Conversations with Konstantin Escher, Head of UX Research @ OneFootball
1. What was your motivation to transition into a career in UX research? (How it all started!)
I started studying psychology when I was 18. Since high school, I had been planning to go into advertising and see how brands work, and how it impacts human decision making. I wanted to learn how brands have such power on people’s self perceptions and status. For example, wearing white headphones back in the days.
I started working as an advertising writer in a traditional ad agency and very soon I realized that the worlds I thought were connected, were actually not, at least not in practice. It is a very creative and business driven world but it was not what I was seeking. So I reshaped my interests a bit and was drawn into neuromarketing. Then again, it was not science, it was just marketing, a cool way to sell your service as an agency. And so I again learned that it was not something substantial. I, again went to find my way within the field of psychology. I did know that I didn’t want to become a clinical psychologist. I was more interested in the fundamental science of how people behave.
Later on, I moved to Basel because of their unique Master’s program, which focused on decision making and social psychology, which I was extremely interested about because for me that was basically the scientific way of looking at what I was originally interested about, how do people behave in a social context and how do they make decisions.
During my final year I was introduced to the field of usability testing through a teacher who was running courses in the human machine interaction department at Basel. He was also working at Google and was leading the UX department there. We had a chance to run an eye tracking study for Google Maps, and that was the first time the entire idea of applied psychology, statistics and research blending in the real world clicked for me.
I was also a student assistant for the department of social psychology at that time, and I observed that the academic field of science, especially, psychology, is spinning around itself a lot, and not often tackling real life problems, in a sense. So, when I entered this course on user testing, and usability testing, and how humans interact with technology, it instantly clicked for me. I just never knew what it was called.
So, without any prior experience, I applied for a junior position at HERE technologies in Berlin. I was lucky to get a chance to learn the basics, run studies there and got to know a lot of interesting people. Later on, I was lucky enough to find a position at OneFootball, which at that point had never run user research. I was the first and only person who ever did user research to join there.
The opportunity was awesome as a challenge, but certainly frightening, given the fact that I had less than a year of experience. But I took the chance, and worked from within the product design department. I got the chance to introduce the idea of user research, how it can be used within a product development cycle, how it contributes to success, and how it makes you smarter, and how it makes your decision smarter.
All of a sudden, there were requests towards me from outside the product design department, such as the newsroom, and our sales team, and marketing. They all had an interest in: understanding our users better, what drives them, what they’re interested in, what their routines were and how we can build a product that excites them. I was not just working for the product but I was working for the entire company in a sense. So we decided to grow this into a team, which I am leading now. It has been four and a half years, and I’m still there. And that’s the, kind of the whole story.
2. What is your best skill as a UX researcher and what advice would you give to someone who is motivated to learn it? (The 3 core skills according to Konstantin!)
I will probably generalize as a response to this question, because, I think, as a great user researcher, there are a number of things you need to bring with you in order to succeed.
The first is pretty straightforward, which is, great technical skills both on the qualitative and the quantitative side. You need to know what makes data reliable and valid. You need to be critical towards yourself when it comes to understanding how representative is the qualitative feedback. Often, you need to slow down or speed up in terms of overgeneralizing. You need to know when to validate your data through another set of methodologies.
So I think research is the hard skill, being a good researcher in that traditional sense. Yes, we are faster than academics. Yes, we have to bring stuff on the road. Yes, we don’t have so long, or so much time to execute as you would have in academia, but you always need to be aware of the level that you apply to your own work. You cannot become sloppy just because you are fast.
I think this comes with the second skill, a general interest in people and knowing how to sell research. Qualitative research is very hard to explain in a numbers driven business world, because people don’t initially understand why you would make arguments based on five people’s opinions in an interview situation. So you need to come with a big interest in solving other people’s problems and being empathetic towards others like: “how can I help you?,” “Tell me what I can do to make YOU super successful?,” “How can I support YOU in that regard?”
You are not doing user research for yourself, you are always serving other people, you are serving other departments, you make other people successful, never really yourself. You need to shape your storytelling for your audience, and you need to be a seller of research outcomes. Because, ultimately, what you want is that people take actions from your suggestions. That’s when you’re impactful as a user researcher.
You are not going to be impactful if you limit yourself too much on the data. No one cares about the boxplot or the differences in averages. The question is, what does that mean for the team and their next decisions. And you need to be able to translate numbers into stories.
So, basically user research is storytelling, with a very solid foundation on how we collect the data. We are giving advice to others, based on something we truly believe in, which is not our gut feel but it’s actually valid solid data.
The number three is a collaborative mindset which I think is very related to the previous. You will always fail when your ego comes within the field of user research. This is never a one man show. You will never be able to rule everything and you are always dependent on support from others when it comes to prototyping or when it comes to any stage in the process.
Also, if you are trying to serve yourself then you are on the wrong road. Because as a user researcher, you are barely in the spotlight. You are always the layer behind the success, but you are never the front runner of success because you are not executing; you are not the designer. You are not the one who shipped the feature. You are the supportive role. So, don’t take yourself too seriously. Be there for others, make their problem your problem. And then you will have a great time.
3. What impact and value does your UX team create at OneFootball?
User research, together with product management and product design, are the three pillars of our product division at OneFootball. We act in this triangle, and build cross-functional teams with the engineers to work on features. That is our core essential role. We support the teams from ground up.
So, step number one is problem definition: what problem do we try to solve and is it even a problem. We explore and validate potential problems and how we can move forward to later iterations. Since we play a central agency role: we serve anyone, free to connect and free to move.
