UXR in tech has been a hot topic lately

There's a Lenny's podcast out or about to be about about UXR with Judd Antin who wrote the provocative article, The UXR Reckoning is Here. I had a dropped a comment in Hacker News when it first came out but I wanted to expand on my thoughts here.

I graduated from a HCI program and the problem I continue to see is we turn to UXR in all situations of indecisiveness and not necessarily when it makes sense. I think formal UXR is best applied to situations when you have little room to be wrong. It's also best done before you done a lot of solution formation.

It also matters what you are trying to research, not everything lends itself to being researched. In Silicon Valley when it was boom times, certain companies could afford to be wrong all the time. Talking with friends and sometimes hearing stories from candidates, I can't help wonder some of these ideas got greenlighted. Surely user research would have quickly confirmed that these were follies?

If you're Google and Facebook with behemoth ad revenue sources, you have more room to ship to learn. At a smaller company, you need to find ways to cheaply make sure that you are building the right thing because you may not getting many shots at making it right.

I haven't listened to the podcast yet, but I wanted to write this now so I can be, yes I have orginal thoughts, and not just regurgitate others opinions.