#146 - Building a UX Research Team From Scratch with Julian Della Mattia of the180

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Apr 16, 2024

Julian Della Mattia shares insights on starting a UX research team from scratch, including strategies for success, building bridges within organizations, essential processes, and scaling research capacity. He discusses balancing research with operational tasks, connecting insights from different teams, and aligning user research with core business goals to maximize impact.

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Introduction

00:00 • 2min

Building a UX Research Team: Challenges and Strategies

01:44 • 12min

Navigating Research Onboarding and Prioritization in a New Role

14:03 • 5min

Enhancing Research Outcomes Through Team Collaboration

19:17 • 20min

Navigating the Role of a Researcher and Ops Person in Small Teams

38:53 • 5min

Empowering Researchers to Make Recommendations and Shape Context

43:27 • 6min

Erin and special co-host Ben Wiedmaier are joined by Julian Della Mattia of the180 for a deep dive into being UX team-of-one. Julian has been the first user researcher at a number of companies and shares his top to-dos, milestones, and things to consider before accepting such a role.

The episode digs into the ways a solo UXR can start making an impact, but in a strategic, sustainable way. Julian identifies questions to ask stakeholder teams, processes to consider standing up, and the tools to consider investing in from the start. We also discuss the dual hat-wearing of UXR and Ops on smaller teams/teams-of-one. Julian shares how he balances his time between executing on business-critical work and organizing research workflows so that other teams can start connecting with customers.

Even if you're not a solo UXR or a team-of-one, Julian's experience building bridges between/across departments and his suggestions for aligning user research to core business goals from the start will help you and your team be more impactful.

Episode Highlights

03:49 - Strategies for success as the first researcher in an organization
12:52 - Strategies for building bridges as a researcher in a new organization
19:16 - Building essential processes for small research teams
27:59 - Comparing research repositories and insights hubs
30:47 - Triangulating insights from different teams
35:11 - Strategies for scaling your research capacity

About Our Guest
Julian is a UX Researcher specialized in Research Operations (ReOps), founder of the180 and based in Barcelona, Spain. Whether in-house or working with clients, he repeatedly found myself building Research teams from scratch as the first Researcher in the team. This experience helped him develop a real knack for infrastructure, so he decided to fully specialize myself in ReOps. He likes to talk about this as his switch "from Finder to Builder".

More Resources for Building UX Research Teams

Use this checklist to organize and build your UX team
The steps to build and lead an impactful UX team
How to scale yourself while avoiding burnout