User Science: Product Analytics & User Research
Summary
Want to help make better product decisions? You've got to combine qualitative human insights from user research with data analytics and experimentation. Too often research questions are "sent to the team that can answer them best." Questions about how many users do something goes to analytics, questions about which design might work better goes to user research. But what if you partnered with those other teams to answer the questions together? In this session Marieke will share how, as a qualitative UX researcher she's partnered with analysts to identify high-growth opportunities and gain a deeper understanding of users.
Key Insights
-
•
User science combines qualitative user research and data science to generate more impactful product insights.
-
•
Early collaboration between UX researchers and data teams helps reconcile conflicting insights and builds stronger shared understanding.
-
•
Curious and thoughtful data partners who care about the people behind the data are essential collaborators.
-
•
Developing a shared engagement metric like an activity score can help narrow research focus and create common language.
-
•
UX researchers’ storytelling and cross-functional skills position them uniquely to lead collaboration with data teams.
-
•
Opportunity solution trees provide a useful framework for aligning product goals, user problems, and possible solutions across teams.
-
•
Ethical concerns about striving for more engagement should be constantly revisited; more use is not always better.
-
•
Employee experience and customer experience research share many metrics and methods and can inform one another.
-
•
Proactive collaboration can transform narrow data or qualitative projects into comprehensive, actionable research.
-
•
Transparency about knowledge limits and honest communication enable trust and effective collaboration between UX and data teams.
Notable Quotes
"If you’re a person who studies people, then you’re a person who understands data."
"Typically we get stuck answering the questions we know we can answer but lose the chance to see the big picture."
"I think we as UX researchers are uniquely positioned to forge bonds with data teams because of our storytelling and cross-functional work."
"Finding out more about these most active users is a key priority this year, said our CEO at the board presentation."
"We can’t be there for every behavior after the nudge, nor do we necessarily want to be."
"Less than a third of respondents feel like they work somewhere with a clear investment in customer-driven decision making."
"You might find that spending the most time getting people interested in collaboration is where the work really happens."
"I invited Mark to a user interview — he had no idea interviewing wasn’t for him but respected that skill deeply."
"We are really good at finding problems, but the opportunity solution tree helps pick the best ones to focus on."
"Sharing your research skills broadly within your company can create unexpected opportunities to improve experiences."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Reddit recently fixed their upvote button so it announces toggle states, something many sites neglect."
Sam ProulxEverything You Ever Wanted to Know About Screen Readers
June 11, 2021
"If anything's going wrong on your end, please reach out to help-customer-desk-service in Slack for tech help."
Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
November 17, 2022
"You do not have to go publicly thank the employer who just laid you off. They’ll be fine without it."
Corey Nelson Amy SanteeLayoffs
November 15, 2022
"Whenever you make a process model or service blueprint, make a wrong model first, then let the experts correct it to build shared understanding."
Milan GuentherA Shared Language for Co-Creating Ambitious Endeavours
June 6, 2023
"75% of democratized studies don’t see full reporting mostly because stakeholders don’t have time for the analysis."
Erin May Roberta Dombrowski Laura Oxenfeld Brooke HintonDistributed, Democratized, Decentralized: Finding a Research Model to Support Your Org
March 10, 2022
"The most important thing you can do is listen and watch and put assumptions aside about what is easy or hard."
Sam ProulxUnderstanding Screen Readers on Mobile: How And Why to Learn from Native Users
June 6, 2023
"The core thesis is that saving time with AI and reallocating it into research itself unlocks the true potential of the field."
Mujtaba HameedThe new horizon of ethnography: using AI to unlock the full potential of in-person research
March 11, 2026
"Ethical technology governance means anticipating the long-term social impacts of technology today and acting to protect essential public goods."
Ilana LipsettAnticipating Risk, Regulating Tech: A Playbook for Ethical Technology Governance
December 10, 2021
"It can cost up to 200 times more to remediate and retrofit a solution as opposed to designing it correctly in the first place."
Samuel ProulxFrom Standards to Innovation: Why Inclusive Design Wins
September 10, 2025
