User researchers are always asking for favors of people.  It’s the nature of research.  You’re asking your design team to help you get prepared for the research, often creating or helping to create the materials that you’ll use in your research.  You’re asking your participants to give up some of their time to be poked and prodded by you¹.  You’re asking your application team to make changes to their plans based on what you’ve learned in your research.  It can make a user researcher feel like they’re always taking and never giving.  It’s not true, of course: your work gives your designers and application team better insight, which results in a better product for your users.

I know that I’m asking a lot from many other people as I do my work.  As I’m doing so, I remember to thank them for their work.  I thank my participants for taking the time to talk with me.  I thank the design team for working with me and ensuring that we had the right design artifacts to share with study participants.  I thank the application team for helping me understand what they need to know, what they have time to implement, and how my work fits into their development cycle.  I thank everyone for being involved with the work, for sharing their thoughts and ideas, for listening to what we learned and asking questions to clarify points, and for sharing their thoughts and ideas for how we move forward.

Remembering these simple courtesies helps smooth the way for a user researcher.