Assess and Advance Your Career as a User Researcher
Learn to give yourself structure in your UXR career
As a solo user researcher — typically the first and only at start-ups — I struggled a lot with understanding where I was in my career and, as always, how to get to that “next level.” The next level felt elusive, like something I couldn’t quite understand, because, unlike other departments, it didn’t feel like a clear trajectory. A clear path forward. I didn’t know which skills to learn or what would help me grow in my career. I often felt dizzied by the sheer number of methods — should I learn card sorting? Or tree testing? Or surveys? Or go deeper into analysis?
The constant questioning was terrible for my impostor syndrome. If I couldn’t even figure out a way forward, should I be a user researcher? If I didn’t know how to grow or what to do next, was this the right field or industry for me? I love structure and certainty, and my future didn’t seem to have any of those. In fact, it looked confusing and overwhelming.
I didn’t want to admit the fact that I felt lost, like I was floundering and repeating the same two methods over and over and over with no real movement forward. I didn’t want to say anything because then everyone might think I was a fraud, that I was the impostor I felt like I was. If the “expert user researcher” didn’t know how to get better or what to get better at, then who would? And, was I really an expert if I didn’t know?
And then, I finally went to meet up with some friends, and I whispered to one person, “I would love to get promoted finally, but I have no idea what I am doing.” She laughed and said, “Join the club.”
That was when I realized I was certainly not alone. So many user researchers feel stagnant in their roles like they can’t grow or don’t know how to grow. That “next step” just seems so far away, either because there is no clear path or the path was created by someone who had no idea what a user researcher should be doing — I’ve shuddered at some of the job roles and responsibilities I’ve seen at companies. This has left many of us unsure what to do, who to go to, or how to navigate this confusing landscape.
Then I became a manager. And that’s when I realized I had to do something, if not for my own growth, but for that of the people I was managing. I was meant to be there to guide them, to give them valuable feedback, and to help them grow and succeed as user researchers. I had barely figured out how I got to the place I was. It was a bumpy ride, and let me tell you, I hate turbulence. I didn’t want to put my reports through this same journey. In fact, I didn’t want any user researchers going through what I did, feeling confused and like they didn’t belong as they could never grow and engage further than usability tests and 1x1 interviews.
I wanted my journey of growth as a user researcher to be clear, straightforward, and achievable. Sure, it would be a challenge, but at least it wouldn’t be a hidden challenge. With this inspiration (and my desperation to make sure I wasn’t the worst manager ever), I set forth to create ways that user researchers could assess their careers and actually plan for their growth.
In this article, I discuss the steps I took and the ones I share with my direct reports, mentees and members to help you understand where you are and how you get to where you want to go so that you can finally achieve that level up without the turbulence.
Let’s get unstuck.
Self-Assessment of Your Current Career Position
Before you can run into an action plan of where to go next, it is essential to understand where you currently are in your career. Moving forward is all about bridging gaps — gaps between the now and the future, between the current state and the ideal future state — so if you don’t know where you are starting, it is impossible to know where you are going and the delta between the two.
For a long time, I didn’t really think about where I was currently because I so desperately wanted to be somewhere else. This is still something I have to deal with in my daily life. I’m always trying to skip ahead and frequently not honoring the progress I’ve made to the current point. When I do this, I get wrapped up in impostor syndrome because I am never where I want to be, even if I was where I wanted to be a year ago.
That said, looking at your current state helps you not only identify the progress you’ve made so far but also understand the gaps you will need to fill to reach that beautiful next stage.
Identify Your Current Level and Role
The first step I recommend is identifying your current level and role at your organization. And I don’t mean just making a list of your responsibilities or the things you do; I want you to go further than that.
So, first things first, start by writing a list of what you do, but go deeper by breaking down the frequency of each activity and, if possible, any impact that activity has had on your organization. For example:
40% of time on 1x1 user research interviews (between 60-90 minutes each), which has led to 3 new products in our product suite and 2 personas, which are used to prioritize the product roadmap.
20% of time spent on creating research reports, 50% of which have been shared with executive leadership and led to a change in company priorities
30% of time spent on synthesis and analysis, of which 10% of that time has been dedicated to creating synthesis templates which have sped up time to synthesis by 5% and increased collaboration with teams.
If you can try to follow this kind of model: [Amount of time spent} on {method/initiative/phase of process], which has led to [concrete impact].
As you can see, these almost read like resume bullet points, and there is a reason for that. By more deeply understanding how you are working and the impact you have, you can more clearly see the gaps. For instance, maybe you are spending a lot of time on synthesis, which can then indicate to you that you could use work to speed it up. Or maybe you are spending 50% of your time on usability testing or surveys, meaning you might need to look into doing or learning more generative-based user research methods to help you round out as a researcher.
I know this might feel time-consuming, and, to be honest, it is, but it is hugely worth it. Not only is it a great exercise for understanding where you are, but these points can also be used in conversations with your manager for promotion or pay rises. You can swap the amount of time with an impact word and put these on your resume. Three annoying to-dos in one exercise—what could be better?
Once you do this, it is time to identify your current level. You can look generally at the chart below, or you might have been given a fitting title at your current organization. However, if you aren’t sure about your title, the next step will be great for you.
Now, it’s time to put your researcher hat on and do additional research. Sure, you have written down your level and responsibilities, but now it is time to compare that to similar roles at different organizations. The reason it is important to compare your responsibilities with those of similar ones is to identify if there are any discrepancies — these discrepancies can go either way: are you doing too much, or are there things you aren’t yet doing in your role?
To do this, I recommend an affinity diagram because, well, we are usually very good at it, and affinity diagrams help us understand the trends and patterns. In the past, I have split the affinity diagram into:
Common activities for [x level]. These are the activities that are present in most of the job postings and seem the most consistent across them. I always start with this one and then move to the next two.
Activities I am not yet doing. These are activities that have cropped up that you are not doing in your current role and that aren’t in your current job description, but they seem pretty consistent outside of your organization. These are likely your gaps.
Activities I am doing not listed. These are activities you are doing that aren’t listed in job postings. They might be unique to your organization or mean you are doing things outside your current level. If there are quite a few in this category, I recommend looking at the level above you to see if you are responsible for things in the next level of your career. These are great talking points for promotions and pay raises and can indicate you’re ready to move to that next step.
Parking lot. These are activities that don’t really seem to fit anywhere, but you are interested in exploring. Or maybe something else you’ve seen that doesn’t fit into responsibilities but you want to note. This could be average years of experience or auxiliary skills (ex, deep quantitative research) that seem to come up often but aren’t directly related to the role.
Once you have this list, it’s time to take the next step.
Evaluating Current Skills
The list you’ve put together is a fantastic way to start understanding the gaps, but it is important now to mix this with understanding your current skill set and what motivates you as a user researcher.
I really struggled with this for a while, but then I created a user research skills matrix to help make this practice more straightforward.
In this matrix, I listed out all the technical and soft skills I could think of for a user researcher and mapped them to (approximately) a level, as well as more general levels in careers. These levels include:
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