Tracy McGoldrick
Running Research Ops at a Grand Scale
In this episode of Brave UX, Tracy McGoldrick talks about the challenges of building a Research Ops practice that supports over 100 UX researchers, and how IBM’s increasing the impact of design.
Highlights include:
- How do you know if Research Ops is doing a good job?
- What is the biggest misconception people have about Research Ops?
- How has GDPR and CCPA impacted the Research Ops practice?
- Why is IBM investing hundreds of millions of dollars into design?
- How did you make your massive research repository easy to use?
Who is Tracy McGoldrick?
Tracy is the Head of UX Research Ops and Design Eminence at IBM in Austin Texas, where she is currently creating the infrastructure to help accelerate IBM’s Cloud and Cognitive Software research practice.
A passionate evangelist for User Experience and Design Thinking, Tracy actively works with all aspects of IBM’s business to grow the relationships and culture that develop awareness, appreciation, and ability in human-centred design practices.
Before joining IBM in 2017, Tracy was the Head of Global Photography and CG Imaging at Dell Technologies. There, she led the talented teams who created visual assets for the company, while also running the operational aspects that supported them.
Transcript
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Hello and welcome to another episode of Brave UX. I'm Brendan Jarvis, Managing Founder of The Space InBetween, the home of New Zealand's only specialist evaluative UX research practice and world-class UX lab, enabling brave teams across the globe to de-risk product design and equally brave leaders to shape and scale design culture. Here on Brave UX though, it's my job to help you to put the pieces of the product puzzle together, I do that by unpacking the stories, learnings and expert advice of world-class UX, design and product management professionals.
- My guest today is Tracy McGoldrick. Tracy is the head of UX Research Ops and Design Emminance at IBM in Austin, Texas, where she is currently creating the infrastructure to help accelerate IBM's cloud and cognitive software research practice. To put that into perspective, that's 90 researchers working on over 80 products. Before joining IBM in 2017, Tracy was the Head of Global Photography and CG Imaging at Dell Technologies.
- There she led the talented teams who created the visual assets for the company, while also running the operational aspects that supported them. A passionate eval evangelist for user experience and design thinking. Tracy actively works with all aspects of IBM's business to grow the relationships and the culture that develop awareness, appreciation, and ability in human-centered design practices.
- Someone who generously donates her time to causes she believes in. Tracy is a volunteer at Ronald McDonald House, which provides a home away from home to families with children undergoing hospital treatment. She's also a volunteer at Austin Pets Alive, a shelter designed to save animals that are most at risk of euthanasia described by her colleagues. As someone who is humble, supportive, and possessing immense organizational agility, it seems that Tracy is perfectly suited to research operations and I can't wait to speak with her about that. So Tracy, welcome to the show.
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Thank you. It's nice to be here.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It's nice to have you here. And it's also nice that I managed to get through your introduction after about take 47. So much appreciated your patience. We've only got 20 minutes left in this interview As a result, [laugh] Tracy, I was looking into your work history, your educational history, your background as I tend to do for these interviews. And I noticed that you study, you studied communications art at a highly reputable college called Art Center in the United States. What was it about Art Center that drew you there?
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Oh, Art Center just always had a history of just being the very best art school going. And I wanted to go there so badly. And actually I was going to a different college and my roommate's boyfriend was switching over to Art Center. He was going to be a photographer and he goes, oh, you really need to come over to Art Center. And yes I do. This is fantastic. I put my portfolio together and lo and behold got accepted and it was one of the most amazing experiences that I've had. It teaches you how to focus, get your work done, and learn actually from the very best cuz you're learning from people who are in the industry. So I just had the opportunity to work and learn from so many amazing people.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I did note when I was researching Art Center that there are so many notable alumni. You've got Rebecca Mendez, Zach Snyder Larry Shinoda amongst them. There's just so many fantastic creative people that have been there. And I believe another creative person who's very well regarded in the industry that went there as well. Quite well, in fact. Who is that person? Well,
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Would you be talking about my husband, Kirk Weddle?
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I might be. Oh indeed. Talking about your husband, Kirk Weddle.
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Yes Kirk and I actually met, he had graduated, I was just going to school and I met him at a party. Kirk Weddle photographed the baby Nirvana, so believe it or not, has been iconic. Yes, iconic. And I can't believe it's been 30 years ago that he did that. So it's been around for a long time and it just keeps popping up on all the best album covers of the year and I'm just thrilled to know him to be married to him. I'm really proud of him and it's just such an amazing photo.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Do you remember exactly, so you met at a party, you were saying, do you remember what that party, whose party it was and [laugh] set the scene for us. What was the moment that Sparks flew?
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Well, we'll bypass a few details, but [laugh] Okay. Yeah,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Fair enough.
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- It was actually, Kirk was throwing the party, it was a graduation party and I had just recently moved to LA and it was just one of these parties we, they're like, oh my gosh, look at all this stuff and look at where we're at. And it was just amazing. And I met him when I was walking through the door and he was giving out tequila shots. I don't know if I should say this on the show here, but tequila shots
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Everybody right? We're okay.
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Yes, yes. So that's actually how I met him and met his best friend. His best friend wanted to date me. I introduced him to my best friend. I met Kirk and there you go. Always history ended up always history. Well, dating for a year and then married
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And you're obviously both two very creative people. What was that like that time in LA after you met when you were both pursuing your respective creative careers? What were the standout moments or memories that you made during your time there?
