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We have been told to be more strategic AD NAUSEAM. To get a seat at the table, to speak to the business, to have our research be impactful and inform decisions, to JUST DO BETTER.

We’re over here

flailing like a tube man (yes that’s what they are called, and yes, there are no tube women - maybe because we can dance better?).

I’m a huge fan of strategy and user researchers being more strategic, hence my company name. I love it. It makes me giddy, gives me goosebumps, makes me want to scream from the rooftops.

I had a wonderful call with a mentee the other week and we had walked through a plan she had for a project to put a more “strategic lens” on it. I told her my thoughts and we talked through ideas.

At the end of the chat she said, “how can I think like that?”

And I was like, “goodness, I have no idea.”

Helpful, huh!

So, naturally, I went on a mission to figure out how I can talk about strategy and research better, in a more tangible way for you. And, really, how I can help you think through your projects in an extremely strategic way.

And why does that matter? Who cares about thinking strategically? Well, everyone. Your employers, stakeholders, colleagues, friends, dog, cat, your dog’s cat friend, your neighbor’s uncle, you name it.

Especially these days, strategic work means more impact, more visibility, and more value. Which then makes YOU more valuable, which then leads to job security, promotions, pay rises, finding a better job, enjoying life a little more, etc.

Okay so I figured it was time to start thinking about how user research can overlap with strategy in a more concrete way. Outside of things like ROI, biz metrics, speaking stakeholder language. Something that was more concretely measurable.

And what’s easier to measure? Decisions.

With that, I created decision research.

A decision researcher measures their work by the decisions it changes, rather than the number of studies they run or the decks they deliver. Most of us were taught to see research as producing insights and representing the user, which made sense when insights were slow and expensive to get. With AI producing summaries and themes in minutes, insights are no longer the scarce thing in an organization, and the researchers who stay valuable are the ones who can get the right decision made with the right evidence.

A decision researcher still cares deeply about users and still does careful, rigorous work. The difference is that every study starts with a decision someone needs to make and ends with a record of what happened to that decision, so the value of your work is clear, visible, and measurable.

I’ve learnt that frameworks are KEY for helping with breaking down a concept like decision research into something tangible. I created a framework for decision research

In decision research, there are three main areas to help us measure our impact:

Each strategy breaks down into three smaller areas, nine in total, and each one comes with a simple metric so you can score your own work red, yellow or green and see exactly where your research is getting stuck. I’m going to go through them one strategy at a time over the next few weeks, so you can score yourself as we go.

All three strategies point to one number in the middle of the triangle, the decision rate, which is the share of your studies that led to a decision.

Decision rate = (changed + confirmed + stopped) ÷ closed studies

A study counts when the decision changed because of your research, when the team confirmed their original plan using your research as evidence, or when your research stopped a project. Studies that were ignored or never got decided still count toward the total, so if ten of your studies closed and six ended in one of those three outcomes, your decision rate is 60%.

Take your last five studies and, for each one, write down the decision it was meant to inform and what happened to that decision. Each study will land in one of five buckets:

For example, your last five studies might look like this.

Three of those five studies led to a decision (changed, confirmed and stopped), so the decision rate is 3 ÷ 5, which is 60%.

Don’t worry if your number isn’t what you hoped, it’s a starting point, and the next few posts are all about moving it. I’d love to hear where everyone is starting, so hit reply and tell me your number.

Stay curious,

Nikki & Poncho 🥰