UX Tea Break: User Research and Business Analysis
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- Опубліковано 8 лют 2025
- Subscribe to my channel: bit.ly/2NBKaOe
I answer the question, "What’s the difference between a user researcher and a business analyst? Can a business analyst work in a user research role?"
Have a UX-related question you want me to answer? Post it in the comments.
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As a User Researcher, I think you've got this spot on. While I look down on BAs because I think they don't like users, they look down on me because I don't have a clue about the business 😄
Thank you David, I work in the user research role and recently got paired with a BA in my team. This helps to understand how we both can compliment each other.
Glad it was helpful!
I am so glad that you had a youtube channel. Looking forward to coming videos.
Thanks for your support John!
I kind of file everything under product and there are different paths you can take based on the economy and demand. Project Management, Product Management, UX Researcher and Business Analysis. You might have to be flexible around all four to be really job secure.
Good point Temi.
This is great!
I’m a Business analyst and currently supporting the user researcher and doing the job too. I had to change my business analyst mindset to be able to elicit requirements like a user researcher.
Glad it was helpful Jane.
Thank you for sharing your ideas in this video.
I've been working as a BA for a while. In my experiences we have a lot overlapping in the part of users experiences and needs. However, apart from that BA job also analysis the whole level of business from the holistic perspective as well. So, there are lots of more extra analysis for BA to do.
Well said! I think BAs provide great value in an enterprise architecture role.
THE video I've been waiting years for
Cheers Geoff, I'm glad it was useful.
Thanks David
You're welcome. 😊
So, just a comment about what you're saying at 4:04 I don't really find that any book or course that is worth its salt- or certainly not an accredited course- for Business Analysts will instruct a BA to ask stakeholders for what they want- BAs have numerous techniques, as do UX (arguably more) for eliciting requirements. In that sense BAs also need to find the "true" not the expressed requirements- or even undiscovered ones.
Fair point, well made. I was speaking from my experience working with BAs.
I was exactly looking for this video. Thanks.
Questions:
1.
What is the authorized formal body for service design like Stanford dSchool for Design Thinking, British Design Council for double diamond...
2.
I work as a BA with a summer internship experience of using DESIGN THINKING's tools for a new product fighting food waste (from ideation to validating a high fidelity prototype). Now how can I learn service design? can you suggest any resources?
3.
Can you make a video explaining how Business Analysis, UX research and Product Management work together?
There isn't a formal body for service design. It's the Wild West out there! I know there are a number of free courses that teach service design: try looking at Coursera.
Thanks David, this video is very insightful as I have been trying to understand the value of a UX when a Business Analyst is in a project or vice versa. I have 4 years of solid agile BA experience, the projects I was involved including digital transformation, service design, IT, cyber security and many more. But when this UX designer was first introduced into my project I was confused and to an extent I thought he was taking over my role. I understand that UX by name has that extra knowledge around users and I agree with you that a business analyst might not ALWAYS think as a user-because we care about the business. Now things are changing slowly (or maybe I am slow at this) and I an under an impression that UX/CX are evolving and soon the BAs will be redundant because they do exactly the same thing (less the design part from a BA) is this correct? I am very disappointed at the fact that how can a BA be so under valued when working with a UX? Correct me if Im wrong, as a BA, I always make sure I understand every single detail from both business and technology (not that I would document them all but I definitely want to know the ins and the outs of that product) whereas a UX from my view, they are more focusing on the user experience, design and process improvement (in the digital wold only) but not always looking things in a granular level. I would say both roles must dependent on each other in order to achieve a goal.
Rather than think of yourself in competition with user researchers, my suggestion is that business analysts instead look to their strengths, and fill the gaps that user researchers leave. The old way of doing requirements capture is behind us. In the new world, let the user researchers uncover user needs. The BA could then champion business needs, stakeholder needs and make technology decisions. Imagine yourself as the bridge between the user researcher and the enterprise architect.
David Travis thank you for your advice 🙏
Nice overview. However, I think that you are considering the difference only from a historical point of view, but it seems to me that you missed the bigger point. UX researchers are focused on the interaction of the users with the system only, whereas business analysts have a wider system scope. For example, the business may require a server with one terabyte of storage to accommodate all its user’s data. The business analyst would care about and document that. The UX researcher would not.
Good point, agreed. Though these days, I see that part of the job being done by enterprise architects. Maybe BAs are being swallowed up at both ends?
@DavidTravis hello Sir, I want to share my experience in the above comparison which you have discussed. By profession I am Business Analyst but having 4 years of experience I learned about user research, wire-framing and of course analysis. I was curious to know that how this wire-framing can be helpful to the stockholders and the developers. So I learn so many things into that and slowly unknowingly I also learned about this User research.
Let me share you my view and that is, for business analyst it is plus point to have knowledge in User research part because it helps team to take care some of the things which only Business Analyst know based on the conversation with the stockholders. Those are Business analyst who shaped the business of client including requirements to whole system's flow.
To cut it short, I believe there is very thin line of demarcation between Business Analyst and User Research. At some point those are connected. It is easy to carry out user research when a person knows what users need from the xyz project and Business Analyst can understand it better then the anyone else.
I learned many things from your video. Thank you for sharing this valuable information to us. God bless you !
Thank you for your considered and thoughtful comment Jasmin. However, I disagree that a BA understands what users need better than anyone else. BAs understand what the business needs -- this isn't always what users need.