#160 - Where Design Thinking Went Wrong with Brett Krajewski of Accelerant Research

02/12/25 • 44 min

In 2022, the UX community experienced a series of convulsions: layoffs, reorgs, and reduced budgets. A common thread throughout was accountability: user researchers faced frequent questions about their direct impact on and importance for the business. "Doing" UX research and "being" a design thinker was no longer enough.

Today's guest believes these questions present opportunities for UX researchers. Brett Krajewski, VP Research and Growth at Accelerant Research, joins Erin and Carol to share strategies for researchers to stay sharp, stay relevant, and stay valuable. These include balancing business goals with user needs, being more experimental with methods, reframing how we use time for research, and more.

Highlights

06:30 Justifying UX ROI Amid Economic Challenges
12:02 Integrating Insights for Improved UX
18:50 Balancing User Needs and Business Goals
21:07 Scalable Research in Fortune 500 Companies
29:47 Innovative Strategies in Research Planning
38:30 Storytelling's Role in Research Impact

About Brett
Brett Krajewski is the Vice President of Research & Growth at Accelerant Research, where he leads the research and client solutions teams, delivering innovative insights to empower businesses and many fortune 500 companies. With a career spanning both in-house industry roles and consulting/agency leadership, Brett has built and led high-performing, multi-method research teams for Fortune 50 companies. His past roles include Head of Design Research: Customer at Walmart and Lead of Product Research at Lowe’s, where he drove customer-focused innovation and strategy.

Resources

Highlights

06:30 Justifying UX ROI Amid Economic Challenges
12:02 Integrating Insights for Improved UX
18:50 Balancing User Needs and Business Goals
21:07 Scalable Research in Fortune 500 Companies
29:47 Innovative Strategies in Research Planning
38:30 Storytelling's Role in Research Impact

Resources

Previous Episode

#159 - Building Cross-Functional Research Impact with Judy Xu of Salesforce

Creating strong stakeholder relationships is important for UX researchers at any company. Doing this at "enterprise" companies—large organizations with many products and an international footprint—can feel daunting. Our guest, Judy Xu, has successfully navigated the scale of enterprises like Hubspot, Meta, and Salesforce, where they work as a Senior Researcher.

They join Erin to take us inside the enterprise, unpacking how research "happens" and what this has taught them about building cross-functional relationships. Specifically, Judy shares the value of using environmental inputs (like whether it's B2B or B2C) to map stakeholder structures, identify (and start using) meaningful metrics, and choose the right method for the moment.

Together, these strategies have helped Judy create lasting UX impact, building influence and trust with key stakeholders. Listen to learn how you can start creating more impact inside your organization, whether it's an enterprise or a startup.

Highlights

06:16 Learning and Research Challenges in Large Organizations
10:56 B2C vs B2B: User Metrics vs Revenue Focus
15:43 Adapting Research Insight Presentation to Stakeholder Needs
17:43 Collaboration with Key Stakeholders and Functional Diversity
22:39 Understanding Matrix Structures: Cross-Functional Roles & Incentives
26:55 Embrace Details: Mastering Business Processes Efficiently

About Judy
Judy is a Senior Researcher at Salesforce, where she uses I use qualitative (e.g., interviews, codesign) and quantitative (e.g., text analysis, surveys) approaches to tackle strategic, exploratory, and evaluative research questions. She has worked at Meta, Hubspot, and Simplisafe, and has a Ph.D. in Psychology from Columbia University.

Resources

Learn the fundamentals of business with this free course
Use these five steps to calculate the ROI of UX research
These skills build credibility and influence for more impact

Next Episode

#161 - Learn More Faster About Customers with Michael Margolis of GV

This episode is all about learning from customers...early and often. Our guest, Michael Margolis, UX Research Partner at GV (formerly Google Ventures), has made a career of helping teams do this successfully. He joins to share his Bullseye Customer Method, which is the result of his experience (it's also the subject of his latest book, "Learn More Faster," which is available for free).

Michael breaks down the Bullseye Customer Method, including best practices for recruitment, question design, and analysis. He's found that research is more successful when it's a team effort, and shares ways to promote cross-team collaboration throughout the Bullseye process, like using watch parties for share-outs. Michael also weighs in (using his 30+ years in the industry) on topics like the current UX job market, the impact of AI on researchers, and the power democratization for resource-limited teams.

It's a must-listen for anyone working on early-stage products or struggling with visibility and buy-in from stakeholders.

Highlights

06:33 Defining Core Value Proposition
16:29 Founders' Key Concerns Analysis
21:58 Clarifying Customer Understanding
26:38 Effective Open-Ended Survey Questions
31:46 Leveraging Associations for Networking
43:01 Benefits of Team Watch Parties

About Michael
Michael joined GV in 2010 as the venture industry’s first UX research partner. As a UX researcher with over 30 years of experience, Michael has boosted conversion, tested new concepts, streamlined workflows, and defined bullseye customers for hundreds of companies. He helped develop the design sprint method made famous by the seminal book, Sprint. He has also written about his research work for startups at medium.com/@mmargolis.

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