My go-to list of references and how-tos from some of my favorite researchers and former colleagues

Talks

Cognitive Bias and the Questions You Shouldn’t Be Asking
Some advice for us (from my former boss, Cindy Alvarez!) on how reduce the impact bias has in our research.

Great User Research for Non-Researchers
This is a great talk my grad school mentor Steve Portigal gave at Mind the Product. It’s an excellent intro to share with stakeholders who may be new to doing their own research.

Podcasts

Dollars to Donuts
“The podcast where we talk with the people who lead user research in their organization.” Steve Portigal interviews research leaders of all stripes.

Acquired
“Every company has a story.” Well-researched, in-depth examinations of the brands that are household names, and how they got there, by Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal.

Lenny’s Podcast
“Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover concrete, actionable, and tactical advice.” Lenny Rachitsky uses in-depth interviews to uncover what makes product leaders successful, across a range of industries.

Articles

118 Ways to Get a Job in User Experience Research
I get asked all the time “how can I break in to UX Research?” Well, Amy Santee is a (fantastic!) researcher-turned-career coach, and she’s put it all into a single article.

Mad Libs style findings framework
My former colleague at AnswerLab, Beth Lingard, is now a research leader at Meta. She introduced me to this when we worked in consulting and I still find it helpful. Maybe you will, too!

Self Care for Researchers
From Vivianne Castillo, Founder at HmntyCntrd.

Rolling Research
An article about how to set up rolling research programs, with input from yours truly and my former Research Ops colleague, Akilah Bledsoe, who is now over at Meta.

The Future of UX Research
Monty Hammontree from Microsoft argues that everyone is now responsible for collecting insights from customers, not just researchers.

How to Stop UX Research being a Blocker
Ben Ralph has some thoughts about how research can fit into different agile methods, along with some great visualizations.

Hypotheses in user research and discovery
A follow up to his earlier article Everything is hypothesis driven design, Ben Holliday has written a good primer to think about how to formulate and test hypotheses using research.

Books

Becoming a Better Observer

Thoughtless Acts? Observations on Intuitive Design by Jane Fulton Suri (IDEO) – classic inspirational design book that will force you to look for the ways people hack the things we build for them

Intro to Research

Just Enough Research by Erika Hall Written for non-researchers, I still think this book is great for reinforcing some salient points every researcher should keep in mind (“do you really need a survey?”)

User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live Work & Play by Cliff Kuang with Robert Fabricant – nice history of the flow from physical to digital product design

Lean Customer Development: Building Products Your Customers Will Buy by Cindy Alvarez – how to use a hypothesis-driven research framework and flexible research techniques to get answers and insights quickly

Intro to Lean Development Culture

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries – if you are entirely new to startup/agile culture, this is a helpful primer

Jobs to Be Done Resources

The Jobs to Be Done Playbook by Jim Kalbach – Jim is the head of CX for Mural, that fabulous online white boarding tool you probably already use to collaborate remotely with your colleagues. This book is a really nice intro to Jobs to Be Done and it also contains useful frameworks for actually getting started with JTBD – it’s not just theory.

When Coffee and Kale Compete by Alan Klement – also a great intro to JTBD, and has a unique focus on go-to-market side of JTBD.

(While you’re at it, you can read a little bit about the argument over the different JTBD methodologies here.)