Moderated by Helen Lee Lin with guest speaker Ploy Hemrathiran
A presentation of the UX Researchers’ Guild
This is an abridgment; view the full video presentation here.
Session 5 – April 15, 2023

In Session #5 of the “Farewell Academia, Hello UXr”  series Helen Lee Lin welcomed guest speaker TEKsystems onboarding coach and specialized digital creative recruiter Ploy Hemrathiran. In this session, Ploy talked about ​what to include in a LinkedIn profile, how to work with recruiters, and discussed ​recruiters’ goals when reviewing a potential candidate’s portfolio.

How to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile

Keep in mind that Linkedin is a social media platform to connect with other business people and be sure and include information to make those connections more meaningful and effective.

A common mistake when working with a recruiter is not having a LinkedIn profile. A couple of years ago, that might have been okay. But not having a Linkedin now makes a recruiter’s job more difficult. Hiring managers or recruiting coordinators use LinkedIn to screen potential candidates. They will take a look at your LinkedIn to make sure that it matches your resume. For example, if your resume says you are a UX researcher, but your Linkedin says you are a Research Associate, could indicate a red flag. Ensure that your resume and your Linkedin match.

Be sure you’re representing yourself at the best. Presentation does matter. This includes having a professional image as your profile picture. It doesn’t have to be done in a studio, but it should be clear, not blurry.

Another thing that is often overlooked on Linkedin is recommendations. As I look at someone’s Linkedin and see they are at Amazon where I know they are looking for a UX researcher, I might contact them to see if you know this person. Having recommendations and professional references is important and can help solidify those connections you’re trying to make. 

While it is obvious to include your current and past work histories, recruiters also want to know about you; who you are, and what you‘ve done. If, for example, you graduated from a school that specializes in AI or AR, that might make a difference. But recruiters will take maybe 20-60 seconds to look at resumes and profiles. Be sure and highlight what matters most without making it too long. But it has to grab my attention. 

Unfortunately, many people leave the “About Me” section blank. We want to know what you’ve done, but we also want to know what makes you unique. Even hobbies or side gigs can highlight additional skill sets that a recruiter is looking for. I typically recommend two bullet points in this section. 

As a recruiter, I use Control F to find what I am looking for. If my client wants someone with B2B experience with Cloud software, I’ll Control F “Cloud.” Or if I want to know if someone has used internal tools, I’ll Control. F “Internal”. If I don’t find these keywords, I’ll probably assume that this person is not a great fit. 

If the client wants someone who has worked with Salesforce before, that’s very easy and quick to find. Sometimes our clients are very specific about what types of background they’re looking at. So when you leave a blank, it’s almost like a guessing game.

Be sure and note whether your work is a contract or full-time. This helps recruiters understand your availability. If interested, they can reach out for more information as to when your contracts end and set up a follow-up call.

Lastly, post content! And like other people’s posts. This will help boost your posts and utilize your network more effectively. 

Partnering with Recruiters

Partnering with a recruiter implies a relationship. And with any relationship, it takes effort on both parts to make it work. You can help your recruiter, and thus yourself, with a few easy steps.

I interact with upwards of 100 people each week, whether by phone or email. And because I’m in staffing, everything moves quickly, and as much as I would love to remember everyone’s name, it can be challenging. So be intentional in your interactions.  

First, let your recruiter get to know you. Make yourself memorable in some way. My name is Ploy, which I describe as rhyming with “employ” or “deploy.” This way, someone will more than likely remember me. Make a connection in some way that stands out so that a recruiter will remember you. 

Because a relationship is a two-way street, take time to get to know your recruiter. Do they work for a staffing agency or are they from internal recruiters? Is it a contract? Is it full-time? Do they have a special specialization, or focus on different skill sets?

As you share your own skill sets, be careful to avoid saying you are open to anything and everything. That might seem like a good mindset to have. But if you want to go into Ux research, I would be very intentional about your journey and what want to do. As a recruiter, this will help me identify what jobs would be best for you. 

Because I interact with so many people, it may take longer to respond than I would like. That’s why taking the time for a recruiter to get to know you is so important. It makes it so much easier to place people in the perfect positions. 

Even though you may not hear from a recruiter as often as you would like, please know that they do care and want what is best for you. Unfortunately, there is a misconception that recruiters only care about themselves. That has not been my experience. Because of this, don’t be afraid to reach out to them for any updates via text or a LinkedIn message if you don’t hear back in a timely manner. 

