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This article is based on a research project conducted by NN/g 

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In 2021, Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g) — world leaders in research-based user experience — began a long-term research project to better understand human-centered design (HCD) and how practitioners utilize it in everyday work and its effects on project outcomes.  

NN/g began by establishing an HCD maturity model and realized that the maturity of individual team members and their experience, exposure, and mastery of HCD were essential to the overall team’s (or organization’s) ability to effectively utilize HCD methodologies. Catalysts were identified to help better understand the relationship between practitioner abilities and team performance. Catalysts consisted of individual practitioners whose HCD mastery positively influenced HCD practices in their teams or organizations. After conversations with the catalysts about their experience (and the experience of those they teach and guide), NN/g hypothesized that HCD practitioners share roughly the same learning journey, despite different backgrounds and contexts. 

NN/g began by conducting a large-scale survey of more than 1,000 practitioners and aimed at investigating respondents’ experience with HCD. Responses were classified into learning stages based on the self-reported HCD exposure, experience, primary activities, and biggest challenges. This process, combined with talking to hundreds of HCD practitioners each year at the NN/g user-experience conference, helped establish a set of unifying stages that most practitioners encounter while learning HCD. The stages include: newcomer, adopter, leader, and grandmaster. 

Many organizations are embracing democratization of UX, especially of UX research. Democratization of user research means making it acceptable and possible for anyone, no matter their role, to do user research.

Here are two terms we use in this article when discussing democratization:

• Professional Researchers: People who have the capabilities — experience, education, and responsibility — to do user research
• People who do research (PwDR): People who do research, even though they are not researchers by profession

Benefits of Democratization of User Research

There are many advantages to democratizing user research, including these:

• Getting research done. The obvious benefit of making it possible for more people to do user research is that it increases the likelihood that more research will be done, especially in organizations that have nobody in research roles or where professional researchers cannot meet demand. For example, imagine you’re a designer on a team with no professional researchers. You believe user research is necessary, so you get creative and resourceful and find a way to get research done. That is commendable! Even imperfect user research is usually much better than no research at all.
• Increased job satisfaction. Some designers, product managers, developers, content editors, and people in other roles enjoy doing user research. They appreciate the exposure to customers, use the findings to drive their decisions, and welcome a variety of tasks in their job. Enabling them to do research ultimately helps them learn new skills, increases their perception of growth and their value to their teams and the organizations.
• Increased knowledge about user research. Each time a person plans, runs, and follows through on a user study, they become more aware of the effort and complexities involved. They also sometimes share this new knowledge with others. Even those who don’t pick up on all nuances involved or make mistakes will probably realize there is more to research than initially meets the eye.

Dangers of Democratization

In some circles, democratization of user research has come to mean that anyone can do user research — even people who don’t know much about research or who have no accountability and responsibility for doing it. However, just as with anything else, user research can be conducted at different levels of skill, which lead to a different quality of insights. As an analogy, most people can microwave a frozen meal, but only a trained, skilled chef can devise a menu for a 4-star restaurant.

Good research requires time and involves many aspects:

• Choosing the best method for the goals of the study
• Recruiting participants and conducting the study
• Keeping participants’ information safe
• Analyzing the data
• Involving the team in research
• Turning observations into insights that shape design
• Tracking and sharing of research findings

When people with no knowledge about any of these do research, they are set up for failure. Democratization of user research done this way can bring with it the following negative byproducts:

