Set Solid Goals as a User Researcher

Using OKRs to move your career forward and show value

👋🏻Hi, this is Nikki with a 🔒subscriber-only 🔒 article from User Research Academy. In every article, I cover in-depth topics on how to conduct user research, grow in your career, and fall in love with the craft of user research again.

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Typically, when discussing goals, I reserve them for research projects or presentations. With good study and presentation goals, you set yourself up for success within projects and with your audience.

Goals are wayfinders — they allow us to understand and set a course that is more likely to move toward success. You know where you are going and can structure your project or report to get you to that satisfactory end.

With this in mind, why wouldn’t we set career goals? If you know where you are and where you want to go, goals are a great way to set us on that path toward what we’re looking for, whether a promotion, pay rise, or learning new skills and getting recognition for our work.

*PS. If you aren’t sure where you are in your research career, check out this article on how to assess and advance in your user research career.

However, even with this in mind, I struggled to set career goals as a user researcher. I didn’t have a research manager to look up to or anyone to emulate, so I had no idea how to apply this concept.

I knew I wanted to be better, sure. I knew I wanted to get a promotion. I wanted a pay rise, of course. I wanted the things everyone tends to want from advancing in their careers, but I just wasn’t exactly sure how to set effective and efficient goals to not only help me get to that place but also to demonstrate the value I brought over time. Because, to me, goals aren’t only about getting somewhere, but about showing how you got there, how you succeeded.

My goals always felt generic and vague, including ideas like “do better.”

Kidding…kind of. My goals weren’t quite that but but still too vague, such as, “getting better at generative research” or “taking on more responsibility.”

They weren’t measurable, or specific, and, to be honest, they weren’t very inspiring or motivating. I couldn’t go to my manager, excited to show that person how I “did better” at generative research because there wasn’t really anything to show. I always had a difficult time when it came to performance reviews and I has to show the value I’d brought to the table, especially with goals like those.

After a particularly frustrating performance review and another belly flopping within the goal-setting process, I decided I was over it. I wanted to figure out how to write effective goals that felt good to me, allowed me to show and track progress, and had a solid end point.

I had watched teams implement and (sometimes successfully) execute on OKRs as goal tracking, so I thought, “why not try this?” It was a hilarious failure (I’ll give examples later) at first, but, over time, I learned and honed my OKR and goal-setting techniques and now teach them to my mentees.

In this article, I will provide structure and examples of how you can start setting effective and efficient goals for your user research career.

So, What are OKRs?

Imagine you’re about to embark on a road trip. You have a destination in mind, but without Google Maps, you might take a few wrong turns or get lost along the way. Now, imagine having an app that not only shows you the final destination but also highlights the best route to get there, complete with rest stops and points of interest. This is what OKRs do for your career—they provide a clear, structured path to achieving your goals.

OKRs, which stands for Objectives and Key Results, is a simple yet powerful framework for setting and tracking goals. It was popularized by companies like Intel and Google, but its principles are universally applicable, making it a valuable tool for anyone looking to achieve personal or professional growth. At its core, the OKR system helps you define what you want to achieve (your Objective) and the specific steps you need to take to get there (your Key Results).

Objectives are the big, inspiring goals that give you a clear direction. They should be ambitious yet attainable, pushing you to stretch your capabilities. Think of an Objective as the final destination on your journey. For instance, if you’re a user researcher aiming to make a significant impact in your field, your Objective might be something like, “Become a recognized expert in user research.”

To reach this ambitious Objective, you need a set of Key Results. These are the measurable, concrete actions that will lead you to your goal. Key Results break down your Objective into smaller, actionable steps that are easy to track and measure. Continuing with our example, your Key Results for becoming a recognized expert might include publishing three articles in top UX journals, speaking at two industry conferences, and increasing your professional network by 500 LinkedIn connections. Each of these Key Results is specific and measurable, providing clear progress indicators.

The beauty of OKRs lies in their simplicity and effectiveness. By defining clear Objectives and aligning them with measurable Key Results, you create a roadmap that not only shows you where you want to go but also how to get there. This clarity is particularly beneficial for user researchers since we often juggle multiple projects/teams and must prioritize our efforts strategically.

Why Use OKRs?

One significant advantage of using OKRs is that they provide a sense of focus. As a solo user researcher, especially, I was very easily sidetracked and overwhelmed by everything I had to do to support the eight teams I worked with. Without any structure, I said yes to things I shouldn’t have and didn’t have time to focus on things that could have moved my career forward.

For example, I took on so many usability tests and surveys without really thinking about the broader goals of the organization and teams, and also without thinking about my own professional development. I quickly became an expert at usability testing, which was great, but it wasn't where I needed to go with my career — I had to expand my methodology toolkit rather than going back to the same approach repeatedly.

