Gloria Osardu
Slowing Down to See the System
In this brand new episode of Brave UX, Gloria Osardu urges researchers to slow down ⏳, understand the business 📊, and partner with intention 🤝—sharing why empathy, alignment, and asking the right questions are the foundation for impact 💡.
Highlights include:
- How did your parents help you develop a critical and global mindset?
- What does it mean for researchers to support—but not own—the business?
- How do you assess the “skin in the game” of cross-functional partners?
- How do you resolve stakeholder conflict without taking sides?
- How has embracing slowness changed your approach to research leadership?
Who is Gloria Osardu, PhD?
Gloria is a Senior Director and Global Head of UX Research, Brand, and Consumer Insights at Yahoo!, where she leads initiatives to deepen Yahoo’s understanding of consumer behaviour, aligning the company’s brand, product, and marketing strategies with these insights 🎯.
Before joining Yahoo!, Gloria was Senior Director and Head of UX Research and Insights at Gusto 💼, where she built and led Gusto’s Global Product Experience Research Team, overseeing both research and research operations professionals.
She has also held senior research roles at Amazon Web Services ☁️, where she led UX Research Operations and Programs, and at Capital One, where she headed UX Research for their Enterprise AI and ML Platforms.
With extensive commercial experience in customer insights and analytics 📈, Gloria also brings an impressive academic background, holding a PhD in Human-Computer Interaction, a Master of Science in Applied Health Informatics, and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science.
A committed contributor to our field 💬, Gloria is a long-standing mentor with the Computing Research Association and has been featured in User Weekly, as well as on podcasts like Black Stories and Saving UX.
Transcript
- Gloria Osardu:
- This is a commitment I'm calling on researchers to slow down in our attempt to solve product questions and answer more questions around where's the world going? Where's the business going? What commitments have we made to our customers? What commitments have we made to ourselves? And what is it that the leaders or decision makers in the business know well, but also things that they haven't experienced before and the fears that they have that makes us more intentional?
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Hello and welcome to another episode of Brave UX. I'm Brendan Jarvis, managing founder of The Space InBetween, the behavior-based UX research partner for enterprise leaders who want an independent perspective to align hearts and minds. You can find out more about me and what we do at thespaceinbetween.co nz.
- Here on Brave UX though, it's my job to help you to keep on top of the latest thinking and important issues affecting our field of design. I do that by unpacking the stories, learnings, and expert advice of a diverse range of world-class leaders.
- My guest today is Gloria odu. Gloria is a senior director and global head of UX research brand and consumer insights at Yahoo, where she leads initiatives to deepen Yahoo's understanding of consumer behaviour, aligning the company's brand, product, and marketing strategies with these insights.
- Before joining Yahoo, Gloria was a senior director and head of UX research and Insights at Gusto where she built and led Gustos global product experience research team overseeing both research and research operations professionals.
- She has also held senior research roles at Amazon Web Services where she led UX research operations and programmes, and at Capital One where she headed UX research for the enterprise AI and ML platforms with extensive consumer experience and customer insights and analytics.
- Gloria also brings an impressive academic background holding a PhD in human computer interaction, a master of science and applied Health informatics and a Bachelor of Science and computer science, a committed contributor to our field.
- Gloria is a longstanding mentor with the Computer Research Association and has been featured in User Weekly as well as on podcasts like Black Stories and Saving UX. And now she's here with me for this conversation on Brave UX. Gloria, a very warm welcome to the show.
- Gloria Osardu:
- Thank you so much Brendan, and I'm very excited to be here.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It's great to have you here. And I just want to start by going right back to your beginning and I believe you are originally from Ghana and I was curious, I don't know much about Ghana. What is the best thing about being from Ghana?
- Gloria Osardu:
- Well, the best thing about being from Ghana is having this worldview. I think for me, the best thing that being from Ghana has done for me is opening my eyes and my perspective to understanding that there is a whole different world and there's a whole new audience or users of technology or innovation that have a different set of environmental factors that could contribute or detract from adoption. And so that's where my love for being curious about technology or innovation started from. And then living in the United States, I get to compare and contract. I get to ask all the questions that are usually taken for granted when you're building or innovating for a diverse world.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Tell me about that. What are some, or perhaps even just one of the things that has been taken for granted that you've observed coming from your unique perspective.
