Your research team is doing the work.
So why isn't anyone listening?
I train teams to do research that actually lands with stakeholders, with leadership, and across the business. Not theory or slides people forget. Real skills that change how your team operates, starting the week after training.
I’ve trained teams at ↓
72%
of research findings are never acted on by the teams that commissioned them
Nielsen Norman Group3 in 5
research leads say stakeholders regularly ignore or deprioritise their team's findings
UXR Collective, 2025$0
is the return on research that gets filed and forgotten, no matter how good it was
2,000+ trained researchers
If you lead a research team, I already know what is keeping you up at night
Stakeholders nod along in readouts then do whatever they were going to do anyway. Your team is producing great work. It's just not changing decisions.
Leadership is starting to ask if you really need this many researchers. You can feel the pressure to justify the team's existence, and "we do great research" isn't cutting it anymore.
Everyone's talking about AI and your team doesn't have a clear answer. Some are scared of it. Some are using it badly. None of it is coordinated.
Research gets done. Research gets filed. Nobody's sure what happened to it. The work is good but the impact is invisible and invisible impact doesn't survive budget season.
You can't show ROI on your team's work. You know the value is there. Proving it to finance, to your CPO, to anyone who controls headcount? That's a different skill entirely.
In my 12 years training researchers, I've never met a team that didn't have at least one of these problems
This is exactly what I fix.
I've trained over 2,000 researchers across 12 years. I know where teams who do research get stuck and I know how to unstick them. Fast.
What changes after working with me
Stakeholders start pulling research into decisions
Your team learns to speak the language of business impact so research becomes impossible to ignore
Research ops stops being a source of chaos
Cleaner processes, better tooling decisions, and a team that spends more time on research and less on admin
Researchers can show measurable impact on the business
Concrete frameworks for tracking, communicating, and proving the value of every piece of research
Findings land. Stakeholders listen. Work gets acted on.
Researchers learn to communicate with clarity and confidence. No more shrugging after a readout
Your team uses AI confidently and correctly
No more AI chaos or avoidance. A clear, shared approach to where and how AI fits into your research practice
Your team leaves energised, not exhausted
People actually enjoy the training. They leave with momentum and action items they can put into play immediately.
What I train on
Research in the Age of AI
AI isn't going away and neither is the chaos of teams using it differently, badly, or not at all. This session gives research teams a shared, practical framework for where AI genuinely helps, where it creates risk, and how to use it in a way the whole team trusts.
What your team walks away able to do
Identify where AI genuinely accelerates research and where it quietly destroys quality
Use AI tools confidently in synthesis, analysis, recruitment, and research planning
Build a shared team approach so everyone's using AI consistently, not chaotically
Write prompts that produce actually useful research outputs
Best for teams who know AI is changing their work but haven't figured out a coherent approach yet. Especially valuable when there's a mix of AI-enthusiasts and AI-sceptics on the team, this session gets everyone to the same place.
Available formats:
90 min session: AI landscape + where to start
Half-day: hands-on with your team's actual tools
Full-day: build your team's AI research playbook
Program: 3 x 2hr sessions, tool-specific deep dives
Stop Burying the Lead
Your research is good. The problem is how it's being communicated. This session teaches researchers to lead with insight, not methodology so findings actually change decisions instead of getting nodded at and forgotten.
What your team walks away able to do
tructure any research output using the Pyramid Principle so stakeholders get the "so what" in the first 30 seconds
Translate research findings into business language that resonates with product, engineering, and leadership
Track and demonstrate research impact even without direct access to product metrics
Run readouts that end with action rather than polite nodding and no follow-up
Best for research teams who feel like their work is good but doesn't get the traction it deserves. Also powerful run with stakeholders in the room — when both sides speak the same language, things move faster.
Available formats:
90 min session: overview of Pyramid Principle
Half-day: full Pyramid Principle + live practice
Full-day: deep dive with team's real work
Program: 3 x 2hr sessions over 3 weeks focused on different areas
Research that Actually Answers the Question
Most research problems aren't method problems, they're question problems. Teams spend weeks on research that was never going to answer what the business actually needed to know. This session fixes that, and builds the method confidence to back it up.
What your team walks away able to do
Turn vague stakeholder requests into sharp, answerable research questions
Choose the right method for the right question and confidently explain why to stakeholders
Run leaner studies that produce sharper insights without cutting corners on quality
Stop doing research that was never going to be acted on before it starts
Best for teams with a mix of experience levels, teams onboarding new researchers, or any team that's realized their research is thorough but not quite landing. Also great run with product and design, including shared method literacy changes how the whole team scopes work.
Available formats:
90 min session: research question sharpening workshop
Half-day: methods + planning with real team projects
Full-day: end-to-end research planning intensive
Program: 3 x 2hr sessions across the research lifecycle
From Chaos to Research Practice
When research ops is broken, everything else suffers. Recruiting takes forever, no one can find past studies, and researchers spend half their time on admin instead of research. This session builds the operational foundation that lets a research team actually scale.
What your team walks away able to do
Audit what's broken in their current ops setup and know exactly what to fix first
Build a lightweight research repository that people actually use
Create repeatable processes for recruiting, consent, and study documentation
Make the case to leadership for proper ops resourcing with numbers to back it up
Best for growing research teams who've outgrown informal processes, teams without a dedicated research ops person, or any team where researchers are losing significant time to avoidable admin. Head of research or research ops lead should be in the room.
Available formats:
90 min session: ops audit and priority-setting
Half-day: process design workshop
Full-day: full ops overhaul intensive
Program: 3 x 2hr sessions to build as you go
I also offer trainings and sessions on:
Specific research methodologies like research interviews, usability tests, surveys, quantitative research benchmarking
Using mixed methods research
Workshop facilitation
Synthesis and analysis
Design sprints
Team dynamics
Don’t see your topic here, just ask!
How it works
01. 30-minute discovery call
We talk about where your team is, what's not working, and what success looks like in very specific outcomes that we can measure.
02. I design a session built for your team
Not off-the-shelf. Built around your team's actual challenges, tools, and context so every thing is relevant and helpful.
03. Your team leaves with skills they actually use
Interactive, practical, memorable. People leave with things they can do differently the next day, not slides they'll never open again.
Hello.
I’m Nikki.
I've spent 12 years watching research get ignored and figuring out how to fix it.
I'm a user researcher, educator, and founder of User Research Strategist and Drop In Research. I've trained 2,000+ researchers, spoken at 30+ conferences, and write The User Research Strategist on Substack, one of the most-read newsletters in the UXR world.
I care deeply about research being done well and taken seriously. I built this training practice because I kept seeing the same problems at company after company and I got tired of watching great researchers go unheard.
Your team deserves to be taken seriously.
Let's make that happen.
Sessions are fully customised to your team's needs. Let's spend 30 minutes figuring out exactly what yours needs.