Curio Research Quarterly, Vol. 16

Hello, 2022! You look a lot like 2021. I can’t say I was a fan of 2021, and we are not getting off on the right foot so far this year. I’m busy, but I miss people. I miss making travel plans and feeling confident about sticking to them. 

Much like my last letter, I highly recommend being proactive about future projects. I was booked solid for most of last year, and this year is proving to be the same. If you see yourself having research needs soon, I urge you to contact your research consultant of choice (hopefully, yours truly) earlier rather than later. Our schedules tend to fill fast these days.

Business

Work

Work has been good for me. I did a healthcare-related project for Spatial Research & Design. I’ve had a relationship with Spatial for a while, but this was our first time working together. We did desktop and mobile portal usability testing with 16 participants remotely over Zoom. It went reasonably well. The mobile part was hit and miss. Some people joined the sessions from their desktop instead of their mobile device, and others had trouble getting Zoom to work on their phones, but we managed to complete the project, and the client forgave the imbalance.

Then I moved on to a persona and journey mapping project for Blink on behalf of a cloud computing company. Blink was very focused on having me take the time to learn the product, but I just didn’t have the background to understand it. So I did a few informational interviews with friends who have computer science backgrounds and are well-versed in cloud computing. They got me up to speed at the necessary level before the research interviews started. In the end, the client was delighted with the work. I don’t think I’ve ever presented just the topline report to such rave reviews before.

Now I’m doing research project management for Chadwick Martin Bailey. It’s unusual for me to take a more supportive role in a research project, but it’s nice to get a different perspective from time to time and try to strengthen your weaker skill sets. They will test new marketing message concepts on people who fit recently revamped customer persona profiles — nine interviews, three focus groups, and a quantitative study to confirm appeal. I’ll only be handling the qualitative phase. Someone else will take over for the quantitative work.

I also pitch-hit for a friend and fellow moderator from Ready to Launch. She asked me to take on half of the interviews for a study on the usage of car audio systems. Because of the pandemic, we’ll be treating it like a diary study asking people to record their experiences and then talking with them about the particulars and getting their reactions to program concepts in a series of exit interviews.

Then I was asked to do usability testing for Kalamuna on behalf of a California government agency focused on equity in transportation planning. A subject very near and dear to my heart after so many years of working with BEST, a Vancouver-based sustainable transportation non-profit.

All of this work leaves me fully occupied until mid-February. If you have something that aligns with that window, let me know.

Leadership

I am now one of the co-chairs of the QRCA’s marketing committee. My goal will be to bring more of the UX research community into the fold. UX researchers tend to see the gap between market research and what they do as more significant than it is. I believe the community would benefit greatly from interacting and learning from the more seasoned QRCA members. I know I do. I’ve never known them to be anything other than knowledgeable and supportive, and I wouldn’t have access to them without the community the organization provides.

The UX field is rife with ageism, and interacting with people who are still practicing research well into their 60’s and 70’s shows where our careers can go.

Conferences

Good news - the QRCA virtual conference happened last week, and it was great. The content was well-curated. I did my duty as a mentor and session host for a talk about applying Learning Theory to UX research. When I introduced myself as their mentor, I made it very clear that there is no such thing as trade secrets at a QRCA conference. If they were going to give this talk, they would have to share how they applied learning theory and how the audience can apply it to their practice. I am pleased to say they did well on both counts.

Bad news - the QRCA in-person conference was postponed until May. All the details remain the same; only the date has changed. I’m planning on going and getting some SoCal spring sunshine and seeing all of the fellow researchers I’ve missed or only connected with online.

If the date change makes going to the conference an option for you, I can share a friends and family discount code. You will still be able to cancel your ticket and get a full refund if you decide not to attend before April 14th.

Public Speaking

At the QRCA online conference, I led a roundtable discussion on tools and shortcuts independent researchers can use to make their presentation decks look like they have a design team on-call to slap some pretty on their deliverables. I shared all of the resources I keep bookmarked for this. 

I also pitched our submission for the Qually Award with my entry partner, Cherri Christiansen from Breakthrough Research. Shortly after, we found out WE WON. 

The Agua Hedionda Lagoon Foundation liked our angle, posing them as heroes on a quest to defeat the enemies of safe but stagnant programs and unsustainable new ventures, with us as the wizard friends who would gather the allies to help them on their journey. We proposed a series of expert interviews with engagement managers and other leaders from environmental non-profits to share their successes and failures in developing and launching new programs coupled with onsite visitor interviews at the Discovery Center in Escondido, California.

Now we get to execute the research and present a case study on the project at the in-person conference in May.

Writing

One of my contacts asked to write a couple thousand words on customer journey mapping for an agency in the UK. At first, I turned it down because I could not meet the deadline, but they relaxed the deadline for me and now I have a bunch of writing to do. Excellent timing, considering I just finished a journey mapping project this month.

Personal

Health

I got my booster last weekend and while I didn’t get feverish chills as I did with previous doses, I did feel achy and lightheaded the next day which made for a very unproductive Sunday. Worth it.

I’ve gotten into running again. I started a couple of years ago to get in shape for our trip to South Africa, and I’ve had an on-and-off relationship with it ever since. It’s tough to keep it up since we live so far north, and I refuse to run in the rain or at night, making winters especially difficult, but I manage an irregular 5 km now and then. I don’t mind it when I’m doing it; I just have a hard time finding the fortitude to make an effort when there’s a window of opportunity.

Travel

There was a brief window when we didn’t need PCR tests for trips shorter than 72-hours across the border. We used that for a quick trip to Bellingham to eat well, play some mini-golf, and pet the good dogs at the dog park bar.

We didn’t visit any family over winter break. The weather made going anywhere difficult, so we made the best of it by staying home. My husband used it to experiment in the kitchen, and I enjoyed eating what resulted. Paté en croute? Don’t mind if I do.

We’re thinking about the next big trip and setting our sights on Eastern Canada again sometime in the late summer since we don’t know when we will be able to travel abroad again confidently.

Media

I finally got around to watching Mare of Eastown, and while I liked it, I couldn’t help but compare it to Happy Valley. In MoE, the lead character was messy and unlikeable for excellent reasons. She just wasn’t handling her grief well and taking it out on everyone around her. In Happy Valley, we had a female protagonist in much the same position, dealing with the loss of a child while also being a lead detective, but she was holding it together. Barely holding it together and making mistakes along the way, but she was holding it together and taking responsibility for when she wasn’t. It was such a great representation of a woman in a position of power leading with empathy instead of rage.

Anyways, if you liked Mare of Eastown, you should also watch Happy Valley. Similar stories, but just different enough to make the pairing worthwhile.

The other night I was suggesting different movie rental options to my husband, and I asked, “How about a Bob Odenkirk action movie?” and he was perplexed, but he was all in when he found out the protagonist’s descent was instigated by the theft of his daughter’s kitty cat bracelet. And that is how we decided to watch Nobody and enjoyed it thoroughly. If you’re ever in the mood for a dark comic shoot ‘em up, I highly recommend Nobody.

Giving Back

I finished the year with donations to Dogwood BC and the David Suzuki Foundation. It was a good year for me, which meant I gave a decent amount of money to various environmental non-profits. I hope you consider doing the same to a cause near and dear to you.

That’s all for this quarter. I hope you enjoyed it. Let’s kick the snot out of 2022!