To make this communication easier, I highly recommend asking about your recruiter’s preferred method of communication. Some people will say you can give them a call, while others will say they will reach out to you. Be sure to ask those questions.

And if a particular recruiter doesn’t find anything for you, check their network to see if they know someone with whom you might be able to connect. Finding a great job is all about networking, and a recruiter can be a big part of that process.

Tips for UX Research Case Studies/Portfolios

• Format:
  While a pdf is acceptable, it’s becoming more of an expectation to have a portfolio or a website. From my perspective, I look to see how easy it is to read. Can I get the gist of what this person is doing within two minutes? I look for a clean research portfolio that is easy to navigate. Whatever format you choose, make sure that your fonts are consistent throughout your presentation. Your name and section headings might be in a different font, but the rest should be in an easy-to-read format. Also ensure that the placement of information (for example, section headings, deliverables, etc) is consistent from page to page.

• What is your role?
  Sometimes people forget to include what their role is. I need to be able to see it right off the bat.

• Research question:
  Include your research question early on before you get into the process. What is the problem that you are trying to solve? Make this a separate section near the beginning of your portfolio to make it stand out and easy to find.

• Timeline and Collaboration Partners:
  As a recruiter, I look at your timeline, and the reason for it, and if you worked with anybody else. Who were your collaboration partners? This might include working cross-collaboration with product managers, developers, engineers, and designers. If you’re transitioning from Academia, you might not have those opportunities. But I also want to know if you partnered with others.

• Background:
  This might include improving order, size, and communications for particular products. Simplify your explanations using no more than four or five sentences. To help readers know more than a quick summary of findings, direct them to deeper information. This is where a website is helpful. You can embed hyperlinks to include additional analysis. You won’t lose content and readers will clearly understand what you have done.

• Explain Your Processes:
  As I read through your resume, one of the things I will look for is your processes. If I don’t see it there, that’s where your portfolio comes in. You can also use bullet points to show the steps you took to address your research question. Again, this breaks up all the text and makes it easy to read.

• Incorporate images:
  While images in a Ux portfolio may not be as important as they are in a design presentation, adding pictures will do two things: break up the text and make your portfolio more interesting to look at. A helpful, and perhaps more relative, visual might be a screenshot from a spreadsheet to explain data or processes. An image could also be used to explain the background, a summary of findings, methods, tools, process, data, analysis, and survey questions. Having some images will help recruiters understand better what you’re trying to communicate.

• Added Information:
  Depending on the processes you use, describing the environment of your testing, for example, if it was done remotely, could help to explain outcomes. A remote test does not allow participants to ask clarifying questions which could affect the data. Giving explanations like this will help recruiters understand your findings better. This will also help you advocate for your own research if the data is clean and easy for your stakeholder to digest.

• Conclusions, Reflections, and Lessons Learned:
  Use the STAR approach when designing your portfolio by explaining the Situation, Task, Action, and Result. But also add your reflections. What did you find that could have been more helpful? What could have been that next step? I love seeing conclusions and impact. This is the solution to the research question that I look for in the beginning. Here again, I will use Control F and look for your recommendations to solve the problem. This might be in a separate paragraph but should be easy to find.In addition, share what you learned from the study. Stay focused on your research question and try to not make your case study overly long. It can also be helpful to include any challenges you faced. I know that research is not smooth sailing all the time. Understanding how you met and addressed those challenges helps me understand you even better.

While every portfolio will look different, above all, do all you can to take the guesswork out of the process for whoever may be looking at your presentation. The easier you make it for them, the more likely a recruiter or hiring manager will want to work with you.

About Helen: Helen Lee Lin received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology and has worked in applied research in adolescent literacy and children’s nutrition, and with combat veterans with traumatic brain injuries. She took a career pause while living in Ankara, Turkey for 6 years and then transitioned to UXR in 2018. She volunteered for Hack for LA for six months and broke into industry in January 2021 with a contract at TikTok. She is currently a contract UXR at Meta, working on Facebook Groups.

Moderated by Helen Lee Lin as part of the UX Researchers’ Guild
This is an abridgment; view the full video presentation here.
Session 4 – February 11, 2023

Once you have wrapped up fielding your UX project, it’s time to dive into analysis and reporting! In this session, Helen Lee Lin shared examples of UXR portfolios and talked briefly about the level of detail, storytelling, and presentation resources.

UX Analysis Guide

The first thing to look at is the depth of analysis. Here are some tips to ensure that you are on the right path.

While you may be familiar with analysis in the world of academia, expect that you’ll spend far less time analyzing data in industry. For an interview study (8-12 participants), plan on about 2-3 days to synthesize data, which may overlap with study fielding and reporting timeline.