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Yeah, it was an amazing time cuz he was coming up at the same time I was going to school and I got outta school and it was just an intense time because back then we would work 18 hour days, he would work 20 hour days. It was just crazy and we barely saw each other.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So while we're on the topic of la, I understand that when you were living there, you lovingly refurbished a 1920s bungalow, but you didn't get much time to enjoy that bungalow. What's the story there?
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Well, speaking of studios, let me just backtrack. Yeah, we had a beautiful 1926 bungalow that we did refurbish and we thought, oh, let's just rent this out for movies or commercials. It was such a cool house, maybe it'll go first try. We got a take and we rented it out for a commercial shoot and they moved us into this wonderful hotel. It was fantastic. And that's the whole reason we were doing it. We wanted to be able to get out, go to hotels and go to cold restaurant. But we got a phone call in the early morning and producer at the time of the commercial said, Tracy, you gotta get over here and your house is on fire. I'm like, what? I thought he was messing around, but because we were getting along pretty good with these guys, so I'm like, this is not funny cuz no really your house is on fire.
- And what had happened, we did refurbish the 1926, but we did not refurbish the heater that was in the floor. And what had happened is they had covered the floor to protect the hardwood and overnight it just sm well the fire was just smoldering and the smolder and the smoldering then it just went up. When had happened, the house, the whole house didn't burn down. There was just a hole in the center. And so [laugh], needless to say, we just imagine. But yeah, kind of a cool thing. I mean, fast forward many, many, many years, Kirks out to lunch with one of his art director buddies and he would, cuz God, I just heard this weird story from one of the advertising agencies here that I work with. He was telling me about this house that he had rented out for a shoot and the house had caught on fire and they didn't get to finish the shoot or anything like that. And Chris's like, are you kidding me? He goes, that was my house. And so it was just this weird coincidence of people 15 plus years later of finding out who had actually been part of the team that caught the house on fire. But we love those guys. I'm not going to say their name on the radio, but they're in Austin. So
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It's They're in Austin now. They're
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- In Austin, yeah.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Did Kirk make it awkward for that person?
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- They actually went out to lunch so it wasn't too awkward. Okay.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah. Oh that's good. Yeah. Well hopefully they were generous with the settlement for the reparations for the damage that they did.
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Oh, they're probably still suing each other over that one. I d I [laugh], I dunno. It was a mask.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So just fast forwarding a bit now. So after eight years at Dell in 2017, you finished up, as I mentioned, intro, the head of global photography and CG imaging before you headed to ibm. That seems like a massive shift to go from imagery to research operations. Was it? And what was that transition like?
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Well, can I back up even further? Yeah,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, absolutely.
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- All right. My whole career's been a little bit different. It's loved, it wouldn't change a thing, but I started out as a designer and design's my true passion and love. But user-centered design really is, and it comes full circle. So I did start out as a designer, but even when I was back in art center, I was always incorporating photography into my work and I love photography, but so I transitioned in from being a designer into doing some design work at Dell as well. But then the director at the time, I loved photography, always had a passion for it. We had great photographers at Dell and we were incorporating video as well into some of our deliverables to help sell the product. And what happened is we needed to operationalize the photography video and then pulling in cgi. So it was just a happy accident, I guess, where he saw the ability to have that operations background and then come in to help build that team and build out the team so we could create just amazing assets for Dell. And I have to say, that team is still going strong and just creating some of the most beautiful imagery going.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And you mentioned winding back the clock a little, and I wanna wind it back a little bit further because I do remember in your LinkedIn profile that you also worked, you had your own agency, I believe, for a number of years leading up to around about 2008, 2009. So it sounds That's correct. Right, right.
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- You're exactly right. And that was all geared around photography. So yeah, so most definitely have all of that in my background. And so pulling that into the operations at Dell, which makes more sense now. But yeah, so the trajectory, I did start my own company called Talent Wrangler. And Talent Wrangler was all centered around photography, pulling in the stylists and the photographers and the production folks all to create these amazing photo shoots for different customers at the time. And I was based up in Seattle then and coming back to Dell, it was just this amazing opportunity. And I remember when I started there, I wasn't working with the photo and video studio, but previous director said, well what do you wanna do? And I wrote it down and I said, I would love to be able to manage the photo video studio. And I found that I forgot about, I had even written that down for her. And I found, I'm like, wow, my dream came true.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And all of that wrangling, you know, mentioned talent wrangler and all the operational aspects of making creative productions happen. I imagine that that has been a skill that you've developed over time and that has served you well now at IBM running research operations. You've been there for, I think it's a little over four years now, and for about the last 18 months or so, you've been running the research operations practice there as I mentioned, just so that people have some idea or some better context about that area of research operations that you're working in. What is the IBM cloud and cognitive software research practice all about? What are the questions that it's trying to answer?
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Questions that we're trying to answer all the time is how can we make our product better for our product users? It really is that, so IBM has over 3000 designers and I am focused on product design with under an amazing VP oma. And he is pulling in, we have over 635 designers under arn and then we have now over 100 researchers within Nest 100 now. So it keeps growing and the thing that we wanna do is make sure that we are talking to our product users to constantly improve our user experience. And that's really what this research group is all about, is getting the research to the correct product teams to help them create better products for our end users.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So as I mentioned, you've been now in that research operations role for about 18 months. Did this role exist before it was yours or is it something that you've really stepped into fresh and have shaped without really any guardrails or anything else that preceded it?
