Earlier today, I read an interview with Karina van Schaardenburg, a user experience researcher at Twitter, in which she discusses what she uses to get her job done.  In essence, she’s got a laptop for her own use, and she’s got some tools that she uses for data collection and analysis, and she’s got some hardware and software that she uses when she’s conducting her research.  As I read it, it was all familiar to me.  Specifics aside, Karina’s setup is pretty similar to my own.  But I felt like something was missing.

The interview focuses on applications and hardware, and all of the interviews on the usesthis.com site focus on that.  Which is fine, in term of the mechanics of what I do as a researcher.  But the question that the site is trying to answer is “What do people use to get stuff done?”  The tools that I use aren’t what I do to get stuff done.

As a researcher, what I actually do to get stuff done is communicate.  I communicate with the design team, the program management team, the development team, and anyone else who I can get to talk tome.  That communication is about deciding our goals and priorities.  Then I communicate with our users to learn about what they do.  Sometimes that communication is conducted via survey, sometimes by interview, sometimes by contextual inquiry, sometimes by usability study.  After I’ve completed my research and conducted my analysis of the data, I then circle back with everyone at my company and communicate with them again: what I learned, what steps we should take next.  I keep up this communication to ensure that actions are taken, based on my recommendations.

In my opinion, the tools themselves don’t matter that much.  Yes, I’m a Mac user, and I use Morae to record my studies, and I use SlideRocket to give presentations to my team, and I use Apple Mail to communicate with everyone involved throughout the process.  But those tools isn’t what makes me a good user experience researcher.  If you took my Mac and my SlideRocket account away from me, I would still produce good research.  The tools are all but orthogonal to the discussion of how I get stuff done.  The thing that I actually use to get stuff done is communication.

This isn’t a complaint about the idea behind usesthis.com, and it’s certainly not a commentary on Karina.  I think that we understand intrinsically that copying someone else’s setup won’t magically imbue you with their traits and talents.  It’s pretty clear that using BBEdit and jailbreaking my iPhone won’t make me a novelist like Charlie Strouss.  The tool is only the tool.  Answering “what tools do you use to get stuff done” is very different from answering “what do you use to get stuff done”.  Communication is what I use to get stuff done.  Everything else is just a tool that supports that communication.