Research The Researcher S01C12 feat Mrudula Sreekanth
The finale for Season 1!
This conversation is special in many ways.
This is the last Conversation for the inaugural Season-1.
Mrudula was the 2nd person whom I met in-person for this passion project of mine. Rest everyone was done remotely due to geographical constraints.
The 1st person I met in-person was Harini who inaugurated “Research the Researcher”.
So the 1st and the finale one both were done in-person. :)
Name and a brief intro about yourself…
Hi, I am Mrudula.
I am at Peepal Design for the last 4.5 years.
Prior to that, I was at, Oracle, Samsung, SAP. I do not have a Design/Research background.
I started my career in Germany. I did my Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering from NIE Mysore, Masters in Information Technology from Germany. During my masters, there were courses in HCI which exposed me to this field. Master Thesis was in a German Research AI institute where I stayed on for 2 years. This was a project for Paul Allen, the Co-founder of Microsoft.
My Manager in SAP — Durgaprasad, is the co-founder of Peepal Design, he offered me to be a part of Peepal Design in 2015.
Current place of work
Peepal Design
Designation/role/title
COO & Head of Research
What you up to? (any interesting work or project you want to talk about)
Not doing as much hands-on research as I used to do earlier when I had joined Peepal Design.
Nowadays I step in when local language (Kannada) is required or when clients (large scale) insists I get involved.
Clients come with unique questions and problem statements, some don’t even know what the problem statements are. Some studies are towards finding whether a problem even exists.
How and Why did you get into User Research?
While at SAP, in the first appraisal there was a remark “Potential to be a great researcher”. Took whatever opportunity came for Research at SAP, which was not quite a lot. It was more of a Design role with opportunities in Research.
Then joined Samsung in a full-time Researcher role, and moved on to Oracle before joining Peepal Design
One book recommendation for those who want to get started in User Research (can also be a book which you often refer to)
About Face by Alan Cooper, when I was doing my Masters.
What skills do you look for when hiring Researchers? (or what skills you think Researchers should have)
We have had bad hires from a cultural perspective, some were not a team player, some we couldn’t evaluate the skillset properly.
Being in a service agency, we cannot afford people who are not able to scale quickly. And in small teams, it’s difficult to hide your incompetence or lack of certain skills which we need.
Unless our entire team is client facing and billable, they are of no value to us. So, to be able to become billable and scale quickly is what we look for in our candidates.
It's ok if they take 3–6 months, but taking a year is not workable for us and not worth time to invest.
We are still learning and tighten things from a hiring perspective. Though at times, compromises do get made as we have projects and need to get it done.
Now we are trying to refuse projects rather than hire a bad fit.
We look for, how is their facilitation skills, they need not be great in the beginning, but we need to see the potential.
We look for screener writing skills (analytical skills), how is their discussion guide writing skills, how many different research methods are they aware of, how is their analysis skills.
General communication, written and verbal skill. How they present portfolios. Story-telling skills, we look at various aspects, we don’t expect them to know everything, but do they have a fair idea and do we see the potential.
Will he/she fit in in our environment (fast paced) and the kind of team we have. Can we coach and mentor? The person must enjoy the work they do.
Some people are fit for a kind of work — say social cause/noble cause…so they may not fit in with the kind of work we do, doesn’t mean they are bad at what they do.
What value does User Research add to Product Design & Development? (if any examples where User Research created an impact, that would be great)
Research is the foundation. It tells you whether to build a product or not.
A client came to us saying we want to do Research in the farmer segment and see if we can build a product for them. Post-research we went back with our findings that perhaps the “mandi” people is where there is a potential and not with the farmers.
(Anirudh — This is such a wonderful example. The field of Research is such that, if you have an open mind, you may stumble upon opportunities you never thought existed.)
How do you grow as a Researcher? (what should Researchers do to stay valuable)
Help the client solve the problem, do different kinds of projects. Try to propose new unique methods depending on the problem statement and what the client is trying to achieve.
Think, why you are proposing a particular method and why will it work.
What are the sources of info which you follow to stay updated in the field of User Research (can be people you follow on Medium/LinkedIn/Twitter, Websites, Publications, etc)
Tie-up with UX alliance helps a lot to stay updated with different methodologies and internationally accepted standards. They are trying multi-country studies, different tools…so this helps to learn.
Thanks, Mrudula for the wonderful insights! Mrudula is on LinkedIn.
Past Conversations with fellow Researchers —
