Three months after I got laid off from the top robotics manufacturer in China, I recovered from the burn-out and started to reflect on my nearly three years of experience in exploring the so-called user research (用户研究) in China.
Start knowing about user research
“What is user research?” When I was stuck in China at the beginning of 2020 without completing my anthropology master’s degree, I had no idea what the answer was. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, I had spent three years studying in Europe and was planning to start my career in NGOs. My flight back to France was cancelled twice, and I eventually gave up and accepted my fate.
Maybe I should consider something in China? However, I had no internship experience, design skills, or business acumen. The only skill I possess is my experience in conducting research, which I acquired during almost 7 years of studying anthropology. When I found the job description “user research”, I was so excited and nearly shouted, it’s exactly what I can do!
Stepping into this industry can be challenging, especially it seemed that nobody was hiring this kind of position under the effect of covid in 2020. I took a product manager course where I knew about Jakob’s Nielsen 10 Usability Heuristics and used it to evaluate two competitve application. Then, luckily I got two short periods of internship in market & user research and consumer insight. I did some cases in comparative analysis, designing persona & scenarios and qualitative content analysis. Despite having various pieces of its methodology, I was still unable to see the whole picture of user research. What is this about? What is the scope of the position? How does it compare to the product manager role, and how does it relate to market and consumer research?
Driven by curiosity, I landed my first job as a “user researcher,” albeit a contract position. At the top Chinese e-commerce company, I found myself functioning more as a general “researcher” rather than a specific “user researcher.”
My duties included gathering second-hand information and reports to build a database for analyzing competitor products. I also conducted cold calls with users who filled out our questionnaire to obtain pre-interview insights. Additionally, I handled some quantitative data from the NPS survey platform. I never really talked with the product or design team!
Go solve the doubt myself
If I want to do more research involving contact with people, I still need to see what work is like in market & consumer research. Three months later, I decided to focus on qualitative research and received offers from two global market research consultancies.
Entering the market research sector was a smooth transition for me, as qualitative methods remained the key tool. It was during this time that I met my leader, who worked as a UX researcher. It was the first time I had heard the term, instead of “user researcher”. The projects I worked on were used to serve products and designs, and I started to become familiar with user testing, affinity mapping, personas (which we called segmentation), and user journey design, without fully understanding why we chose those methods or whether they were part of qualitative methods. I also never co-created with any designers. We had focus groups to co-create concepts, ideas, pros & cons, and the key findings fell on very specific product services or features. From being a novice to becoming a skilled labourer, I did this type of work with some level of proficiency but without needing profound insight.
Looking back, I can see that the role of a user researcher can be divided into three sub-directions:
- Research for insight/innovation that helps entrepreneurs with a look-ahead strategy.
- Research for product and design, which are likely the works of a UXR.
- Research for branding, sales (after-sales), and marketing.
Of course, there can be overlap between these categories, but they are all based on different sectors of companies. Researchers who work on these three types, focusing on understanding the users/consumers, can all be called user researchers in China.
My experience in consulting naturally led me to the second category, and I started my UXR career in my last company. In this position, I encountered a real dilemma as a UXR without a design foundation.
“I can teach designers with research methods, and then, what am I for?”
During my year at the robotics company, I found that conducting research in this industry had its challenges. The limited time and expectation of immediate results were crucial restraints. The research had to be conducted within a strict production process, with everything standardized to avoid errors. A large portion of the research involved user testing, which meant evaluating the product experience in multiple countries. There were no changes, no innovations, and not much room for insight, unlike in consulting. As a social science researcher, I didn’t feel that I added much value.
However, the structure of the company changed, and our group was redefined as “user experience designers.” This meant that I would literally become a designer, despite not having systematically studied design. We began collaborating with UI designers, GUI designers, industrial designers, and package designers. One of our new tasks was to teach the designers how to iterate their designs with research on different phases, including writing tasks, conducting interviews, A/B testing, launching user testing, and analyzing problems, scenarios, and satisfactions…
In effect, we were turning the designers into UX generalist!
I had the concert feeling that I was losing my value as a researcher. As I was thinking of quitting this job, the layoff found me precisely. Luckily, I got money. But my future is vast and hazy.
2013 sucks for the Chinese job market. The situation is even worse for younger juniors, regardless of the sector in which they work. I should be appreciated that I got to understand more of the user research sector and the dilemma is clear. Researches means uncertainty and money wasting for financially strained companies.
To be a UXR who will succeed, there is only one way out of the dilemma — — being a designer yourself. There will be no UXR, UXD but only UX. Although there are many articles talking about specialist will become the trend. It is simply not the case in China. When the economy goes down, being a specialist is precarious. You need to enhance your value proposition by acquiring more skills.
It will be a hard time for people who do not come from a design background to work in this section. The rat race in the UX design field is becoming increasingly fierce, making it even more difficult for UX researchers to prove themselves. Learn more concrete skills and combine them with research ability, that should be prioritized in the career strategy.