Research: From the brief to the boardroom, the world, and back to you
The lifecycle of a ship is 28 years. Aleks Melnikova learned this from a participant in a research session about something else entirely, and it sent her down a rabbit hole she is still exploring.
After 18 years in research, Aleks sees the discipline as an education in other people’s expertise: how railcards work, how oncologists decide, how heat-pump installers quote, how teachers construct lessons.
In this talk, she will follow research from the earliest choices in the brief, through recruitment and session design, to the way findings are framed, remembered and used inside organisations.
Aleks will explore research as a design practice in its own right: one that determines whose knowledge enters the room, how well people are able to contribute, and whether what they share survives long enough to influence decisions.
She will look at four connected parts of the research system: the brief, the room, the story and the impact. Along the way, she will share examples of research influencing products, services and organisational thinking, including a booking-flow redesign after which Disabled Persons Railcard use rose by 92% within a year.
You will learn:
- How early research choices shape who gets included, whose knowledge is heard and what becomes possible to learn
- How the conditions of participation, from recruitment to facilitation, affect the quality and depth of research
- How to turn messy human insight into stories and decisions that travel through an organisation
