The User Research Round-Up: CW31

Pokemon (duh), leading in UXR, accessibility, alignment, and dating apps

Hello hello! Welcome to August?!

How is that possible? No idea.

Anyways, I hope you are having a great week! I’ve been so super busy revamping my offers in between surfing (my ribs hurt so much) and trying desperately to finish the first draft of my horror novel (I’m at 415 pages, eeek). The reason I’m revamping is because things change and, instead of being my normal stubborn self who is terrified of changing things up, I’m trying to go with those changes.

One of those changes includes this Substack (in a good way). I’ve been brainstorming ways to improve it based on the survey I sent out — feel free to take it if you haven’t already!

Here are some other things I am trying out and offering:

• 1x1 call package — 6 or 12 call package with me where we can chat through anything you are struggling with, from job stuff to stakeholder management to research projects to upskilling in mixed methods, and beyond. I’m all ears.

• Continuous feedback program — get my eyes on your work and get continuous feedback from me every single month. I will help you get unstuck on your resume or a research plan or stop you from staring at the same report slides that don’t feel quite right but you don’t know how to change.

• UXR Job prep intensive session — have a job interview or whiteboard challenge coming up? Or do you just need an overhaul of your resume/case study? In this two hour intensive session, we focus on whatever you need to make you feel confident in your UXR job hunt! PS - if you’re interested and can’t find a day/time, just email me (nikki@userresearchacademy.com)

• UXR membership — my membership is what I literally want to do for the rest of my life (outside of being the female version of Stephen King). In this membership is a community of UXRs that I hope to grow over time to help answer burning questions, upskill in tough areas, and advance the industry together. Never feel alone.

All of these offers are focused on making you feel more confident as a user researcher because I know it can be tough out there. Anywhoodles, let’s see what’s on for this week:

01.

From Charmander to Charizard: Level Up Your UX Research Job Search with Nikki Anderson (Podcast) by Amy Santee

Amy is awesome and I loved chatting with her about job searching as a user researcher, but this time I talked about it very much from the perspective of a hiring manager. I put that hat on and we discussed what it’s like for a hiring manager, how we want candidates to succeed, and what we are looking for during the job interview process. We also spoke about Pokemon, so it’s pretty much the best. Hope you enjoy!

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02.

Sandra by Design (Resource/Courses) by Sandra Camacho

I’ve received so many questions about accessibility recently, and I found Sandra’s resources to be really awesome. She has a fantastic blog where she shares really amazing and in-depth information on accessibility, including real case studies and personal experiences. Highly recommend you check it out!

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