One thing to remember is that stakeholders prize timely insights. But don’t be afraid to advocate for the time you need – just be reasonable. Consider providing “quick insights” or “initial insights” when there is time pressure so stakeholders will know you are actively working on the project. Then, follow up with a deeper dive and higher-fidelity shareout if needed.

Sometimes leads or stakeholders have made a go/no-go decision, and further reporting will no longer be relevant. Keep lines of communication open to understand their timeline and how it corresponds with what you have planned.

While it is preferable to have more than one researcher on a project, you’ll likely be the only one. You probably won’t be tagging/coding data with other raters or attempting inter-rater reliability.

Key Features of UX Analysis

As you’re doing your analysis, here are some key points to consider.

You won’t dissect every bit of information, but you are looking for patterns. You’re looking for information that answers your main research questions. This will help provide direction for your stakeholders in their decision-making. Look for signals that speak to any of those things. 

Perhaps your data scientist has questions they want answered with qualitative data. They might have some specific insights from the data that they’ve collected. But they don’t know why it’s happening. You can help by looking for answers along those lines.

Speak to your stakeholders. Your manager is usually tapped in and can guide you there if necessary. Your product manager usually has these questions in mind as well.

Be on the lookout for surprising and interesting insights. Maybe it was not something you set out to study, but then it turned up in the patterns you’re missing from your data. If something piques your interest, ask yourself: “Is this an example that would make a good story?”

It’s common for a user research team to point out what designers or engineers have done wrong. Look for things that your team or product is doing well. You know these team members have been working for months to design and build what you’re studying. The last thing you want to do is to tear apart their work.

You also want to know what’s working well for the users. You don’t want to break the good experience they are having. As you iterate on the product and start changing things, try to preserve either the general aspect of what was working well for the user, or the experience itself.

Make special note of customer requests and new questions for future research that arise. These can point to the root problem that the users want solved. You may not be able to meet every request, especially if it is just one person that wants it, but identifying the problem will be helpful in the long run.

Think About Your Audience

As you think about the deliverable, the presentation you’re putting together, your audience will generally be your first question. Your presentation may vary if it’s an interview presentation. So, depending on the company you interview with, you may speak only to other researchers. But you could present to an entire product team, including engineers and designers. Ask your recruiter or hiring manager who will be present to know how to direct your presentation. 

If it’s a presentation for your entire workplace, keep it general. Include any research-related details in an appendix for researchers, because those are the questions they will have in mind. But you don’t want to distract the non-researchers with that extra information.

Recruiters typically spend less than 30 seconds on a resume. It might be as little as six or seven seconds to see if they should triage a particular regimen, or if they need to look deeper. When it comes to portfolios, managers might give it a glance for about three minutes before deciding if they see potential in what you can bring to their team or organization. Provide information as succinctly as possible and make it easy to find. Your project may not be deemed relevant at first, but if you have something that piques their interest, that could be the foot in the door to score that interview.

Creating Portfolio Case Studies

The first thing that anyone will see is your title. Give special attention to how you present yourself and choose a title that conveys the expected impact or POV. Try to get information on the users to make it relevant.  Some examples might be:

• “Optimizing new user onboarding…”
• “Understanding young adult creators’ community needs…”
• “Identifying gaps in admins’ moderation tools…”

Play to your strengths. If you have a niche market, include it. Ask yourself: “What makes this case study distinct from others or showcases special skills?” Then be specific: “Diary study and moderated interviews, teens 13-17, APAC market,” for example.

Explain your role in the project. If you were not the lead on the project, clearly identify which parts of the project you owned and what was done by others.

You will want to include the titles, but not the names, of your stakeholders’ and which cross-functional roles you worked with. This could include:

• Common: PM (product manager), EM (engineering manager), ENG (engineers), UXD/PD (designers), UXW/CD (content/writers), DS (data scientists), Marketing/Analysts/Insights
• Also possible: C-suite, Directors, Heads of…, Leads, Strategists

There are several processes for creating your portfolio case study: the collaboration process, the decision-making process, and the research process. Each needs to be addressed and communicated to your stakeholders.

The collaboration process involves identifying how you kept stakeholders well-informed and when you sought any necessary alignment with them. Other questions to consider are: How did you gain stakeholder buy-in, and how did you manage your stakeholders?

The decision-making process presents the steps you took to gather information. What information did you need and how did you gather it? What decisions did you make as you scoped your project, and why?

