Best-Kept Secrets on Becoming a Great User Researcher - Marisa Morby (Prin. Researcher, Observable)

User research is an underappreciated art - we in tech are so used to being immersed in an ocean of quantitative data that we can forget that on the other side of the screen are real humans who want to solve very specific problems. And often times, their problems are extremely hard to put a number on. Why did they abandon their cart right before checkout? What made them start creating a new newsletter but then abandon it but come back a month later? Not everything can be answered with a SQL query against the telemetry database.

Marisa Morby, a Principal Researcher at Observable, sat down with me to help me better understand what it means to be great (not just good) at user research, and how that can help produce a whole new range of unexpected product insights. And Marisa definitely knows what the impact of great user research can be on the product - she previously worked at such notable companies like Netlify, Gatsby, and Accenture Song, where she honed her skills and UX instincts.

You can also find Marisa around the web:

🌍 Website: https://marisamorby.com/
📷 Instagram:   / marisamorby  
🦋 Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/marisamorby.com
📰 Newsletter: https://marisamorby.kit.com/posts

Read more about the show: https://theworkitem.com/episodes/secr...

-----

🎙 SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2vbh70X...
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...
Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1506863229
RSS: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/the...
YouTube Music:    • The Work Item Podcast - Real Talk on Tech’...  

You can check out more episodes of The Work Item on https://theworkitem.com.

The Work Item podcast is hosted and produced by Den Delimarsky (https://den.dev).

#engineering #Career #podcast

00:50 Early career and finding her calling
05:39 Qualitative research is just as important as quantitative
10:19 Developing the requires skillset to be a great UX researcher
18:05 Becoming a good storyteller
23:47 Developing an intuition for what's important
28:24 A/B testing or user research
32:37 Determining what's a good thing to test
37:27 Transition from content to UX research
41:27 Developing a T-shaped personal skillset
45:12 Should you be a generalist
46:24 Value of combining many skills together
52:31 Unconventional career advice
53:49 Where can you find Marisa online