Black in Technology, Life in Technology, in Technology, Why black in technology?
Life in Technology? Why life in Technology? What's up? Bit Family?
We are back with another exciting episode at the bit tech Talk podcast.
On this episode, Greg explores the world of user experience with Emani Nichols.
Imani Nichols as the founder and senior UX researcher at Ghizzy Research base in New
York City. Imani founded Hizzy Research to help businesses understand the pain points,
desires, experiences, and journeys of their end users and customers. She provides
research based insights that enable businesses to design and engineer products and services that their
customers enjoy. And Now, the host of our show, Blacks and Technology
founder, Greg Greenley, tell us a little bit about yourself. How where
you're from, a little bit about your education. Yeah, I'm a UX
researcher and people listening. UX stands for User experience. I'm a user experienced
researcher based here in Manhattan, in New York. I didn't grow up too
far from here. I'm originally from Brooklyn. I grew up in the Crown
Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, and then at some point my family and I moved
to the south to Delaware, where I considered the south, to Delaware where
I finished being raised there, and then I went to college even further down
south in Virginia. I went to University of Virginia, where I studied media
studies and monitored in sociology, and that's where I started learning about research,
which is what I do now. The cavaliers, right, Yes, that's
some the cools. Nice. Nice give us a little bit of background about
kind of how you became interested and technology. I never had an interest in
technology specifically, at least not as a career path, so I mentioned.
When I went to the University of Virginia also known as UVA, I did
research there for most of my tenure. I was an undergrad research assistant for
a variety of professors, working on different types of projects that were like qualitative
and also quantitative as well, and I wanted to continue doing research in some
capacity as a professional, but I didn't know how that would manifest. Thankfully,
I had a mentor who was an alumna of the university who was a
ux researcher in New York at the time, and so I'm thankful she and
I got linked up because she taught me about UX research. Prior to her,
I'd never even heard of it. So she told me about it.
She explained what she did day to day, and she told me that I
probably would be good at it since I had all of this research experience from
undergrad And as I dug deeper into UX research, I learned very quickly that
it mostly exists in the tech space. So I wasn't really interested in tech
per se. It was the fact that my interest in neu X research took
me to tech since UX research, for whatever reason, seems to be most
dominant in the text. So that's how I became interested. It was more
like, I guess a tangential entry into the tech space. Nice, nice,
And I like that word tangential. Might have to use that sometimes.
No, some I was actually talking to someone earlier than they use it.
I'm like, you know, I'm going to use that great minds think alike
when you're interesting word, steal it and use it later on. Exactly nice.
Nice. So you mentioned what the letters stand for. The abbreviation UX
stands for user experience, But tell us what a user experience researcher is.
Yeah, it's always interesting because UX research is so straightforward, but yeah,
it's always so hard to define to other people. So I always say it's
someone who studies users of a product to understand how they interact with interact with
the product itself. And the product is usually a digital product, so I
think like a website, a web based experience, an app on your phone,
and researchers we try to answer at a higher level, how do users
behave, how do they engage with the actual experience, what are there pain
points? We usually try to understand how users behave, how they think,
and how they feel, and we try to use our insights help to help
the product team, including the product managers and designers, understand how to design
products that people actually like and therefore want to use. So that may manifest
as us observing how people actually use the product and asking questions about that and
giving them tasks to complete to see how they actually can achieve those tasks in
the app or in the web experience can also manifest as US doing interviews with
customers to understand how the product fits into their lives, to understand them more
as people, and to help design products around their humanity. Basically, so
it manifests in many different ways in terms of how we do it, but
ultimately it's just someone who tries to understand and users of our product. I
like that. Here's something interesting, an interesting questions I'll post to you because
I think when people think about customers, let me actually this when you say
customers, right or who who are you? Who are you referring to?
Because I had an experience, a conversation that I had with the person who
was a ui u X person uh, and a lot of people when they
think about, you know, customers, they think about people outside of You
have your internal stakeholders who you work with at your actual job, and you
also have your external stakeholders who I think of as the customers. Excellent,
and that's that's UM. I wanted you to you to explain it because I
felt it was necessary to kind of make that distinction. UM. Although you
know they're you know, customers are is a general term, uh, the
distinction between internal and external customers. UM. I wanted you to kind of,
you know, clarify that because I had an interesting discussion with um a
person who works for a large retailer, uh, and when he said he
was a UIUX person, my mind instantly went to the people who who shot
at this particular retailer, right, and instead he was referring to going around
talking to the people inside the stores, employees who are working in bakery.