Finally is the research process.  What were your constraints? Budget, time, recruitment difficulties? What blockers did you run into while fielding? How did you solve or pivot?

If under NDA, keep findings high-level or change variables/numbers. This may mean being vague or simply describing the impact this finding would have. Update your impact as time passes as you see new effects of your research.

No portfolio is perfect. Take a hard look at what you’ve done and plan what you’d do differently next time. Be transparent and honest about mistakes. What did you learn from your mistakes? What steps have you taken, or will take, to improve in the future?

Visually Appealing Portfolios

As researchers, not designers, your content is more important than showing designs. However, visual considerations are still important for your audience’s user experience. Consider the ease of finding key information, including headings, labels, and putting sections in a logical order. Be mindful of font type, the color of the text, and background and alignment, all of which will affect the readability of your text. 

Communicate information but avoid large blocks of text. Break up your text by bolding key phrases or using bullet points. And lastly, proofread for grammar and spelling! Ask friends who are unfamiliar with your work to review for understandability, accidentally omitted information and typos.

Portfolio/Presentation Resources

The following are some presentation resources that Helen has used. Most are free, with some additional resources available for a fee.

• Free slide templates that come with professionally designed layouts, icons, and images
  • Slidescarnival, Slidesgo, Slidesmania, Canva
• Free stock photos
  • Unsplash, Pexels, Pixabay, Nappy.co, Freepik, The Noun Project, more resources here
• Free icons/graphics
  • Icons8, Flaticon, The Noun Project, Drawkit, Storyset, Undraw, Opendoodles, Blush.design, StreamlineHQ
• Other helpful presentation resources
  • Mockdrop, ThisPersonDoesNotExist, DiverseUI, LottieFiles, MOV to GIF

Tips for an Interview Presentation

If you’re doing your presentation as part of a job interview, Helen offers the following tips:

• Reduce text and voice-over details instead
• Spread information out across more slides
• Include checkpoints where you pause for questions
• Include slides that emphasize key takeaways
• Include slides with pullout quotes from participants, or interesting statistics
• Illustrate with screenshots of the UI that you’re discussing and be sure to label them clearly and accurately
• Add more images, graphs, and icons to break up text
• Place additional details in an appendix or appendices

Tips for a Work Presentation

If the deck will be shared throughout your company, here are some additional considerations:

• Add a TL;DR (Too Long, Don’t Read) or executive summary.
  • Summary of key insights
  • Similar to abstracts in academia, but with less focus on background and methods
• (If relevant) include a success story from your participants, and tie it into insights or the recommendations you’ll be making.
• Use example scenarios, give names to the users or personas – make the info “sticky” for your audience.
• Add diagrams and graphs to illustrate concepts
• Include hero quotes and video clips from participants
• Illustrate with screenshots of the UI that you’re discussing
  • Be sure to label them clearly and accurately
  • Tell stakeholders what the product is doing well (don’t tear apart Design and Eng’s hard work)
• Add recommendations – where should your stakeholders go from here?
• Place additional details in an appendix or appendices.

About Helen: Helen Lee Lin received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology and has worked in applied research in adolescent literacy and children’s nutrition, and with combat veterans with traumatic brain injuries. She took a career pause while living in Ankara, Turkey for 6 years and then transitioned to UXR in 2018. She volunteered for Hack for LA for six months and broke into industry in January 2021 with a contract at TikTok. She is currently a contract UXR at Meta, working on Facebook Groups.

Moderated by Helen Lee Lin as part of the UX Researchers’ Guild
This is an abridgment; view the full video presentation here.
Session 3 – January 7, 2023

Once you have completed a research plan, which is aligned with the goals of the stakeholders, and have chosen your methodology, it’s time to recruit and field participants for your UX research study. In this session, Helen discussed screeners, incentives, interviews, cardsorts, and diary studies. 

To begin, she offered the following tips to aid in this effort:

• Due to the high rate of no-shows in some segments of users, consider over-recruiting. Plan on over-recruiting by 15-20% for diary studies, especially if the study lasts longer than one week or if tasks present a considerable burden.
• Consider recruiting distinct and extreme segments (users versus non-users, power users versus newbies, users who feel somewhat strongly to very strongly about X topic).
• Place knockout questions near the beginning when logical.
• For qualitative studies: Use 1-2 open-ended questions to vet the participant for insightfulness, level of detail, fluency of thought, organization of information as well as  what POV they can offer.
• UserTesting: break your segments into narrow recruitment “audiences” to better distribute recruitment between gender and age groups.

