Our researchers work tirelessly to amplify the voice of the people for design research— but what does that look like?
Our Senior Researcher, Jenny Cole, took us through a day in her life.
8:30 am
- When I wake up in the morning, I put on my favorite Nespresso to brew while I check my email to see if I’ve got any client updates, participant questions, or messages from my fellow team members.
8:45 am
- From there, I answer any questions from participants who I might be scheduling for Zoom interviews that week or guiding through a mobile diary submission via their Vidlet app.
9:30 am
- I’ll then check on all of my project sites – with our software, we have dedicated sites to manage all of our projects. Each site houses the mobile diary content from participants as well as any recorded Zoom interviews we’ve conducted. This is the fun part: I’ll see if we’ve had any new submissions overnight by participants, which means new content to review.
10:30 am
- I’ll take a look at which participants who might’ve not yet submitted their mobile diaries, and shoot those participants an email to check on their progress, ask if they have any questions, etc. to help guide them through the process.
11:00 am
- By this time, it’s usually time for our standup call – we have a daily all-hands meeting in which we run through all active Vidlet projects. The researcher responsible for each project gives a status update, and this is also a great opportunity to ask for advice, support, or any other assistance from our fellow Vidlet team members. We finish the call every day by reviewing any deliverables the team is set to send out that week, giving feedback and workshopping them together.
12:00 pm
- The afternoon is usually spent either on client calls – a combination of new project intake calls, status updates to our client research teams, or presentations of our research. I may also have internal calls with my fellow team members to workshop deliverables, discuss content analysis, or otherwise work together on synthesizing our research. This could look like a Miro board session, collaborative work in PowerPoint, or just an open discussion about what we’ve heard in reviewing all submitted content for a given project.
- In the time not spent on calls, I typically focus solely on content review – which is a lot of fun. I watch all submitted video content from participants on a given project. During this time, I’ll save thematic clips into playlists, take notes in a program like Miro, tag content, and leave notes for my teammates so that we can discuss later. This is where we start developing insights from the research itself.
5:00 pm
- With the time that’s left in the day, I might spend some time leaving notes in our participant database - e.g., “This participant mentions that they work in healthcare” or “This participant loves to play golf” – you never know when we might have a new study request seeking nurses or golf enthusiasts! This helps us find the right participants for the right studies.
- Depending on the stage of a given project, I may also be laying out the framework for the study itself – for example, creating a screener to send out to potential participants who may be interested or a fit for the study, or drafting the study questions that participants will be asked to answer, both of which are often a collaborative process with the client team and my Vidlet teammates as well. We’ll typically review potential participants for the study to make sure our sample is representative of the client’s customer base or stakeholders, or review these questions together to be sure we’ll be satisfying our research objectives.
5:45 pm
- At the end of the day, I’ll typically check in with the client teams for the projects that I’m leading to provide EOD status updates, as well as check in with my Vidlet teammates. I’ll leave notes for myself to address in the AM, as well as any to-do items that’ll be first on the list tomorrow.
6:00 pm
- Log off for the day!