I was like, Oh, yeah, I guess if they were, you
know, to use an internal app in order to you know, maybe uh,
you know, order ingredients or something like that, or however, you
know, whatever they needed to do, you would need to know, um,
you know, what their experience is um with using that app. So
you know their internal their employees to the company, but you need to know
how to make their experience a lot better so that they actually use it because
they're you know, they're not only use it, but use it in the
correct way too, right. So uh. I thought that was a very
interesting discussion and it gave me a different perspective when I when I, you
know, think about customers exactly. That's a good example. It also what's
really important too when thinking about customers is if the company is B to B
right, or if it's B or what's the other B two C to be
right? That matters as well. Like I've mostly worked with companies at least
as a researcher where the company was direct to consumer, So the end user
was the consumer. However, when you gave that example, I was thinking
of a company like Uber, Uber Eats or door dash right, where the
customer could be like someone like me just ordering some pizza, right, but
it could also be the Uber East driver as well. It could also be
the restaurant owner. Um. So yeah, I think that it definitely matters
if the organization is like direct to consumer or not. That definitely changes the
context of who the customers and stakeholders are. And so you gave us a
little bit about about your actually your education, your background. But what are
some of the necessary skills you you think are needed to become a UX researcher.
Yeah, so the skills I think that people really need. Um,
this is obvious, but having research experience. UX research isn't really something that
you can learn by reading a book. It's very practical. It's very experimental
and experimental and experiential as well. So you definitely have to learn by doing
and making mistakes. So when I say knowing how to do research, having
knowledge of research methods, having applied knowledge like usability testing, user interviews,
focus group moderation, survey research, diary studies, field research, so on
and so forth. So I think that's like the top hard skill to have
is actual research experience. And then I would say in terms of soft skills,
being a good listener. We talk to people all the time. Being
a good note taker taking notes on what they're saying. You don't have to
be a super extrovert, I'm not, but being a good conversation list is
important. Being organized because you work with a lot of different types of data
points and you have to keep it all together. So I think that's are
really the top for soft skills, So being able to listen, being able
to take notes, being able to speak well, and also being organized.
And also I would say another one too is just knowing how to balance different
temperaments as a researcher. When you have an active project, you're working with
so many different people, and I mean, as anyone who works with people
knows, everyone has a different energy and vibe in personality, and there are
some people who are just easy to get along with their others who are not.
And so just having like maturity and patience to manage all of that as
also critically important as well. Interesting. I wouldn't know if I would have
thought that most people would be cooperative, I guess in the research, But
is that your experience or you you've come across people who are like, don't
want to talk kind of, or you know, people that you kind of
have to pull information out of. Yeah, So generally most people are pretty
pleasant because they choose to participate, right, Like, I've never been in
a I've never been in a situation where I've forced anyone to do to participate
in research. So generally people are fine. But it's not uncommon, and
I'm sure if any researcher listens to this, they're probably not in their head.
It's not uncommon to do a usability test or an interview where you need
the person to talk and they just don't give you anything, right They say
yes, no, yes, no, and it's not really it's not really
a good conversation. So I would say most people generally that I've worked with,
they're usually pretty pretty good to work with. But occasionally you do get
people who just won't talk, or if people are wanting to talk to you,
they may be really upset and I may be the closest person to the
company that they actually get a chance to speak to. This closest live person,
so you may get the brunt of their frustrations. That doesn't happen often,
but it has happened a few times. So generally I would say people
are pretty pleasant, but occasionally I do have to pull pull it out of
people. Got you, got you? And I apologize beforehand because I know
I said that. I usually don't pivot or asked questions outside of some of
the questions that I send over, but this, this is kind of in
the same lane. But I wanted to get your opinion on something, or
get your thoughts on something I should say, because we're we're in a very
I guess, precarious age of miss and disinformation. And with the I guess
the advent of social media and now everyone thinks that they are a trained researcher.
You get a lot of nonsense right on social media. You know,
things that are spread through means and that type of thing. And one of
my things is that people don't do and and not to say that I do
like proper research, but a lot of people who spread like misinformation and things
like that, they don't actually do proper what I feel is proper research.