• Underestimating the value of research training and professional experience:  User research seems easy if you’re watching someone else doing it. And, unlike some other tasks, basic user research can, in fact, be done by almost anyone. A person can read a few articles to gain the skills and the confidence needed for a simple user interview or qualitative user test. Because of that, some may assume that research democratization means that anybody can do any type of research. Wrong! Complex research-related tasks — like determining the best research method, identifying research questions, planning a contextual inquiry or quantitative study — will be done well only by someone with education, experience, and skills.
• Poor research resulting in poor design: Have you ever used a bad design and wondered how it ever got out the door? It was probably based on poor research, which can take many forms. Some teams analyze data badly. Others chase quantitative measures but do qualitative research. Still others ask questions and probe study participants when they should be observing them. Some craft leading questions or ones that are too narrow in scope. Others recruit the wrong users. These types of mistakes reap poor user data. Teams use it to make decisions, which result in bad designs.
• Lack of accountability for UX research: When no one has explicit responsibility for user research, serious issues can arise. Research can be deprioritized, so it doesn’t get done. If nobody has explicit responsibility, people may believe that someone else will take care of doing research. Or, multiple people and teams may do the same or similar research. This duplicated work results in wasted time and effort and decreased job satisfaction.
• Misuse of resources:  When the task at hand doesn’t match the ability of the person doing it, resources are wasted. Some examples:
  • Someone with expert research skills may do simple research studies that others could be doing. The result is wasting a highly skilled researcher on low-skill tasks.
  • Someone in a high-paid role does research. The result is spending more than necessary for research and possibly putting off tasks important to that role. Organizations should conserve high skills and people with high pay for the tasks that only people with those abilities or in those roles can do.
• Halted growth in UX maturity: Teams with low UX maturity may believe that any user research is good and enough. While some research is usually better than none, poorly conducted research is unlikely to help the organization grow and advance to the next level of UX maturity. Organizations that can afford research roles but don’t hire them probably do not understand the complexities and the value of good research. Leaders at organizations doing a few last-minute user tests may say, “Yes, we do user research.” But they could be doing more and better if they grew PwDR, took on a ResearchOps framework and roles, and hired or appointed full-time researchers.

Democratization to Support Good Research

Some researchers fear that democratizing research will dilute the collective understanding of the skills and knowledge needed to be a researcher. They want to protect the progress that professional researchers have made and the influence they have earned. Even though some may feel that the existence of UX as a profession is threatened by democratization, most probably just want to ensure that expectations are set, research is done well, and everyone respects user research as a craft. Democratization doubters would probably become advocates if they knew that it results in good research. But what is good research?

Many factors make up good research. But let’s focus on the V.I.S.E (Viable, Influential, Sound, and Efficient) model of user research. This model assumes that good research is not only about how the research is done, but also about whether user research as an activity is stable at a given organization, so that, even if the best researcher or a strong research champion leaves the organization, research will persist. The four components of the V.I.S.E model are:

• Viable: Research is mature, embedded, expected, ongoing, and so much a part of the culture that it will endure. Job descriptions, careers, teams, and budgets account for research. Benefits of research are identified, tracked, communicated, socialized, and respected.
• Influential: Research insights drive design ideas, iterations, and changes. Leaders support thorough research. Designers and stakeholders actively participate in research. Researchers are perceived as an essential part of the project team. Research and professional researchers are referred to regularly and at key times in the project.
• Sound: Research questions are stated and the most fitting research methods are used to answer them. Data is earnestly collected and analyzed, and insights aptly represent what was observed or heard during the research. Research participants are treated ethically and fairly, and their personal information is kept safe.
• Efficient: Researchers promptly plan, conduct, and analyze research; and share and track insights. Research is done at opportune times using proven, shared methods and tools, which are improved and redefined over time. Project schedules include time for research — planning, doing, and analyzing user research; acting in response to findings; and sometimes running multiple rounds of research on the same design.

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The V.I.S.E. model of user research defines good research as s viable, influential, sound, and efficient.

How to Make Democratization of User Research Work

This section outlines 5 areas of focus to help you implement effective research democratization.

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The 5 steps to democratization research include: 1) identifying the research demand, 2) classifying the skills of available people who do research, 3) doing a gap analysis and matching the supply with the demand and filling the gaps, 4) sharing and agreeing with team members and stakeholders about who will do which research, and 5) assessing how the process went and coming up with ideas for improving.

1. Identify: Evaluate the demand for research.

Take inventory of the organization’s user research needs. Go beyond what is currently done. Count the completed research as well as the unmet requests for user research. Consider both strategic and reactionary research. Planned strategic studies are, for example, discoveries at the inception of projects and iterative user testing on areas related to top tasks. Reactionary research is research that comes up unexpectedly during a project, such as a user test of a prototype for a new feature requested by a large customer. Prioritize the research items. Then summarize the skills needed for each research item.

2. Classify: Determine the supply of professional researchers and PwDR.

Find out who is available and wants to do user research. Once you know there are people who want to and have time to do research, see which research skills they have now.

3. Fulfill: Find and fill the gaps between demand and supply.

Figure out the research needs of your organization. Then determine the kinds of training that can be done to improve research skills. Your goals should be both bringing people up to the most basic skill levels and growing advanced researchers. Some self-education and practice can go a long way. For example, most people can learn to run a simple qualitative user test and how to improve a design by themselves.