She also shared two common mistakes that can mar your recruiting: not considering who should be in your sample, using leading questions when screening, or giving away the study topic in the screener intro.

Using Screeners in UX Research

If you know the participants you will be interviewing, a screener may not be needed. But if you don’t and need to recruit outside your organization or a known pool of users, use this tool before signing on with people for an upcoming study. 

In looking at questions to use in a screener, move beyond yes and no queries. If you were screening participants to use a mountain biking app, for example, a question such as “Have you ever ridden a bike?” clues in the participant as to what you’ll be studying. If they’re motivated to get into your study because they wish to be paid, or for some other reason, they know to respond, “Yes.” These kinds of pointed questions, therefore, would not be ideal. It’s better to hide the target behavior of interest or the target attitude of interest and not make it so obvious. 

A better question for the above example would be, “Which of these have you done?” and then list options such as: “Rode a mountain bike; Cooked food; Called a friend; or Bought a ticket.”

The best approach to screen for this example, however, would be to ask questions along the lines of: “In the recent past, have you participated in any of the following activities at least once a month?” with options such as: 

• Completed a day hike
• Went mountain biking 
• Trained for a 5K
• Used a single-person kayak
• Swam for 30 minutes
• Attended a sports clinic

This route is specific and targets the type of person that you want. Check with your stakeholders to know how engaged of a user  that person needs to be for the upcoming study. Using this last approach, you can hide your desired response among other specific responses. This is certainly not the only question you could ask to achieve this goal. But this example shows a much more effective way to identify participants that would be target users of a mountain biking app.

Compensation for UX Research Study Participants

If you find people are not as willing to participate as you had hoped, look at what you are offering as an incentive or compensation. Consider a non-monetary benefit that the organization can offer to these individuals. Compensations or incentives will increase trust and communicate that you do value their feedback. Offering compensation of some kind is one of the best practices,  

Surveys and Unmoderated Interviews for UX Research

An unmoderated interview is a study that can be run on User Testing or on UserZoom, where the participant is usually either voice- or video-recorded. Similar to a survey, participants respond to a series of questions. In this scenario, you are not there to correct them if they go off course, you can’t probe them further if they don’t go into enough detail nor can you redirect them if they misunderstand the question.

Here are some tips to make un-moderated interviews work for you:

• Do a soft launch with a small N, then review the data or recordings to ensure participants understand all the instructions and questions and that all questions/images/skip logic are programmed correctly.
• Make sure participants understand what they are giving feedback on.
• Use carefully labeled & highlighted screenshots or photos of the experience they are responding to.

Some common mistakes that can and should be addressed before launching an un-moderated interview include:

• Using the wrong/broken/duplicate links
• Not allowing ‘share’ or preview access to Figma/Google files
• Writing unclear instructions or questions
• Using ambiguous or idiomatic phrases with international markets
• Not triple-checking branching and skipping logic

A last consideration is to instruct participants to record in a quiet, well-lit space and to check that their microphones are not covered up. The recording needs to be the best it can since it will be your main source of data.

In-depth Moderated Interviews for UX Research (IDIs)

The ideal scenario when running moderated interviews is to record the session or have another researcher who is also a trained note-taker. This will free you up to focus on participants’ expressions and nonverbal queues helping you to know when to probe more deeply. 

But sometimes you won’t have this ideal situation and will do all this by yourself. Whether you’re on your own or have the luxury of a second person or a recording of the interview, it’s always a good idea to take time to debrief time after the first one or two participants. Set aside an hour or so right after those first couple of participants to see how many questions you were able to get through. You might find that there are questions you can throw out while prioritizing or rewording others that participants seem to find confusing. You can then complete the rest of your interviews with a more streamlined set of questions and go back to the more low-priority questions if there’s time. 

Some common mistakes to be aware of with moderated interviews include the following:

• Not reminding participants to download needed software,forgetting to prep needed devices ahead of the session
• Not including an initial icebreaker with “easy” questions about them
• Noting the participant’s talking speed, whether they will require reining in or encouragement to speak
• Talking over/interrupting participants during quotable moments
• Spending too much time trying to build rapport or establish commonalities: this is an interview, not a conversation with a friend. Plan on listening at least 75% of the length of the interview.
• Sticking too rigidly to scripted questions (it’s okay to go off-script and dive into a tangent, especially if you have saturation on research questions from previous participants)
• Asking a scripted question about something they’ve already answered, making participants feel like you weren’t listening
• Leading the participant with biased phrasing, or using too many examples

