The User Research Strategist

The User Research Strategist

Link Round-ups

The User Research Round-Up: CW41

Research maturity, impact v2, new era of working, SUPR-Qm, and UXR with start-ups and founders

Nikki Anderson's avatar
Nikki Anderson
Oct 09, 2025
∙ Paid

Every researcher has that one tool they swear they’ll try “next project.”

And then next project turns into six months of juggling spreadsheets, chasing no-shows, and trying to make sense of messy transcripts at 2am.

That’s exactly why I built this bundle. Paid subscribers get all Substack content and you get handed the tools that cut out half the stress:

  • User Interviews → 5 participants without the ghosting circus

  • Askable → a full month of Industry Stream (recruitment on autopilot)

  • Lyssna → 6 months of tests that don’t stall out after 5 clicks

  • Condens → 6 months of a real repository, not 47 Google Docs and a prayer

It’s the stack I wish I had when I was duct-taping research together. And it costs less than what you’d pay to recruit a single participant.

If you’re tired of telling yourself “I’ll get organized later,” this is later. Grab it now.

Grab it!

Now, onto this week’s round-up…

Link roundup

01.

Jack, Diane and the future of research maturity (Article) by Maze

I got tired of maturity models being these dry, soulless frameworks nobody actually wanted to read, so I decided to write something different. Enter Jack and Diane, two fictional researchers who show what research maturity really looks like in the trenches: messy, political, and often hilarious in hindsight. You’ll probably recognize your own team in them (and maybe yourself, which can sting a little). The whole point was to make maturity feel less like a box-ticking exercise and more like a story you can actually learn from. If you’ve been wondering how to move beyond “we test buttons” mode, this is where I’d start.


02.

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