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INTRODUCTION

“We’re wired for story. In a culture of scarcity and perfectionism, there’s a surprisingly simple reason we want to own, integrate, and share our stories of struggle. We do this because we feel the most alive when we’re connecting with others and being brave with our stories—it’s in our biology.”

—Brené Brown, Rising Strong

I vividly remember the first time I sat at a hotel bar during a conference and swapped stories about the bizarre, hilarious, and daunting things that had happened out in the field doing research. It felt good to discover that we all had had similarly extreme experiences. Joyfully, I realized that I was actually part of a community of practice. These outlier stories facilitated my sense of belonging, as much, if not more, than the “real stuff” we were supposed to be getting out of fieldwork. I didn’t realize it at the time, but we were sharing war stories.

A war story is a specific type of story: a personal story about how the storyteller encountered a challenge. Unlike other forms of storytelling, where you are inspired by how the storyteller overcame a challenge, in war stories, the storyteller doesn’t necessarily prevail.

Over the past few years, I’ve been gathering and publishing war stories by other user researchers.¹ These stories show how research can actually be an exciting activity that is interpersonal, intimate, and unpredictable, even though it is often hard work. Let’s face it—even experienced people may find themselves in situations they aren’t prepared to deal with.

These stories are tremendously valuable. By reading these stories, we can learn from what went wrong for someone else (or at least what was different than expected). By sharing these stories, we can create an opportunity for researchers to reflect more deeply on what really happens in the field. This is a way to move beyond merely sharing “best practices” on the tactics of research (where every online forum for researchers has a regular posting asking about video camera models and online transcription services) to addressing the personal qualities that researchers work on bolstering their entire lives. There are no tactical solutions for most of the challenges encountered in war stories. Sometimes a solution isn’t necessary or even appropriate. Rather, there are things that can be learned only when things go awry.

Some people approach their own skill development in user research in terms of other people. I am frequently asked questions like “How do I get a reluctant respondent to talk more?” and “How do I shut down a chatty participant?” These war stories show how much of doing research well is about what is within us. Improving our research skills, at least in part, is about coming to grips with our own flawed humanity.

Survivorship bias (also known as winner’s bias) is a cognitive bias that manifests as a focus on the people or things that “survived” some process, while overlooking those that did not. Sometimes this is because what didn’t survive just isn’t visible. Survivorship bias leads to overly optimistic beliefs about how the world works, because it means we don’t include the complete set of data, including both successes and failure. This type of thinking can lead to a false belief that a particular set of successes has some special property, rather than just coincidence. Culturally, our mindset encourages us to examine and emulate success in order to be successful ourselves. The prevalence of memoirs/profiles of successful business leaders is an artifact of that mindset.

Engineering and medicine have formally incorporated failure analysis into their practices, but in design, user experience, research, and so on, we don’t have the appetite. Indeed, the reward structure in the cultures that many of us work in encourages (over)confident success stories, rather than humility and reflection, which ironically are the very qualities that make for successful researchers. The demand for clear and actionable insights means we may set aside these other stories, as they aren’t “valuable.”

In these stories, you’ll see that research isn’t a method executed on subjects; rather, it’s an experience that people have together. Crucially, if more elusively, these stories reveal the priceless data that comes out of being in the field, the elements that aren’t “findings,” but are the ways in which we are personally—and permanently—changed. And you can’t be changed this way while sitting at your desk, peering into your webcam at a research participant far, far away. When you step outside of your comfort zone, you are heading off to war, in a small but meaningful way. You are facing two stages of risk—the first from whatever unknown awaits you out there, and the second from the likelihood that you will return from the war forever changed.

With all the hype around reducing the effort to conduct research so that it fits more comfortably with other aspects of product development, we risk marginalizing research as a tool for validating decisions rather than as a strategic approach for understanding the world in a profoundly different way. The journey to reach that level of understanding is founded upon those experiences that change us, even if only in small ways. Risk be damned, being changed is integral to the work we seek to do. Uncovering a new way of looking at the world, of understanding the beliefs and desires of a group of people represents a change in ourselves. Being changed, we advocate for that understanding, exhorting and cajoling others to grasp the nuances of that understanding, so that they can bring new things into the world that will better support others. In risking being changed, we are changed. And so we try to change others, and we try to make something that changes the world for some.

These stories are artifacts. They are a representation of the essence of an experience. How you receive these stories will vary. You may feel empathy for the author, thinking about how awful, or how amazing their experience was. You may feel surprised that they failed to prepare for a challenging situation, or that they were bothered by something you would simply shrug off. You might think about what you would do in that situation, and how you would have made different choices. You might feel critical of what they did or in how they described the experience in retrospect. But that’s the point! We bring our own experiences, strengths, and vulnerabilities as readers and what we take away will naturally vary. Pay attention to your reactions, emotions, and judgments. That’s where the learning lies!

