👀 Bias & Temporal Reframing + 📉Organizations Don't Do User Research

This week: Why Organizations Don't Do User Research and How to Change That; The Importance of Critical Thinking in User Research; Your first UX researcher should report to product, not design. Check out our Research Lunch Club member interview from 🇸🇬 Singapore, our podcast pick on How Klarna uses present bias and temporal reframing to make shopping feel irresistible from Behavioral Science For Brands, plus the latest job opportunities in research. And finally - join Research Lunch Club, now live in 33+ cities, before we send out our Fourth round of matches on Monday!

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People of Research
September 04, 2025

🎤 Community Highlights

🚀 Research Lunch Club is matching researchers across 30+ cities worldwide this May - connecting members in trios from fields like AI ethics, cognitive science, ethnography, and UX research. Whether you’re in New York or London or Sydney, there’s a seat at the table.

Start this weekend with lunch with two awesome researchers!  - it’s like networking, but tailored, fun and over lunch!

🔬 Research Lunch Club Member Interview

🔬 At Research Lunch Club, we’re passionate about sharing the stories of researchers. Our Meet Our Members series spotlights the journeys and achievements of our research community, fostering connections across disciplines and giving you a view into who you can meet over lunch!

Research Lunch Club Meet our Members #15

đź“° Article Picks

đź”— Why Organizations Don't Do User Research and How to Change That: Laura Klein for NN/g breaks down the common excuses organizations use to avoid user research, such as lack of time and budget, and fears like "people don't know what they want" or "my baby is ugly." She provides direct rebuttals for each, arguing for example that it's far more costly and time-consuming to build the wrong product than to do research upfront, and clarifies that qualitative research is not a replacement for A/B testing. Klein concludes that while these excuses are addressable, the "real reason" research is often skipped is a deeper issue of misaligned incentives, where teams are rewarded for shipping features quickly rather than for delivering true user value.

đź”— The Importance of Critical Thinking in User Research: Stephanie Wilson on Medium argues that critical thinking is a crucial "superskill" for user researchers, essential for recognizing biases, embracing complexity, and making better decisions. She outlines common cognitive pitfalls like confirmation bias and black-and-white thinking and demonstrates how to apply critical thinking strategies to various research activities. For example, she advises checking interview questions for leading assumptions, analyzing concept tests to learn from all options rather than just picking a 'winner', and actively looking for data that disproves hypotheses during analysis to ensure more robust and objective insights.

đź”— Your first UX researcher should report to product, not design: Beth Devine on Medium argues that for a startup's first UX researcher, reporting to the product team instead of the design team is critical for maximizing their impact. She contends that placing research within design often relegates it to rushed, incremental validation work late in the development cycle, burdened by tight design deadlines. By having the researcher report to product, they are structurally positioned for more strategic, exploratory research that can inform the product roadmap from the beginning, building collaborative relationships with product managers and ensuring user needs are addressed before design work even starts.

🎙️ Podcast Pick

Behavioral Science For Brands: Leveraging behavioral science in brand marketing.

Podcast · Consumer Behavior Lab · The Consumer Behavior Lab is dedicated to teaching marketers across the United States how behavioral science principles can be applied to help their brands. By decoding the underlying motivations of how consumers make decisions, the CBL seeks to make a better industry - where both brands and agencies put proven science behind their decision making.

open.spotify.com/show/1fIl8q5j2CCiokt0xfdCvz

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đź‘‹ About us

We’re People of Research & Research Lunch Club - a global hybrid community uniting researchers across the industries, from UX Research to Behavioural Science. We connect, collab and grow. People of Research was created by @faysel.

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