UX Research seems to be one of those careers: everybody in it is a life-long learner. It’s a great fit for the naturally curious, and for people with a strong investigative bent. I’m lucky to be part of a UX research team at HubSpot whose members strive to collaborate, share lessons learned, and teach each other different ways of working so we can all grow. And as we all remember what it was like to be starting out in the field, we also love to mentor junior researchers as they learn and mature in their career.

At HubSpot, we’re working to build a more diverse and inclusive place to work. We want to make sure that HubSpot is the kind of place where everyone can do their best work. We also want to make sure that our software — which thousands of companies use in their own workplaces — fosters an inclusive environment for our customers, too.

This post is the third in a series about HubSpot Canvas, our new Design Language. Read the first here and the second here.

Every January, millions of people decide that this is the year their lives will be different. You’ll read more books. You’ll put more money into savings. You’ll eat fewer Cool Ranch Doritos and pints of Ben & Jerry’s. And you will gym. Every. Day.

But more often than not, as soon as February rolls around, there’s a stack of unread books on your nightstand. Your savings is routinely going to fund your Taco Tuesday habit. And there’s a fine layer of Dorito dust covering your couch. 

Why? Because good intentions aren’t enough. Unless you make a lifestyle change, even the best-intentioned resolution just won’t stick.

User Experience (UX) teams have existed at software companies for a long time. But as the field of UX continues to grow and develop, more specialized roles, like UX writers, have been steadily growing and developing in importance, too, taking their place alongside more established roles like UX (product) designers and UX researchers. UX writers (also sometimes known as content strategists) are the folks responsible for crafting the words you see on the screen in the software you use.

Microcopy can make or break your product's user experience. Good microcopy goes beyond just telling your users what they need to do to make your product work -- it engages their emotions, generates trust, deepens loyalty, develops a sense of agency and empowerment, and creates an unshakeable bond between user and product. 

Done poorly, microcopy can make your user experience go very wrong, very fast. And the toughest aspect of microcopy is often just finding the proper voice for your product, then the applying the appropriate tone for that voice in any given context. Find out how the HubSpot product team approaches voice and tone -- and microcopy in general -- in this Tech Talk from January, 2015.

The use case for live chat on a website seems obvious at first glance. It’s a support tool that allows users to more quickly and painlessly get help from your team, rather than having to fill out a ticket or call. Here at the Signals team, however, we use live chat for one other very distinct use case: user testing.

The beauty of live chat is that it creates an avenue for you to speak with users when they’re in the thick of their experience with your product. As I explained in my previous post, it helps you get to the real problem. In addition, you can actually use it for gathering both qualitative and quantitative -- if executed under the right circumstances.

Why live chat for user testing?