Issue 001 - What is Yet Another Studio?
Hello,
In case we haven't met -- or you're not sure what you're reading -- my name is Behzod (bay’-zod) Sirjani and I’m the founder of Yet Another Studio. I wanted to start by saying thank you for being here! "Here" being Issue 001 of Yet Another Newsletter. (Seriously, thanks for reading. This one's quite long!)
I haven’t written a newsletter since I worked on Chasing Ice in 2012, and I’ve never run my own studio - which is to say, I'm sure I'm doing something "wrong" and I'm hoping you'll forgive me. I’m an introverted person and not someone who likes to be the center of attention (even though being a Leo may indicate otherwise), but I wanted to spend time in this issue talking about where the Studio came from and some of the wonderful opportunities we’ve had so far, if only to indicate the kind of work I’m energized by right now. After that, I’ll share a few ideas I’ve been sitting with and some things that friends of the studio are up to.
What is Yet Another Studio?
I hope the honest answer to that question, at least over a long time horizon, is something that mattered. I chose the name "Yet Another" because I want to acknowledge that the Studio is one of many options and because I want clients to think critically about what they are making in a world of excess and planned obsolescence.
The truth is the Studio is a vehicle for me to help drive the kinds of changes I’m excited about seeing in the world. Right now, much of that work is focused on research and how research is practiced, but I have hopes of expanding the scope as I go. I'd love to bring on talented people I respect as collaborators, and leverage our skills in areas where they can be impactful (more on that later).
The focus on research right now is both a pragmatic and passionate choice. Research is something I’ve spent the better part of the last decade thinking about, practicing, and sharing with others, and it’s something that I feel many people are wrong about in damaging ways. People who don’t understand research can do harm to their customers and the world. People who practice research can be exclusionary and elitist in ways that ultimate hurts us as a discipline (and by extension - the people we're trying to serve).
These wrongs are part of why I talk about my practice the way I do - I want to "bring more rigor to people’s curiosity." Everyone is curious, and everyone (I’d argue) can be more intentional and rigorous about that curiosity, especially in a work context.
In my last year at Slack, I was able to work with people across the company to do just that - bring rigor to their curiosity - and while there were (and are) exciting opportunities for me there, I wanted to spend my time changing how research was practiced broadly, not just at Slack. The more time I spent talking to people building products in the earliest phases or research leaders exploring how to build and grow their teams, the more excited I was to dive into new spaces and new problems. When that excitement became distracting from my work at Slack, I knew I needed to commit.
I hope that as I continue, both the practice and how I think about it will mature. For now, I have an orientation I’m excited about and others find valuable, which brings me to...
Year Zero
When you run your own business, it can be difficult to tell where you end and the business starts, if that even matters to you. In some ways, the Studio has been around for years, as the ideas I’m sharing and the work itself has been built over a long time horizon. In more practical terms, we’ve only been around for a few months, but those months have been full of life.
Democratization
Prior to the official “start” of things, I talked with dscout about the importance of researchers being teachers, not oracles. I expanded on this in my talk at UXRConfAnywhere in June (which will be online in September), and then wrote about how “Democratization is Our Job.” I’m grateful to the people who gave feedback on the essay and those who shared it. I’ve been fortunate to have many rich conversations as a result.
If this topic is interesting to you, I’m going to be speaking more about it this Wednesday alongside Michael Winnick, CEO of dscout, Rannie Teodoro, Head of Design at Thumbtack, and Roy Opata Olende, Senior Research Operations Manager at Zapier. (If you can’t join, signing up for the event will get you a link to the recording when it’s available). I’m also giving the first iteration of my Democratizing Research workshop in September, with more cohorts to follow later this year. Reply to this email for more information.
What Work Looks Like
"What do you do?" used to feel like a hard question to answer when I wanted to explain what it meant to be a "User Experience Researcher," but I've found the question much easier to answer these days. If I put aside the catchphrase for a moment, the reality is that I help people make decisions better. What's wonderful about that is it means my play space is nearly infinite, since everyone in the world makes decisions. This truth makes the work even more exciting.
Right now, the Studio "offers" two things:
- Sustained partnership where I work alongside you/your team on a specific problem space (i.e. building self-service research programs at your organization)
- Brief, focused dives into a specific question/problem (often in the format of a workshop)
I've found that the exposure I get through partnership makes the deep dives better, and the deep dives often surface learnings that I can apply in the partnership. I hope this valuable reinforcement can continue.
Outside of these modes of engagement, I spend a lot of my time reading and writing. It's something I never felt I had enough time to do in prior roles, so I've made explicit time to do so as a part of my practice. This leads me to our next section.
What's alive for me?
Tom Critchlow asked me this question earlier in the week (in a different context), and I loved the framing so much, I had to steal it.
Something that's been alive for me as I get the Studio up and running is who I work with and what I work on. While it's easy for me to look to my friends who work at (usually enterprise) software companies and see opportunities to partner with them (and I do!), I think about my work with Chasing Ice as something I'll always be proud of. As my own boss, I have control over my time, and I want to be intentional in the ways I spend it.
Recently, I came across Courtney Martin's "The Reductive Seduction of Other People's Problems and have been sitting with it as I balance the feelings of "wanting to do good" and embracing a problem space "because [I've] fallen in love with [its] complexity" (to use her words).
Martin's essay led me to a 2013 piece by C.Z. Nnaemeka about "The Unexotic Underclass", which is also very much worth reading. In it, Nnaemeka highlights the fact that "too many smart people are chasing too many dumb ideas." This sentiment is echoed by the regular posts on Twitter hoping people stop creating new note taking apps (apologies to those of you who are unsatisfied by iA Writer, Tot, Bear, Ulysses, Notion, Roam, Obsidian, Evernote... I mean come on).
Given the world around us, it's easy for us to pick problems worth solving - the environment, politics, health care - but it's much harder for us to be willing to do the work to embrace those problems and their thorns. I don't have an any answers yet, but in a future issue, I'll let you know where this thinking takes me.
Friends of the Studio
But enough about me. Something I want to do in every issue is support and amplify great things that others are doing. I'll limit myself to two people for now.
One of the benefits of running your own business is you get to set the budget for "professional development." Fortunately for me, there are some incredible opportunities coming up from people I know and respect.
Vivianne Castillo has launched HmntyCntrd, which looks to be fantastic. In her words:
We offer a 6-week online cohort to engage in a dynamic, interactive course that helps UX professionals deepen their awareness and practices in navigating deeper UX topics with humility, openness and courage so that we can understand how to craft equitable, inclusive experiences, know how to navigate UX topics that don’t have easy or obvious answers and transform the status quo of what it means to be human-centered in our professional & personal lives.
I'm excited to see this go live, and I've signed up for the first cohort.
Separately, Jan Chipchase still has room in his fall Masterclasses (Field Study Fundamentals, Emotional Resilience, and Sensemaking for Impact). Jan has provided invaluable feedback on getting the Studio up and running, and taking Fundamentals from him transformed the way I think about research and my relationship to research participants. Any of these classes would be worth your time.
I hope this newsletter was too.
-- Behzod