- Gloria Osardu:
- So for example, internet connection, having access to mobile phones, what community looks like, what culture does and the world it plays in helping people thrive, what it means to build effective groups of people that come together to do the same thing. Yeah,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- There's quite a few things there and I learned when I was researching for today that you've spoken quite fondly in the past of the role that your parents have played in helping you to adopt and I suppose embrace this worldview that you have. And no doubt some of that's been through your own adventures and your own travels. I believe you've lived in the United Kingdom and the United States as well as Ghana. You've said about your parents, and I'll just paraphrase you here. You've said that they taught you what it means to think critically and also to have that worldview. And I wanted to understand how did they teach you those things?
- Gloria Osardu:
- So I love this question. The first thing they taught me was to stay curious. As you're growing, you want to find answers. You feel like being young or being a child limits you in so many ways, but my parents taught me, the first thing that they taught me was to stay curious and to help me understand that there's no destination and being curious. So through my academic journey and even through my career, my professional side, I'm okay with not fully knowing. I'm okay with starting from a place where I keep learning. And that led to that installation of one, you always have to learn, and two, you need to widen your perspective. You don't have to do it all. You need to reach out to folks, you need to learn from others, you need to inquire from others. You need to try to get more out of what others have experienced. And I don't know if that directly led me to being a researcher, but I believe that it had a role to play that.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, and I think if I, from the outside in, look at your academic background and your career journey, you started off as a software engineer as far as I can tell, right? Yes. Yeah. But I think you ended up doing your masters of science and Informatics, which somehow opened your eyes to this world of human computer action of which your PhD, as I mentioned in your introduction was right. So you certainly seem to have had no destination in mind as such when you were pursuing your curiosity. First of all, does that connects with you? And if it does, is it only something that you can really join the dots between in retrospect, once you've actually walked that path?
- Gloria Osardu:
- In retrospect, it's so perfect the narrative next, but I remember starting in computer science, software engineering, I always wanted to build code that others can debug. So I asked myself, what if I would beautifully write what the code did, what the lines meant, and what if others can run my lines of software without me being there? And then I stumbled on informatics and learning more about building intentionally and building software that is intuitive to use Around that time I was in back in Ghana, my parents are missionaries, and so I got curious around what does it mean for industries, some industries to thrive in terms of technology and the world of innovation and others to be burgeoning. So back then it was like healthcare and banking and finance and education, and that opened the Pandora's box of like, okay, what about healthcare? What about finance? What about banking? What about education? And so I see myself as industry agnostic in terms of thinking through innovation. What do we need to know? How do we build for the masses? How do we consider things that are not, are really abstract, right? They're not really things that you can check off, but really helps in implementation of the new things that we build every day.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Speaking of healthcare, I understand that you and I share something in common, and that is that both of our spouses are in surgical practise and that could be a subject of its own podcast. I'm sure we could spend an hour just talking about what that's like. I'm curious, what type of surgery does your husband specialise in?
- Gloria Osardu:
- He's in general surgery and he does all of the above. He jokes when I tell him things that are going on at work and he's like, nobody's going to die, nobody's going to die. You'll be fine. But our connection point is obviously health it, and so he has some sense of what it means to innovate in the space of technology in the healthcare side. So we'll talk about software that he uses, we'll talk about where the world is going, we'll talk about AI and all of that.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It's good that you've got that crossover and appreciation because it's not the same for all nonmedical partners, that's for sure. One of the things that you have spoken about at length previously has been researchers collaboration with other partners in the business, and it's pretty obvious to everyone that's listening to this podcast that creating products or experience doesn't operate in a vacuum. In your experience, what's been key to fostering a positive collaboration between your research team and the partners outside of it and the broader business?
