Original subtitles

Hi, there! My name is Craig, and I'm

a research manager at Google.

In terms of what the day normally looks like,

I will be working closely with design,

thinking about the next iteration of a product.

I'll probably be working with a product manager, trying to

convince them of a certain direction

that we should be taking.

I'll be thinking about the research gap:

What research should we be doing?

Where could we have real benefit

and impact to the business?

There's very particular moments

where research and design really come

together to align on who we're designing

a product for and seeing how that product is then built,

and then seeing it in the hands of our users,

and seeing how that's then evaluated by them.

Normally, upfront, before we

even think about launching a product,

there's a good amount of what we

call formative or strategic

research that goes on that

our design counterparts are utilizing,

to effectively build out those initial concepts that we

will start advocating for around the business.

Once we've gotten approval or once

we're in the process of saying, "Yes,

this is something we really want to

pursue," then we're typically

researching with users, with prototypes.

We are taking insights that we

have got from the research, working with

our design teams, and really

thinking about the actual design itself,

like, Should it look like this? Should it look like that?

Where should we place this?

How will the user move from screen to screen?

In those moments, we're testing

frequently, we're testing often.

One of the biggest mistakes

I think every researcher learns at

some point in their career is

not testing early and frequently enough,

and we all have stories of where we

haven't done that and the

effect that it's had on the product.

Eventually, we'll have something that we can

launch and that's a really exciting moment.

We've gone all the way from an idea,

all the way from ideation,

through to testing something in the hands of our users,

all the way to a proper launch

where it's out in the public.

Our job doesn't stop. We're then

really heavily involved in understanding,

has that product landed?

Is it doing the things that we want it to for the user?

How do the users feel about that?

How are they responding to it?

Again, we take that feedback and

we work quickly with our design, product, and eng[ineering] team

to put that feedback into

the product and iterate from that moment on.

Over time, you get these cyclical loops,

you get this product development process using

research and insights to

inform the next stage of the product.

And fortunately, I manage a really great team of researchers,

so it's also about giving them

responsibility and giving them ownership of things,

so where can I step back and

let them do more and let them shine?