Building Teams and Driving Collaboration as a UX Researcher

At the time this was recorded, Lawton Pybus was a research manager at UserZoom, with a human factors PhD and a stint before that supporting the contact center at Charles Schwab — regulated industry, legacy systems. He framed research against the product development lifecycle rather than as a phase that happens first. In discovery, you don't need a product at all; you're defining the problem space and learning how people solve it today. Once there's a prototype, it's a usability test. After launch, it's measurement — how it holds up against competitors and whether it's moving KPIs.

He'd written that week about demand for research outpacing the supply of practitioners, and his answer was researchers enabling designers rather than gatekeeping. Plenty of designers have an aptitude for research without wanting to do it all week, and they can run basic usability tests. Specialists don't disappear in that model; there are things a PhD researcher does that a designer won't want to specialize in. The same logic drove his advice on making the case to a C-suite: most businesses are data-driven, so the researcher who can speak in the company's own KPIs is a natural fit, and the practical starting point was letting a research-inclined designer run a few projects and tell the story in numbers. That's what you build the argument for a full-time hire on.

What surprised him coming into the field was how little of it was the research itself. A large share was giving research a voice in an organization — working with people who had no concept of what UX is, who just wanted insights so they could get on with their day. Meeting them where they are, showing them you're invested in the product succeeding, and knowing who will vouch for you was, by his estimate, half the job or more. For anyone trying to break in, his advice was to practice by any route available: pro bono work, personal projects, and the notepad habit his grad school advisor gave him of writing down every research idea whether or not you get to it. Pick something you use that's genuinely bad, research it properly, make recommendations — you end up with a portfolio case study, real hands-on experience, and an honest answer about whether you like the work.