►
Description
Lorie Whitaker and Rayana Verissimo talk about UX Research, leadership, and career development at GitLab. https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-design/-/issues/1545
B
B
Yes,
I'm
I'm
the
only
one
that
we
have
currently
and
the
distinction
between
being
a
staff
researcher
and
an
individual
contributor
role,
which
maybe
would
be
like
your
senior
or
your
mid-level,
is
that
the
staff
researcher
has
the
ability
to
look
across
stages,
which
is
another
word
for
our
business
lines
here
to
work
with
different
product
managers
and
the
product
group
manager
to
understand
where
some
opportunities
might
lie
for
deeper
research
that
spans
more
than
just
a
feature
or
a
function.
Inside
of
a
stage
group.
A
B
I
really
rely
heavily
on
my
product
manager
manager,
the
group
project
manager,
jackie
jackie
porter,
she's
fantastic.
She
can
help
me
understand
the
landscape
of
where
ops
is
going.
Where
verifies
going,
how
I
can
help
to
dive
into
the
holes
that
we
have
in
our
knowledge
of
either
our
users,
our
potential
users
of
our
our
features.
Things
like
that.
B
A
B
B
Right
now
that
one
came
directly
from
a
conversation
jackie
and
I
had
and
the
other
project
that
I'm
balancing
with
that
is
a
cross
stage-
group
strategic
project,
that's
more
holistic
of
the
whole
company
to
understand
how
people
are
using
devops
tools
across
devops
stages.
So
they
may
not
define
it
as
a
stage.
They
just
may
say
this
is
my
task
and
I'm
doing
it
then
I
hand
it
over
to
carl
and
carl
does
whatever
he
does
with
it.
B
B
So
we're
definitely
looking
to
talk
to
people
who
are
in
enterprise
organizations
that
have
a
high
level
of
maturity
in
their
devops
practices,
because
we
need
to
be
able
to
talk
to
internal
organizations
that
are
using
enough
tools
to
to
get
some
feedback
on,
and
the
hope
is
to
talk
to
two
different
companies.
This
quarter
and
get
some
high
level
themes
out
of
those
conversations
and
then
that
will
then
get
bubbled
down
to
the
different
stage
groups
so
that
they
can
say
hey.
B
You
know
there's
a
theme
here
with
adopting
secure
or
some
features
of
secure,
let's
dive
deeper
into
that
as
a
stage
group
and
then
the
idea
is
that
that
stage
group
takes
on
that
piece
of
the
research
to
become
more
tactical,
less
broad
and
strategic,
and
then
they
can
kind
of
get
some
good
hard
and
fast.
If
we
change
this,
this
will
be
a
good
thing.
Recommendations
of
it.
A
That's
awesome,
and
you
saw
previously
about
your
background
in
education
right
and
now
you
are
in
this
super
technical
environment
in
the
super
technical
company
and
I'm
curious
to
hear
what
skills
did
you
develop
or
what
skills
like
from
your
your
past
experience.
Your
past
lives
right
outside
of
gitlab
that
you
think
were
helpful
to
you
or
that
helped
you
transition
from
an
ic
to
ic
leadership
in
our
organization.
B
Yeah
definitely
my
curiosity
asking
questions
and
and
being
being
very
interested
in.
Where
is
this
going?
How
are
you
going
to
apply
this,
because
what
I've
experienced
is
a
lot
of
a
lot
of
people.
I've
worked
with
they're,
really
good
and
steeped
in
the
thing
that
they're
doing
right
there
in
that
moment,
but
if
you
start
to
ask
them
well,
if
we
do
this
now
next
quarter
next
year,
what
does
the
landscape
look
for
like
for
this
feature?
What's
a
competitive
landscape,
look
like
you
have
different
conversations
with
people
and
you're.
A
B
A
B
B
How
how
are
things
changing-
and
you
know
in
ops,
for
instance,
with
this
dakota
person-
persona
about
buying
stuff
buying
tools?
You
know
jackie
and
I
had
a
really
good
conversation
around.
