Dr Nick Fine

Adaptavist

Principal UX Research Consultant and Strategist

Cult of Curiosity

Cult of Curiosity is a professional membership guild for UX professionals to learn and grow.  Come join us!

Cult Leader and co-founder

Big Digital Energy Ltd

Head of Behavioural Science

Cabinet Office

Lead User Researcher

Crown Commercial Service

NHS Blood and Transplant

Working on COVID-19 project to collect convalescent plasma from people who have had COVID-19, whose antibodies can be collected and transferred to unwell individuals to help aid recovery

Emergn

Head of Research

Shell

Principal User Researcher

Greater London Authority

Eurostar

Nick is a user experience researcher and designer with 20 years experience in digital and over 12 years as a practitioner, both agency and client-side.  He holds a PhD and MSc in Human Computer Interaction and a BSc in Psychology. He successfully defended his PhD thesis in 2009, entitled “Personalising Interaction Using User Interface Skins”, where he established both a novel means for establishing personality type from keyboard and mouse usage as well as discovering relationships between design elements (colour, shape, meaning) and personality type. 

By combining academic research skills and HCI knowledge with commercial UX experience, Nick has successfully delivered a number of complex and mission-critical projects, including air traffic control, financial systems and pharmaceutical R&D. He has been lead UX on projects for a number of brands, including Coca Cola, SAB Miller, Jaguar Land Rover, Bentley, EY, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, BT, Virgin Media, Camelot and both the Home and Cabinet Office.

Nick’s areas of expertise are behavioural personalisation, personality psychology, conversion rate optimisation, remote user testing and transformation through user experience.  He is a regular speaker at conferences and talks about the science of UX and scientific design.

Portfolio available on request

Senior User Researcher

If you want to emulate the success of the UX practitioners before you, you can't just pretend to do what we do, you have to do what we do in the ways that we do it, in order to get the desired successful outcomes

This means that this ridiculous idea that anyone can do research needs to go away

Anyone doing research means that anyone can create fairytales that you invest time, money, resource into, which results in low/no ROI and a lot of unnecessary pressure, stress and conflict

Having eyes and ears on your Product development is not optional or on-demand.  You don't keep your eyes and ears closed off all day and only use them occasionally.  You need feedback constantly.  Product is no different and the sooner this penny drops, the better for everyone.

Inexperience tends to overwork and 'boil the ocean'.  This is what we're seeing at scale right now, compounding the situation

Look for experienced user researchers, not market researchers, not PMs doing DIY research, if you want to understand and benefit from the true value that regular valid insight brings

Product Managers need to manage product.  Researchers need to research.  Crossing these lines is not delivering the value needed.  If PMs want research, they have to appreciate that they are going to be responsible for the outcomes - and most people just want the control, not the responsibility....because when push comes to shove, it's a big burden that requires broad shoulders and experience to manage successfully

This is a major issue that is blocking our recovery.  If there is a UR present, a PM or anyone else should not being doing DIY research.  If there is no UR, DIY research works as a temporary measure but must be treated very carefully (i.e. hypothetical insight for further validation) and plans for a dedicated UR should be made

It's a false economy, and you don't want to learn this the hard way, it's horrible, lots of toxicity and finger pointing, which ends up in a blame culture.  Not good.  Don't do it.  Invest in true, dedicated UR, ideally a senior.

Brian W Reaves

Did you know that your favourite product authors have never worked a single day as a Product Manager?  Just saying.  They have no experience of managing or working with a Product team of diverse practitioners. 

This is why the communication is all about testing your assumptions and ideas and doesn't ever appear to ever explicitly reference the researcher already present.

If you've never worked on a Product team before, you have no idea of the inter-practice dynamics and needs.  You have no idea about the ways of working issues.

So how is it that we're adopting this style of Product Management into actual live teams when it comes from a place of ideation and not a place of practical, applied, real world experience??

Way too much spice, but this is all really bad and there are too many of our peers losing their jobs as a result of being made practically redundant or have value questioned by a PM who thinks all lanes are theirs.

This is the sort of post that I should write and then delete as a cathartic act...but I can't and won't.  This is too important because we can't make the brands the money they need under these conditions, it's too random, too inefficient, too subjective, just low grade guesswork instead of high quality outcomes.

There is a better way, we just have to stop reinventing things that were already working well just because the newcomers can't or won't learn the existing thing.  Fact.

I wish my posts of late weren't quite so spicy/salty/ranty, but we can't fix things if we don't call them out.  Awareness is the first step...

🏐Wilson Thai

Taplio

Dr Nick Fine's Linkedin Analytics

Dr Nick Fine

What is Dr Nick talking about?

Dr Nick Fine's Best Posts (last 30 days)

Want to drive more opportunities from LinkedIn?

Taplio

.css-1jgreyo{background-image:linear-gradient(284deg, rgba(39,43,72,1) 0%, rgba(33,47,183,1) 100%);color:transparent;-webkit-background-clip:text;background-clip:text;}Dr Nick Fine's Linkedin Analytics

Dr Nick Fine

What is Dr Nick talking about?

Dr Nick Fine's Best Posts .css-qqfgvy{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);}(last 30 days)

Want to drive more opportunities from LinkedIn?

Dr Nick Fine's Linkedin Analytics

Dr Nick Fine's Best Posts (last 30 days)