21 User Researchers you NEED to Follow on Twitter in 2022
A wise old proverb once said that we are the average of the people whose tweets we spend the most time reading. Whoever said that was obviously pretty ahead of their time. As we enter 2022, level up your UX Research chops by following the leading UXR voices on Twitter.
There are a few BNOCs (big names on campus) missing from this list - I selected my favourite accounts that tend to tweet more about research and less about how well their homemade carbonara turned out at the weekend. They're all real people, so expect a bit of that, but overall these are UXR-focused tweeters.
Instead of opening each one in a new tab, you can follow this whole list on Twitter here.
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[1] Tricia Wang - @triciawang
Dr. Tricia Wang is a global tech ethnographer living at the intersection of data, design, and digital. She's the co-founder of Sudden Compass, a consulting firm that helps companies to unlock new growth opportunities in their big data with human insights in their digital transformation. She's known for popularizing 'Thick Data' - the need for companies to integrate Big Data with qualitative and ethnographic methods in order to uncover people's emotions, stories and models of their world. She explains her perspective on Thick Data in her must-see TED talk, "The human insights missing from big data."
I HAVE AN ASK! I want to know what you visualize when you think about your data?
— Tricia Wang (@triciawang) January 17, 2020
Can you grab a 📝, and draw what you imagine when you think about your data, like where it comes from and where it goes. Any and all kinds of data!
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[2] Gregg Bernstein - @greggcorp
Having previously led User Research at Vox Media and Mailchimp, Gregg Bernstein now looks after all things research related at Signal Messenger - a hot topic startup at the centre of the privacy and security movement in tech. A regular headline speaker at conferences, his soon-to-be-released book 'Research Practice' just hit number one on Amazon's pre-release list. He used to design albums for punk and emo bands too, which is definitely gives him a bonus point in our eyes.
Popular user research methods, explained briefly. pic.twitter.com/RnOBX0CQxO
— Gregg Bernstein (@greggcorp) April 25, 2018
(Note: Interested in quantifying your user’s biggest problems? Use our solution, OpinionX, to stack rank customer problems and understand what matters to them most. Try it for free!)
[3] Nikki Anderson - @productherapist
Nikki Anderson is a User Research Lead at Zalando in Berlin. If the name rings a bell, it's probably because she founded the online community User Research Academy, because she's a must-follow on Medium, or maybe because she's a renowned petter of dogs (in niche circles anyway). While Nikki doesn't tweet that much, I recommend following so you don't miss her next Medium drop - her last post on writing user research case studies was 10/10.
I often get solutions put in front of me and asked to validate them. Let’s take a step back and think about the problem before the solution to ensure we are solving a real human need https://t.co/H7IL07bthX
— Nikki (@productherapist) February 9, 2020
[4] Indi Young - @indiyoung
Indi Young was possibly the most suggested name by user researchers for this list, for obvious reasons. For the past 20 years, she has been pioneering ways to understand customers and employees in order to support them better. Indi is an independent qualitative data scientist and, in her own words, she wrote the book on mental model diagrams and developing empathy. Not to mention she has a kick-ass newsletter (and so do we, it's called The Full-Stack Researcher).
Sometimes people misconstrue the word qualitative. They think of qualitative insights as data that has to be qualified with a phrase about how unreliable it is. In reality, both qualitative and quantitative studies can be reliable or unreliable, "fuzzy" or precise. pic.twitter.com/pGtBGNDcZ0
— Indi Young (@indiyoung) August 24, 2020
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[5] Roy Olende - @royolende
Roy Olende is the host of Research at Scale, a podcast Roy launched in the latter half of 2020. When he's not working on and tweeting about his myriad of ResearchOps-related projects, he's the Head of UX Research at Zapier. Roy is one of those great Twitter users that seems to read something new and interesting every day, which he also shares on his Substack Newsletter, 'System17'.
Asking a PM or designer to consistently run good UX research sounds straightforward, but it's not.
— Roy Opata Olende (@RoyOlende) November 23, 2020
It's sorta like making scrambled eggs. Everyone thinks they know how to do it until they see it done properly.
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[6] Teresa Torres - @ttorres
Teresa Torres is THE leading authority on discovery research. Her talks on continuous product discovery at conferences like Productized in 2016 are mandatory viewing for discovery researchers. If you're a fan of a framework, you'll be right at home on a deep dive through Teresa's tweets and blog post archives over on her website producttalk.org.
"Good discovery is continuous. The day we stop being curious about our customers is the day our competitors start catching up." https://t.co/kk4g8AaUwV #prodmgmt #ux pic.twitter.com/LNnKsf4XeU
— Teresa Torres (@ttorres) August 11, 2018
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[7] OpinionX - @MyOpinionX
Our own Twitter account is new to the scene, but dare we say it, there's some pretty sick content on under our name. We take our latest blog posts every week and share them out as bite-sized Twitter threads, like our deep dive on Mixed Methods Research that we shared recently as in tweet-summary format. Keep an eye out for more hot UXR content coming soon (aka every week) 👀
Between Sept and Dec 2020, we interviewed 100+ user researchers and product managers. There's a clear trend emerging about the future of user research.