Examine also the existing coaching resources that you already have — people with UX research experience who may be able to train others.

Last but not least, look at how well the organization matches skills with user-research tasks and attempt to correct any inefficiencies and make sure that everyone is used to their full potential. Also, make sure that people interested in doing research know how to join those projects that have a need for research.

Are there employees who can train people, regularly, to do user research?

Are there avenues for making connections between available PwDR and the places that need them? For example:

• Designers test each other’s designs
• Connect a network of designers to test one another’s work
• Interns and research assistants
• References or partnerships with external consultants

4. Sync: Align on responsibilities.

Teams and individuals should agree on who will do research.

5. Revise: Reassess and improve.

Look back at how research has been done and how successful the current process is.

Summary

Good user research requires many skills, and most of these come with experience and education. The good news is that a lot of these skills can be easily learned.

Experienced researchers should strive to grow their own research skills and tools, but also those of other researchers and PwDR. Do only the more complex research tasks; provide coaching and resources for easier research tasks.

PwDRs should keep practicing and educating themselves. Take on research challenges while also trying to identify tasks above your current ability. Seek resources and assistance.

Leaders should support the development of research capabilities for people in research and non-research roles. Don’t get caught in the trap of believing that people without training, experience, or knowledge can do research well; but do support research assessment, education, coaching to enable PwDRs.

Learn more about user research democratization in our full-day course on ResearchOps.

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This article is was originally published by the Nielson Norman Group on Dec. 12 2022 

Why these stages matter

HCD practitioners can better understand their own learning process and set appropriate expectations if they know the typical stages of the learning journey. 

NN/g concluded that:

• Most learning journeys feel frustrating at some point. Having insight into the HCD learning journey and the end goal can provide encouragement during “what’s the point” moments. If you’re learning HCD independently, awareness of the journey can help you feel less alone.
• Identifying one’s current phase can help predict future progress, staying focused on the goals of the current learning phase rather than jumping ahead. Jumping ahead runs the risk of creating experiences that may be confusing, and thus less motivated to continue to learn. 

Course facilitators (or managers or mentors), must empathize, create an effective HCD learning experience for others, and enable sustainable, long-term success. 

• Understanding that different people will be at different stages in the learning process is a key part in being an effective educator. It allows for the delivery of effective learning experiences without overwhelming the audience with too much complexity and also preemptively mitigate learners’ pain points at each phase. 

Educating and activating a group of people takes a lot of resources (time, money, and effort). The education process should be intentionally designed, in order to maximize resources and return on investment. Mapping participants’ phases and their progression through the learning journey allows an educator to benchmark progress, and indirectly, success of the training. 

As practitioners progress through the stages, their mastery increases in a nonlinear fashion — experiencing fluctuations due to various factors, especially, lack of self-confidence. Note that mastery is a combination of competence and confidence; both are required to effectively use HCD. If a practitioner is good but still feels insecure, they won’t deviate from the strict steps of HCD and won’t teach others.  The goal is to create alignment between competence and confidence in order to master HCD.

The Structure

Rather than thinking of each phase as a discrete checklist, NN/g created a three-component framework for characterizing each learning stage: criteria, primary activities, and educator goals.

1. Criteria are observable qualities that can help the learner (or an external observer, such as a trainer) identify the learner’s current stage along the learning journey. It includes awareness of one’s own competence, level of exposure, and confidence.
2. Primary activities are the learner’s actions and use of HCD methodologies.
3. Educator goals and obstacles summarize learner’s pain points at any given stage and corresponding educator goals that can help learners overcome them. 

Phase 1: Newcomer 

This phase is the first in the learning journey. For the majority of HCD practitioners, this exposure occurs via a university or institution, a place of work, or an online resource. The amount of time spent at this first stage depends on how motivated the learner is. Interestingly, many practitioners immediately perceive HCD as useless and never leave this stage.

Criteria

Individuals in this stage have been introduced to HCD, but have limited experience with it. Practitioners in this phase fall into 2 buckets:

1. Individuals who are committed to learn HCD
2. Individuals who are not interested to learn more about HCD. They’ve been exposed to it, but that is where their learning journey halts. Newcomers may remain in this stage indefinitely until they encounter a deeper exposure to HCD that broadens their perspective, experience, or acceptance. 