They'll pull something from an article or YouTube, video, mail say, oh,
that's you know, do your research. I've done my research. Look
at this YouTube video. So let me actually this. What do you think
constitutes proper research? Like, what's a process a research kind of process look
like. That's a great question. I definitely think it varies in terms of
what research looks like. I think it varies in terms of a type of
research you're doing. So if you are a medical researcher, it's very different
than being a UX researcher at a tech company, right as opposed to a
market researcher or I don't know, a legal researcher. So I think it
varies in that respect. But I would say for UX research, what really
constitutes good research is having a research plan ahead of time. So what is
your hypothesis or the assumptions that you're testing, what methods are you using,
who are you recruiting, how are you recruiting them, what are the research
questions? What is the discussion guide if that's needed. So I think that
having a solid plan ahead of time is what makes research solid. I also
think that getting stakeholders involved early early on in the research planning process is also
important. So let's say, for example, usually when i'm planning a research
study, I'll ask for the opinions of the product managers, the product marketing
managers, the UX designers. If I have other researchers on the team as
well, I'll ask them too, just to get some perspective and some buying.
And also the people I mentioned, some of them are the ones who
actually can take the research and actually apply it. So it's important that they
know what's going on and they have input as to what I'm actually asking people
during the interview sessions or during the usability testing sessions for example. So I
think what mixed research, reputable and solid is being able to have a research
I keep using the word solid, keep having a sound research plan ahead of
time, and also getting stakeholder buying and getting their opinions, because you want
to make sure that you're asking questions of your customers and end users that yield
answers that people at the company can actually use, so answers that the product
managers can actually use to help prioritize features on the roadmap, to help designers
understand what's actually design in the app or on the website. And thanks,
thank you for the that clarification. UM it's it's one of my it's it's
a pet peever mine. Um, I'm on I'm on Facebook a lot,
and so um, it's someone who's on Facebook a lot. I see a
lot of nonsense and discussions and things like that, and you know, people
kind of throw their opinions or uh they're so called facts, uh and and
discussions and you know, I have I have a serious problem when people try
to pass off something as fact and it's not thoroughly like checked out, and
it's not properly researched, and they and so that's why I asked that question.
Anyhow, let me let me get back to the regular questions. So
one thing that I like to do, because I've you know, spoken to
classrooms and you know, college students and things like that, is I like
to tell people how much I make. Like I'm not ashamed or I don't
try to make it private, because I think it's important for people, especially
if they are looking to get into tech, and especially if they're people within
the black community, so they can you know, see like what could be
on the horizon for them. Right as far as salary, how much can
a UX researcher make in terms of salary Yeah, it varies pretty significantly depending
on location, seniority, company size. Right, if you're in the Bay
Area, which is where like all the UX stuff is happening, you probably
get a really high salary there, but it's also that area has a high
cost of living. Same here with New York. I would say in terms
of range overall, I would imagine somewhere between like sixtk if you're just like
getting started at a smaller company, all the way up maybe through two hundred
k or more if you're like super senior ten plus years of experience at a
company like Facebook or Amazon or something. So yeah, I would say,
which is a pretty significant range. Yeah, I guess it depends a lot
on like those factors that I mentioned, the location, scenority, and company
size. But I think it's a pretty I think it's a pretty well compensated
career, which is why I think it's probably so popular. But yeah,
I would say it somewhere in that range, and there probably may be some
unicorns making way more than that if you account for things like profit sharing stocks
bonuses. So yeah, that the range I gave was probably what I would
estimate for like base salary. And so how does someone get started. I
know you taught us a little bit about kind of your journey and that you
know, you kind of had a mentor that came to you and said,
hey, you know, this might be a good path for you to take.
How would you recommend someone get started in becoming a UX researcher. Oh,
it's such a mystery. I mean I always say I think there's a
thing amongst UX researchers that none of us know how we got into it.
It's just one of those things that you just kind of fall into it.
It's not a clear career path, Like if you want to become a doctor
or a lawyer, it's pretty clear what you need to do. It's not
like that with UX research. So for me personally, I started with academic
research as an undergrad and I did UX research very briefly. After I graduated.
