Researching the research

For those who don’t know about the ResearchOps community, they are “a global group of people who’ve come together to discuss the operations and operationalization of user research and design research”.

Similar to the DesignOps community, their aim is to further the practice through the process and technological advancements.

The community is built on three core beliefs:

• ResearchOps is an emergent consequence of knowledge work at scale
• Scaling the operation of research requires specific skills and attention to corporate memory
• Our collective experience holds the keys to building capability within the profession

The community regularly holds global workshops to discuss and collaborate on specific projects.

The rise of Research Ops is something we've been exploring through our panel events.

Everything in its right place

The most recent project to emerge from the community is the research repository project. It is exploring how research is processed, stored and retrieved. The current definition of a repository differs widely across the industry. Solutions range from live products to home-spun ‘hacks’. For these reasons, the project is starting broad to understand the nuances of the process.

The overall aim:

• Evaluate the pros/cons of having a research repo with regard to a variety of research methods
• Gather a folksonomy for each method and develop a structured taxonomy for human research
• Review strengths/weaknesses of governance in terms of practice and policy
• Create a list useful requirements for repo builders to prioritise their roadmap.

Over the next few months, there will be workshops held worldwide to feed into the project. The core of the workshop will be an experience mapping activity. Currently, 55 organisers in 20 countries have signed up, making it one the biggest projects to date!

I’ll be helping to run a Brighton workshop later this month. If you are involved in the practice of research we’d love for you to see you there!