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Well that's a great way to describe it. I stepped into this brush and created this amazing team and we created this amazing team cuz it's not me, it's so many amazing people, such talented people on this research ops team. But the way it happened was our team started off as being five researchers and now it's over 100 researchers. It just was growing so quickly and the researchers were doing all this amazing work, but it really had become the wild west. And I say that because everybody was doing their own, they had their own processes. We were storing all of our researchers in our research in box. Once it goes in the box, where is it? I can't find it. It kind of goes in there and has the potential to die. We don't want that to happen. And we were just pulling all these different teams together and so we needed to create a team that could operationalize research. And we did that by creating the research ops team.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Where did you start? I mean when you walk into something and it's a blank canvas as a designer, you'll probably know just how intimidating a blank canvas can be. Where did you start? What was the thing you focused most of your efforts on first?
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Well there was a team, including myself, we had four people. The first thing that we did was we did our own research and we needed to go back and figure out, we think we know what you need to be successful, but really what is it that you need from us to be more successful? So we did do our research and it came back very, very, we needed the infrastructure to create it. We needed processes, we needed to be able to talk to our end users and we needed a way to find our research, acti our activities that we've all done. So it was very clean cut for us where to start now we just needed to actually go and do that and put it together and we did it very successfully, I'm happy to say. And it's a we, it's always a, because they're the ones that did it, the team. And now we actually are going to have 12 people on our team and over just a little over a year and a half. So it's growing leaps and bounds.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Let's talk about the we side of things, cuz like you said, it's not just one person that makes change happen, particularly at scale at which we're talking about here at IBM. What is the composition or the makeup of different roles in the team and how has that changed over time? So you went from four to start with and now you've got trouble that at 12 soon. How has the team changed over time? What roles do you have in the team and where is the team's focus currently? That was unfair. That was about three questions, but I think hope hopeful, hopefully you can find something in there to jump off at.
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Well, yes, what I could do is tell you where we are now and I could even work back backwards. Let's
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Do that.
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- So the team is put together to accelerate the product design research practice. And so we've categorized into these different squads or teams within the larger team. We have one group focusing on customer engagement and panel recruitment optimization. So that's one team. We have research enablement, that's another team. We have technology and data-driven insights, that's another team. And then we have this newer team that is added, which is design eminence and practices. And so for panel recruitment and optimization and that customer engagement that we have a fantastic project manager assigned to that with a couple of program managers which really focus on one side, our user experience program, which are our actual customers that we talk to, our PR are in our IBM product users that give us feedback. And then we also have different ways of talking with our customers and potentially not customers. We wanna make sure that we're getting feedback from many different areas.
- So that's one area of focus. Research enablement is all around the tool management, vendor management, making sure that we and they are data privacy compliant. I mean that's something that's happened over the past two years that's radically different. And we needed to make sure that we have education and best practices in place. We created a resource library and then onboarding and off onboarding as well. We have a really cool team, which is this TA technology and data driven insights. And to start off, we created a global repository, but we needed a way for all of IBM to be able to go in and find our research. And the repository is a little bit overwhelming for people outside of research. And so what we did is we created our own, I would say it's our own smart library. And we did this with in under a year. And so it's one of our new products that we have for ibm. It's called IBM Sheldon. And there's a little bit of story behind that, but it's the total experience insights library. We also are creating what we're calling the voice. Let's
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Go into that story. What is that story behind Sheldon? Let's dive into that.
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Well, okay, so our team, [laugh] is referred to as a bunch of tur we're turtles. And so my fabulous manager's name is Eric Malted and he loves turtles. And the reason why is because he says they stick their necks out and they always get things done. So we're all turtles. And when we created this user research library, of course you need a name, you need something that's memorable so people could go to it. And so we're trying to think of a name one day and we're just spitballing some different names about, and one of the guys goes, Sheldon, because Sheldon from a turtle. So IBM Sheldon came about and there there's that name's stuck. So now and we love it. And we even have our own identity that is beautiful design turtle. So that's IBM Sheldon, which is our library and the voice of the customer. So love
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It makes a lot of sense. And there's also that the whole turtle and the hair story that comes to mind when you mentioned that as well, there's a number of interesting, I suppose, attributes you can apply to turtles and particularly in the research context.
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Oh absolutely. You take your time, do it right. It's very methodical. And I have to say that these turtles are the beautiful swimming type of turtles. So not that the other type of turtles are not beautiful. I'm going to get in trouble for saying that these are all the, they're
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Turtles are beautiful people. All
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Turtles are beautiful people. Exactly.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well let's just put that perspec into perspective for people though as well around the repository. So I understand that the repository holds over 17,000 files across 80 products that's now accessed by over a hundred researchers, which is definitely no small undertaking. And like you said initially was quite intimidating for people to try and figure out exactly where the insights were within this thing. It's quite massive. What was it that you did and during that design process to really make that content accessible and understandable and findable for the people that were outside of the core research team?
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Well, that's exactly why we created Sheldon because there are all of these assets available, but it's like, all right, how do I find them? We know, but they don't. And so this needs to go out to the product teams, the product managers, the developers. It needs to go out to our vice presidents and the CEO e o with, we want this accessible to all 300,000 IBMers. And so that's what it is now. So everybody within IBM now has access to these product design research findings. So you go in, it's easily searchable, you, let's just say Cloud Pak for data, that's one of our fabulous products. You type in cloud factor data and all the research activities that have been done are available to 'em. And they could go in there and finesse the research findings as well. But it's supposed to help all of our product teams have access to the research that's going to provide insights on where they should go for the new product roadmap, what needs to be changed, what needs to not be changed. It's, it's supposed to be that one stop shop for this valuable information that they did not have access to before Sheldon was created.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, a hundred percent. So I might have misunderstood that. So is Sheldon the interface that you used to query the repository or is it the repository itself?