- Gloria Osardu:
- That's a really good question. So this has been a journey for me. I think what has been key in this journey that I'm on with my teams is the fact that we acknowledge that UX research is just one side of the whole spectrum of, I call it 360 degree insights, and for UX researchers or researchers to acknowledge that there are so many touch points in building technology and software that the decision maker, whether it's a product person or design person or engineer, has to make a decision or move forward. There's so many touch points that they need. Insights helps us understand that there's much more that we need to do in understanding the business and the types of insights that folks are looking for to de-risk the decisions that they make. One thing that I tell my teams is imagine that you have four stones in your bag and you're trying to throw the stones.
- You are hoping to hit five birds. You're trying to do your best. You want to have all the insights and all the understanding that you need to gauge the right space, the right direction, know what type of stones to pick, what type of aiming to do in order to be successful. This is a situation that you always think that our decision makers, whether it's product design, engineering, business ops folks are in. And so it means that we need to want to learn more about UX research, but also connect the dots across the company and say, okay, what do we know about the audience or the user or the customer? What do we know about the metrics and the data that they care about? What do we know about the market and the landscape and the competitors? How do we package all of this and present it to our decision makers so that they can act on it?
- And I think that is where I see research and insights teams going where previously I would reach out across the aisle to talk to data science or analytics or product ops or even some design teams who do research. I think where the world is going is for researchers to take on more of that facilitators and the single point of contact to say, what is everything we know right now and how can we send that over in a way that is actionable, that helps direct the decisions that are making? And that's what we are doing right now. That's a journey that my teams are on right now to be a source of 360 degrees insights for our decision makers
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And speaking about those decision makers and I suppose building a relationship with them so that irrespective of the information you might have to impart to them to help them with those decisions, that they're open and willing to listen to what you have to say. I've heard you previously say, and I'll quote you now, people make companies and it's such a beautifully simple and it's a beautifully obvious thing as well, but often forgotten. What significance does that saying people make companies have for you and the way in which you encourage your teams to develop relationships with those stakeholders and decision makers?
- Gloria Osardu:
- Yes, I'm a firm believer that people make companies. It's because I truly believe that people do things for people just because they know them and have related to them on a personal basics. It's hard to build and nurture that relationship, but when we apply the principles that we've always used as researchers, we know that there's this empathy, understanding where they're coming from, who they are, what matters to them. There's this psychology of the more you set up cadences with them, talk to them, get to know about their wealth, the more other things that they know also spew you into your world. And so for me, I believe that even if you don't know anything about analytics, as a researcher, reach out, set a cadence, understand how they think about problems, why it matters to the business, and start that relationship. People make companies, which means that even all the way to deciding what resources we need or who works on what, these are all part of what we already know about human behaviour.
- Once we can unlock that and start to build that journey, it makes it easier. And I know that a lot of researchers, we do so much to prove ourselves. I think the real problem is folks don't really know us as people in the company. The only see us when we are being policemen or women or we are saying, you can do this or you can't do that, or we are questioning where they got the source of insights. But if the seniors in strategy meetings and we have touch bases with them and we want to learn more about how the product is making money and we are showing them more of how we have done some deck research, people would do stuff with us and do stuff for us because they know us.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- This ties in to another maxim that you've got, which is you never ask, you never know. And I like that as well because that really touches on the curiosity that I believe underlies all researchers and hopefully I would say all designers as well. That is one of those things that if you can bear that in mind when you're working with people that will serve you well. And speaking of working with people while we continue on with this theme, you've previously said, and I'll quote you again now, what makes you really successful as a research leader is understanding that you are facilitating other people's goals. And that is I think the biggest lesson for research leaders to be okay with. Why do you think research leaders sometimes struggle with that?
- Gloria Osardu:
- I would say two things. The first thing is the reason why I am on a journey to grow in that and not being territorial and being okay with supporting other people's goals. The fact that I have a worldwide perspective, and I do understand that culture plays a huge role in the way we think about life and the way we think about things. But I also believe that we have always seen examples of folks who own p and l, folks that own the product, folks that own tangible things. We've always seen impact as the things that you can see, the things you can touch. And we have a wrong way of looking at how we are doing. Research has all traditionally reported into product reported in design and sometimes in engineering, and we can't help but define what the ones in who we are are compared to design and product or engineering.