What
does
this
project
mean
to
ops?
How?
How
will
this
information
allow
ops
to
grow
and
get
better
and
achieve
whatever
goals?
B
Ops
has
that
to
me
is
crucial
for
somebody
who
is
seeking
to
stretch
their
leadership
skills
because
you,
you
do
have
to
understand
that
in
order
to
so
you
can
have
the
conversations
with
them
and
then
go
have
other
conversations
with
other
people,
other
pm's
or
sales
people.
When
you're
trying
to
find
people
to
talk
to
you
can
you
can
communicate
to
them
the
importance
and
the
significance
of
this
project,
but
only
if
you
have
those
conversations
with
the
people
who
are
holding
that
information.
A
And
then,
in
terms
of
collaboration
within
the
ux
research
group
department,
I'm
not
sure
what
we
call
the
team
team.
What
is
your
role
today
as
staff?
How
do
you
collaborate
with
your
team?
How
do
you
influence
and
how
do
they
influence
your
your
work,
but
also
your
your
career,
your
self-development
at
gitlab.
B
Yeah
I
love
working
with
my
fellow
researchers.
We
don't
get
to
work
enough
together
and
we're
actually
actively
working
to
change
that.
That's
one
of
my
okrs
that
I've
taken
on
to
encourage
more
cross-collaboration,
but
I
frequently
meet
with
random
researchers
whenever
they
have
questions
or
concerns
or
anything
that
they've
got
going
on,
and
we
talk
about
methods
we
talk
about.
How
do
you
how
they're
approaching
the
project
what
concerns
they
have?
B
I've
only
been
on
this
earth
for
a
short
time,
but
I
have
seen
a
lot
of
permutations
of
projects
and
I
usually
can
talk
to
them
and
tell
them
my
experiences
and
then
hopefully
that
will
help
them
to
anticipate
what
their
experience
might
be
in
that
particular
project.
So
it's
a
lot
of
you
know,
bring
me
your
troubles
and
let's
talk
about
it
and
figure
out
how
we
can
make
it
less
troublesome
for
you,
and
I
love
work.
B
Learning
from
my
fellow
researchers
too,
because,
like
I
said,
I
don't
know
everything,
and
just
because
they're
not
at
a
staff
level,
doesn't
mean
that
they
can't
teach
me
things
so,
for
instance,
andre
who
is
on
fraternity
leave
right
now.
He
and
I
worked
on
a
project
for
verify
a
couple
months
ago
and
just
being
able
to
partner
with
him
opened
my
eyes
up
to
different
ways
to
approach
a
project
different
ways
to
pull
in
some
quantitative
data
that
I
don't
tend
to
lean
towards
as
a
default,
I'm
more
of
a
qualitative
person.
B
A
I
think
that's
also
part
of
the
beauty
right
of
this
organization
that
you
can.
You
can
get
access
to
people
as
much
as
I
don't
think,
we'll
ever
be
satisfied
with
the
level
of
collaboration
of
how
much
cross-collaboration
you
know
work
we
do,
but
we
can
create
these
opportunities
right
to
help
others
and
also
be
influenced
by
the
skills
of
people
around
us.
I
think
that's
awesome.
I'm
curious
about
challenges.
B
I
don't
feel
like
I've
transitioned,
to
be
honest
with
you,
so
I'm
still
performing
my
senior
role
duties,
I'm
still
working
with
the
product
managers
and
each
of
my
design
partners
on
their
individual
projects
now
they're
executing
them,
but
I'm
still
advising
and
mentoring
them
on
approaches
and
discussion,
guides
and
and
all
of
those
things.
So
that's
that's
something,
that's
very
tactical.
B
We
took
the
the
process
of
defining
what
it
would
be
for
ops,
because
that's
where
we,
where
we
mainly
work,
but
what
it's
turned
into
is
defining
it
for
the
wider
company,
because
before
me
there
was
no
staff
researcher
strategic
research
had
been
done,
but
not
fully
at
all.
It
was.
