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Lindsey Wallace

Design research leader spearheading enterprise research with an inclusive and ethnographic lens and a passion for shaping how organizations learn. Head of Research and Strategy at Cisco Cloud and Network Security.

Stop Dividing Generative and Evaluative Research 

  • Customer Experience, Design, Design Theory, Research Methods and Techniques, The Evolution of Research, UX Education

Every UX research method should generate new insights about the people we study and allow us to refine our understanding of the problems our products are trying to solve. Distinguishing “generative” and “evaluative” studies doesn’t always make sense. 

Article by Lindsey Wallace
IDEAS IN BRIEF
Stop Dividing Generative and Evaluative Research 
  • UX research is a strange thing, being divided into “generative” and “evaluative” studies, the former conducted ideally early in product development, the latter further along in the process.
  • The author shares some ways to expand requests for evaluative research into research with generative insights.
  • Here are some tips that might help you conduct your qualitative research session:
    • Begin by asking users “casual” questions to build rapport.
    • Ask them about their favorite and least favorite parts of their job, to walk me through a typical day.
    • Try to orient the concept test around them.
    • Ask stupid questions when people react to a concept.
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8 min read

Compassion is a Strategy

  • Behavioral Science, Customer Experience, Design, Design Theory, Emotion, Empathy, Employee Experience, Human factors, Usability, UX Education, UX Magazine

Burned out leaders lead teams to burn out.

Article by Lindsey Wallace
IDEAS IN BRIEF
Compassion is a Strategy
  • The author believes that compassion helps create teams and organizations that foster not just “human centered design” but organizations and structure that help people thrive rather than crushing them.
  • The author shares her own story and gives tips on how to become a more effective compassionate leader:
    • Let go of control and delegate intentionally
    • Caring for yourselves and your families
    • Let the news and the fullness of your experience into work
    • Cancel things
    • Work on your emotional distance
    • Place a higher value on your mental and physical health than on your work
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8 min read
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When Growth Feels Like Failure

  • Behavioral Science, Customer Experience, Design, Design Theory, Emotion, Human factors, Psychology and Human Behavior, Team Dynamics, Usability, UX Education, UX Magazine

3 key things to keep in mind on the way to becoming an influential strategic player

Article by Lindsey Wallace
IDEAS IN BRIEF
When Growth Feels Like Failure
  • UX researchers tend to be people who like to see the impact of their work. However, as researchers climb their career ladders these stories often start to fall apart, causing self-doubt.
  • The authors talks about a few key things to keep in mind on the way to becoming an influential strategic player:
    1. Ripple effects are part of impact.
    2. The bigger the ship the slower the turn
    3. Ownership becomes communal
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3 min read
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How To Research So PMs Will Listen

  • Customer Experience, Design, Design Theory, Employee Experience, Psychology and Human Behavior, Remote Research, Research Methods and Techniques, Research Tools and Software, Usability, UX Education, UX Magazine

Building effective partnerships with PMs requires stepping outside of any frustration, ego, or resentment at being ignored, and building empathy. How to do that? Here is what we’re going to find out.

Article by Lindsey Wallace
IDEAS IN BRIEF
How To Research So PMs Will Listen
  • PMs are the most critical audiences for research, they are also often the hardest to convince, and the source of many of researchers’ frustrations and heartaches.
  • Building effective partnerships with PMs requires stepping outside of any frustration, ego, or resentment at being ignored, and building empathy.
  • The author shares:
    • Some practices of working with PMs
    • Questions to ask PMs and stakeholders
  • The baseline expectation setting:
    • Level set
    • Set guardrails based on your role
    • Ask for candid feedback and engagement
    • No surprises
  • When researchers and PMs are in conflict or in separate silos, neither role gets the value of the other, but strong researcher-pm partnerships can be game-changing for extending the strategic impact and influence of both design and research.
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6 min read
How to research so PMs will listen

Personas — Training Wheels

  • Customer Experience, Design, Personas, Usability, UX Education, UX Magazine

A persona-hater’s guide to teaching with personas

Article by Lindsey Wallace
IDEAS IN BRIEF
Personas — Training Wheels
  • Personas can help build an organizations’ capacity to imagine the people who use and interact with their products.
  • The author’s take on what’s useful about personas:
    • Personas help teams build a shared language to argue with when they have to work together.
    • Personas can show teams when they need to think with a higher level of specificity.
    • Using personas helps teams create hypotheses about who our users are and what matters to them.
    • Personas give a framework that helps cross-functional teams easily understand research insights and implications.
  • Personas need never replace research, but they can be a useful tool to begin to value them enough to bring their individual success or failure into designers’ decision-making.
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3 min read
Personas — training wheels

Surfing the waves of UX research, swimming in deep organizational water

  • Customer Experience, Design, Usability, UX Education, UX Magazine

UX researchers often feel like they are bombarded with projects and drowning in work. But just like surfing, they can try to avoid swimming alone and make sure they are prepared for deep water.

Article by Lindsey Wallace
IDEAS IN BRIEF
Surfing the waves of UX research, swimming in deep organizational water
  • For researchers new to their role, working in spaces of ambiguity betwixt and between design, product and engineering can create a lot of anxiety around whether they are working “right”.
  • For the productivity increase, the author suggests UX researchers follow these tips:
    • Take care of yourself, your personal life and don’t stress
    • Keep in close contact with your partners
    • Lean in to the chaos
    • Take the time to socialize your findings with stakeholders
    • Take a deep breath before spotting the next wave out on the horizon
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3 min read
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