OKRs constantly remind you of what’s important, allowing you to allocate your time and resources more effectively. They help to remind you what you need to focus on, which is extremely helpful for prioritizing projects and work.

Moreover, OKRs bring measurability to your career development. Unlike vague resolutions or broad aspirations, like “getting better at usability testing” or “making recruitment easier,” OKRs require setting specific, quantifiable targets. This makes it easier to monitor your progress and adjust your strategies as needed. For instance, if one of your Key Results is to conduct five user research studies in the next six months, you can easily track how many studies you’ve completed and whether you’re on pace to meet your goal.

In addition to providing clarity and focus, OKRs also foster alignment. Aligning your personal OKRs with the broader company goals not only helps you with getting teams on board but can also help you prove the value user research can bring to your organization. This exact process makes user research more impactful at a company.

Setting Effective OKRs

When I first set off to create OKRs, it was hilariously painful. As mentioned, my goals consisted of extremely vague and non-measurable ideas. Uninspiring and not an easy promotion case for my manager to make. I realized that I didn’t really understand how OKRs worked, so I researched (of course) to come up with some steps to help me with breaking down the different components.

I often get overwhelmed with bigger concepts so being able to make OKRs smaller and more manageable was key for me in using them consistently and effectively. For this, I followed a plan that I still follow today:

Step 1: Reflect on Your Career Aspirations

First things first, take a moment to think about where you want to go in your career. What excites you? What kind of impact do you want to make? Maybe you dream of becoming a thought leader in user research, or perhaps you want to develop a new set of skills. Write down your big-picture aspirations.

If you are having a difficult time with this, take some time to answer these questions:

1. What part of your current role do you enjoy the most? Why? 

2. What part of your current role are you struggling with? Why? 

3. How would you describe success in your current role? 

4. What are 3-5 of your strengths? 

5. What are 2-3 of your weaknesses? 

By understanding a mix of what you are feeling good about and where you want to improve, you can find some different areas you want to move forward in.

For example, some of my more recent career aspirations (when I was in-house) included:

1. Becoming more fluent in mixed methods research

2. Being more effective at stakeholder management

3. Sharing research more effectively across the organization

Step 2: Turn Aspirations into Objectives

After you identify the things you want to improve, those aspirations, its time to turn them into objectives. An Objective is a statement of what you want to achieve—it’s your North Star. Make sure it’s inspiring and a bit of a stretch. For example, if you aspire to become a recognized expert in user research, your Objective might be: “Become a thought leader in user research within the next two years.”

This is something I actually thought about and worked on myself. It was about 2018 when I decided I wanted to become a thought leader in user research and to help others advance/gain confidence in their careers. I started out with that larger objective and broke it down into more tangible key results. I won’t lie, at the time it felt nearly impossible, but with understanding the specific steps I wanted to take, I actually got to a place I feel good about.

This is the same with more in-house skills as well, such as incorporating more mixed methods research into your process, becoming a better workshop facilitator, or mastering generative research.

Think about what really drives you because those will become the most motivating and inspiring objectives.

Step 3: Break Down Objectives into Key Results

Next, you’ll break down your Objective into specific, measurable Key Results. These are the steps you need to take to reach your goal. Think of them as the milestones on your journey. For each Key Result, ask yourself, “What does success look like?”

Here’s how my thought leader objective looked and how I broke it down into key results.

Objective: Become a thought leader in user research within the next two years.

• Key Result 1: Publish weekly articles on Medium and through UX Collective (they picked up my publications at the time) and get recognized for the writing by being shared across connections

• Key Result 2: Speak at two major user research conferences

• Key Result 3: Grow my professional network by 500 LinkedIn connections

• Key Result 4: Start an introduction to user research course to help others grow in the field and to share expertise more broadly

Each of these key results was not only measurable, but they were also attainable, as scary as some of them were (particularly the course). However, I was super passionate about becoming more of a thought leader in the field. As I achieved those key results, I continued to intensify and iterate on them, such as:

• Key Result 1: Write a book on setting a research foundation at an organization based on your experience (Heyyyya, Impact)

• Key Result 2: Host and be a keynote speaker at three conferences in 2024

• Key Result 3: Start and maintain a successful user research membership to help others advance in their career and spread positive knowledge on the field

• Key Result 4: Become an expert user researcher in Jersey through continued consultancy in the local government, finance, and education departments

As you can see, this path continued after I had achieved a certain level of that goal of becoming a thought leader, which is one of the amazing qualities of OKRs. You can continue to update your key results as you reach them or as your career aspirations change.

Having a Hard Time Defining Key Results?