The dawn of Big R and all its benefits with Naomi Grewal

In this episode of Now That's Significant, host Michael Howard, Head of Marketing at Infotools, speaks with Naomi Grewal, who recently joined LinkedIn as Director of UX Research. Naomi shares her extensive career journey, insights from her roles at leading tech companies, and her perspective on the evolving field of UX research.

Naomi's background includes leading research teams at Meta (formerly Facebook), Uber, Pinterest, and Workday, as well as academic roles at SurveyMonkey and Ipsos. With a PhD in cognitive psychology and a teaching role at USC, Naomi offers a unique blend of academic rigor and practical experience.

 Key takeaways from this episode:

1. Career Journey and Expertise: With her journey in the insights industry including considerable time in academia, Naomi was able to bring fresh perspectives into her work. She since gained a wealth of knowledge and experience in UX research and cognitive psychology experience which has enabled her to go on to lead research teams in some exciting tech companies.

2. Importance of Research Integration: Naomi emphasizes the value of integrating research within organizations. She points out that while research skills are essential, they must be complemented by excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration to be effective in a business context.

3. Applied Psychology in the Workforce: Naomi discusses how applied psychology can be leveraged in various industries. She teaches foundational principles at USC that prepare students for diverse careers in UX and market research, underscoring the importance of understanding human behavior in business applications.

4. Emerging UX Trends: The future of UX research includes greater use of AI and personalization. Naomi highlights trends such as AI-driven automation, which streamlines user experiences, and the integration of mixed methods for holistic insights. These advancements are set to transform how researchers and businesses understand and interact with users.

5. Big R Concept: Naomi introduces the idea of 'Big R,' positioning research as a strategic function that spans multiple areas within a company, from market research to people research and UX. This holistic approach aims to elevate the role of research in driving informed decision-making across all levels of an organization.

Check out more episodes of Now That's Significant on major podcast platforms and stay informed about the evolving landscape of consumer behavior and technology.

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Infotools Harmoni is a fit-for-purpose market research analysis, visualization, and reporting platform that gives the world’s leading brands the tools they need to better understand their consumers, customers, organization, and market.

Established in 1990, we work with some of the world’s top brands around the world, including Coca-Cola, Orange, Samsung, and Mondelēz.

Our powerful cloud-based platform, Harmoni, is purpose-built for market research. From data processing to investigation, dashboards to collaboration, Harmoni is a true "data-to-decision-making" solution for in-house corporate insights teams and agencies.

While we don't facilitate market research surveys, we make it easy for to find and share compelling insights that go over-and-above what stakeholders want, inspiring them to act decisively.

One of the most powerful features of Harmoni is Discover, a time-tested, time-saving, and investigative approach to data analysis. Using automated analyses to reveal patterns and trends, Discover minimizes potential research bias by removing the need for requesting and manually analyzing scores of cumbersome crosstabs – often seeing what you can’t.

Discover helps you easily find what differentiates groups that matter to you, uncover what makes them unique, and deliver data points that are interesting, relevant, and statistically significant, plus see things others can’t. Add to all this an impending GenAI feature, and you have an extremely powerful, future-proofed tool.