- We forget that there are so many parts of a business that are in the back end. We look at comms, we look at finance, we look at product ops, we look at EAs and support systems. We forget to learn how they're doing this, right? And so part of being owners of the business have always been, or the examples we've seen are areas where you're a product manager. I've seen researchers who want to be product managers. That's cool. We've also seen researchers who want to be designers because they feel undervalued. But for me, when I look in society and I go back to people and culture and spaces, when I've observed the world and I look at communities, there are people who are the backbone of the community but are not visible in a lot of matriarchal or matri systems. You'd find moms and grandmas and people in the community or even storytellers that do not sit in the limelight, but they make sure things are happening.
- And so that is where I start from and that's where I encourage a team. We are the business and it's not just owning a p and l, it's not just having this thing that we can show and tell. It's about learning how product is talking about the success, learning how engineering is talking about the success, and really tying that to how you help them de-risk whatever they're doing or help them get the insights that they need to be successful. There is this code that I like, it's religious, but it's a bible code that says they also serve who only stand and wait. It's regarding sentinels who are standing at the door. They just stand there 24 7, and the code is about they are also serving, but the job is only to stand and wait. And so if we can understand that just like product ops, just like finance, just like comms, just like HR are foundational to a business, but they don't really control a p and l or a launch product, but they still are meaningful, that will give us the piece that we need to leverage the right relationships, learn what we need to learn, and then do our job by getting the insights and the research and the data that is needed to de-risk any business on earth.
- And we will never feel like we are undervalued or our jobs are not important.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It almost sounds as if part of this is an internal agreement or understanding that needs to be reached. So there's an internal conversation that's going on here in terms of being comfortable with providing that. I think you used the example of the matriarchal type supportive role, very critical, but not necessarily front and centre leading from the front beating the chest type leadership role. But then there's also something I'm curious about and maybe there's a number of assumptions I'm packing into the question that I'm about to ask and feel free to tear them apart and put it back together in a way that makes sense to you. But how do you prevent the research organisation from being overshadowed and passed over for opportunities to grow if they're adopting that very much supportive role?
- Gloria Osardu:
- You beat me to the punch. There's also a role that we play in creating the environment and the mechanisms and setting the tone of like this is the expectation we have. I think you listed when you're introducing me, I've been in so many different spaces, right? Spaces that's like large scale growing, scaling the work that we do, spaces where research is not growing, but we are asked to scale our efforts and give out everything that we have for others to execute. Been in spaces where research is growing, but we are not working on what's critical. We are just working on mass production, not urgent. And I've also been in spaces where research is required to partner directly with product at the very beginning of product discovery where there's a lot of risks and we want to figure out what direction we should go. Now for me, I've learned so much.
- I've been burned. I have really enjoyed some spaces. I have had deep conversation with my friends, I have other colleagues who are also leading research organisation. I think that the first part of onboarding is to understand where you are with the company. The traditional way that we see growth. Back to some of the things that we need to disassociate with is numbers and scaling and growing the teams that we are on. But I think a huge part of onboarding and how to measure impact is ensuring that folks loop you in. Folks recognise who you are. That takes a very long time. There's even discussions around what should we call ourselves? We have so many names to call a researcher, but then design and product, you're just like everybody understands it's because we need to do the deep work of understanding the business. What is it that they need?
