The Practical UX Research Podcast

Warning: in the spirit of Socrates, this episode blows up conventional thinking on two points: (1) that the goal of research is to answer questions, and (2) that thinking takes place only in your head.

It's easy to think that the purpose of research is to answer questions. But when we plan our work just by acting on our stakeholders' questions, we risk doing a mountain of unnecessary research that has no impact.

Leave it to a philosopher to help us find our way out of this trap. Aaron Kagan, PhD, is both an actively publishing philosopher and an accomplished Staff UX Researcher who has worked at Google, Meta Reality Labs, and Articulate. He'll walk us through what he does at the very beginning of a project to make sure he's doing exactly the right research.

And as a bonus, we'll hear about Aaron's new book, An Introduction to Embodied Mind: Thinking Outside the Head. The notion of the “embodied” or “extended” mind is incredibly helpful to UX professionals because it helps us see how our interactions with tools and the environment are actually part of our thinking, not extra add-ons.

You can find it on Routledge's website and on Amazon and other booksellers.

The Tiny Research Wins podcast is from UXR Institute.

Some of the richest moments in a user interview come not from sticking to the script, but from questions based on simple noticing: an off-hand remark, a casual detail in their environment. This episode shows you how to use tiny moments to unlock the data that leads to big UX research insights. Amanda Gelb's UX research has helped Google, Lyft, and Asana build better products. She walks us through a case study of how noticing a small detail unlocked deep, emotional stories from a participant who'd been giving flat, surface-level answers, and gets specific about applying it in your own sessions: how to spot the signal, and why this small calculated risk consistently surfaces the depth that scripted questions miss. A skill worth sharpening for every interview you run. Subscribe to Amanda's newsletter, People Problems. The Tiny Research Wins podcast is from UXR Institute.

There's a kind of research advantage that doesn't come from a better method. It comes from understanding the context before anyone makes a formal request. Mariya Vizireanu shares a simple recurring habit that builds exactly that: a specific way to prepare for a casual stakeholder catch-up so you walk into any study already weeks ahead. She breaks down what to bring, what to ask, why showing up with a prepared question is a power move, and how to keep the exchange reciprocal to strengthen the working relationship. She also walks through a concrete example from a complex AI product launch in the gaming industry where this habit directly shaped research that moved measurable metrics. The Tiny Research Wins podcast is from UXR Institute, where Mariya teaches Games User Research.