User Defenders – UX Design & Personal Growth · Jason Ogle

UX Research on a Budget with Becca Kennedy

·1 hr 16 min·5 clips

A stakeholder secretly yelled at users during testing, revealing the pitfalls of remote research.

Budget research begins with permission. Becca's advice is refreshingly plain: find something irritating, redesign it, add a survey if the question calls for one, and use the work to practice thinking through real problems. The host brings her into the User Defenders superhero frame, but the lesson stays grounded. Start before anyone picks you. Side projects are not a magic door into production work; they are something a designer can point to, explain, and learn from. Jason keeps the encouragement warm without making the craft sound precious. Research, in this conversation, is something beginners can approach with curiosity, some structure, and enough care not to waste people's time. Then recruitment gets practical. Becca and Jason talk through screening participants, because a test only helps when the people involved resemble the people the product is meant to serve. Jason's testing story lands as a gentle warning: incentives, access, and fuzzy recruiting can quietly pull a study away from the audience it was supposed to understand. The conversation also gets into diminishing returns. Qualitative research can show patterns after a small group, especially when the same usability problems keep surfacing. Becca gets the tension. Her academic background makes larger samples feel familiar, but she also sees how fast repeated signals can appear. Jason keeps asking for her read and nudging anecdotes into advice a working designer could use tomorrow. The close stays in the show's affectionate house style: subscribe, stay connected, and keep fighting for users.

As heard by us

Practical UX research guidance that makes small tests feel useful.

The conversation between Becca Kennedy and Jason Ogle keeps the advice grounded and usable. It pushes readers toward action first: run a survey, rebuild the thing that keeps getting in the way, and treat the work as practice that can also double as portfolio material.

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Why you'd press play

You want a low-pressure way to start UX research and redesign work.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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