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- It's the front end to the repository.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Got it. Okay. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, so I'm just interested in understanding how you are helping your product teams or the researchers that you are supporting to recruit reliably and regularly enough participants to run studies with.
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- I think that's a challenge for every single company out there trying to get enough people to talk to, provide insights. And what we're doing is we work together as a team. It's really up to everybody within that product team. Product team meaning designers, researchers, product managers, developers, all to bring in actually, and I wanna grow it, tech, sales, everybody, any, anybody and everybody that has a pipeline to a customer that can provide insights they need to bring those people back to the team so we can actually talk to 'em. And that is what we're working on now is trying to find these ways to more effectively get access to these customers who have all these, all this valuable information. And so it's really a very difficult job. If you talk to anybody within research, they always say, and I need more, I need more people to talk to. And we get it. But we do talk to people in the field when we go to to events, we talk to our customers there. We have what we call the user experience program where it is a program that our product users can join for, provide insights with our researchers and our designers and our product teams. So
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So that's like a panel that they can join
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- It is that? Exactly, yeah. And it's a little bit different from a lot of o other companies out there. So we do have this one panel and we call 'em partners because our product users do become our partners when they're part of this program. And what we do with them is we like to meet with our customers at least once a month, but we need to make sure that we're talking to people within different industries and different company sizes that, so we're ensuring that we're creating a product that everybody can use instead of just potentially one group. So we're constantly trying to get new people to join this program, to engage with us and talk. And it's really beneficial to the customer, the product user, as well as our teams because they really have a seat at the table. And it's quite an amazing experience. And the product users and our customers that actually have been involved for many years, they love it, we love it. And we just have this open collaboration, which is extraordinary and we can't do it without 'em. Right.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah. Well yes, researching in a vacuum doesn't lead to very many useful findings. You mentioned collaboration and that's also important I suppose, for us to dive into the collaboration that exists between, you say yourself leading up the research operations practice and the other areas of the business that the research operations practice supports. I mean obviously there's research, but I was curious to know just how you are structuring your relationships or what those working relationships look like between say yourself and research or engineering or products. How are you supporting them and what does that relationship look like?
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Well, we all have to support each other. We really do to get the job done. So our teams are formed around at a minimum of three in the box. So three in the box here are the researchers, the product managers, and the developers. But it does extend past that when we have the teams that are working, I would say super high functioning, talking also with the tech sales and sales. And we all collaborate. Our product managers have what we call cabs, the customer advisory board. So we get involved with those to be able to provide show unreleased designs to our customers within the cabs. And those cabs are great sister programs to our user experience program. So we try as best we can to always be working together to make sure that we get feedback from our customers. If we're getting the feedback from our customers, we're giving it right back out to all of the teams that need it. Cuz it's not just us, it's research, but it's also the product managers. They and the developers need the same information to be able to make informed decisions.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And in terms of you yourself in the leadership role that you occupy, where is most of your time invested with the other people that are your peers in other practice areas or areas of the business? Or what do you spend most of your time doing or talking about with them?
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- With my peers,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- With your peers.
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- With my peers. So many different peers in many different areas. But from on the research side, we're just trying to make sure that we're grow, growing the research operations team to be beneficial to them. We do meet once a week just to align and make sure that we're all on the same page when it comes to design directors, design managers, making sure that we're listening to their needs as well. Because without good research, how can you have good design and vice versa, you need each other to be able to create magic. So it really is just a constant game of talking, collaborating, feedback. And as we like to say at IBM we have this constant, we have that figure eight or that infinity. We are constantly reinventing what needs to be reinvented and continuing on with what's working well.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Tell me about that figure eight, what has been working really well and what is in need of reinvention Currently?
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- I would say research ops is working very well. It's been, that's good. Yeah. Yes. And it's let our researchers focus on research, right? Before they were having to do a lot of this and maintain their databases and try to figure out how to do all this work. And it was overwhelming. So now the researchers get to focus on their craft, which is amazing. I would say what needs to be reworked is we grew so quickly and I think a lot of people can probably align with this, that this team grew so quickly that now we're pulled, we brought in four project managers in their respective areas to help us make sure that we are being as effective as we can. That we actually are prioritizing our deliverables, that we're hitting our deliverables within the allocated timeframe, that we're focusing on what needs to be focused on. And so that iteration is ongoing right now and it's been pretty magical.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well let's talk about that iteration, about hitting deliverables, about the measures of effectiveness of research operations. I was interested to dive into what that looks like for you. How do you know if your team, the research operations team is doing a great job or not? What are you tracking? What are you looking for? What are those clues and signals?