Using Cardsorts for UX Research

If using cardsorts, conduct these in-person whenever possible or with screen share recording allowing participants to think out loud as they sort the cards. This is really where your insights will come from. After the session, run the analysis to see how they grouped the cards. It’s also important to know why they’ve chosen to group them a certain way, because people may group cards similarly, but not have the same reason for doing so. And don’t be afraid to jump in and ask any questions that may come to mind during this process

Some other considerations are to have participants review the cards they placed under each category at the end and make final adjustments to their categorizations before submitting the cardsort. If you intend to ask follow-up questions about specific cards (e.g., “Were there any cards that belong to more than one category?” or “Were any cards difficult to understand?”), ask them before the cardsort is submitted so they can look back at their sorted cards.

If you are running your cardsorts as an un-moderated study, ensure that the text is as clear as possible and that if examples are necessary, participants know where to find those examples. 

Some common mistakes with this method might be: including too few or too many cards (the task typically takes 10-20 minutes); not vetting the text on the cards which could cause ambiguity; and not providing context or examples for cards that may require some explanation.

Diary Studies for UX Research

Think of a diary study as a variable that you track on a daily or regular basis. If people have kept a calorie counter or food diary or tracked the number of steps they walk every day, that’s a form of a diary study. For participants to follow through with recording their experiences, make it simple and require no more than 10 to 15 minutes each day, with the initial onboarding questions taking a bit longer.

When using diary studies, keep the tests clear and make the study no more than 8 to 10 days long. The length is crucial because there’s going to be a lot of attrition unless you have highly invested users who are engaged and willing to do something for longer than that. In academia, this might include participants from your department at your university, people who are basically a more adaptive audience and would likely be available for a longer study. In industry, plan on a shorter study –  no more than 10 days. After that, there would be a lot of drop-off, and you would still need to compensate them accordingly. If questions were not thorough enough, invite these participants to come back for post-study interviews. These might include participants who offered interesting insights or those with very different points of view. During these later interviews, dive deeper into things only touched on in the diary process.

About Helen: Helen Lee Lin received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology and has worked in applied research in adolescent literacy and children’s nutrition, and with combat veterans with traumatic brain injuries. She took a career pause while living in Ankara, Turkey for 6 years and then transitioned to UXR in 2018. She volunteered for Hack for LA for six months and broke into industry in January 2021 with a contract at TikTok. She is currently a contract UXR at Meta, working on Facebook Groups.

Moderated by Helen Lee Lin as part of the UX Researchers’ Guild
This is an abridgment; view the full video presentation here.
Session 2 – December 3, 2022

As you approach your UX proposals, there are three crucial documents: a Research Plan, a Moderation Guide, and a Screener. Becoming familiar with these will help you be successful as a UXr Freelancer.

Compiling a Research Plan

Research plans, or research briefs or proposals, are similar from team to team. They use similar formats, although the headings may differ or be referenced by different names. Some teams may even have their unique format but they will likely revolve around the same information. 

To begin with, list the stakeholders with whom you have worked. Whenever you get to the interview stage with a company, they will want to know if you have experience working with project managers, engineers, or developers, as well as people in the C-Suite, including heads of Strategy, Content Designers (also known as Ux Writers). A potential employer or client wants to know with whom you’ve communicated and from whom you have gathered ideas. When you work on a team, research is collaborative. You may be the only researcher in the group, but you will receive feedback from different functions and give recommendations that will impact these areas.

Be sure and talk about your background. This is analogous to when you were in academia and conducting your Lit Review. You will create similar documents in industry although they might look different and be shorter. For these reviews, choose the best resources you have used internally at your company, helpful academic articles, or a mix of both. This helps explain why you are doing this study, why you are doing it now, what is the question, and why it is important to address.

Research plans don’t have to be long; shoot half a page to two pages at the most. Include relevant products you’ve worked on as well as past research you have done on the topic. Then you will discuss your research questions at a very high level to focus on general themes.

The research questions are not the actual questions you would ask in a survey or interview. These questions give your stakeholders an idea of what will be covered so they can give feedback and make suggestions. This information will help shape your survey or Moderation Guide when you get to that point.

Within the research plan, talk about what methods you’ve chosen. Typically you would not include why you chose the methods that you did. However, be prepared to explain this in an interview. Preparing and documenting this information while it is still fresh in your mind will also be helpful down the road when the details of a previous research plan might be forgotten. 

The need for incentives is something that we take for granted in the industry. Usually, there is money to pay participants, but in the case of research, you might do as a freelancer, think of some nonmonetary incentives. 