I wanted to try something different than I did market research for like a
year and a half and I didn't really like that and that wasn't all that
great at it, honestly, and then I went back to UX research,
which I enjoy. So I think a lot of people get started with academic
research. There are people who get their PhDs and masters in a human computer
interaction or psychology or something related to us. In that way, that's a
good place to start, or starting with being a designer. It's not uncommon
for designers to also transition into research. Some people start in market research or
consumer insights. There are a variety of paths to come into it, but
those usually seem to be the top three that I've witnessed, either from myself
or from other researchers. I'm one of the things about UX research it's there's
no one path to it, like I mentioned a few moments ago, and
that's good and bad. I mean it's bad because if you're trying to break
into it, it's hard to know where to start or if you're doing things
quote right end quote. However, it can also be really good because since
there's no typical UX researcher, you have a chance to really define what that
means for you if you want to do that. So, yeah, it's
it's like a double edged sword there in that respect. The Bit Foundation has
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is free. Tell us a little bit about as a UX researcher. What
do you do on a day to day? It varies pretty significantly, which
I hate when people give that response when you ask them what they do every
day, But it's true. But it's true it varies significantly. And also
so I own myne that keeps it in right. It does, it definitely
does, and I own my own research company, which I know will probably
talkbout a little bit later in the episode. But on a day to day
it varies, So I may if I'm doing an active research project, I'll
be writing research plans, recruiting participants, conducting the actual research, scheduling time
with participants, following up with incentives, analyzing notes from the research, sharing
insights with the team. If I'm at a if I'm on a longer engagement,
creating a research roadmap, if there's a repository, updating a research repository
with my notes, with recordings from sessions. And of course, because I
do work for myself and I am I might work on a contract basis,
applying for contracts. And also I have a coaching program where I coach aspiring
and current UX researchers and I help them get their application materials together to apply
for UX research roles, so I may be doing a little bit of that
too, or and I'll also produce my own podcasts, the US Research Podcast,
so it's a podcast about research, primarily US research, but I have
other researchers come on at times as well, so I may be producing that.
So again, it really varies depending on if I'm working on a client
project, if a research study is active, if I have like um coaching
mentees lined up, So it just it varies quite a bit. But that's
usually it's usually one of those handful of tasks. Sounds like you have a
ton of spare time on your hands. Yeah, but thankfully I enjoy what
I do, so it's easy to find the energy to do it. But
yeah, it is a lot, but like, um, you know,
just juggling different things on different days, right, right, and when you
enjoy it doesn't seem like work, and it's just you know, you just
kind of flow right exactly. Yeah, I think that's the word for it.
In psychology, I think it's called flow, like when you just get
in the zone. Yeah, there's a psychological I could totally be lying too,
I could be making it up. I think it is called flow,
like when you find something that you really enjoy. Time just goes by.
So yeah, I do think that research for me is one of those things
for me, like at this point in my career. So what do you
think, out of all those things, are are like the most important function
of your job? Yeah, I would say practically is actually conducting the research
and also making sure that my internal stakeholders like product managers and designers actually understand
the findings and can apply them if they need to. And also at a
more higher level, being a liaison between the users or the customers and the
internal stakeholders like that I mentioned. So I would definitely say getting collecting the
data and also making sense of it and relaying that sense to internal stakeholders as
well. Speaking speaking of that, kind of let's let's walk through that that
process. Um, you know, and you don't have to go, you
know, super in depth about about it, but tell us kind of a
little bit about what that process is from you know, kind of beginning to
end. They are just like a quick you know, run through of what
that is. Like, what does it like to like start our project all
the way through delivering the insights exactly. Yeah, So I had mentioned a
few moments ago. I mentioned like the research plan and getting by stakeholder buy
in early on. So that's usually the first step, and then once I
get the green life from the stakeholders to move forward, then I do recruitment
for participants, which is not usually the most fun part. People sometimes don't
show up, they cancel, and it's kind of hard to reschedule. Sometimes
That's what I do next. And then I conduct the actual research. So
let's say if I'm doing user interviews, I'll conduct the actual interviews, and
then once the research is conducted, I'll go ahead and analyze and synthesize the
findings. So I'll review the notes from the interviews to find patterns and themes
to see what answers I found the research questions that were on the research plan,
and then I'll take those and put those in a presentation usually and share
it with those internal stakeholders like the product managers, designers, salespeople, et
cetera. Depending on which contexts I'm in, and then once I share it
with them, I usually follow up with them to see if there's anything else
they need for me, if there any other questions that are an answered that
I can use another research study for. So that's usually that's usually the flow
and the more abbreviated UM since nice nice and without naming like names or companies
or anything like that. Are there companies out there where you go through this
entire process and I'm not sure you know what the time frame is like for
a process like this, Uh that when you get to the end and you
kind of present all your findings that they like totally go the opposite way and
say, yeah, well, you know, thank you, We're we're not
gonna use these you know these these findings, you know, we kind of
think we have a handle on it, and they go an opposite way and
then things like fail miserably or moments like that. So, in terms of
being a researcher, it does happen often when you deliver insights and they're not
always applied and sometimes not apply for a variety of reasons. There may not
be enough bandwidth to actually help build what you suggested or improve what you suggested.