— OpinionX (@MyOpinionX) January 5, 2021
Hint: it's called Mixed Methods Research 💬📊
THREAD 🧵 [1/11]
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[8] Aryel Cianflone - @mixedmthods
Ok, I'm cheating a liiiiiittle bit on this one too. Aryel is the founder of Mixed Methods, a UX Research podcast and 12,000-strong Slack community. We previously quoted Aryel on our deep dive post on Mixed Methods Research. While this isn't Aryel's personal account, we've got our fingers crossed that the Mixed Methods Twitter account will be more active in 2022 because their content is 🔥
Humans have developed 200+ cognitive biases to work through information everyday. 😲 Eliminating bias may not be possible, but understanding it is crucial for researchers!@buster, creator of the cognitive bias codex, offers a cheat sheet here: https://t.co/1QpO17seYy pic.twitter.com/dAX5jWZ0F4
— Mixed Methods (@mixedmthods) March 6, 2018
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[9] dscout - @dscout
Sticking with the theme of non-human accounts you should follow, the team at dscout are constantly interviewing and featuring guests posts from the most interesting names in UXR. Their blog 'People Nerds' features loads of amazing articles from the dscout team and guest writers, updated all the time with new content.
"If you really want to hear a person for who they are...you can’t go into an interview saying, 'I’m going to come back with seven key takeaways to type up and put into the Slack channel.'"- @steveportigal
— dscout (@dscout) April 25, 2019
Lot's of great advice here:https://t.co/wbcfy13RJO
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[10] Jen Blatz - @jnblatz
Jen is a User Experience Designer and Researcher at Fidelity Investments. 2 years ago, Jen co-founded the online community 'UX Research & Strategy,' where she is super active sharing all the top UX research resources she finds on a daily basis. Just to be even busier, Jen is the co-founder of IxDA Dallas (Interaction Design Association), was the organiser of World Information Architecture Day DFW, and has been behind the social accounts for Ladies that UX Dallas and Big Design (aka, she's a pro).
The best quote I heard today from a non-UX person: “I wish they would stop bringing us the solution, and that they would focus more on their problem.” Yassss!!!
— Jen Blatz (@jnblatz) May 23, 2018
[11] Alba Villamil - @albanvillamil
Alba Villamil is an independent User Experience Researcher who specializes in designing for the social sector. Her projects focus on underserved populations such as refugees, low-income parents, and domestic violence survivors. In addition to working with community organizations, Alba has also worked on projects with the Harvard Kennedy School and Rochester City School District. Her tweets are a fantastic resource on topics such as research ethics and addressing race in UX design.
Lately, I've been thinking of #userresearch #ethics as a maturity model where we name our vision of the world and outline the evolution our practices must follow to achieve that vision. For example, how can we go beyond extractive "do no harm" to produce research that "heals"? pic.twitter.com/qBS0hgdcAV
— Alba Villamil (@albanvillamil) October 1, 2020
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[12] Alec Levin - @al_clevin
Alec Levin is the CEO of UXR Collective, the team behind UXRConf (which featured as a big not-to-be-missed event on our list of Top UX Research Conferences to Attend in 2021) and the new UXRC subscription learning platform for learning about all things research-related. Considering the calibre of speakers featured on UXRC, it's not surprising that Alec's Twitter is full of golden nuggets and inspiring insights.
Your must read #uxresarch article for this week is from @sladner 👇
— Alec 🌱 (@al_clevin) July 16, 2018
Best explanation I've read for how #uxresearch uses and doesn't use the scientific method 💯 💯 💯
https://t.co/bRhPdjqt1e
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[13] Sam Ladner - @sladner
Dr. Sam Ladner is Principal Researcher for Strategy at Workday and has held similarly senior roles at other heavyweight tech players such as Amazon and Microsoft. Sam is a particular favourite tweeter for the team here at OpinionX as she is the leading authority on Mixed Methods Research (she literally wrote the book on it).
Tips on notetaking for qual researchers 1/x: avoid using bullets in your notes (bullets are the fast food of note-taking). Try to write complete sentences (you will fail) but you will at least have the beginning of a coherent point, which you clean up later (see 3/x)
— Dr. Sam Ladner (@sladner) December 16, 2020
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[14] Kate Towsey - @katetowsey
Another leading authority for the list, Kate Towsey is the big name in the ResearchOps world. Not only did she basically define the term, she also started the ResearchOps Slack group (which, as a proud member, I'd highly recommend). If you'd like to catch Kate on stage soon, she's a headline speaker for UX Brighton later this year. Keep an eye out for her book "Research At Scale: The Research Operations Handbook" coming in 2022 👀
Proud to present... a framework for #WhatisResearchOps. Borne out of a massive global community effort, 1 survey and 33 research workshops: https://t.co/AKIfAsGQyW
— Kate Towsey (@katetowsey) October 23, 2018
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[15] Holly Cole - @hollyface1975
Now at the reins of the same ResearchOps Slack group is Holly Cole. As well as being co-chair of the ReOps community, Holly is Director of Research & ResearchOps at 15five, a performance management startup based in the Bay Area. She's super active in the research community and her 'Research Unicorn' thread below is a great precursor to the Full-Stack Researcher (which we predict at OpinionX will become the hottest UXR role in the coming years).
