Powering smarter research: what the UserTesting acquisition of User Interviews signals for UX research
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome back to Insights Unlocked. In this episode, we're diving into a big moment in the research world, user testing's acquisition of user interviews. Guest host Kate Towsey joins Baran Urkel and Basil Fakhoury to talk about what this means for researchers, the vision behind the move, and how the combined platforms will shape the future of customer insights. Enjoy the show.
welcome to insights unlocked an original podcast from user testing where we bring you candid conversations and stories with the thinkers doers and builders behind some of the most successful digital products and experiences in the world from concept to execution
Welcome to the Insights Unlocked podcast. I'm Nathan Isaacs, Principal Content Marketing Manager here at User Testing. And joining us today as guest host is Kate Towsey. Kate is a ResearchOps thought leader, advisor, coach, and educator. She's the author of Research That Scales, the editor-in-chief of the ResearchOps Review, and the founder of the ChaCha Club, a member's club for ResearchOps professionals.
What does the acquisition of User Interviews by UserTesting signify for researchers?
She is also an auto-documentarian, recently exploring the past, present, and future of research ops in a five-part series published on the Awkward Silences podcast. Welcome to the show, Kate.
Really great to be here.
And our guests today are Baran Erkal and Basel Fakhoury. Basel is the co-founder and CEO of User Interviews, and Baran is the Chief Strategy Officer at User Testing. Recently, user testing acquired user interviews, and this episode is an opportunity to talk about what that means for our listeners in the research community. Welcome, everyone.
Thank you, Nathan.
And a quick note that we've asked Kate to be our guest host, given her leadership role in the research community. Kate is not being paid for her appearance, but User Interviews is a sponsor of the Research Ops Review. And with that, enjoy the show.
Wonderful. So let's really start with the big picture because we've seen a lot of chatter, particularly on LinkedIn. People have been blown away by the merger, a lot of interest in it, but also a lot of emotions around it. Basil, let's start with you. Why now? Why now is now the right time for user testing and news interviews to become one, I guess?
Awesome. Okay. First of all, really excited that you're hosting this. For everyone who doesn't know, I've known Kate for almost a decade since we were building user interviews.
We got way back.
Yeah. Coming up with the concept of research operations. But yeah, a lot of the, there's many reasons now is the right time. One of which is user testing right now. I think the leadership at user testing, I've been able to get to know over the past year. Brian and I coincidentally live ten minutes from each other. We've had many coffees over the past year talking about the vision for user testing, for user research broadly about the space. And there's just a ton of alignment with our mission and user testing's mission and their plans going forward felt so customer centric and tied with what we were trying to do. So a lot of it was was that the timing of the team and then broader for the research industry.
I think the research industry is going through a lot of change right now. And being able to join our best-in-class panel with them as the leader in the space, I think, allows more researchers to have access to our participants, allows for more investment across both products. And the combination of that and the team and user testing, it just felt like, hey, now this makes sense.
MELANIE WARRICK- Baran, what's the vision for, at least what's the vision behind user testing and use-into-use at this time?
Yeah, Kate, I think Basil covered it quite well. We really want to help scale customer insights for our customers and the community more broadly.
How will the platforms maintain openness and flexibility post-acquisition?
User Interviews built the best panel in the industry and one that we heard from our customers that they were very, very happy with. And they asked us, could we work more closely together between our platforms? You know, the vision is really to do that and make it easier for customers to recruit the people they're looking for and to get high quality feedback.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:02–1:10
2
What does the acquisition of User Interviews by UserTesting signify for researchers?
1:10–4:10
3
How will the platforms maintain openness and flexibility post-acquisition?
4:10–10:22
4
What future investments are planned for Research Hub and panel innovation?
10:22–14:43
5
How will participant experiences be prioritized after the merger?
14:43–19:08
6
What is the evolving role of research in an AI-driven future?
19:08–23:18
7
What can researchers expect moving forward from this partnership?
23:18–28:30
8
What lessons from past acquisitions are relevant to this merger?
28:30–44:57
Speakers
5 identifiedMore from Insights Unlocked
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