It
was
very
much
still
under
the
guise
of
a
tactical
strategic
research
project.
So
it's
it's
been
challenging
to
try
to
balance
both
because
every
time
I
need
to
step
back
down
to
help
somebody
to
solve
a
problem
on
a
project.
B
A
Yeah,
I
really
get
that
I
talked
to
marcel
today
about
his
own
transition
right
to
senior
responsibilities,
and
I
think
there's
this
the
curve
right
for
us
when
we
move
from
one
role
to
the
other,
especially
with
the
current
yeah,
with
the
hand
count
in
the
organization.
But
but
that's
that's
also
something
that
aligns
my
next
question.
What
skills
do
you
do,
you
think,
would
be
valuable
for
people
in
the
the
research
and
ux
department
to
invest
on
that
will
further
their
career
development.
B
Well,
it
depends
on
where
they
want
to
go
with
their
career.
You
know,
because
some
people
want
management.
Some
people
just
want
to
to
stay
in
the
practitioner
realm,
but
I
would,
I
would
say,
make
sure
that
your
fundamental
skills
are
solid,
so
for
research
make
sure
you
can
write
a
goal
in
an
objective
in
a
way
that
you
can
actually
measure
it
by
the
thing
that
you're
designing
to
measure
with
I've
seen
not
here
but
other
places.
People
who
just
cannot
get
that
concept.
B
Lends
that
confidence
to
your
ability
to
converse
with
somebody
else
about
it
and
give
them
advice
around
it.
Because,
as
you
move
up
in
your
career
ladder,
you
typically
get
further
away
from
the
hands-on
activities,
but
you
get
closer
to
the
advising
and
the
helping
activities
and
mentoring
of
other
people,
and
so
the
more
you've
got
it
down
and
you've
got
it
solid
in
you,
the
easier
those
conversations
will
be,
and
it
will
the
easier
it
will
be
for
you
to
move
up
with
those
conversations.
A
A
A
B
B
A
B
Consider
that
consider
having
those
conversations
with
people
and
and
talk
to
people
outside
of
get
lab
every
company
is
different
and
and
really
do
it
almost
like
a
research
project.
You
know
try
to
be
as
unbiased
as
you
can
take
in
their
feedback
and
say.
Is
that
really
what
I
want
to
do?
You
know
what
they
have
to
do
all
day,
or
do
I
really
want
to
do
something
else,
and
what
does
that
vision?
B
Look
like
what
are
the
skills
that
you
need
to
acquire
in
order
to
get
to
that
place
and
once
you're
there
is
that,
where
you're
going
to
stop
sometimes-
and
sometimes
no
it's
all
it's
it's
a
very
individual
experience
for
people,
and
I
think
sometimes
we
can
get
locked
into.
I
have
to
get
that
next
promotion,
because
that's
the
next
place
for
me
to
go,
and
sometimes
it
doesn't
have
to
be.
You
know,
look
it's
a
big
world
out.
B
A
I
couldn't
agree
more.
I
I
totally
see
myself
in
what
you
just
said
and
it's
an
exercise
and
it's
something
that
we
have
to
do
for
ourselves
right
and
we've
been
talking
about
career
development
and
growth
opportunities
within
our
organization.
But
I
agree
with
you
for
you
to
grow.
You
need
to
know
who
you
are
right
as
a
designer
as
a
professional,
to
understand
what
makes
you
happy
and
then
use
people
around
you
using
a
positive
way
to
enable
your
growth
and
to
align
with
their
own
goals.
A
You
know,
because,
especially,
I
think
in
our
organization
we're
in
a
very
privileged
position
position
where,
indeed,
everyone
can
contribute
and
everything
is
so
transparent
and
you
can
see
the
opportunities
and
create
them
in
the
open
and
bring
people
to
align
your
personal
goals,
your
career
goals,
with
where
the
organization
is
going,
and
indeed
for
some
people
for
not
everyone.
A
promotion
is
a
measure
of
success
and
that's
also
a
value
in
our
organization.