Issue 003 - Modern Miracles & Moving Forward
Hi,
I’m writing this from ~ 35,000 feet in the air (or whatever the actual altitude is that planes fly at) on my way back to Seattle from a week in NYC. The entire trip was made possible by two (or more) modern miracles - science (specifically immunology & vaccines) and air travel (which I 100% consider a “miracle” even though most people consider it “innovation” — humility and genuine gratitude are good things to hold). It was the first time I got to be with my sister in over 15 months, an experience that was emotional enough I don’t have the right words for it.
Traveling right now feels like an incredible privilege on so many levels. I (and unfortunately, probably many of you) have lost people over the last year plus and the ability to leave our houses - much less our cities - is a gift that I don’t take for granted. Beyond that, being able to physically hold space with the people that you value and care about as the world starts to open up is, again, such a gift.
As chaotic and tumultuous as the last year+ has been, I’ve been fortunate to have tended to seeds planted prior to COVID-19, which not only sprouted - but bloomed - during this period. I’m excited to share more about a few of them here, and talk about upcoming changes to the studio and how we (I?) practice.
Reforge
I love and find so much energy in teaching - both in the ability to share what I have learned, but also in the opportunity to see ideas and experiences with the new (and often critical) perspectives of others. I’ve been fortunate over the last year and change to work with the folks at Reforge to build out curriculum to share a lot of my own beliefs about what research is and how it should be practiced as a part of their program offerings. If you're not familiar with Reforge, their recent funding announcement provides a great overview.
With incredible folks like Akshita, Arch, and Brendan, I’ve put together User Insights for Product Decisions - a curriculum that is much more than “research for non-researchers,” currently aimed at folks in product, design, or customer-facing roles. The program builds off of ideas that I’ve been sharing as early as 2018 that research should be oriented not simply at learning, but at gathering the evidence you need to make decisions. In fact, “learning” being the only goal of research without awareness of what you are trying to decide as a result of that learning is one of the quickest ways to do inefficient and ineffective research (in my opinion).
We wrapped up our first live cohort in May and I was absolutely humbled by the experience. I was able to bring in many wonderful people I respect as program guests, engaged with fantastic Reforge members each week during the program, and became a part of a community of practice where folks are excited about learning new frameworks and approaches to push their own thinking.
From a studio perspective, having the UIPD program at Reforge has also been a blessing because it allows me to share my ideas with more people and organizations than I could through direct engagements. In fact, many folks who approach me for training or partnership are a better fit for the UIPD program first, and then we can work together to operationalize the material for them and their organization. I’m excited to keep pushing on this over the next few (many!) years.
HmntyCntrd
In YAN Issue 001, I mentioned that Vivianne Castillo was launching HmntyCntrd. Since then, she’s run two cohorts of the program and more than a dozen events for folks within the community. For both May and September’s cohorts, I have the privilege of being a guest facilitator, speaking about “The Pervasiveness of Fear & the Scarcity Mindset in UX.” With all of my work, I look for opportunities to both learn and be valuable, and getting to work with Vivianne and Alba Villamil as a part of HC definitely fits the bill. Putting together the module and sharing the ideas with the community have pushed me tremendously, and I’m excited to join again this September. If live cohorts aren't your thing, you can also join the self-paced masterclass.
Growing as a Studio
In May, I celebrated one year of the studio, which I’ll be writing and reflecting on more publicly soon. Something I’ve always found to be true in my work, but increasingly true as an independent “consultant” is my focus on outcomes, not ownership. In that spirit, I’ve thought a lot about how I want to grow the studio (and grow as a studio) over the last year, and have finally taken some of the first steps in that direction.
I recently tweeted about my belief that researchers have an outsized impact on earlier stages than they typically get hired. Part of the experiment of starting YAS was to prove that was true so I could share what I learned with others who are interested in this path (and related ones). There are two people in my close orbit who I know have been more actively considering this kind of work, so with the principle of “outcomes, not ownership” we’ve spun up a Slack workspace where I can share all my experiences and mistakes with them, we can discuss future opportunities (for all of us) as well as anything else that may be relevant. (In continuing with my endearing naming schema, the workspace is called Yet Another Backchannel as I continue to fill out the alphabet). Even in sharing past experiences, projects, pricing, and what not, I’ve learned from their questions and perspectives, and it’s felt like an authentic way for me to grow the studio without worrying about the overhead or structures of “running” a larger operation. The goal is to slowly and intentionally weave more people in, so if you’re interested in active participation, let me know.
Separate from Yet Another Backchannel, another shift in the practice has been in the move from a “project-based” model to one that looks closer to coaching or personal training. Something that I learned in the first year of the work is how damaging time-based billing is. While there are lots of good articles and tweets about why “value-based pricing” is better than selling your time (it is), the crux of why I don’t like it comes down to a simple fact: Having someone in a client organization reach out to my POC to see if they can reach out to me about something is often a massive of waste of time and creates unnecessary friction.
The best engagements that I’ve done to date have had alignment between my skills and the clients needs, clear success criteria, and near-total transparency between me and the client organization (including being added to Slack/Notion/etc as a multi-channel guest). This reduces the time I spend waiting to get access to things I need, allows me to be proactive in developing an understanding of the organization, and reduces the cost of engagement such that I’m able to work with various folks on the client side in whatever way makes sense (from a single message to regular meetings).
Where this has led is to a new “offering” that looks a lot like a coach — we meet regularly based on the needs of the client/project and I am “available” outside of that synchronous time. This ensures we have regular touch points as required by the work, enables me to do the (often) independent/asynchronous work that the client needs of me, and removes the need for anyone to ask “Can I talk to Behzod about X?” (_Should I… is perhaps a different story, but no one has really erred on that end yet.) So far it’s worked with folks who are pre-product, pre-product-market-fit, and large public companies, so I’m optimistic about iterating on it as I go forward.
Press
Briefly, I’ll note that I’ve done a recent interview I’m proud of and have one coming up that I’m excited about. I sat down with the team at Maze to talk about democratizing research. In full disclosure, I’m an advisor to these fantastic people, but I’d like to think the invitation for the interview was genuine (who knows?). Separately, I’ll be doing a multi-part series on Learners about starting the studio, loosely coinciding with this one year mark. I still have more questions than answers about what it is that I’m doing, but I’m looking forward to sharing whatever I can that may be helpful to others who are considering a similar path.
Friends of the Studio
Now to my favorite part, where I get to shine a light on some of the wonderful people in my orbit.
One of the best parts of my trip to NYC was the hours that Coleen Baik and I sat outside Lelabar talking about life, love, and everything in between. Coleen and I got connected through the MAEKAN community, though we have enough mutual friends that when I posted a photo of her on Instagram, I woke up to a flood of notifications professing people’s admiration.
Coleen is a true creative, who is able to give life to ideas through words, illustrations, animations, sounds and more. She’s recently started writing The Line Between, which has quickly become one of my favorite newsletters. If my endorsement is not enough, Substack also featured her this week, and they’re in the Newsletter business, literally.
A similar wizard of words and multi-hyphenate, my friend Vincent H. Bish Jr. gave the graduate student commencement address for Harvard this year which can only be described as a tour de force. I’ve heard Vincent speak a number of times and have always been awestruck by his oration, but this speech was truly on another level. I didn’t go to Harvard and have been out of a university setting for almost a decade, and I still felt pierced by the questions Vincent asked and the provocations he made. Give it a watch here.
Until next time, please take care of yourself and your community — however you define it.
Behzod