Research : The Academic - Practitioner Divide

A Recap on the Talk

This week I attended PhillyCHI's event featuring Michael Carvin and Michael Zarro. The talk was entitled User Experience Research: Is there an Academic – Practitioner Divide? The discussion proposed the thesis that there is hardline division between the practitioner research and academic research. The talk was rich and the discussion afterwards fruitful. The conclusion was that there is much more room for the use of academic research within the practitioners day-to-day projects, but that due to perceived dense material, difficult search options, and time constraints many practitioners do not use the amazingly thorough research that is done in the field of human computer interaction. There also is the potential for further partnerships between academia and corporations within the Philadelphia area. When the talk was finished there were some tangential thoughts and further exploration that occurred as a group.
 

The Discussion

Rigor within User Experience (is there a lack there of?)
The subject of rigor within UX research was posed by Dave Cooksey of saturdave, an independent user experience consultancy. His concern seemed to me to be two-fold: 1. that there is not a rigorous community of partitioners providing the necessary feedback and constructive criticism on the amount and strategy for UX research and 2. that there is no standard for UX research, unlike other fields. Without such standards, there's no ability to measure the level of rigor or to even have baseline approaches to our methods. While many practitioners participate in discussing standards through a lively community online there is no formal academic requirement for practitioners in the field. In his talk. The User Experience of User Experience, another PhillyCHI event, Cooksey made the point that 'there is no qualifying test for User Experience Professionals as there is with architects or Doctors' and that 'we are not held to the same standards as other fields.' Yet, we are increasingly being brought to the table as experts in our field without the same formal qualifications as other disciplines. From my point of view this brings us both advantages and disadvantages. Without having formal requirements we are free to help shape what the field is in a way that other more formal professions are not. We have the ability to shape how we fit into a team through our actions. This could be seen as a disadvantage as well, which I think was more the point of the comment: that there are many practitioners who do not follow rigorous methods of practice, who could inevitably poison the perception of the field by producing low quality work and produce irreversible perceptions within the minds of our non-UX partners. This double edge sword I believe to be one though that is faced by many fields due to differences in the level of rigor at different institutions. Overall, I tend to lean towards the direction that our current position affords us immense opportunity to help shape our field as well as act as change agents in legacy institutional structures.
 
Is the bar set low for design research?
I brought up the point that was mirrored by another participant, forgive me for not citing his name, that the bar for User Experience professionals doing research is quite low. This relates to the way that we communicate to our clients and business stakeholders on the level of numbers and metrics. These are the bread and butter of what they do, and I feel that whenever research is cited or conducted by the User Experience teams, the tendency of business is to be either surprised that such thought was included in what is perceived as more of an aesthetic practice or to somewhat blindly take the research as fact without much questioning. This does get back to the earlier point of there being no true research standards in UX. I also feel it gets at this idea of the increasing overlap of product management and user experience professionals, as we get more refined in our ability to conduct both qualitative and evaluative research we are able to provide more objective rational behind our decisions and also speak more the language of business in a way that we have not been able to before. I recently wrote about this overlap in my article: Product Management and User Experience Had a Baby.
 
How can we use UX metrics?
After the talk a woman who also works at a large corporation explained to me that my comment on the bar being set low for research hit home for her. She spoke of a way that her internal design team has been able to improve the relationship with business as well as the outcome of the final product by creating User Experience Metrics that are more granular ways of measuring success and failure of given interactions and tasks. What these do is two fold: 1. it forces the designs to align closely with the business goals in a way that elevates the practice of User Experience within the eyes of the business as an important and rigorous practice that is integral to business success and 2. With the added inclusion of "how to measure success" tacked on to the definition phase of the user experience both teams are forced to consolidate and prioritize the use cases which comprise the heart and soul of the desired experience. At the end of a project when the product is within flight, the use of user experience metrics map seamlessly with the business metrics and both teams are able to measure success and failure concurrently.
 
Potential for Partnership: Academia and Institutions
The talk also raised the idea for more collaboration between academic institutions and corporations, especially within the Philadelphia area. By creating relationships either through a stipend or granting the ability to publish findings, institutions can have academic research and insight into their operations and products that may not be feasible internally due to timing, budget, or internal resources. This would require some level of trust on both parties and could be tricky from a legal perspective. However, from my perspective seems like a no brainer!
For now, I at least feel encouraged to reach out to local academics and libraries to use relevant published research within my daily practice. 
 
PHOTO CREDITS:
http://trevinwax.com/2007/12/26/2007-the-year-in-book-review/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/taedc/5686750281/lightbox/