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Well, we have our OKRs and so we're always laddering back. We have our monthly check-ins on our OKRs to make sure that we are, we're hitting those, but also we have feedback forms to the research operations team. And so the researchers and designers are not shy. So if we're not doing something well they let us know. And that's great because how do we know what to fix if nobody gives us feedback? So we do on Sheldon, we have feedback on our own, we have feedback, we also have created these different, within a specific specialty, I would say we have research focals that are kind of our, I don't wanna call, but there are person, they're researchers that go between research ops and their teams to help bring us what feedback, how do we improve, what do we improve? And then also they go back and help evangelize what we've just created or what we've just released to that team. So with a big team like this, we rely on a lot of different people to help us do our job even better. But it really is a constant iteration and just when you're growing so quickly and the team needs change as well, and then of course you're bringing in new people and they need to learn the ropes, they need to be onboarded, they need to know what tools to use and how to use 'em. So it's a very busy job and
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Super boring. And I imagine in the last 18 months also with Covid, cuz I know that Texas and Austin in particular was quite badly hit, at least at one point when I was looking at what was going on over in the us. I'd imagine that most of these people that have been coming on board during that time may have had to have done that remotely. How Covid impacted your ability to bring people into the team to get them familiar. What have been some of the interesting learnings or challenges that have come out of this awful pandemic situation that we're all facing around the world?
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Well, I have to say, I hope everybody's doing okay and that we could get out of this pandemic situation soon. But to answer your question, actually the research operations team was formed during Covid. So we've always been remote, we've ne never been able to work together in the same room. And so we started that way and we work and we try different ways of working together. And what we do is we get together every Monday and we have working sessions instead of meetings, which I try to minimize meetings, but you have to be able to work together. So if they're called working sessions, that means you get on and if you were going to be in a room together, you create in that form. And that's been really effective. We have just to keep people in sync and learning about each other and just having some fun.
- We have a monthly culture club, so we do call it the CL culture club and one person leads it each month and we come with different ideas different one day people know that I wanna live in Italy one day and they hired one of the guys from Airbnb who taught us how to speak in Italian with our hands because that's creative. But it was always something just to keep the team together. And I would have to say, knock on wood, this team research ops has been very, worked very effectively together. We really have not had issues because we started that way. But I know other teams have had trouble and p individuals have had trouble. A lot of people work better when they are, they need that FaceTime and we're all missing that and we're all looking forward to getting back into the office. But I know each individual manager works with the people that are having more of the difficulties working remotely.
- And I spend a good chunk of my day just talking with people and making sure that they are okay and how can we get you through this spot if it's trouble. During this time, people have had to put their lives on hold as, and people wanted to get married and they couldn't, had to figure out different ways of getting married and you know, deal with the personal side of somebody's life as well as their business. And you really become part of a family in a way. You get to know each other inside and out as much as they wanna give or listen to me. And most of us do. And it's really been a learning experience for me too, just to learn how to listen more and take in what people are giving me and try to help 'em as best I can.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- The boundary between work life and personal life literally has been obliterated as a result of covid 19. And it's interesting you say that your team formed during this time, so your ways of working in your rhythm, your ability to get the job done wasn't as necessarily badly impacted as say some of those other people that are more used to that face-to-face or have been operating in that physical context. It sounds like even that being so just given the situation that we've all found ourselves in, that there is a lot of stress, not just in terms of what's going out in the world with Covid 19, but you're in an operational role. So and you mentioned before the feedback that teams are giving you and designers don't pull their punches when things aren't working. You are getting it kind of on the nose I would imagine at sometimes. So you are having to deal with all of the stuff going on. It's a high stress environment. What have you been doing to help the team to see that for what that is and manage those pressures while the whole world seems to have been burning around us?
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Burning around us is absolutely right. I really think it's that being available to them. Mm-hmm. Making sure that we talk with each other as much as we need to give them their space as much as they need as well. Really try to cut down on meetings so people can actually focus and get some head down time. And then making sure that I have one-on-ones with each one of these fabulous team members because I need to make sure that they're okay if they need some extra time to do something, of course we work through that. This
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Who makes sure that you are. Okay.
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- [laugh], Kirk, [laugh], Eric, my fabulous manager, rn, he checks into our vp. I could keep going. It's been a real amazing time because you really learn about the people that you're working with and how much they actually really do care. Seriously. It kind of blew me away and that the culture at IBM is something so different that I had anywhere else. And it is a really caring environment. It it's work too. You work your butt off, but these people are always there for you. And what do you attribute
- Brendan Jarvis:
- That to? Yeah, what do you attribute that to? Because I mean culture that is such a broad topic culture, but you're in this environment, you've obviously seen different cultures, you've worked at Dell and others. And I'm not going to ask you an unfair question to compare one to the other, but when you think about IBM's culture, what is it that, who's who, who's setting the tone for this to develop? Or has this been something that has just emerged as the result of the type of people that b m employs? This
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- One stems, it goes up and down. The leadership's insanely amazing. And if you think, look back through all of IBM's years, culture has been really important and culture goes many ways. Equality, caring for each other. You really do look back through IBM's history and it's always been that way. But to be fair, I haven't been around through all of IBM's [laugh] years, thank God. And I do know the leadership within the design community has always been astounding and it just blossoms from there. And when we all are hiring people, we wanna make sure that we are hiring not only insanely creative, amazing designers, but people that are inclusive as well. And it stems from the top. And like I said, it goes up and down because every single one of us has that responsibility to each other as well. And we do it.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I wanna bring the focus back to research ops now cuz I am fascinated. So I obviously talked about this transition from imagery and photography into research operations and there's clearly a very strong operational line that you can draw between those two aspects. And being a designer, as you've mentioned, there's also that experience that you have about knowing what that process is like and how important people are in that process, that human-centered design aspect. But you have relatively fresh eyes in terms of the last four years in research specifically, what do you believe the biggest misconception or misunderstanding there is that people have about research operations and what it's actually there to do?