- And always start from the question of what will make the business successful? What insights and research do they need? And then understand where we come in, who we need to partner with. So yes, there is room for setting the tone, setting the balance, setting an expectation of this is what we can do, this is what we cannot do. For me, I like this approach where based on what I have right now, my first nine days, I'll let you know what we can do with the current team. I show you what can be done if we have half of the team right now, and then I show you what can be done when the team doubles. And then I also go to the risky areas of the business, which goes back to understanding the numbers. Businesses exist to make money, to reduce costs, to go into new markets and to increase the usage or engagement on their platforms or whatever they've built. So as you start to understand those fundamental metrics and the way that the business thinks, you help them achieve those things and then you can speak the language of the business. So yes, it's harder that I'm making this seem, but I think the mindset and what I encourage my team and the journey that I go with my team is we are here to build a business. We have this most important job to de-risk the business, and then we start with this gnarly part of who do we work with, what is expectations? We set
- Brendan Jarvis:
- That term. The business is a term that gets used often in our circles, and I'm not sure because I don't exist in circles outside of our circle. I'm not sure how or if at all it gets used outside of it. It's rather abstract. And I've been guilty of abstracting the business as well. I mean businesses are fundamentally quite complex, particularly large enterprise businesses. When you talk about the business, what does it mean to you? What are you talking about specifically?
- Gloria Osardu:
- I mean two things. So at a very overarching view, I mean the entity that I'm working for, that entity shuts down. If it's not making money, if it's not growing, the fundamental business exists to grow or to keep expanding or to make money. If it doesn't happen, we can't even be hired if we're not making money. That's the first understanding of the business. The second is the space that I'm supporting. In some spaces, you know that all the product spaces, which is all the things that have been launched or the new products that will coming research supports that. So that in term is my business because supporting that product function. In my current role at Yahoo, I support all of the office of the CMO, which is branded marketing. I support some part of sales which is Hong Kong, Taiwan, international global. And then I also support all the consumer business. So all the properties that you see, Yahoo Finance, mail search. And so for me, when I talk about the business, I'm talking about all these GM led spaces that operate their profits and loss. So in that case, if I am talking about business, I'm looking to see what are the metrics, what are the thresholds, how are they making money, what are the key initiatives that they have? Why do they have those? What are the research that my teams need to do to drive those execution?
- Brendan Jarvis:
- We speak often about needing to understand the business, and I understand exactly now what you're talking about in terms of those GM led organisations that you're supporting as a research leader. And I think we are getting clearer, and I'm generalising here, which is always a little dangerous, but I think as a field we're getting clearer and understanding how critical that is to our own success. What I'm interested in is getting your perspective, and again, I'm not sure if you can generalise here, but perhaps there's a story or two you can tell in how is it that you have seen the business in whichever way you want to define it, perceive research as a function and where, if any, are there disconnects that you've sought to address?
- Gloria Osardu:
- My philosophy is change only happens if the pain of remaining the same is if you remain the same, you have more pain than changing because nobody wants to change. And so the way that over time I've seen businesses treat research or even think about research falls into the bucket of from a global level, do they see the need to utilise research or learn more about what's going on or learn more about product space or want research? And then there are the people that run the business. And so I've also seen situations where the people that run the business with us on the product side engineering side that say, no, no, no, no, no, we can't move forward unless we have research. That also happened. But I have so many examples because no two businesses are the same. At Amazon, they had the money, they had everything.
- They just needed to move AWS to a space where lay people can use it and use it well. And we scaled our research organisation like you have never seen before because AWS is now moving into more lay less technical folks using it. At Capital One, the bank definitely needed to save money and reduce risks. And so we had to really think about not just research but design agency to come in and help us understand what does it mean when you're locked out and you have to make a phone call. The cost for the business was stronger and the regulatory regulatory fees and situations where more that required them to get a design agency and get researchers to work on some of their issues. And then you see startups where they have so much that they have to decide against things that they have to figure out to help them grow, but then they don't have a lot of resources.
