UserTesting.com has a great article up about The Top 10 User Testing Bad Habits (and How to Fix Them). I disagree with their #1 (it feels more like an ad for their product than a bad habit). The rest is a great reminder about how to get a user study right. I really liked this one:
#6 Do a data dump
If you run the study, then you’re familiar with everything — the instructions, the tasks, the results. But if you just hand the data and the video recordings to someone else, they may be overwhelmed. You need to summarize the results, draw conclusions, and present a cohesive summary to your team and stakeholders, not just hand them a lot of data.
Yes! The job of a user researcher is not to take dictation. The job of a user researcher is to collect and analyze the data. I see too many researchers doing a great job of collecting data and not a great job of analyzing the data. You know the data better than anyone else. Do the analysis so that your team knows what matters and what action to take.