A Day in the Life...

I would venture a guess that most of you are at least peripherally familiar with “Day in the Life of a Customer” (DITLOC) studies.  If your customers are looking for a deep-dive into their customers' lives, looking for new product opportunities, better knowledge about how their products or services are being used, or simply wanting to learn more about their customer base, a DITLOC study could be the way to go. 

However, what I've found interesting lately is when I mention “day in the life” studies in my conversations with other researchers, what comes up more often than DITLOC studies with customers is the desire to hear more about the day in the life (and/or the productivity and workflow tips) of a researcher. 

Why? If you’re a corporate researcher like I am, it’s always fascinating to get out of your bubble and hear how other corporate researchers are faring within their companies. Are there better ways to do things? Ways to gain efficiencies? Inspiration to be had? 

One of benefits of attending TMRE is to meet your peers. In my case that's client-side researchers in small-to-medium size organizations. It's a chance to commiserate and accomplish the above - to do some brain picking as to each other's processes in the hopes we can find some efficiencies to bring back to our offices and teams. 

Sessions at #TMRE13 that focused on the stories, processes, and triumphs of corporate researchers such as Marisa Paruch of Wolverine Worldwide and Susan Topel of Centene were fantastic for corporate researchers like me - to give us a "day in the life" per se.  

Outside of attending TMRE there are some but not many resources that cover this for researchers.  There are a few videos out there that cover this such as this overview of Steve Murphy's day as Managing Director at Ipsos, and this oldie but goodie about the day in the life of a Research Analyst. Are there some great researcher day-in-the-life resources that I’m missing? 

Outside of research, there are great ongoing profile series such as Inc.'s The Way I Work and Lifehacker's This Is How I Work.  

Is this a topic that resonates with you? Are you interested in how different researchers work? What questions would you want to know, and who would you like to hear from?  

If so, let me know in the comments below if this is a feature you'd be interested in reading, I’m happy to do some interviewing.