, the participant further revealed that:

“I just don’t believe any company actually wants to make my life better so much as they want me to think that they do. What they really want is to make sure I keep writing the cheques.”

Naturally, that didn’t sit well with the user research team. But we couldn’t deny that the participant did make some valid points. From the end user’s perspective, there can be an undeniable lack of transparency into how their feedback influences a product, leaving them with the feeling that the insights they’ve provided might just dissipate into the ether.

And who can blame them? I can’t remember how many times I’ve had to explain what UX research is to friends, family, or even co-workers. Or the number of times that I’ve been confused with our support department, with people expecting that I had set up a call to help them with specific problems they were experiencing.

Another scenario I keep coming across is when others think they know what a UX researcher does, but might not be aware of the guiding principles behind the practice. Put in simple terms, user research “focuses on understanding user behaviors, needs, and motivations through observation techniques, task analysis, and other feedback methodologies.” To do this, researchers rely on a wide repertoire of techniques, from observations to usability tests, surveys to interviews, workshops and more, all designed to elicit feedback from which meaningful insights can be synthesized.

But while this might explain what user research is on some fundamental level, it only really scratches the surface of what truly motivates us as researchers.

Guiding others towards designing and building for people

One of our biggest responsibilities as UX researchers is to guide our project teams (designers, developers, product managers, etc.) to design and build for people. Not “users”, but people. This is an important distinction: we don’t define people within the context of the tools they’re using, but rather as humans for whom those tools represent only a small part of their lives.

And, our research insights don’t mean much unless they become recommendations that actually get implemented. So the way we share them is just as important as where they come from: while a detailed test report has a place and time (for example, at the end of a project or extended study), more often than not this format can be intimidating and deter others from adopting our findings. Instead, we need to consider our audience and the format of the study itself:

• How involved were non-researchers in the project?
• What do they intend to do with the results and recommendations?
• How do they disseminate and consume other information on daily basis?
• Why was this research conducted in the first place?

More often than you’d think, a poster, light talk, story, or short video can help us communicate our findings much more effectively than a lengthy report.

Empathy is at the core of what we do

On the surface, research techniques might seem accessible with little training, but a good researcher needs to possess or at least develop certain key qualities. Natural curiosity — this vital need to ask questions and find answers — is at the core of all research. But where UX research differs from other types of research that are also driven by curiosity (see: academic) is that it can’t be successful without another key ingredient: empathy. As Indi Young describes it, empathy isn’t just about feeling the same emotions as another person:

“It’s about understanding how another person thinks — what’s going on inside her head and heart. And most importantly, it’s about acknowledging her reasoning and emotions as valid, even if they differ from your own understanding.”

As UX researchers, we not only talk to people, but also listen with intent; that type of listening where you’re completely focused and absorbed by what others are saying, rather than just waiting for your turn to speak. We explore, understand and, in that very moment, adopt another person’s perspective. We look past preferences and seek to understand behaviours. We take note of emotional reactions, but also dig deeper to find the reasons that elicit them in the first place.

So, what do we do with your feedback?

If you’re participating in user research, you might find yourself asking this question. Perhaps you’ve given feedback on a feature, but upon its release, you found that it differs widely from what you expected, or that your feedback seems to have been discarded altogether. At this point, you might start to wonder why you participated in the first place. Sure, you may have received some compensation for your time, but that’s not the real reason you agreed to take part in a study: you actually care about the product and genuinely wanted to help.

The reality is, while we treat all feedback with equal importance, the insights we distill from it are ranked on two different scales:

• Frequency: How many participants experienced the same problem, or expressed the same view?
• Severity: To what extent did this problem prevent those participants from accomplishing a given task?

After careful analysis accounting for these factors, we prioritize issues that emerged in our research, and make recommendations. And though we try to resolve as many of these issues as possible, there is a chance that technical limitations or project conflicts get in the way, at least for the time being. However, a good researcher will continue to follow up on those, even months after the fact, to make sure that participants’ feedback is thoroughly incorporated wherever possible.

So with that in mind, here’s how my aforementioned teammate eventually responded to our disillusioned participant’s concerns:

“More than anything — we want this to be a partnership — we’re here to build a product for you that helps you to run your business, and we need to have ears to the ground so we can tell whether this is working or not. We try our best to make that happen for you, so please let us know if we’re successful or not.”

Please do. We’re always curious to hear about what you’re thinking.