Some of these storytellers are explicit about what they learned. Others just relate the narrative. That’s how life works: sometimes things happen, and we learn from them, and sometimes things happen, and we don’t learn anything. I have encouraged storytellers to limit the impulse to turn everything into a lesson and instead just try to tell a story. However, you can ponder the lessons you take away from the story. I invite you to discuss and debate these stories—and your reactions—with your friends and colleagues.

It’s OK that these researchers “messed up” in some way. You probably have messed up; you probably will mess up—that’s inevitable and OK. In no way am I suggesting that you do anything but your best work, always, but rather I’m affirming that the demands of reality—especially the messy, human reality that is at the core of research—can sometimes exceed the level of your best work, and that’s just the way it is. Reading these stories, reflecting on your reaction, and discussing with others is a way to get past unhelpful self-recrimination and to continue learning the craft of research. Reading stories like these serves as a catharsis, and there’s a therapeutic benefit to the emotional release from the tension in a story. Use that to foster empathy for the storyteller, for the other people in the story, and for yourself. Failing sucks, but reading this book gives you three ways to overcome that: lessons from others’ experiences that can limit your failures, a big stack of permission slips for your inevitable failures to come, and a growth medium for the skills and insights that can help you learn from failures.

“Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage.”

—Brené Brown, Rising Strong

Each chapter presents a group of stories organized around a theme. The chapter starts with an introduction to the theme, followed by a few stories, and concludes with a number of takeaways. Those take-aways come directly from the storytellers, or from my response to the specific stories, or my recommendations based on the chapter’s theme.

I expect that you’ll find these stories touching, amazing, hilarious, cringe-worthy, surprising, and even familiar. Let’s begin with one of my own experiences . . .

It’s All Going to Burn

It was the late 1990s. My colleague and I drove out to the exurbs of Silicon Valley to learn about our research participant’s smart home. The participant (I’ll call him Jon) told me they homeschooled their kids. I was young and naive enough that I didn’t have a clue what that typically signified in California in terms of religious affiliation and general orientation. When I asked about why they made that decision, Jon really snarled at me. He was far more interested in showing me his gear than talking about his family, but I explained that we wanted to learn about him as well. He told me that they didn’t support the local school system and its attitude toward “alternative lifestyles.” That’s when I realized I was in an environment where the values were really different than my own.

OK, no problem, that’s par for the course for the job. We spent a good long time after that checking out the details of a really incredible smart home system that he had built, cobbled, and coded together. Yet, there was a constant theme of monitoring and control, of using the technology to check up on the kids from other rooms. Still, all good information. As we were getting to the reflective part of the interview, wrapping up or nearly so, Jon abruptly changed gears mid-explanation.

Jon, “Of course, none of this really matters because it’s all going to burn.” My colleague and I were stunned and remained silent. Jon continued, “And now I have a question for you fellas: Have you accepted Christ as your savior?”

This is the sort of question I’m utterly unprepared for. In this interview, I knew it was coming, some part of my body was tense from the discussion of the rationale for home schooling, knowing that I was in a slightly vulnerable situation that was going to emerge at some point. So, while I was dreading it all along, perhaps it came as some kind of relief. Watching the video later, I saw the most deadpan version of myself I’d ever seen: “Well . . . perhaps that’s a question for another time.”

I was stuck. I couldn’t dishonor all the rapport-building and honest curiosity I’d been exhibiting for the past two hours, but now we were trapped. My colleague spluttered helplessly in an endless loop of reflecting back what Jon had said previously. I kept waiting for my opening for the “Well, time to go,” but Jon really wanted to talk to us about what we should be doing and thinking, with respect to Christ. It seems as if this went on for a very long time, but we finally made it to the doorway. Jon asked us to wait, and went off to get something. We should have made a break for it, but we were too ensnared by the requirements of politeness in our researcher role. He returned with some Bible-related literature and exhorted us intensely to follow up. Another eternity (if you will), and we were finally able to step away.

We made it to the car, drove a block, and erupted in hysterical, gasping laughter. It was the laughter of relief, the kind of manic giggling you’d get from 10-year-olds who just got away from the angry shopkeeper. We had some choice words about Jon, once we were safe.

The experience was terribly uncomfortable. I could not find a way to follow my own values as a researcher and still protect myself from a conversation that was personally risky. As a researcher, I was interested in and had respect for Jon’s views on his family, his home, education, and the afterlife. But I really didn’t want to have to reveal my own beliefs or defend them, especially in this setting.