GIS Career Pathways: UX Researcher
Greetings, Esri YPN Community!
My name is Adam Williams. I joined Esri in 2022 and am a Principal UX Researcher. In this post, I’ll share some of my professional trajectory that informs my perspective and approach for the work I do.
User experience research (also known as UXR) may be of interest to you if you’re curious how social sciences are applied in design, technology, and business. There’s a robust body of literature on methods and practical approaches for UX research as both a discipline and career. There are also a variety of conferences happening annually in the UX field. I always recommend exploring the EPIC ethnography conference and community.
My Own Background
I began considering a professional transition from academia to tech not long after earning my PhD in geography from the University of Colorado Boulder. I had moved from the Rocky Mountains to the North Bay Area of California, joining Sonoma State University’s geography department.
Landing near San Francisco's tech scene, I ran into friends and acquaintances working at companies with products I had used, like eBay, Airbnb, and Apple. I realized there were resources, challenges, and opportunities in the tech sector that I was interested to apply a human geographic lens to. Through a series of conversations, plenty of job applications, and a few chance meetings, I found steady employment in tech.
Backing up a bit, I grew up with teachers for parents, a love of being outdoors, and some empowering experiences traveling and living abroad between high school, college and graduate school.
I backpacked through the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe before the internet was widely available. I got very confident in engaging with people, places, and cultures that were unfamiliar. I liked being an outsider, asking open questions, and being observant. At first this was simply how I would figure out the best overland route through Morocco or where to stay in the Baltic States. But soon I also had the means to find and appreciate connection through conversation anywhere, with anyone.
I moved to Shanghai in the early 2000s, curious to try living in a place that felt both challenging and welcoming. After four years, I had far more questions and interests about China than when I started, which led to my graduate school focus on qualitative research and ethnography. I studied China’s informal recycling economy, mostly for the opportunity to hear the fascinating stories and perspectives of the people who powered that particular sector.
My Experience in UX Research
Once I started working in tech, I understood that UX Research as a discipline needs to provide both hard and soft skills to be effective in a business environment. We need to define the questions and hypotheses we can effectively address, then advocate for the right research methods.
Research with humans needs to be carried out effectively and with respect for users, maintaining a high standard of quality for both observers and participants. UX researchers can build bridges of communication and shared awareness between teams that may have different goals but can rally together behind insights about user-centered experiences and how we can improve outcomes for the business and customers.
I worked at Uber for four years, at a time when the company grew and evolved rapidly. I was fascinated by the social spaces created by a platform of rides shared between riders and drivers. During the years I worked there, ridesharing was still a novel experience. Many new ventures were being explored, including food delivery, freight, autonomous vehicles, and even VTOL aircraft.
I benefited from joining a design organization that was hiring staff with significant tenure in the tech industry, alongside relative newcomers like me. I began to find success applying my skills in meeting with real people, in real places, doing real things, then translating data like field interviews into applicable insights and recommendations for how the tools a company builds can best support the needs and opportunities of its users.
Rapid Advances in UX as a Field
Over the past decade, I’ve seen advances and consolidation in UX as a field. Powerful tools now make recruiting and interviewing users a lot faster. An unmoderated test can be created and completed in hours. To find representative people to join the right study at the right time, we can draw on platforms that include millions of would-be study participants. AI is being introduced to many UXR subscription-based tools, promising rapid analysis of data to create insights that are valuable and applicable. It all requires a willingness to experiment while maintaining your own ability for applied critical thinking.
Despite technological advances, I believe that the core of UX as a discipline will always be social interaction and engagement between a business and its customers. Esri is a fantastic company to work for in this sense.
Esri customers are incredibly diverse, talented, motivated, and dedicated to the work they do, the purpose they find, and the impact their organizations have. Esri staff must be adept in engaging directly with customers and users. This makes for a rewarding job as a researcher seeking to connect these groups in the spirit of building better experiences.
Being a UX Researcher at Esri
A typical day at Esri for me as a UX Researcher might include research sessions (live interviews, evaluative testing) with new or experienced users, collaborative meetings with designers, writers, and other UX-oriented teams, strategic planning for prioritizing multiple research studies, and development of methodological and analytical skills among researchers and non-researchers alike. Empathy, curiosity, storytelling, and patience are also invaluable skills that UX researchers can practice themselves and encourage others to leverage.
I attend one or two professional conferences like EPIC, CHI, or UXDX annually to connect with other UXRs, and I’m always at the Esri User Conference in San Diego, where the UX Research team runs a lab, floor studies, and often presents on bringing qualitative research to GIS. Stop by and say hello!
Please comment below if you have any questions about the UX field and roles in it. You can connect with me on LinkedIn here.