There may not be enough time. That's always an issue. There may
not be enough money to put towards creating X, Y and Z. So
there are usually a variety of reasons why stakeholders can't move forward, or if
they already have something in flight, it may be too much to adjust it
at the moment that they get the research. So it definitely varies in terms
of reasons why, but it definitely does happen. BIT is always focused on
forming new partnerships and opportunities to assist the community and our members with their continued
professional growth and development. If you'd like to partner with us, send an
email inquiries at blacks and Technology dot net. So let's let's talk about your
company. And I don't know how do you how do you pronounce that?
Is that or yuzzy yuzzy? Okay yazy research? So tell us a little
bit about yusy Research and why why you chose to start your own business.
Yeah, so yusy Research. It's a ux research company, UM and I
always wanted to work for myself and have that flexibility and like being able to
pick who I work with. UM. I like having the variety of clients
and also being able to work on projects that are really engaging. So that's
why I started my own company. Is something I've always wanted to do.
I didn't know until fairly recently that I wanted to do a ux research company.
Um, but I've always wanted to own a business, even as a
child. Where do you think that came from? Did you have like,
you know, influences as a as a as a young child that you know
you kind of drew from and said, hey, like that. I like
that the idea of working for myself and the flexibility, and I think I
want to do that later on in life. I don't think so, yes,
No, I would say no because it probably wasn't consciously looking at someone
and thinking that. But both of my parents, at some point when I
was much younger, they were entrepreneurs, so they owned like different businesses and
when I was much younger, so I'm pretty sure like growing up seeing them
work on their own and work for themselves was probably an inspiration by a virtue
of osmosis. But wasn't like that. I consciously think that most likely not.
But you know how it is, if it's just an environment something as
a kid would do it too. Exactly. Shout out to moms and pops
for yes, for subconsciously inspiring exactly. So tell us about some of the
services that you provide. Yeah, So I provide UX research services. So
I do discovery and the value to of UX research. So the value to
of UX research is what most people associate with UX research. So think something
like usability testing for example, and discovery research is more open ended, more
like strategic research that isn't really centered around specific usability about a product, but
more so about learning who the users are. So I do both of those,
and that can include things like interviews, journey maps, personas, usability
testing, focus groups, field research. More we're able to actually go out
in public again, cards, sorts. And also in addition to doing UX
research, I also produce the Easy Research podcasts where I talk about research with
other researchers. And also I have the Easy Research Coaching program, which is
geared aspiring and practicing UX researchers who want to work on their job application collateral.
So think like their LinkedIn accounts, cover letters, resumes, portfolios,
mock interviewing skills. I help them as well. So I take a lot
of what I've learned because it was kind of hard for me to actually break
into UX research and figure out how I needed to present myself because you need
to do it in a very particular way, but it's not always clear how
you're supposed to do that. So that's why I started the coaching program element
of it. So that's what I do. So I do UX research and
also coaching for UX researchers as well. Very nice, very nice. So
let me what are you know, because I've worked in companies that have like
UIUX personnel that are employees of a company. What are some of the benefits
of like hiring just a UX research firm. Yeah, And in terms of
hiring a UX research firm, you get very intimate knowledge about your user base.