Newcomers’ knowledge is minimal; they have a surface-level understanding of HCD, often rooted in the definition they received during their first exposure. They may be able to provide a definition, but are not familiar with the details of a framework or its value. They have topical associations with HCD — sticky-notes, phase models, and whiteboards. Newcomers are unaware of their HCD incompetence. In other words, they don’t yet know what they don’t know.

Primary Activities

Newcomers’ primary goal is to understand the basics — what HCD is and why it’s useful. Often, this stage’s activities are self-initiated: browsing articles, reading books, or signing up for a course. In other cases, HCD is learned by necessity or requirement at work or school through onboarding programs, collaborative workshops, required courses, or mandated trainings. Most newcomers have not yet actively practiced HCD activities. If they have practiced HCD at all, their participation is limited and surface-level. 

Educator’s Goals and Obstacles

The goal of an HCD educator at this stage is to communicate the purpose and potential value of HCD and to motivate the newcomer to pursue learning, then make time for it and move on to the next phases. Common obstacles are overcoming learners’ negative sentiments: annoyance with “yet another thing to learn,” unsuccessful previous attempts or experiences, capped bandwidth, and realization of their own limits (in this case, how little they know about HCD). 

Phase 2: Adopter

Individuals in phase 2 have adopted HCD and begun to practice it. They may have had some ups and downs in their limited experience with HCD. It is common for adopters to flip-flop between overconfidence and self-doubt and to feel both confused and successful at the same time. Successful adopters have discovered how relevant HCD is to their work or life and, thus, make a commitment to continue learning.

Criteria

Increased (passive or active) exposure and familiarity with HCD has made adopters aware of their knowledge limits. They understand the potential of HCD, but still have a lot to learn. Adopters have invested time, effort, and energy into HCD and have started applying it to their work with mixed success. The commitment to HCD at this phase can be self-initiated or dictated by an authority with an invested interest (leadership, organization, or supervisor). 

Primary Activities

Adopters practice HCD in a linear way — by the book. They rely heavily on checklists — for example an HCD Phases Model, as well as for the activities associated with each of its steps. Many adopters lean towards a prescribed, branded version of HCD, often provided by their institution, company, or a reputable external organization.  

It is common for HCD practitioners to encounter failure in this phase — especially if they are learning predominately on their own — because of their incomplete understanding of the HCD framework. Common types of failure include jumping to conclusions, using the wrong activity at the wrong time, and lack of buy-in or support from others. These failures push some practitioners to abandon HCD altogether. However, most learning in this phase occurs through failure. Practitioners who embrace failure tend to develop a better understanding of HCD in future phases.

Some adopters might learn primarily by actively participating in HCD training, coaching and activities together with experienced HCD practitioners. While this group of adopters may not have the opportunity to experience a sense of failure because of the support received from their peers, it is still likely they will question the value and legitimacy of HCD from time-to-time.   

Educator’s Goals and Obstacles

Adopters are on the bike, but still need training wheels and coaching. Adopters’ confidence drops as they realize the indirect ways in which HCD can be applied and how much they have to learn — for example, how straightforward they originally thought the process was versus how abstract (and potentially overwhelming) it really is. The goal of the educator at this stage is to help learners through hands-on practice and assistance until they can comfortably use HCD on their own. Many individuals can become confused in this phase when they cannot make a direct connection to the relevance of HCD. Thus, it is imperative that adopters find relevance and application to their everyday work.

Phase 3: Leader 

This is the proficiency stage of HCD. Leaders can articulate HCD succinctly to others, steadily growing their confidence, with varied experiences and continued exposure. Leaders take an active, independent role in their learning journey and begin to think adaptively about HCD; starting to explore new applications and may even have established a reputation as a subject matter expert. 

Criteria

Leaders practice HCD with general ease, confidence, and independence. Leaders become more and more aware of their new knowledge and comfort as they mature through this phase. They often teach others earlier in the learning journey. They are able to consistently and somewhat adaptively perform HCD activities without thinking too much about them. Leaders don’t try to apply HCD by the book, rather use it as needed depending on the goals. 

