When I first transitioned to UX, it was as a research coordinator. I had been working as a content and growth marketer, and I used the same community-focused mindset to grow a research ops program. I believe that when executed well, a research program can be an important brand touchpoint, and can help users feel like they have unlocked a new level in their relationship with the brand. Below are some examples of steps I took to build the program.

Build a research panel

• Get buy-in from stakeholders on the need for a research panel
• Create screening questionnaire for research panel sign-ups
• Create research program page
• Set up campaign to promote at intervals to grow the panel via digital (company social, blogs), and in-person (table cards with QR code that can be passed out at booths) channels

Project management

• Issue templates - for project planning, timelines, scheduling, and incentives tracking
• Templates for research briefs at the front end of a project, annotated with the steps that may pose timeline risk (e.g., steps must be taken during recruiting to keep the project on track)

Research best practices

• Screener templates with example questions
• Document guidelines for contact frequency rules to respect users’ inboxes
• Academic research on UX foundations, viewable by all
• Workshop on UX heuristics
• Documentation on interviewing best practices
• Template for moderated usability testing notes
• Templates for research reports

Establish recruiting channels

• Emails via Qualtrics to the research panel
• Pop-up in-app on relevant pages via Userflow
• Cold emails to relevant database contacts
• Posts on support forum
• Slack internal messages to account managers for intros to enterprise customers
• Documentation on why/when we use different recruiting channels

Efficiency & budgets

• Propose plan(s) for how researchers should be allocated according to business needs, and SLAs for researchers in working with stakeholders
• Stakeholder-facing documentation on what they can expect from researchers, the different methods we use, the types of questions we take on, and how our prioritization works.
• Evaluate tools, make a business case for budget for participant management tool; global digital incentives; insights management tool

Socializing research results

• Guidelines on how to write great headlines for research
• Suggestion of different channels and formats to use, prioritizing async when possible: R&D demo meeting presentation; record a short Loom; share headlines via Slack with link to report; where possible write a public-facing blog post and promote the research panel within the post, etc.