I always say, like market research is good for like the big picture,
and it's good for collecting big data. However, when you need small
data, like that human touch or a sense of narrative or understanding your users
more intimately, that's where UX research really is a strength. You get that
expertise that you just can't get from market research or from data science. And
also bringing in a third party firm for someone who doesn't actually work at the
company, because we obviously don't have any company knowledge if we haven't worked there
before. We bring a unique perspective as individuals coming into this dynamic, and
also the research skills as well. So I think that what I'm saying is
that UX research hiring or UX research or UX research firm definitely gives companies competitive
advantage because a lot of companies don't do UX research and they don't know their
customers and they their customers. If you actually talk to your customers, they
will tell you what they want. People are not shy when it comes to
things like that to tell you what they like and dislike what they want to
see. So I definitely think that the major benefit is that the company doing
the hiring gets a significant competitive advantage over their competitors. What's up, everyone,
We hope that you're enjoying this episode of the Blacks and Technology BIT tech
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Technology got net, or click on the link in the show notes and fill
out our form. We're looking to hear from you. I like that you
mentioned just having a different perspective because being inside a company, you can kind
of become what's the good word term for the You become so embedded in the
culture, right, uh, that you don't have that fresh perspective that someone
coming from the outside might have. Right, You're kind of uh entrenched in
the culture of the company. H So you you become kind of biased,
um and not saying that all you know, you ux people are like this,
but it's good to kind of have, you know, that outside perspective
coming in where you don't have the bias or you don't have the you know,
kind of the some of the things that the company has done in the
past and things like that. You don't have that history, so to speak,
and so you can you can ask questions and look at things in a
different way than someone who has been at a company for life, let's say
a few years or whatever has. So. Yeah, I also think that
coming in as a third party, as a contractor or as a consultant like
you said, I'm not entrenched in the business, so I can do a
little bit more freely amongst like different departments and different teams and rallying the troops
with little resistance. I feel like when you work somewhere at full time,
a lot of companies, especially big companies, tend to be very silo just
because they're so big. And when you come in as a consultant or a
contractor and you have to pull in all these different parts, it's easier to
pull in people from different parts of the company because you're you're not there all
the time, and you're there for a certain time period, so there's a
sense of, Okay, well we have to if you want to get these
insights by the end of this contract, you kind of need to collaborate with
you. So there's a sense of that as well. So yeah, I
definitely think that coming in as a third party helps me move a little bit
more freely amongst teams that may be more siloed. I love the fact that
you are coaching as well, like it's as her way of giving back.
You know, there are people who once they get to a certain status,
are a certain point in their career, they kind of want to cruise right
because they're comfortable with that point, like, hey, you know, I'm
making good money, I'm you know, doing what I love. And there's
something different about a person who can reach back and they can give back and
say, hey, you know, I understand the struggles and that some of
the obstacles that that I had to overcome to get there, and I want
to give back and make it easier for the for the next person. It
takes a special person to do something like that, because then you're you're a
little bit you're a lot more more selfless and that aspect, and not everyone
can do that, right, So kudos kudos to you for for coaching and
giving back. Oh shucks, Greg, No, but thanks, I appreciate
that. But I so for my coaching program, I do charge for that.
However, I do realize that not everyone obviously can afford to pay for
support. That's the reason why I did the podcast, which is free and
will always be free. I share a lot of knowledge there as well,
in terms of like interviewing and getting your portfolio together and what do researchers actually
do, et cetera, et cetera. So I try to balance that out
too. Because I'm not oblivious to the fact that not everyone can afford a
coaching program. So the podcast is free. That's also a lot of information
there too for people as well. Excellent and well we'll get into a little
bit more about that, because I mean I think that's you know it for
me, you know, blacks and technology has always been about, you know,
kind of providing information and supporting one another and community. So I love
to see another black person in tech, uh doing the same thing, right
because when you know, I say this quite often on the past podcast,
but when when I got started doing podcasts, there weren't a lot of black
people doing podcasts at all period, like not in tech for sure, right,
And so m I started seeing like this expansion of black people in tech
doing podcasts, and I was I thought, like, this is great,
Like this is what we need because not a lot of us are out there
doing it, and uh, it's great to kind of hear us being in
this space, being in this ecosystem, providing the knowledge and being an experts
in our field and giving back to others. Right. So I think I
think that's you having a podcast, I mean on top of you running a
business, uh, and you working, uh and all other things that you
have to deal with in life that you still have the time, I mean,
and then you're coaching, you're giving back that in that respect, and
then also producing a podcast like I you know, I know firsthand that's not
easy, Like it takes a lot of cycles to be able to to do
something like that. So again, once again, kudos kudos to you for
giving back and you know during this podcast and provide people with uh, you
know, the knowledge and things like that. Do you have a product or
service that you would like to share with a bit audience or maybe you'd like
to support the bit community and do your part in helping us with stomping the
divide. Start by sponsoring one of our podcasts. Please email us at contact
us at blacks and Technology dot net. Tell us you know what's the hardest
part about owning your own business a tech business? Yeah, I also have
the hardest part about owning a company, especially as a researcher, is learning
how to actually be a consultant. When I short, relatively short term basis,
if you're a a company full time as a traditional nine to five employee,
you're there until you choose to leave or you get laid off or you
quit or you get fired. Right when you're there as a contract or a
consultant, you're there until you're there for six months, eight months a year,
and that's pretty set in stone unless something changes. And learning how to
adapt to different clients every few months is something I'm still trying to get adjusted
to. So I like the variety. I like trying different different things,
working with different companies in different industries. However, it is kind of hard
sometimes to figure out, Okay, how do they do it here? Right?
