Nikki Anderson-Stanier

I once entered a bar as a normal graduate student and emerged as an aspiring user researcher.

I first heard about user research at an NYC bar party in 2015, the year we had the seemingly never-ended debate on whether that dress was #blackandblue or #whiteandgold and also the year Google changed its logo for the first time since 1999.

I’d love to say I've never looked back, but there were quite a few times when I seriously considered quitting to be an interior decorator or to open my own bookstore.

What gave me self-crippling doubt about user research?

I was so lonely as a team of one that I practiced my presentations in front of the bathroom mirror at work rather than with colleagues. My fingers nearly broke from the hours I spent googling “how to build a persona,” or “what is an executive summary,” or “how to write insights that stakeholders will actually listen to and care about that will also get me promoted because all I do is work?”

Luckily I kept going, and now people call me an “expert in the field” - someone once even called me a “legend.” I have written over 250 articles, - attempting to wrangle them into a book - spoken at dozens of conferences, and upwards of fifty podcasts and events with super cool people and organizations such as UXPA, dscout, UXInsight, and Dovetail.

I don’t want you to experience the crippling self-doubt and impostor syndrome I did. I want you to:
⭐️ Stroll into that 1x1 interview with confidence rather than crossing your fingers (toes and eyes) that the participant will cancel
⭐️ Facilitate that workshop so well that everyone’s buzzing about your insights, rather than calling in sick for the next six months until someone forgets about it
⭐️ Grab that promotion/pay rise you’ve been wanting for what feels like the past five years by the horns

I’ve rallied together hundreds of user researchers, cheering them on, and supernova-ing their careers, so that they are happy doing the thing they love: researching users.

If this sounds like something you’d enjoy, join the community (www.userresearchacademy.com/uxrmembership)!

PS: In my spare time, I carry around something called a Pokeball Plus to walk around with some of my favorite Pokemon (Charizard, Gengar, and Growlithe, if I have to name a few) in real life. I also obsess over the chemical levels in our pond, which houses our beautiful Koi fish (each of them has a name, and they are funny). I live in Jersey (the old one off the coast of France but part of the UK) with my husband, my aforementioned dog, two cats, eleven Koi fish, and our garden railway.