The Learners Podcast Great Research - Nizar Saqqar - Impact-Driven User Research: Breaking Barriers and Driving Value
Oct 3, 2024
Nizar Saqqar, the first user researcher at Snowflake, discusses transforming user research into a powerhouse for business impact. He shares lessons from his journey, including clarifying research roles and reframing focus from reports to actionable insights. Nizar emphasizes five principles that earned user research a seat at the table and advocates for researchers to engage early in product development. He highlights the importance of aligning research with business goals and creating practical, impactful recommendations, making a compelling case for user research as a high-value hire today.
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First Win: Research Telling Teams To Do Less
- Nizar recounts his first assignment at Snowflake where a PM rejected research help because they were overwhelmed with a 20-feature backlog.
- He used research to help prioritize and reduce the backlog, surprising the PM by suggesting doing less, not more.
Value = Insights Applied To Resource Tradeoffs
- Research value is not in reports but in using insights to inform limited resources and maximize impact.
- Focus on opportunity cost: what we should not build is as important as what we should build.
Engage Early And Be Action-Oriented
- Do engage research early at the business-problem level to unblock progress rather than answer open questions.
- Be action-oriented: surface the few usable solutions and discard the rest to drive product change.