Moreover, we are not just very deep down in the execution of individual features but we are more on the high level of where we are heading as a company. We support in future strategic operations, we can support different teams when it comes to market analysis and market comparisons. We are also working with partners of OneFootball. I have run research projects together with Sky, Adidas, Betway. That’s kind of the groundwork for our product strategy.
When I joined OneFootball, it was very close to the Euro 2016, like one month before. Back then we were just 60 people. Today we are 250. So, now the company size, the setup, the way we work and the way we create teams is very different. I cannot speak for what was the case before I joined but what I have seen developed is just how much research has become the norm. I think, our contribution in the last four and a half years so far has been kind of standardizing the ways you understand your users and consider user needs in their decision making.
4. What is your perception about UX maturity across industries in Germany?
I am not sure I am in the position to judge UX majority for an entire industry or market, I would not want to make that judgment. Also, because very honestly speaking, I’m sitting in the middle of a bubble which is called Berlin, and Berlin is like the epicenter of the UX majority when it comes to Germany. Like, at least Germany.
I think we’re very privileged in Berlin to have such a great community and so many people to connect with through. I don’t want to make any judgments, beyond the horizon that I’m familiar with. So, I cannot really give you a good answer.
5. What would be the top 3 challenges UX researchers face in the current environment?
When it comes to the challenges, I have three points based on my observations.
The first challenge, what I am observing in the market for user researchers is that it seems that many companies are splitting qualitative and quantitative research. They have experts for both. I think that’s dangerous for two reasons.
One, I think it makes work a bit less efficient. Let’s say your team wants to start working on the research questions that you have discussed and agreed on. It turns out that a user survey, across five markets, would be the best way to approach that research question right now. Then, it turns out that the quantitative researcher is someone else who has not been involved with that team and the team’s issues and problems for a while. So, you need to first get that person fully on board, so that he or she fully understands what the questions are and what kind of pain points are you addressing.
Two, as an individual, I believe that if you want to make a career in user research, it’s very important that you are qualified in mixed methodologies, because without that, you will end up not being able to answer 50% of potential questions that you come across. I was very privileged that I got such a good statistics education and in university. I learned the qualitative side of things, and the ways of analyzing qualitative data and collecting interesting information. I think the other way around is way more difficult if you come from a qualitative background. It takes really long to learn the quantitative side of things, get comfortable in statistics and data analysis to become comfortable and confident in any kind of research question people throw at you.
The second challenge I see is that, when I talk to people, they act as the agent for the user, and the defender of user interests. Sometimes it falls into the category of user versus business. I think that is fundamentally wrong. I think if you want to have an impact in a company that is organically business driven, you, as a user researcher, need to be able to express user needs in a business language, otherwise you will probably fail on the higher level of management. You need to tell that story from a business perspective on how the users perceive you and how you can make your company and business even more successful by pleasing user interests. I think a lot of people struggle in finding the right tone when they talk to management and business operations.
The third one is very related to COVID. I think one big challenge right now is creating an atmosphere of trust and a kind of common empathy in a remote user interview situation. We are not able to invite people to our office and interact with body language, right? We’re not able to create an atmosphere in a room or in a shared physical space, that gives people comfort and trust and makes them relaxed, so that you can really have an interview, which is interesting for the both parties. Now, we are relying heavily on remote interviews and I perceive it much more difficult in front of a webcam, to build up the connection with our participants, to build up a relationship. You are very limited in your body language, and it’s also difficult to look at a product together and share an interest in understanding how this thing works. This is a big challenge right now.
6. If there are some common core abilities that you assess while you take a UX researcher (from junior to senior) in your team, what would they be?
I think that’s a bit related to some of my previous answers when it comes to storytelling. But If I want to add, I think Junior user researchers tend to rush. The first and most important step of every project is really, really understanding what the questions are and what problems you are trying to solve.
I observe that I have to push back people into that stage one of each project. They tend to rush into execution because they feel more comfortable and confident in that second stage or third stage. But very often, I tell them that we’re not there yet, we have to go back, we really need to understand what we’re trying to solve.
Because you can execute the project, very well, technically very well. Still, it will never create impact, if it was not tackling real questions, real problems that your stakeholders have.
So, I think that’s especially difficult for junior researchers because they are confronted with potentially much older or much more experienced stakeholders, designers, product owners etc. Still they need to push them back and they need to stay in that uncomfortable moment and ask, “I don’t think I understood. Can you explain it again?,” “Why is that a problem for you?”. Ask again in different words and try to understand what impacts their decision making.
I believe that if a question is not really a question, it’s not going to change anything anyway, and we don’t need to investigate it. A lot of designers and product owners struggle coming up with that formulation and I think it is a researcher’s responsibility to help others get into that sync.
What I said last was more on the junior side. But documentation and reporting is something I have seen people struggle across a junior to a senior. You need to report your research work, express yourself, write your thoughts in a structured written form so that others can review and give feedback whenever they have the time. Asynchronous communication is a must.
Your storytelling abilities are a key factor. You can refer to a bar plot or a box plot or whatever, but the data should never be a message. The message is always something of quality that people understand and relate to, while the data is just the support of that message.
But too often it’s still flipped. People point at the data. But what does it mean? The first sentence should be, “Hey, you should do ABC because then you are going to be successful.” “Why should you do that? let me show you the data.” That is the order. Be brave enough to give strong recommendations.
I think these are the core abilities as a researcher: stay in uncomfortable situations when it comes to stakeholder management, get to the core of what you’re trying to understand, find the right tone to communicate and become the partner for people, document your work structure and your thinking, express yourself clearly and don’t keep talking but actually make a point. That’s the core abilities for me, from turning a junior into a senior.
(End of conversation)
