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>This was also the only place I've ever worked with that regularly assembled test panels of customers for direct UX testing (we had someone on staff "that's all

>This was also the only place I've ever worked with that regularly assembled test panels of customers for direct UX testing (we had someone on staff "that's all they did" was user studies of this nature) A dedicated UX researcher! What a rare creature, most UX teams have to fight tooth and nail to get one of those.

mdip 3y ago
That's been my experience at every company I've been at. I don't know how they did it ... they not only got panels, they were all paid for by the customer. We had credentialed in house staff but routinely outsourced the work[0]. I asked how they sell these things so frequently and was told "it's easy" with no explanation. The best I can tell is that the company was laid out specifically focused on industrial/product/digital design. It built excellent, polished products[1] and the clients that were attracted to the company wanted that polished product. We positioned ourselves as a partner in executing on that vision but the reality is that we were taking a few sentences of an idea and creating it (with a bunch of hostility from the partner along the way). If the client wanted the polished product, we gave them an RFP that included everything required to get there and many of the things on that RFP came from bruises we received from previous work, so we were ready with "Here's a perfect example of why that's a must-have." And some of these bruises were incredible: I know of at least one project that was over a year past-due owing to a customer's constant design adjustments. They did a lot right. The design pricing and QA was double what I recall seeing at previous employers. Development cost (equating to time) was a bit more, on average, than previous employers[2]. The development budget didn't necessarily suffer due to design being too large, but we weren't consistent enough with change-orders to handle the fickle customers we often ended up with. Hiring was impossible -- to get the people necessary to build these products they had open positions in nearly everything and hired anyone who was exceptional whether or not they had work for them (we were paid salary). This sort of worked, but after losing a huge contract for a product in a language we wrote almost nothing else in, we took a 25% hit to staffing affecting everyone who specialized in that language exclusively. It was a very demanding job but I met some amazing people there -- I remember a certified genius hardware guy who when I asked about his experience learning "C++" he said "I learned from Bjarn Straustrup" -- delivered factually, deadpan, no hint/intention to brag -- so much so that I took it as "read the books/code/self-taught as he was an autodidact" but he clarified "my employer paid to have my team trained by him (I think in the 90s)." WTF?! [0] You have to be careful, here -- we used a couple of providers and I can only remember Shiffrin Heyworth and I can't find them any longer. Shame, too, it's even harder to find these kinds of companies if you want to participate as a panelist (most are scams) -- they had real secret shopper programs, expert studies (flying panel participants with specific, narrow, subject matter expertise), 3-5 hour paid catered studies (with a 20% chance of being handed food/a cheque and sent on your way) -- all design/product/marketing focus -- it was a lot of fun. [1] "Products" was a range, but mostly digital, however we did a few interiors of the early Microsoft stores. They spun off a few companies from products they partnered with third parties to design/develop, as well. [2] Adjusting for "specialization tax" -- I worked for a company that wrote software add-ons for Skype for Business/Lync/etc ... there were very few of us ... my hourly billing rate made me wonder where my corner office on the top floor was hiding at. Though my dataset is small, it's still about twice what my time has been valued at to a third-party.

mdip 3y ago

That's been my experience at every company I've been at. I don't know how they did it ... they not only got panels, they were all paid for by the customer. We had credentialed in house staff but routinely outsourced the work[0]. I asked how they sell these things so frequently and was told "it's easy" with no explanation. The best I can tell is that the company was laid out specifically focused on industrial/product/digital design. It built excellent, polished products[1] and the clients that were attracted to the company wanted that polished product. We positioned ourselves as a partner in executing on that vision but the reality is that we were taking a few sentences of an idea and creating it (with a bunch of hostility from the partner along the way). If the client wanted the polished product, we gave them an RFP that included everything required to get there and many of the things on that RFP came from bruises we received from previous work, so we were ready with "Here's a perfect example of why that's a must-have." And some of these bruises were incredible: I know of at least one project that was over a year past-due owing to a customer's constant design adjustments. They did a lot right. The design pricing and QA was double what I recall seeing at previous employers. Development cost (equating to time) was a bit more, on average, than previous employers[2]. The development budget didn't necessarily suffer due to design being too large, but we weren't consistent enough with change-orders to handle the fickle customers we often ended up with. Hiring was impossible -- to get the people necessary to build these products they had open positions in nearly everything and hired anyone who was exceptional whether or not they had work for them (we were paid salary). This sort of worked, but after losing a huge contract for a product in a language we wrote almost nothing else in, we took a 25% hit to staffing affecting everyone who specialized in that language exclusively. It was a very demanding job but I met some amazing people there -- I remember a certified genius hardware guy who when I asked about his experience learning "C++" he said "I learned from Bjarn Straustrup" -- delivered factually, deadpan, no hint/intention to brag -- so much so that I took it as "read the books/code/self-taught as he was an autodidact" but he clarified "my employer paid to have my team trained by him (I think in the 90s)." WTF?! [0] You have to be careful, here -- we used a couple of providers and I can only remember Shiffrin Heyworth and I can't find them any longer. Shame, too, it's even harder to find these kinds of companies if you want to participate as a panelist (most are scams) -- they had real secret shopper programs, expert studies (flying panel participants with specific, narrow, subject matter expertise), 3-5 hour paid catered studies (with a 20% chance of being handed food/a cheque and sent on your way) -- all design/product/marketing focus -- it was a lot of fun. [1] "Products" was a range, but mostly digital, however we did a few interiors of the early Microsoft stores. They spun off a few companies from products they partnered with third parties to design/develop, as well. [2] Adjusting for "specialization tax" -- I worked for a company that wrote software add-ons for Skype for Business/Lync/etc ... there were very few of us ... my hourly billing rate made me wonder where my corner office on the top floor was hiding at. Though my dataset is small, it's still about twice what my time has been valued at to a third-party.