Primary Activities

HCD practitioners in this phase lead HCD activities with others or perform HCD without coaching, but still apply preparation and focus. While they were previously participants, they now facilitate, initiate, and even advocate for collaborative HCD activities. Activities that leaders are involved in gradually increase in complexity, ranging from involving users in learning opportunities to fostering stakeholders into the process and prototyping. 

Educator’s Goals and Obstacles

The goal of the educator in this phase is to continue to instill confidence and help sustain learner commitment. The goal should be to empower leaders to transition into the role of HCD educators and facilitators. As much as they’ve progressed, they still may not be aware of weaknesses or potential improvements (even though they often recognize a mistake after they made it). Promoting reflection in this phase is the key to helping leaders continue to grow (and progress to grandmasters). They must take an active role in adapting the HCD practice to fit their contextual goals and needs, be sustainable over time, and maximize potential benefits.  

Phase 4: Grandmaster

If you are familiar with the game of chess, the title of grandmaster is only given to the most exceptional players—those who have spent countless hours perfecting their skills and techniques.

HCD practitioners at this stage have not only become teachers of HCD, but create new ways of applying it, thinking about it, and adding to it. The practice of HCD is so embodied in their behavior that they seldom have to think about applying it. Grandmasters view HCD as a flexible, dynamic toolkit. They’ve long departed from the concept of a prescribed process and rather view it as scaffolding to solve both organizational (often internal) and end-user (external, product-related) problems. However, this phase doesn’t come without downsides. Grandmasters are more likely to doubt HCD than leaders, often when early-stage learners fall victim to mismanaged HCD marketing and thus misinterpret, misapply, or undercut the practice as a whole. 

Criteria

Grandmasters’ defining characteristic is the ability to critically reflect on their HCD practice. This enables them to judge what is useful and potentially depart from the traditional ways and activities of HCD. Grandmasters also know how to help others to this same stage of enlightenment. Grandmasters are aware of their competence. They have an in-depth, intuitive understanding and can blend HCD skills together to meet specific needs. 

Primary Activities

Traditional HCD activities are still used by grandmasters, but are altered, adapted, and applied in complex ways, depending on the goal, audience, and potential obstacles. Grandmasters don’t stick to prescribed or branded versions of HCD and more often pull tools and/or activities from other realms, like service design and business strategy. While basic HCD activities are still carried out in this phase, they differ from those in earlier stages because they are inputs or alignment strategies for more complex, involved activities (compared to previous stages where the basic activities are the end goal). 

Educator’s Goals and Obstacle

Grandmasters have very likely surpassed their original teachers. Their goal becomes not just activating and educating individual learners, but rather organizations as a whole. As practitioners themselves, grandmasters face an increasing likelihood of (re)questioning the value of HCD. Increased knowledge and mastery are a blessing and curse; this pessimistic view is often rooted in the realization of what HCD can and cannot solve (contrary to earlier naive ideas that HCD can be a cure-all). However, even grandmasters can get better, by self-reflection, by learning from their peers, and also by learning from their juniors: one of the skills of supreme mastery is the ability to discern which of the hundreds of ideas generated by eager newcomers is actually a stroke of genius.

Other Considerations 

• Trained designers experience the HCD learning journey too, just differently. Many designers view HCD as simply a way to articulate and communicate a creative approach to problem solving. Thus, many designers are likely to feel as if they bypassed this learning journey altogether because this is how they instinctively think. However, designers experience this learning journey too, albeit much earlier in their education or career, and likely not packaged or branded as HCD. This does not mean that all grandmasters are designers, but rather that many successful designers likely are. 
• Individual practitioners can be at multiple levels at the same time. Some skills may fall into one phase, while others into a lower different phase. For example, a practitioner’s mindset and reflection may fall into Grandmaster, while their hands-on experience and exposure to activities into Leader. The goal is to identify this imbalance and invest in experiences that bolster weaker dimensions of our practice. 

The HCD learning journey is a high-level, distilled representation of the most common learning phases observed in the NN/g research. Learning and teaching HCD is messy; not all experiences will fit squarely into this model. 

Regardless, it is imperative to frame and articulate learning HCD as an experiential journey. Doing so can help all practitioners become more effective learners and educators. Learners can gain insight and awareness into the greater journey and goals, while educators can thoughtfully and successfully execute the HCD learning experience they aim to create.  

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This article is based on a research study conducted by the Nielsen Norman Group. Originally published January 2021.