There is a low barrier to mediocre UX Research.

Anyone can sit with a customer, have a discussion and make some observations.

And this will seem a lot like ‘doing research’.

Even if the research looked like:

👉 Poorly defined research objectives
👉 Leading questions
👉 Observations not insights

But you will still have done something that looks like UX Research.

Compare this to disciplines like engineering.

You can't build a functional app without knowing the structure of code.

Even with AI helping out, you still probably need to understand what an array, object and loop are.

There is a barrier to producing something in engineering.

This ‘condition to entry’ don’t exist in the same way in UXR.

The result?

👉 Lots of mediocre research.
👉 Anyone thinks they can do quality research.
👉 Folks with UXR expertise dismissed expendable.

To become an expert takes time, effort and hundreds of hours of practice.

The barrier to mediocrity is low. The barrier to expertise is high.

Invest. In. Research.