- And so the way the cost to acquire research organisation versus what they need to know. And so you see a lot of startups wanting to scale what researchers can do without getting actual researchers. And we have all been in spaces where you are asked to teach others how to do your research, very uncomfortable. And then you have spaces like Yahoo that understands, yes, research is needed. We have consumer products, but we also have a non-traditional company which has the media side, the publishing side, the consumer product side. And so we need to understand, yes, product UX research, but we need to understand our audience, the segments, the marketing landscape, the competitive landscape, analytics testing and everything in between because it's just this huge thing that is turning around. So yes, the business makes the decisions and they only make decisions that seems like a favour to research once they weigh the cost and they realise we have to do something right now, other than that, things stay the same. And I've seen some great research teams even shrink because it is just like a phase in the business where there's other things burning up that research is not high priority for us.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You spoke about cost and one of the things with research organisations that many of the other leaders of those organisations that I've spoken with have shared is that there's often a greater demand on the resources of the research organisation. Then there are resources to deliver on that demand. And I understand that one of the questions that you ask yourself about your cross-functional partners is what skin do they have in the game when they come to you with a research request or in other words what you're saying is what are they willing to give up to get the insights? You talked about pain and how you only change if the pain of staying the same outweighs the pain of change. So what is it about the answer to that question? What skin do they have in the game that's important to you?
- Gloria Osardu:
- Yes, it's important to me because when I ask that question, I get a sense of why they want research and that builds and cascades into thinking about forward looking strategy. But I found that a lot of our stakeholders are partners. Some would want research because according to the product lifecycle or the design milestones, this is when they ask for research. But last couple of years has helped me also understand the types of insights or results that they want to see to help them decide or move forward with whatever they're trying to do. When you ask that question, you understand the fears, the metrics that they're going with, what type of information they're looking for, and I started to notice that sometimes it's not talking to users, it's about thresholds that they should consider. It's about analytics. It's about comparing two things and figuring out which one will do well once the product is launched.
- That question also ultimately leads to kind of like a warmup to the end of year conversation around how do you scale your team? What else do you need from us? If you don't hear them talk about what that research is going to do for them, you see a lot of situations where you do research and a lot of researchers will complain about, the team is telling me there's nothing new here. You could have figured this out. And I also, lastly, I intentionally asked that question because research is a resource. It comes at a cost, whether it's time or money with the vendors and the tooling and the space that we have. And so as you ask them, you pause, you have them pause to think through what is it that they need in order to get what they want. And then I talked about our role as facilitators of what else should they know.
- When you ask the question of what's your skin in the game, you also see some of the allyship and advocacy come through. You get to see the stakeholders that you can lean on to get to put some of the things that you want to see happen. And it goes back to half of that relationship component versus half of we want to work on business critical, the things that matter to the business so that they don't see research as a nice to have. We really need to tease what is it that they want from the questions that they have or the things that they're doing right now.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Gloria, does that mean you've found yourself in situations before where you've had to decline a request for research?
- Gloria Osardu:
- I have been in situations like that more recently. I don't decline. I have alignment meetings or I encourage my leaders to have alignment on what should be displaced. Every part of the company does that. When we have interlocks or we have conversations around what needs to give, they do that so that if you depend on folks, if you're asking for resourcing, you have that conversation. Now I have learned enough to have the conversation around these are the top priorities that we discussed last month or last quarter. Now there's something burning or there's something that is new, what should we take away to get that thing to fit into it? The more you have those conversations, they understand that you're not aimed to say no because human behaviour 1 0 1, people don't like people who just tell them no or would not have them do the things they want to do.
- You want to start the conversation with, here are the things that we have prioritised because of the team that we have and now we have two more things that we all agree are urgent. Help me make that decision. The stakeholder team appreciates that because they feel like you acknowledge that they know some things that you don't know, and then they also acknowledge that you can help them figure out what's really important based on the knowledge they shared with you. So yes, I'm a huge proponent of talk it through, go back to your psychology 1 0 1, help them understand that you are an expert in helping them answer the questions, but they are the experts in what's really important, what they want to achieve, and then have those conversations.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, there's an aspect of decision framing there as well, right? You're not saying no, but you're also not committing your organisation to an impossible task of delivering more work than you can.