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Well, research operations is fairly new, right? Yeah. Design operations came first and then we have research operations and I could get in trouble with some people for what I'm going to say, but I think one thing that a lot of companies don't understand is how you really do need a team to form research operations. And I know sometimes you're constricted by budgets and how many people you can hire and so forth, but if you hire the right people to be within this team, the research ops team, it's going to be effective because one person can't do it alone. You need to be able to have people in these different categories to help create panels, to manage the tools, to manage the relationships, to build out these repositories, to get the word out. That whole design imminence side is all about spreading the word and getting the word out to people that wanna come to IBM design to work and spreading the word about the culture and what we're doing and talking about research operations and how important it is at IBM and why.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah. Well let's pick up on the design Eminence side of things. So you are, okay, you are obviously being tasked with this role of spreading that sort of SE seems to me at least to be almost like an evangelistic type role of getting the word out there about design. And I, I'd asked earlier just around the misconceptions that people might have around research ops, but seeing as your role also spreads into trying to educate people about design its impact, it's all about how it can help, why they should get involved with it or seek its input. Are you hearing any sort of outdated thinking that exists out there? Or some, again, misconceptions that people have about design that you're trying to set people straight on? What is the general reception you've been getting?
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Well, the way I can answer that is I can just tell you what I wanna get out of this and what we wanna get out of this. So with design eminence, we want people to know what a great community of designers we have within the IBM M design community. And for me specifically within the IBM product design community, IBM M is a product driven customer centric company. And without these products, that's what IBM is about. And so with this design eminence, we wanna make sure that customers, people potential customers, designers, all know what great products we have that we're winning awards for the great user experiences that we're creating. And we want people to try our products, try our products, and give us feedback so we can make even better products for them. And so that's really what this whole design Eminence and practices team is about.
- And also if we're talking about all these great products and the awards that we're winning, that's also going to let these new designers that are coming out of Arts Center, and forgive me if I'm not naming your school, but I know you all are fantastic designers out there. We wanna talk to them because we want the very best designers working on our products. So it really is this full circle holistic thing. If you talk about how great our product experiences are then and you're winning awards, then the designers come and then you just have this fantastic place and it is a fantastic place that we're trying to build out to
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Work. I'm just remembering my conversation with Jane Austin. She runs the she's chief experience officer at Digita, which is an advertising agency in the uk and prior to that she was at Babylon Health and a couple of other, I think MU as well digital product companies. As she actually, in my notes here, I just remembered, she had mentioned in one of her presentations that I B m, and I don't quite know what the timeframe is, but I'm assuming it's in the last decade or so, has invested a hundred million US dollars in hiring designers and transforming the business. And now at the time that this research was current, there is one designer for every eight other roles in the company. And that to me is a huge voter confidence in the role of design and the enterprise. How much of that have you seen since you started? Because I imagine the last four years, like you said, the team's grown from four to 12, you've got now over a hundred researchers, just what is going on? How much energy and investment is being made in design at the moment? At IBM,
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- It's, it's amazing. And she's exactly right, so I'm not going to get the exact number, but when I first started a little bit over four and a half years ago, I think it was one to, I wanna say 24, 1 to 16, and then now it is one to eight. And one to eight is what we were trying to get to one designer to every other eight. And
- Brendan Jarvis:
- What is this important? I just get the sense that you don't go from one to 24 or one to 16 to then go to one to eight without a real purpose behind that. What is it that you believe b m is seen or is waking up to that they're investing? Your company is investing so heavily in designed, why do this?
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Because IBM is a design centered company, period. And back in the day I believe you, it would be more heavily development centric and you need both. And so being design centric, you're marrying development and product management and design together to bring the very best out of what we can create. And with having one to eight with that designer, designers have a seat at the table when they're talking to ensure that the user experience that we're creating is one that is great, easy to use, makes pupil's lives easier, makes them want to use IBM products. That's really why IBM is so invested in growing the number of designers that work with us. And of course there are other areas within IBM that have designers, and I'm speaking very more on in the sense of the product design, but it's really true. You need a designer to be able to create an amazing user experience and you need and designer in there also includes research. I need to make sure that that's perfectly clear because you need research, you need design and it's married.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Mm-hmm. Hundred percent. You spoke earlier about, I mean this seems to me to be a strategic decision and you spoke earlier about how the research operations team or function that you lead has OKRs that you're laddering back up to look at how you are performing. And I don't know if you can disclose, I don't want you to tell me anything that you're not allowed to from an IBM point of view but I am interested to know what are the company OKRs or the major OKRs that symptomatic of this change in strategy to focus more on design rather than on being engineering led?
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- I'm not going go into all the O K R detail, but really what it comes down to is just really what I said before is ensuring that design is at the forefront of the conversation. So if you pull in a customer that has a bad experience using your product and you've done it many times, whatever it is, what you're trying to do and it's a bad experience, you don't wanna use that product again. And so if you have different competitors out there that are creating a product that's easier to use, therefore the product user feel that it's the product that they want their company to buy, then that's the way they go. Having many different, having all these designers, these great designers, researchers at the table creating these amazing user experiences in IBM, is going to be able to create these great product experiences and user experiences for potential customers and our current customers. So that's really just behind it is just making sure that we're creating products that our customers and product users love
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And never want to leave.