1. I feel like the great debate on Research unicorns is happening like it did with user experience design.
— Holly Burroughs Cole (@hollyface1975) December 4, 2018
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[16] Tomer Sharon - @tsharon
Tomer Sharon was one of my first introductions into the world of user research 😊 Until recently, Tomer was Managing Director and Head of User Research & Metrics at Goldman Sachs, before which he held UX and research roles at WeWork and Google. He's gone stealth mode on his current venture, which he lists himself as Co-founder and Chief Experience Officer of. Follow for the fomo alone, I say. He also wrote the book "Validating Product Ideas through Lean User Research." Need I say more?
As a researcher, one of the best ways to kick off a research study is writing a short plan. Stakeholders appreciate succinct definitions of what’s going to happen, why, when, and with whom. Here are the ingredients of a 1-page research plan... 1/12
— Tomer Sharon 🌱 (@tsharon) May 26, 2020
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[17] Behzod Sirjani - @beh_zod
Behzod is the founder of Yet Another Studio (I'm not being sarcastic, that's the real name) - an independent research agency that provides research partnership to a select number of clients around the world. Before he jumped into the founder's seat, he was Head of Research & Analytics Operations at Slack and a Senior UX Researcher at Facebook. Bezhod is a contributor to heavyweight resources like Reforge's course on customer insights.
Quick reminder about #usability research - whenever you’re asking a participant what they think, you should ask for their:
— Behzod Sirjani (@beh_zod) January 9, 2020
1. Expectation (about what will happen)
2. Reaction (to what happens)
3. Reflection (on the difference between 1 and 2)
Please do not forget #3.
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[18] Laura Faulkner - @laurafaulkner
Laura Faulkner, PhD is the Head of Research at Texas-based cloud-giant Rackspace Technology. While Laura doesn't tweet that much, she's a regular on podcasts and interviews with big names in the industry such as Steve Portigal and in communities like UX Research & Strategy. Add her to your Twitter list so that you never miss out on the recordings of her talks!
An exhilarating moment: Interviewed by the awesome @steveportigal about UX Research - past, present, future https://t.co/J35h3uou9C
— Laura Faulkner PhD (@laurafaulkner) March 27, 2020
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[19] Sofia Quintero - @sofiaqt
Sofia is the CEO of EnjoyHQ, a research repository tool that powers UX and product teams to search, organise and share all of their feedback and user research data in one place. As a fellow founder in the user research startup world, Sofia is quite the generalist - you can find topics from repository strategies to customer acquisition to UX design topics all mixed together on her timeline.
“As Tomer Sharon defines it, ‘A Nugget is a tagged observation supported by evidence. It’s a single-experience insight about a customer’s experience. The insight is backed by evidence in the form of a short video snippet (15–45 seconds) of a…” — @Sofiaqt https://t.co/ZqF8mQsrfB
— Sofia Quintero (@Sofiaqt) October 19, 2020
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[20] Emma Boulton - @emmaboulton
I love Emma's tweets for her no-nonsense approach to UX (and her lovely family updates too!). Emma is a Design and User Research Leader based near Cardiff, Wales. Another ResearchOps community leader, during the day she is Director of User Research at Babylon Health, having previously filled research roles at Monotype and in the BBC’s Audience Research team.
In in-house Research (or Design) Leadership it can take a very long time to move the needle or feel the impact of your work. This is because so much of the work is building relationships and facilitating communication. You can forget how much progress you have made.
— Emma Boulton (@emmaboulton) June 20, 2018
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[21] Jeff Sauro - @MeasuringU
Sneaking one last company one in, Jeff Sauro is the author of 6 UX books and is a Principal at quantitative research firm MeasuringU in Denver, Colorado. Jeff and his team are focused on the statistical analysis of human behavior and quantifying the user experience. The MeasuringU account is a high-volume tweeter, so possibly not for everyone, but there are some real nuggets in their posts.
Most surveys contain a mix of closed-ended (e.g., rating scales) and open-ended questions. Here are five reasons to use open-ended questions. https://t.co/Nk0lrsQE5N pic.twitter.com/LUos1BjYUF
— MeasuringU (@MeasuringU) January 14, 2021
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Yes, we made a Twitter thread about tweeters you should follow on Twitter. Retweet to your hearts content to share it with others:
A wise old proverb says that we are the average of the people whose tweets we spend the most time reading...
— OpinionX (@MyOpinionX) January 18, 2021
Level up your UX Research chops in 2021 with this list of leading industry tweeters 🏆
THREAD 🧵 pic.twitter.com/ScaN1Md8aG
When we're not doom-scrolling on Twitter, we're busy thinking and writing about the future of user research. Sign up to our fortnightly newsletter roundup of our latest ideas and favourite links from across the web:
✌️ - Daniel Kyne, Co-Founder & CEO of OpinionX