- Gloria Osardu:
- Yes.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah. And you're bringing them into that conversation. I imagine that you've also in your career experienced situations where there's perhaps been a bit of conflict and perhaps of ideas perhaps of people situations like that. And I've heard you previously talk about these, and I'll quote you again now, you've said, I can't tell you how many times I have been in situations where I have had to manage and resolve conflict between partners or a stakeholder and executive leadership or even between two functions. So when I listened to you talk about that, that sounded like getting involved in conflict could come with some risk. How do you resolve that conflict without finding yourself in the middle of it?
- Gloria Osardu:
- Wow. This is something that I actually struggled for a long time, but the approach that I use, which was with help of my executive coach was you always go back to the common denominator. You always, whether you have to escalate several levels to the point where we all agree. And the example that my coach gave me, which I think is relevant is you notice that the CEO or maybe the chief product officer or whoever is the top person talking about strategy, has a strategy that works for everyone. And so when you think about how your CEO or the head of the business talks about the strategy for our customers, the strategy for the business, the strategy for how we work, the strategy with how we relate in terms of the different lines of businesses or sub businesses, that helps you in that conversation. There's so many times where it's like product versus analytics, product versus design.
- And whenever there's conflict, one you go with what should be displayed, but if everybody wants to work on it, you go back to what is the strategy around customers? What is the strategy with this product that is being built, but what is the strategy with user experience? And that has helped elevate the conversation outside of what can you do for me? Do you favour design of a product or do you favour a product of a design? And for me, it has also helped me understand that research reports into an organisation, but it's not really catering to that organisation. I mean, Yahoo is different because we have a Yahoo Analytics research and design organisation, data organisation, but in spaces where you report into product, you're report into design, it's tough because your manager feels like you should understand them, but always bump it up to the common understanding and then have that conversation from there. That way you can truly have an unbiased relationship with what has to give. Let's start with this because as a company, we agree on this user experience or this customer opening or this product that has to be launched. And mind you also know a lot about the metrics and what's important, and this is an opportunity to also learn what is it that you don't know that has made those two projects escalate that much? Yeah,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It sounded to me almost as if pointing to or trying to define a third space or a third thing to point to and rely on. In this case, it's either, I suppose it's an operational goal or a strategic goal or something that depersonalises it and deescalates a potential conflict situation and gets the conversation back into a conversation around which decision are we going to make based on what we've previously agreed or the business has previously agreed is important.
- Gloria Osardu:
- And it also sometimes takes us away from our default. Our default is like customer affairs user, but sometimes the business goals are the things that are really hot steaming piping right now. And you get to understand that right now the business trumps all the customer goals that we are so passionately involved in.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- That is so timely and it sounds like it could be dangerous territory. But let's go there in the remaining time that we have because there's a well-known Venn diagram, and I know you've seen this, right? It's the one that illustrates the promised land that exists between business goals and user needs. And it's that sweet spot in the middle where those two things overlap. But you've just outlined a situation where it doesn't always overlap. But I wonder in the road you've travelled so far, have you ever truly found that promised land where those two things user needs and the business goals overlap sweetly?
- Gloria Osardu:
- Well, I'm going to be very candid. The user needs and everything that we do for the experience happens if the business is thriving. I'll say that again. If a business is doing well, a business has a good problem space that is working on and it's building for and has a good direction, then everything else about experience brand falls in place, but that promised land becomes further down the road if the basics are not working well. And that's on us to also understand where is the business going in the last five years? You've seen the climate change when decisions have to be made. I really do hope that out of this episode, researchers would understand that it's always for the business first to keep the business afloat and then later think about everything else. And my husband and I talk about situation like this, and he's like, when a mom is having a baby and this situation where things have to be decided, they always think about the mom's life first, and then if they have extra resources, the foetus or the baby, and that's the example that I gave. If the business is haemorrhaging and the business is dying, granted that that definition is to be defined. When the business feels like it's duress and it's under stress, it always makes decisions for the business. And then later on it revisit all this user goals and experience goals. That's what it is.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And we don't have time today to discuss this in too much further detail, but it did make me wonder, and it's kind of a chicken or the egg type question that's been in my head. It's almost as if when you focus on the user needs, is it causal to the health of the business or not? And I think we believe generally speaking in user experience that if we get the user needs right, then the other things fall into place. But what I've listened to you and heard you say is that may not necessarily be the case, or at least there is some debate about whether that is the case. Perhaps it's a nice to have.
