Rosenverse

Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.

Log in Create free account

100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.

Opportunistic Research with Gregg Bernstein

Thursday, July 11, 2019 • Advancing Research Community
Share the love for this talk
Opportunistic Research with Gregg Bernstein
Speakers: Gregg Bernstein
Link:

Summary

When everyone in an organization shares useful, insightful information, wonderful things happen: we align our company strategies and our teams toward common goals, and we make great user experiences. The job of the research leader is to unlock that information by advocating for users and soliciting insights far and wide. The research leader empowers colleagues to vocalize and share their valuable perspectives so everyone makes better decisions.

Key Insights

  • Opportunistic research leaders expand impact by collaborating beyond product teams with marketing and sales.

  • Including multiple organizational perspectives in research uncovers broader value and drives company-wide buy-in.

  • A single well-designed survey can serve diverse internal stakeholders and inform multiple business decisions.

  • There is a vast disparity between open design roles and user research roles, signaling a need for proactive advocacy.

  • Relentless and strategic sharing of research findings via communication platforms raises awareness and demand.

  • Centralizing research requests via intake forms helps prioritize studies that serve multiple teams and company goals.

  • Researchers must actively ‘go to the mountain’ as awareness of research rarely happens organically in large organizations.

  • Integrating market research data with user research can strengthen insights and foster cross-team collaboration.

  • Balancing top-down (executive) priorities with grassroots demands is key for research resource allocation.

  • Packaging research results with clear headlines and actionable insights increases organizational engagement.

Notable Quotes

"We know users are important, but there are very few user research roles compared to design or engineering."

"Research leaders have a superpower to connect dots between users and the entire organization."

"Relentless oversharing of research in Slack channels builds awareness and invites collaboration."

"We can’t say understanding users is someone else’s job; no white knight is coming to save us."

"Once people see the value of research, they want more of it; it becomes a habit."

"Research leadership is about adding value to the entire organization, not just your small corner."

"Every research project is a chance to serve the whole organization and bring in missing perspectives."

"You have to go to the mountain; the mountain won’t come to you."

"Packaging research with simple headlines brings people in, then we can layer on nuance and detail."

"Balancing top-down strategy and grassroots demand is essential to prioritizing research effectively."

Ask the Rosenbot
Harry Max
Priority Zero: Some Things are More Equal than Others
2016 • Enterprise UX 2016
Gold
Jason Mesut
Unmasking Design Leadership: Navigating leadership without neglecting ourselves
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Cennydd Bowles
Responsible Design in Reality
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Dantley Davis
Leadership & Diversity—A Fireside Chat with Dantley Davis
2020 • Enterprise Community
Peter Van Dijck
Building impactful AI products for design and product leaders, Part 3: Understand AI architectures: RAG, Agents, Oh My!
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Jemma Ahmed
Theme Three Intro
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Matt Duignan
Atomizing Research: Trend or Trap
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Bria Alexander
Opening Remarks Day 2
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Roy Opata Olende
How Zapier Uses ‘All Hands Research’ to Increase Exposure to Users
2020 • Advancing Research Community
Ian Johnson
Latent Scope: Finding structure in unstructured data
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold
Erika Flowers
AI-Readiness: Preparing NASA for a Data-Driven, Agile Future
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold
Hana Nagel
Turning Research Ripples into Waves
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Sean Fitzell
Craft of User Research: Building Out Jobs to be Done Maps
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Caroline Vize
The State of UX: Five Lessons from 2021 to Accelerate Digital Experience in 2022
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Greg Nudelman
Designing Conversational Interfaces
2019 • Enterprise Community
Natalie Dunbar
DesignOps and Content Strategy: Envisioning the Future Together
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold

More Videos

Daniel Gloyd

"We all say empathy is foundational for good design, yet contemporary research often remains oddly distant from real human experience."

Daniel Gloyd

Designing From the Inside Out: How Method Acting Can Inspire Design Research

February 12, 2026

Deirdre Hirschtritt

"Recruiting for indigenous participants via Craigslist missed the unique role community ties play, so we regrouped and connected through community organizations."

Deirdre Hirschtritt Cesar Paredes Marie Perrot

Research is Only as Good as the Relationships You Build

November 17, 2022

Benjamin Real

"It was like giving a map that you could not read or even understand."

Benjamin Real

Maturity Models: A Core Tool for Creating a DesignOps Strategy

October 1, 2021

Max Gadney

"What is your theory of change? How are you actually going to achieve the outcome you’re aiming for?"

Max Gadney Andrea Petrucci Joshua Stehr Hannah Wickes

Assessing UX jobs for impact in climate

August 14, 2024

Lada Gorlenko

"If they can do it, so can I – that’s the takeaway from these transformation stories."

Lada Gorlenko

Theme 1: Intro

January 8, 2024

Feyikemi Akinwolemiwa

"C-FRE stands for curiosity, freedom, reframing, exploration, and engagement—the soft qualities we tend to overlook in play."

Feyikemi Akinwolemiwa

Play to innovate: How curiosity and experimentation transform UX

March 11, 2026

Bria Alexander

"Sponsor sessions are optional but offer incredibly high content, and they are not sales pitches."

Bria Alexander

Opening Remarks

March 29, 2023

Llewyn Paine

"Processing limits and licensing terms currently restrict how much video and audio these AI tools can handle."

Llewyn Paine

[Demo] Deploying AI doppelgangers to de-identify user research recordings

June 5, 2024

Bria Alexander

"It's okay to try and mess up your OKRs in the first few quarters and learn from it."

Bria Alexander Benson Low Natalya Pemberton Stephanie Goldthorpe

OKRs—Helpful or Harmful?

January 20, 2022