Materials you would use might include a survey or Moderation Guide, designs, or a live website or app – anything to illustrate your plan to your users.

Preparing a Moderation Guide

For your Moderation Guide, don’t overlook the basic logistics of a one-on-one interview. Make sure you start the recording and that your participants have signed their research participation agreement. 

You would then prepare an introductory script which should:

• Set the context for the interview.
• Verify if participants have done this type of research before.
• Make them feel comfortable about participating, especially if it’s their first time.
• Get their consent to be recorded.
• Notify participants that they’re agreeing to screen share if you need them to do an on-screen walkthrough.

Communicate that there are no right or wrong answers; in research, we’re looking to improve. That means that they should not shy away from being critical and negative in sharing their thoughts and experiences. They will give more honest feedback if they know they are not going to hurt your feelings. 

Below the introductory script will be your question guide with questions organized by theme or task, followed by probes and links to stimuli.

Creating a Screener

A screener helps you select the right users for your study. If you have a niche product and already know and selected people to recruit, you may be able to just ask some demographic questions.

But if you are planning to recruit in some more anonymous, or large space, with people you are not familiar with, you need to know their motivation. Do they want to participate to troll you or because you have a great incentive? You want to be very careful with the questions you ask to weed out those who don’t qualify without tipping them off to what you’re looking for.

Here are a few tips for creating an effective Screener.

• Knockout questions placed at the beginning will help eliminate unqualified participants so they don’t waste their time going through the Screener.  
• Avoid leading questions which can keep potential participants from trying to guess the “correct” response.
• Consider including open-ended questions for one-on-one interviews. These will help vet participants for insightfulness, level of detail, and fluency of thought, and allow you to understand better what you might be getting with that particular participant if you choose to interview them.

As a freelance UX researcher, you will frequently use Research Plans, Moderation Guides, and Screeners. Familiarize yourself with them to be prepared for every client and their UX needs that may come along.

About Helen: Helen Lee Lin received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology and has worked in applied research in adolescent literacy and children’s nutrition, and with combat veterans with traumatic brain injuries. She took a career pause while living in Ankara, Turkey for 6 years and then transitioned to UXR in 2018. She volunteered for Hack for LA for six months and broke into industry in January 2021 with a contract at TikTok. She is currently a contract UXR at Meta, working on Facebook Groups.

Moderated by Helen Lee Lin as part of the UX Researchers’ Guild
This is an abridgment; view the full video presentation here.
Session 1 – November 5, 2022

When transitioning from academia to UX research, a portfolio can be a great way to introduce yourself, and showcase your talents, experience, and case studies. In this session, Helen Lee Lin explores aspects of portfolios and how to make connections to expand your offering as you move into the workplace.

Do I Need a UXR Portfolio?

While it is possible to get hired without a portfolio, you need case studies to present in an interview. So, at the very least, you need some visual format or presentation. Keep this presentation to yourself until it’s time for an interview or provide it to recruiting or hiring managers beforehand. Either way, you need something that demonstrates you have the skills they’re looking for. 

Either way, it doesn’t hurt to have a portfolio. There were times when Helen was going through a job application process when a portfolio was required and she didn’t have one. She knew she didn’t have time to pull one together, so she had to pass on those particular positions. If you already have a portfolio, you can plug it right in and that’s another job application that you wouldn’t have been able to fill out otherwise. 

What Should I Include in a UXR Portfolio?

You have probably seen portfolios for UX designers with splashy graphics and mock-ups of websites or smartphone screens. But that is not expected of a UX researcher. You would likely have a deck or a document that contains the following:

• Any literature search or background research that you have done before conducting your study.
• The findings and your recommendations. 
• The potential impact, if you are aware of it.

In this way, a portfolio is like a condensed research presentation or a poster, in that you might assume that the audience is not necessarily a researcher. It might be a designer, engineer, or product manager. Beyond these suggestions, don’t forget to address the thought process you went through in your various case studies.

• Why did you make the decisions that you did? 
• Why did you choose the methods, the particular users to survey or interview, or the length of the study that you chose? 
• How did you decide to deal with problems you encountered, and why? 

This is what recruiters and hiring managers want to see: the behind-the-scenes actions that led you to the study in the first place.

Can I Use Academic Research in a UXR Portfolio?

The short answer is yes, you certainly can, and people do. Depending on what types of companies you’re targeting, some of them would find this par for the course. For example, companies like Microsoft, Google, and Meta where Ph.D’s are often hired, are used to seeing academic research in a UXR Portfolio. They understand that you haven’t done industry research and tend to be fine with that.