- Gloria Osardu:
- Ideally when you focus on the user needs, everything should fit. But you know that business decisions happen over cycles. And so depending on when the business started, over the years decisions have been made, compromises have been made, it gets to a point where, wow, the business has not really gone through the trajectory of the experience focusing on user, focusing on what users truly want instead of chasing that competitors. And that leads to a juncture where situations like that happen. But ideally when you focus on the user and you consistently make decisions for the user in a problem space that really is gnarly for our users, things should work out.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You spoke about high stress situations there, like you gave the analogy of maybe a complication in childbirth and also how organisations in the past five years have been experiencing some troubles, and we all know that there have been quite dramatic layoffs in our space. There's some rays of sunshine out there that we may be coming back to or at least close to pre covid hiring levels in our disciplines. However, as we wrap our conversation up today, I wanted to ask you about something that you previously said when you were interviewed on the Nodes of Design podcast. So I'll quote you now. You said most things take time. As a researcher who has become a research leader, I cannot tell you how many times I am just in awe of the different nuances and factors that are happening across the company that makes things really slow. You start to realise that it's not as clean cut as it should be, and that understanding helps you to slow down, build to scale, do a lot more systems thinking. So it almost sounded to me like you've made peace with moving slower, but that perhaps you may have once preferred moving at a faster pace. So if that is true, how has this piece you've made with moving slower, how has that perspective shaped your behaviour as a leader?
- Gloria Osardu:
- That is a good one to wrap up on. My piece that I have come to embrace with Moving Slower is built on the commitment that I've made to myself and my teams to learn more about business, to slow down in your attempt to go in and do research or answer questions, but to understand the ecosystem of what's happening, what type of data is needed, who else is collecting what that slowing down is a commitment for myself, and I'm hoping for all researchers to learn more about why do they bucket test, why do they think about Gen Zs as an audience? Why do they think about this analytics component of a campaign? Why is there a long tail after a brand and marketing campaign? This is a commitment, and I'm calling on researchers to slow down in our attempt to solve product questions and answer more questions around where's the world going?
- Where's the business going? What commitments have we made to our customers? What commitments have we made to ourselves, and what is it that the leaders or decision makers in the business know well how to do, but also things that they haven't experienced before and the fears that they have that makes us more intentional, and it gives us room to not feel like we are being unproductive because we are not doing research back to back, but to we are building those relationships, we're building those influence. And believe it or not, those are the things that unfortunately comes into play when we are thinking about what is the type of business organisational functions we want to move forward with us in the future.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- That is a great point to end our conversation. Gloria, this has been also a very great way for me to start my day. You've certainly given me plenty of things to think about. Thank you for so generously sharing your stories and insights with me today.
- Gloria Osardu:
- Thank you for inviting me. This was a conversation. I look forward to listening to more.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I'll look forward to reviewing the edit. Thank you, Gloria. And if people want to hear more about you and keep on top of the contributions that you've been making to the field, what's the best way for them to do that?
- Gloria Osardu:
- Reach out to me on LinkedIn. I also have Instagram. My name is my handle. I have a lot of pictures on Instagram, but LinkedIn is where I really engage with messages and all of that.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Thank you, Gloria, and to everyone who's tuned in, it's been great having you here as well. Everything that we've covered will be in the show notes, including where you can find Gloria and all of the things that we've spoken about.
- If you enjoyed the show and you want to hear more great stories and conversations like this with world-class leaders and UX research, product management and design, don't forget to leave a review, subscribe, so it turns up every two weeks, and just tell one other person about the show if you feel they would get value from these conversations at depth.
- If you want to reach out to me, you can find me on LinkedIn, just search for Brendan Jarvis, or there's a link to my profile at the bottom of the show notes, or you could head on over to my website, which is thespaceinbetween.co.nz. That's the spaceinbetween.co.nz. And until next time, keep being brave.