Monthly Archives: February 2011

Learn­ing how to say “no” is not easy.  Deal­ing with what comes after the no, the dis­ap­point­ment, dis­ap­proval, and rejec­tion from those you said no to, can some­times seem unbear­able. As a User Expe­ri­ence Researcher, I think we are con­stantly told that we are worth ‘less than’ our more tech­ni­cal coun­ter­parts. We are told we are a ‘cost’ to the orga­ni­za­tion, and that we can’t be picky about the work given to us.  If we say no to stay­ing over the week­end to com­plete a project, we fear that we will hurt our pro­fes­sional rela­tion­ships that we have worked so long to build, and jeop­ar­dize our job security.

I started read­ing The Power of a Pos­i­tive No by William Ury, and it has dra­mat­i­cally changed the way I view my work as a UX Researcher. The fol­low­ing are a series a lessons from the book, and how I think these ses­sions in pos­i­tive assertive­ness apply to a UX Researcher.

1. “I need to tell them no in a way that is clear, hon­est, and respect­ful, and then let them react how­ever they react.” William Ury, The Power of a Pos­i­tive No

UX Researchers often take on too many projects, and say yes to help­ing too many peo­ple. We don’t know how to be upfront and hon­est about our heavy work­load, because we know that it will cause a neg­a­tive reac­tion to the per­son we are speak­ing with. Also, we worry and can’t bear to say no to a project, or say no to help­ing some­one because we are trained to “go with the flow” as facil­i­ta­tors. We are great at accom­mo­dat­ing par­tic­i­pants, and doing what­ever it takes to make them happy. How­ever, we need to learn to stick up for our­selves — the right way, and that we can­not con­trol how oth­ers will react. All we can do is do our best to be hon­est, clear, and respect­ful, and this means we are doing the best we can.

2. “Give respect not because of who they are but because of who you are.” William Ury, The Power of a Pos­i­tive No

Giv­ing respect is the best way to have stake­hold­ers and co-workers accept your “no.”  When you show stake­hold­ers and co-workers you respect where they are com­ing from, and under­stand the pain they are going through that would cause them to bring their request to you, it is much eas­ier for them to see that you are not reject­ing them per­son­ally when you say “no.” It is crit­i­cal to put your­self into other people’s shoes, and do what­ever it takes to under­stand what the moti­va­tions are behind their request, and show them that you under­stand where they are com­ing from. It might be painful or dif­fi­cult to show respect to stake­hold­ers or co-workers who dis­re­spect you. How­ever, the rea­son you need to show this respect, as the quote above sug­gests, is sim­ple:  give respect not because of who they are, but because of who you are.  UX Researchers have good inter­ests at heart. They work as advo­cates to improve the human expe­ri­ence of using Web sites, soft­ware, apps, and other tech­nolo­gies. This is very impor­tant to keep in mind when assert­ing your­self — be empa­thetic with your co-workers, and their needs, and it will take you far.

3. “You have done the essen­tial prepa­tory work. You are like an ath­lete who has trained hard. Now dur­ing the race it is time to reap the rewards of that hard work.” William Ury, The Power of a Pos­i­tive No

Before I get to how this quote applies to UX Researchers, I need to dis­cuss an anaolgy brought up in The Power of a Pos­i­tive No. UX Researchers can learn a lot to learn from trees, in terms of how to stand strong.  William Ury talks about how trees have deep roots in the ground that keep their trunks stand­ing strong.  He says, our “no” is the trunk of the tree.  Our “yes” is in what we are rooted in, and in what we pro­duce.  Our trunks how­ever must stand strong, because if they break, what we pro­duce dies.

UX Researchers need to do their essen­tial prepara­tory work:  deep­en­ing their roots in their “yes.” They need to spend time grow­ing in their knowl­edge and belief in advo­cat­ing for users, build­ing empa­thy for users, mak­ing action­able insights, and inspir­ing devel­op­ment teams with user empa­thy.  Spend­ing time “on the bal­cony,” as William Ury calls it, dis­cov­er­ing our deep core val­ues and inter­ests, enables us to have that strong trunk that grows out of them.  The deeper our roots, the harder it is for some­one to uproot us. Even if we are chopped down, if our roots are strong, they will always grow back.  The goal of course would be to have blos­som­ing branches of UX Research, pro­vid­ing use­ful cus­tomer feed­back, val­i­da­tion, and get the voice of the cus­tomer to be lived and breathed into the very prod­ucts we ship.