The organization as design problem
When I joined Genesys, UX Research didn't exist. There was no function, no practice, and no shared vocabulary for what research was supposed to do inside a product organization. I treated it the way I treat any design problem: start with what the system needs to do, then build backward to the structure that makes it possible.
What the organization needed was a research function that could change how decisions got made, not just answer questions when asked. Those are different things, and building for both at the same time shaped every structural choice: a team distributed across time zones, management tracks that supported real career growth, an education program that raised the floor across the whole organization, and governance infrastructure that made compliance a non-issue rather than a recurring negotiation.
Once the organization could stand on its own, I turned to the harder problem. Embedding researchers directly into product design teams dissolved the service-model dynamic that had always been research's ceiling. A new analytics and measurement practice added the quantitative layer the organization had never had. Structure was the design. Where research sits determines what research can do.
0 → 20 researchers · embedded in design · quantitative practice built