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- And never wanna leave. Exactly.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah. I was speaking to someone, it might have been Jared Spool a few months ago, and we touched on this notion that designers really competitive advantage might be somewhat of an outdated business term, but it's really trying to reinforce the moat that exists around the organization and protects it from competitors just coming in and copying essentially what it is that they've done. It's very easy to copy what you see on the outside, but it's very difficult to copy the entire experience that the organization's delivering
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- It, the experience. And yes, the insides, you can't copy that and you really do need to have just a seamless experience when you're working with a product. And these are enterprise products, they're complex and we're trying to make complexity as simple as possible so people could get on with their day and get more done instead of just trying to figure out how to use a product to make something now get through their day. We wanna make it quicker and easier and better for 'em.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, I'm actually, I'm just referring to something, one of my notes here. I had recently, again, I had a conversation, I dunno if you've come across Dr. Laura Faulkner in your travel, she's also based in Austin.
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- I know the name.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- She runs research at, she's UX research director at Rackspace, I believe. Oh, okay. So yes, I think that's in Austin. It's in Texas anyway.
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- It is. Yes it is.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And her favorite design quote, which I recently posted on LinkedIn, is by a gentleman called Arthur Block. And he said, it's a simple matter to make things complex. It is a complex matter to make things simple. And I think that really applies to what you've just said there, Tracy, about the challenges and the complexities of enterprise UX.
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- It is and very, when you have something very complex and you make it simple, it's it's a wonderful thing for your product users. They get so much more done
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And imagine the operations team doesn't often or always get the credit that it deserves in making its role that it played in making that happen. I just wanna come back to something you touched on earlier, which was the rise in data privacy in terms of regulation and legislation that has happened since you've been involved in the field of research operations. So obviously we had the EU in 2018 bring G P R into effect. Into effect. And I understand there's also been some similar legislation, albeit mainly at the state level in the us I think California passed California some pretty strong data privacy laws, which probably touch most companies if they've got customers in California. What has been the impact of these regulations and legislations on the way that the UX research is able to be practiced and some of the things that from an operations perspective that you need to be more mindful of than you may have necessarily been in the past?
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Many, many, many things. You need to make sure that people's identities are protected names, emails, when you're talking to somebody like we're talking now, you need to make sure that they're aware that they're being recorded with their face or their voice. You need to get permission to do so. You need, once they do sign legal agreements has changed enormously, but you also need to make sure that all the content that you have with people's voices or their selves is removed after 24 months or go back and get their approval. Again, just making sure that the right legal agreements are signed and documented when people are reaching out and they go, Hey, we need to talk to more people and I need all these, they're asking for help with different people to speak with and you need to protect the privacy. You just don't go sending out spreadsheets with all these people's names. Not that whatever happened in the past, but you do not do that. That's why research operations is so important too, on just creating the processes behind actually being able to talk with somebody. And I would say if you're talking to anybody within the industry, that's one of the top thing. Getting people in there and protecting their privacy and getting the names back out for the researchers, designers, people to talk with. It was challenging and a workload. And also it's challenging just keeping up with what changes. Right.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Have I brought back some bad memories? Have I
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Y Yes. [laugh].
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Sorry, Tracy.
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Yes, you have. Can you,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Did you find that during this process, I mean I imagine you have to educate the other areas of the business as this is happening, right? It's not just, it's going to be as easy as it was before, maybe for product teams or designers to go and speak with customers. Did you get any pushback from people getting grumpy? You're in that operational seat, so you kind of flows to you? Were you getting anyone? Yeah, like I said, getting grumpy about the extra red tape that you have to go through now to engage with participants.
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- I think the biggest word that came was why, well why when we're doing that research thing, the five whys why and what it did was we just really needed to go back and reeducate everybody because if you're not aware of all the changes, it does get frustrating. Why can't I just go talk to somebody? And once they understand what the guidelines are, and now everybody does, cuz it's been around for a while, but when it was first coming out, it was really frustrating because you just didn't have immediate access to as many people as you did in the past. And so you really had to change the way that you went about talking to people, keeping their information private and removing all that information as well when needed.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So thinking about that, thinking about that sort of, why is this happening, the red tape and the hoops that you have to go through now in order to get in front of people. In your observation, have you seen this have a negative effect or a slowing down or at least momentarily of insights flowing into the organization and therefore being applied in design to shape better products?
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- I would say what is done is make our jobs more difficult on the research operation side because it's on our team to make it not frustrating, more seamless for them to talk with customers. If you talk to them, they may say, Hey, everybody's always saying I need more anymore, I need more. But it's really up to us to try and get in front of these people and figure out new ways to get people to talk with the researchers and the designers. I think it's probably more frustrating for us than anybody else because we have all that red tape in front of us that we're trying to maneuver through to try and get access to talk to people. And don't get me wrong, data privacy is needed but you also need a way talk to customers and product users or else you can't create better products. And so it's finding this way, this new way of working together with everybody to try and figure out how to do it better. It's in this infancy stage right now, and we are all trying to figure out how do we do this better?
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And I imagine that particularly from the enterprise, there'll be some probably quite well-founded aversion to risk when it comes to making missteps, particularly with some of the punitive damages that the likes of the EU has and can apply. I think it's somewhat something like 10% of profit for the year or something.
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- It's huge.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It's huge. It's like, like, yeah, so no wonder you lost a little bit of sleep over it.