However, there are other companies that are new to hiring people with advanced degrees or they want somebody who has demonstrable industry research experience. If unsure, talk to people who already work in such a company to learn their perspective. Or communicate with the recruiter or hiring manager to understand what they want to see in your portfolio. 

Because of this, your portfolio might be a collection of three or four case studies that showcase your various strengths, such as different methods, topics, or industries where you’ve done research. If you have more studies than this, you can cycle them out, depending on where you’re applying. There’s no need to include every possible case study that you have. You want to present those which will carry the greatest weight with the companies you are pursuing. 

Can I Include Ongoing Projects or NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements)?

Absolutely. You can include expected findings, recommendations, and anticipated impact. Though not as preferred as a completed case study, you can still present work that is under NDA, even if you need to make it vague. Be sure and communicate the status of any such projects to prospective employers. They absolutely will understand. They wouldn’t want you to violate any agreement you have with a previous employer because if they hire you, they want to know that they can trust you in the future.

If you need to leave out particular variables of a study, you can change some of the details and include more generalized findings. Then give the amount of information that impact-wise is either already publicly known or that you can share.

How Should I Present My UXR Portfolio?

The form of a UXr portfolio can be simple and manageable. While it might include a website, it can be as simple as a Google slides or Powerpoint presentation you’ve saved as a pdf. Upload your document to something like Slideshare and include that link on your application. 

Should I Stay Within a Certain Industry or Go into Different Fields?

Take time to think strategically about where you want to go in your career. For example, if you’re interested in fintech, start moving in that direction and conduct research in that area. You’ll gain experience with the variables and competitors and build connections in that industry.

That said, If you are happy where you are, and want to target a future career in that area, then continue to lean into that industry because you are already a expert in that subject are.

How To Identify Warm Connections for Potential Stakeholders

When we speak of warm connections, we’re referring to people or companies with whom you are affiliated in some way. You’re familiar with the space and more likely aware of what needs to be done. This is a huge benefit, considering we frequently have a relatively short time to complete a project. 

When Helen began her freelance career, she wondered how to gain experience. She didn’t know anyone who had a startup, ran a website, or had a small business. She quickly realized, however, that UX is everywhere and doesn’t have to be a digital product. The key is locating warm connections and then discovering ways you can assist them with your UX experience.

So, think about places where you currently volunteer professionally or in your personal life. Are you completing any type of service of running a program for a community or business? Any program evaluation is a type of user experience research. Do you have a side hustle like an Etsy shop? Or a Youtube channel where you interact with a community? These places, and many others, are where you might find those warm connections you’re looking for.

No matter the organization or team to whom you propose change, recognize the impact your suggestions could have on those in decision-making positions. Bring those individuals in early in that process, so they can offer their input and see the benefit of your recommendations. This can help minimize any possible resistance to changes you are proposing.

Where Can I Find Cold Connections?

Helen has met interesting entrepreneurs at Lunch Club. She has also gone to Fishbowl, something like LinkedIn, but anonymous. When posting on Fishbowl, you can see what role somebody works in, or what company they’d work for, even though you don’t know their name. However, that is a potential place to look around for ideas. Angel.co is part of Angel List, where co-investors and founders find each other. But, they are also often hiring as well. You could look on there for at least company ideas, if not an actual job. 

Also, look at volunteer organizations where you can find opportunities to gain experience. Consider taking an idea of your own to say Code for America, Hack for LA, or explore freelance talent sites like Upwork, Toptal, or Hirect. 

And then keep an eye out for any new startups or apps related to your passions. This might be a relatively new app or website you are familiar with, and they may not have a UX researcher or know about UX research. You could teach them about it and then propose a project. There are places you could approach to find out if they’re looking for UX help. Keep your eyes and ears open; those opportunities are out there.

How Important is Networking?

In closing, Helen highly recommends networking with other professionals. “I have found the majority of my positions through networking,” she shares. “Your network is everything career-wise. The people in our networks are important resources to not only look for potential stakeholders but also to expand our experience and increase our strengths as researchers.”

About Helen: Helen Lee Lin received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology and has worked in applied research in adolescent literacy and children’s nutrition, and with combat veterans with traumatic brain injuries. She took a career pause while living in Ankara, Turkey for 6 years and then transitioned to UXR in 2018. She volunteered for Hack for LA for six months and broke into industry in January 2021 with a contract at TikTok. She is currently a contract UXR at Meta, working on Facebook Groups.