There is no service design...

Without high-quality research.

Sure, we all know that.

But doing good research is hard.

Kate Towsey, often called the inventor of the ResearchOps field, can certainly attest to this.

If you're a dedicated listener of the show, you might remember Kate from our conversation about a year ago where she shared that she was writing a book.

Well, that book, titled "Research that Scales", has officially been published!

And with a 4.9/5 rating on Amazon, it seems to have struck a chord with readers.

Of course, we had to get Kate back on the show to discuss it.

In this conversation we delve into topics like:

Do we need to scale research, and if so why?
What does "scale" actually mean in the context of research?
When should you start thinking about scaling?
What are the key steps to scaling research?
What role can AI play in all of this? Will it take over our jobs?
Why did it take Kate 3.5 years to publish the book?

And as always, that's just the tip of the iceberg.

It's hard to imagine a service design professional who wouldn't be interested in the topics we cover in this episode.

Good research isn't just a nice-to-have; it's a must.

Without giving away too many spoilers, I found it fascinating that it's not actually research that you need to (or can) scale, but something else. Something that we as a community are pretty good at.

Can you guess what it is?

Enjoy and keep making a positive impact!

~ Marc

--- [ 1. GUIDE ] ---

00:00 Welcome to Episode 216

03:00 Quick overview about scaling research

04:00 Why she wrote the book

09:30 Pandemic's impact on the book

13:00 Research rabbit hole

15:00 Unscalable Research: What to Avoid

18:30 What is enough research?

22:00 The problem she saw

25:00 The main bottlenecks

27:45 Libriarian's role in making the change

31:00 How the process work

33:00 Knowledge as a network vs tree

35:30 Maximizing efficient use of library

39:00 Designing the system

41:00 Knowledge vs. Learning: Value Proposition

43:00 Cost center vs value center

47:00 AI and Research: A Synergistic Future

49:00 Cost of scaling: A Trade-off

51:00 Strategic approach to scaling

53:00 How to know when to scale

54:30 Her readers insights

56:00 Upcoming masterclasses

58:00 Resources

58:30 Food for thought

--- [ 2. LINKS ] ---

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katetowsey/
Website: https://katetowsey.com/
Substack: https://katetowsey.substack.com

--- [ 3. CIRCLE ] ---

Join our private community for in-house service design professionals.

⁠https://servicedesignshow.com/circle

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