Like what are the dynamics here? Like who can I actually talk to
as an advocate? Who's really pro research, who's not? Whose temperament is
really compatible with mind with mine? Whose temperament isn't? Who can help me
with my tech stuff? Right? Like? Trying to figure all this stuff
out every few months or once a year can be a learning experience. And
that's definitely something that's been the trickiest part. It's just learning how to actually
adjust to new working environments every few months. Wow, Yeah, I would
suspected that, you know that, I mean, because onboarding is hard anyhow,
right, Like every time I work at I work at a technology solutions
company, we're consultants and we go into we either augment teams or uh we
provide a team to to certain businesses and things like that. So I definitely
understand the aspect of going into a new company and or a new team or
you know, and things like that. So one of the things that I
found is that, you know, onboarding is a problem for almost every company.
Every company that I've been a part of has never gotten onboarding completely right,
right, It's it's there's always gaps and how they onboard somebody. So
you you know, coming in as a as a ux researcher, I can
only imagine, you know, they definitely don't have a policy or something you
know, in place onboarding plan for you know, somebody who's doing research.
So I can only imagine how difficult that could be at some of these companies,
right. So, yeah, especially since due to the pandemic, everything
is remote. At least as of right as of this recording, everything is
still remote. So that definitely, I know a lot of companies are struggling.
They're used to doing everything in person and now how do you onboard people
virtually? So it's also been a challenge as well. But I'm getting the
impression. So I've been working full time as a contractor since February of twenty
twenty one, so not very long as of this recording. However, I've
noticed very quickly that I'm going to have to create my own sort of research
onboarding. So if I get I'm going to ask that, Yeah, I
have to have some sort of research onboarding I create, So figuring out who
the stakeholders are, just having a meeting with them initially, figuring out where
documents are stored, things like that, and just trying to pull those people
in myself. So that's something I'm going to have to learn how to do.
However, I have had contracts where that was already done for me,
which was nice. For the contracts where that's not done for me, I
definitely have to start thinking of a way to actually get that information myself and
kind of give myself a ux research specific onboarding for that particular contract. It's
that's something I'm still learning how to do too. Nice. Nice, Yeah,
that's what I was thinking about, Like, you know, how how
how can you create like a run book on getting their information and things like
that that you need in order to be able to successfully do your job.
So yeah, kulos, Okay, So tell me what what what do you
think is uh, you know, kind of the most fun part of owning
the tech business. I would say one of the most fun parts so far
has been the ability to pick and choose who I work with. If I
I've turned contracts down because I just wasn't feeling it, frankly, for a
variety of thefferent reasons. And it's nice being able to just say no to
someone, to someone or something you just don't want to do. That's nice.
And also being able to flex different research muscles. So I may be
working with one client that's really focused on usability testing, but another client wants
to do a lot of survey research or interviews, for example, So it's
nice being able just to try out different methods and not having to commit to
one or the other. So I like that too. So just being able
to have some flexibility and who I actually work with, and also being able
to flex different research skills nice. Nice. And so are you at the
point right now and your company that you're hiring or you're still kind of growing
the company. So I'm still growing. It's just me right now and probably
will be for a while, So I'm not at that point. I'm definitely
not at that point yet, but I will. I would love to be
at that point if I do continue to develop with Ux Research and with Gizi
Research. However, yeah, I'm not there yet. Well, you know,
every company has a beginning, and hopefully this is the beginning of something
big and great for you. So so tell me a little bit about Um,
let's let's switch to to your podcast. Let's talk about that. What's
the name of it. What's the name of your podcast? It's the Easy
Research Podcastle's spell why z z i um And that's how everything that's branded for
the for the business is spelled as well. Tell us what's behind the name?
What is it? What does that mean? So one of my nicknames
is zi z z y and it was just that backwards. Um, I
couldn't. I had a hard thing of a business name, and that was
actually the temporary name. But I kind of just stuck with it, Okay.
So that yeah, so I just kind of ran ran with it.
Okay, Okay that Um, I'm about to really show my my geatness here.