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Yeah, you don't miss with that and you do immediately find a way to protect everybody's identity and yeah, it was black and white open immediately, and I wanna go back and say, Hey, we were not just throwing people's information out there, we were not doing that. It was just that the regulations came down and you just had to be able to make sure and improve it and create a way that things are really locked down and only people that need that information have it. So just a lot of changes.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I won't force us to dwell [laugh] on that for too long because you're with some bad memories maybe there, so we'll leave that one in the past. I also understand, Tracy, that part of your role, you've taken an active role and mentoring team members and in interns in particular, is that mentoring role that you've been playing, is that something that has come to you naturally? Is this something that when you look back at who you are and how you've worked with others, is this something that you've seen you can see as a pattern?
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Yes, because I love it. I really love helping people do their very best work or see the very best that they can become. I would say that's probably one of my most favorite thing that I do every day. And I'm going to call out, we have really interesting diverse group of people on the team, which includes designers, researchers, data scientists and engineers. And one of the researchers on our team right now is a backend front end and now going to be full stack developer. And would've told me that back in the day that I would have data scientists and developers, engineers on the team. And I said, really? That's going to be interesting, but, and mentoring this person has been quite wonderful and he teaches me a lot. He tells me, I help him and teach him a lot too, just from experience and it really does make my day when people can come to you and go, wow, you really helped me. Thank you.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, there's often nothing better than that as a hearing that from somebody else that you've made a difference in their life.
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Yeah, it is. That's pretty wonderful.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So with the mentoring, the reason why I discovered this is someone, one of your mentees, your previous interns gave you a shout out on LinkedIn, which I happen to see really? Is this something that Yeah, yeah. And very complimentary. Very complimentary and very thankful of the time that they'd spent with you and the team at b m. Is this something that is instituted in the culture or the structure of the way in which IBM works or is this something that you are doing yourself in addition to what you would do as leading of leading this team?
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Mentoring is definitely one of the big initiatives at ibm, mentoring and coaching, being able to help people, and there's a big difference between mentoring and coaching too. Sometimes just telling people how to do something if they're open to doing it, and then help on the flip side, being able to get them to work through it and figure it out on their own. Yeah, this is huge at IBM M, which is also another reason why I'm thrilled that I worked there. It's really important and it's always been part of my end of year review as well. Something that I put down that I'm proud of.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, I was coming back to Jane Austin who I mentioned earlier. We were talking about the state of design and in its broad, broader sense, so like we talked about including research and how there's this preference, at least at the moment, it seems to be a global preference to hire mid-career or mid-level designers up. And there is a general lack of emphasis being placed on interns, junior talent, and developing that talent to become our future intermediate senior and design leaders. And we were wondering, and I'm keen to get your thoughts on this too, what have you observed and if you've observed something similar, where does this leave design the state of enterprise design in say, 10 years? If by and large as an industry, we continue to neglect our junior talent?
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Well, I have to kind of flip it around and at IBM we kind of go almost the opposite, where we focus so much on interns and bringing those interns up and new hires. And we even have a bootcamp for new hires. So when you're hired as a new hire within ibm, you go through this bootcamp to teach you everything that you need to know about working at IBM and enterprise design thinking and so forth. And so we really do foster those relationships and bring them around like our interns. We really do hope that they become part of our IBM design community. And if you don't hire new hires and you're just always hiring just from the middle or higher up and beyond, you need that thought process from every different, I would say, level of design. You need the fresh designers coming in with all these new ideas and trying new concepts. And then people that have been working in the industry for some time that are able to help teach these new designers how to do things that will help them or create better designs. And you, it's just like anything, if you just have too much of one thing, it's never good enough. You need to spread the wealth and have somebody across from the beginning, the middle, and the higher echelon to be able to do fantastic work. That's my opinion.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Develop that talent people, it's really, really important.
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- And I tell you, the talent that's out there, nowaday days when they're new hires is really amazing. It continually blows me away. I'm like, wow, what happened to me back then? I, I was as brilliant as these people coming right outta school, they blow me away.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, they are. There's some pretty special people coming there are. So thinking about the future of our field and the people that are working in it, what are you most, what's your biggest hope or wish for those people over the coming years?
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- In user experience?
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah.
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- That we do keep working together, listening to our product users, incorporating their feedback to continually improve the products that they are using to make the best user experience possible.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Perfect. What a great note to wrap things up on. Tracy, I've really enjoyed today's conversation. Thank you for so generously sharing your stories and your insights, your experiences with us today. I'm sure that a lot of people will get a lot of value out of this episode.
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- Well, thank you Brendan. It is been a pleasure and I enjoyed the talk and love meeting you too.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, you're most welcome, Tracy. If people wanna find out more about what you're up to about IBM and what's going on there, what's the best way for them to do that?
- Tracy McGoldrick:
- They can get me on LinkedIn, hit me up on LinkedIn, I check it and I'll answer you back, I promise.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Perfect. Thanks Tracy. And to everyone else that's tuned in, it's been great having you here as well. Everything that we've covered, including where you can find Tracy on LinkedIn, will be in the show notes on YouTube and also on your podcast platform. If you've enjoyed the show and you want to hear more great conversations like this with world class leaders in UX, design and product management, don't forget to leave a review on the podcast and subscribe. And also if you think that someone else that would get value out of these conversations, then pass the podcast along to them as well. If you wanna reach out to me, you can find me on LinkedIn under Brendan Jarvis. There's a link to my LinkedIn profile in the show notes as well. Or you can head on over to thespaceinbetween.co.nz. And until next time, keep being brave.