So when when you said that, the first thing that came to mind
was Mixupleix. And I don't know if you if you read comics or anything
like that, but Mixelplix was this fifth dimensional character, uh that was a
nemesis of Superman. And the only way Superman could get Mixelplix to go back
to his own dimension, so like he could control like pretty much anything,
like he could create, you know, create things out of thin air,
uh and things like that, like he was godlike and so to speak,
right, But the only way to get him to go back to his dimension
and kind of leave like you know, Earth third dimension alone is to get
him to say his name backwards. And his name back backwards was Clippo Skim
for all my nerd people who get people who read comics. Yeah, that
kind of reminds me of Candy Man, right, you say his name five
times or Bloody Mary. Right. But the rub about that is he had
to get Mixelplix to say his own name backwards. So so Superman would like
come up with all these clever ways to get Mixelplix to say his name backwards,
Like one time he got them to say it backwards by skywriting his name
backwards, you know, using like an airplane and you know, smoke and
things like that, and he was like, look what is that. It
was like, oh, let's say it is blah blah blah, and next
thing you know, he would disappear and be back in this dimension. But
anyhow, that's that whole thing. Your name backwards is kind of what drove
overto that. So sorry about that anyhow, So tell us what motivated you
to start your podcasts? Well, motivated me to start the YUSY Research podcast
was a few things. Um One, I mentioned that I knew that when
I started my coaching program, I knew that not everyone could afford that,
So having a podcast allowed me to answer a lot of common research questions and
also feature guests to help provide that information for free. Also, secondly,
I get a lot of questions, especially on LinkedIn, about ux research,
and I can't always answer every question, so if I get enough questions,
I'll just make an episode about it. There's that. Then. Also,
lastly, I do use it to promote. I do use it the podcast
promote my business itself, so I'll promote the coaching program, my research services.
So it serves a variety of reasons. So it's a mix of being
able to help other people, but also to help myself as well and to
promote the business too. So what tell us a little bit about some of
the topics that you cover. I know you mentioned some of them earlier.
Yeah, some of the topics that I cover, I talk about UX research,
career, coaching, and mentorship. I talk about like the personality traits
of good researchers, what do UX researchers actually do in a day, how
to aid the UX research interview. I also have like a few market research.
I also have a few market researchers come on and talk about what they
do. In the future, I do plan to have different types of researchers
as well, but those are like a sampling of topics that I've talked about
so far. And generally I try to keep the episodes pretty like digestible,
So in the episodes where it's just me by myself, it's like fifteen minutes
or less, which you mentioned earlier that producing a podcast is no joke.
For a fifteen minute episode, it can take me months to put it together.
It's crazy how much time it takes to produce these. It takes a
lot of time, but that's about how long it takes when it's by when
it's me by myself. When I have guests, the episode can range from
about can range anywhere from thirty minutes to about an hour. So I have
some short form, quick digestible episodes and also some longer form episodes as well.
That's a sampling of what to expect with the podcasts. Okay, and
how can people subscribe to that podcast? How can they find out more about
it? Yeah? Wherever they listen to podcasts, so Spotify, Apple podcasts,
Google podcasts on the easy to Research website, which is why zeziresearch dot
com, and I have a section there where you can find the show notes
from the podcast and also listen to episodes there as well. But anywhere where
you listen to episodes popularly you can find the podcast there. Okay, and
before we get out of here, um, what's next for you? I
want to continue to build up YUSY research and also getting into audio production as
well. I really love producing a podcast, so I'd like to do more
audio production and media production in the future, but more immediately, definitely continuing
to build up US research, build up my clientele, helping more people in
terms of coaching, and also having more clients as well. And how can
people follow you? Contact, you know, give us all your hand your
Twitter handles, Instagram, all that stuff. Yeah, so it's easy to
find me because everything is branded. So on Twitter you can find me at
yuzy Research y z zi Research. I post tips there weekly about UX Research,
getting hired, etc. And also the same with LinkedIn. For my
LinkedIn, you can just search my name Imani Nichols, I am A and
I and I shls and every week or two I post tips there as well
about UX Research, about interviews, case studies. I post information there too.
So linked and Twitter are the two best ways to follow me and get
in touch, stay in touch as well well, WORLDLYMANI ill really I appreciate
you coming on to the show, telling us about your journey, telling us
about RX researching UH and telling us about you know, some of the fabliest
things you're doing with your company, with your podcast, with your coaching h
and we wish you the best of luck and you know, later on you
know, kind of check in with us and let us know how things are
going. Definitely, definitely, I really appreciate you giving me the opportunity.
This was really fun and it was good talking with you. Same here,
same here, so take care and we'll be in contact soon. All right,
sounds good, Thank you, have a good night you too, take
care. By Black in Technology back black, Black in technology and technology.
Why black in technology? In technology? Why black in technology