Taking User Research to The Field: Drawing Inspiration from Cultural Anthropology

When I first heard about User Research a decade ago, the first image that showed up in my mind was that of ‘cultural anthropologists’ – people who travel to new countries and continents to learn about the building blocks of a community of people.

The goal is to understand why people do what they do – how people think, act, create, find meaning from their lives and work, and connect with one another.

A few years later, heading User Research at Atlan gave me the opportunity to see this in action.

One of my favourite values at Atlan is Problem First, Solution Second – no matter what you think, what the situation is, or how process-oriented you are, nothing matters until you’re working towards solving the real problem the end user is facing.

For a remote organization like Atlan, embracing this value is quintessential. When you clearly define the problem, the entire organization aligns with it. So, even when your company scales and evolves, it doesn’t change focus to chase shiny distractions. Instead, the focus is on constantly building solutions that address the problem at every stage of the company’s growth.

This value lies at the heart of Atlan’s story and shapes how we solve problems as an organization.

Before we wrote the first line of code, our founders Prukalpa and Varun interviewed more than 200 data leaders in a two-week window. The signals captured and patterns noticed helped us validate the challenges we faced as a data team and laid the foundation for Atlan in 2019.

Five years and hundreds of user interviews later, we’re still designing for humans of data, asking ourselves how to help them achieve more. From day one, our focus has remained around the following problem statement:

“How might we design for customer value so that humans of data can do more together?”

Over the past year, we’ve seen that as an organization’s data culture grows, its data teams become more diverse, and its governance needs evolve. This diversity isn’t new to us, but we’ve recognized the value of connecting more closely with data teams to better understand the signals and patterns emerging from their work.

This required a ‘re-discovery’ of the relationships within data teams, the tools they rely on, and how they create value.

Some of the key signals we observed were:

Data teams are no longer just composed of humans of data—they now include humans of data and AI.
Data itself has evolved as an asset, with organizations treating it like an API to their LLMs. This has fundamentally shifted expectations.
Conversations about AI are no longer just technical—they’ve become boardroom discussions about business impact.

Faced with these signals of diverse and dynamic cultures, evolving business needs, and the rising prominence of AI, we knew it was time for a rediscovery.

It was time to step out of Zoom calls and meet humans of data in their natural environments. The story of anthropologists observing humans in context came to life—it was a call to action to deeply understand this new world of data and AI.

The rediscovery began with an experiment that Dhruv (our CX leader) and I started designing (learn more about this below), aimed at meeting our customers where they are by spending an entire day with their data teams.

What began as a small experiment quickly grew into a full-fledged EU Roadshow, thanks to seamless collaboration across our CX, Engineering, Product, and Design teams. Together, we realigned on the problem statement and officially launched the roadshow in October 2024.

Over the course of the roadshow, we engaged with customers across six European cities. We designed each hour of the day to be packed with energy, open conversations, and meaningful discoveries. Our goal was to capture signals at every level—business strategy, team dynamics, supporting processes, and the technology and products that power these teams.

How did that go? Let’s hear from our customers and Atlan’s product team.

Here is what the customers had to say about our visits:
“We can’t thank you enough for traveling all the way and helping us build clarity and consensus within our own teams as to how to build the data governance practice well. We have launched our governance council thanks to you!”

“I love your energy. When you came in with your discovery questions, as a leader, I understood the variety of problem statements that exist in our own teams, thank you for highlighting them to us, I feel so confident about moving forward into the next year”

“Your workshops were fantastic, you brought so much energy into the room that our teams actually lit up with energy and they opened up and how!”

“Such great questions, such a great amount of care.”

“You brought all the different stakeholders into the same room, we have been trying to do this for so long, but we failed. You made this happen, we can’t thank you enough!”

Here is what our product team had to say about the discovery:
“Wow, I did not realize how this feature request was impacting the customer! On an Excel sheet, each request feels the same, but now I have more depth into the impact it is creating.”

“Wait, I just have to make a tiny UX change and it will save so much time for our users? Let me prioritize that!”

“Woah, I did not know how a tiny thing created such a big impact in usability. Let’s create a new initiative to enhance the user experience by many fold.”

“Wait, this is how they use the product in the field? I could have never imagined this!”

Anthropologists meticulously document their findings, often with notebooks in hand to record their discoveries. In our modern approach to field notes, we created short 10-minute videos after each roadshow to capture the insights we gathered. We shared these videos with our teams internally, helping them align priorities and guide design and product investments. All of us worked in a tight sync.

We also wanted to share these learnings with the broader community. So, we created the Data In Transit series on LinkedIn, showcasing the stories of the incredible data teams we met. As these stories went live, we started getting heartfelt messages from our customers and prospects about how they felt so seen. For many, it was the first time in years they were hearing directly from people like them – peers who understood their challenges and journeys.

What did we do with this discovery? These roadshows have directly shaped our product investments and the roadmap for 2025.

For instance, we noticed the struggle data leaders face in identifying the right people to hire and the right processes to create. To address this, we’ve launched a program to help leaders build and evolve the maturity of their governance practices.

We also noticed that data teams can really use help in refining their own problem statement, which inspired us to introduce new Atlan University courses.

And there’s more! Building on the success of our EU roadshow, we’re gearing up for our next one—this time in the USA—to discover the similarities and differences among data teams across geographies. More on that very soon!

An anthropologist’s job is to deeply immerse themselves into a new world, discover the unknown, articulate the unseen, and share their observations to help others understand the nuances of that world and its ecosystem.

When I first read about anthropologists years ago, I never imagined I’d one day have the privilege to step into that role. Now, having experienced the incredible power of discovery, we are committed to continuing this journey.

It’s a privilege to have customers who openly collaborate with us, a team driven by relentless curiosity to uncover deeper truths, and leadership that champions bold experiments like this. The journey of discovery is ongoing, and we’re just getting started!

P.S.: If you are a first principles thinker–you love creating structure and have unlimited curiosity, please reach out. We are always hiring for people at these intersections in our User Research practice. We hire people for their superpowers and find a way to nurture them 🙂

Now, as promised, details of the complete experiment we ran across six cities in Europe.

Transitioning from Zoom to In-Person User Research: Challenges, Insights, and Strategic Alignment

Objective

To conduct in-person user research with core customers to gather deeper insights into their company strategy, evolving business needs, product feedback, and co-creating pathways for future growth.

Emotional goal: Come back discovering what we don’t know and reinforcing the “partner, not vendor” narrative by collaborating closely with our customers.

Participants

Team members:
- Rishi: Lead researcher, responsible for coordinating logistics and designing engagement materials.
- Dhruv: Customer liaison, focused on identifying participants and facilitating conversations.
- CSM team: Mandeep and Adriel, supporting engagement and execution.
Customers: Selected from Atlan’s European customer base for their:
- Stage in the customer journey.
- Openness to in-person engagement.
- Geographical accessibility.
- Willingness to invest time in planning for the upcoming year.

Steps and process

1. Planning phase

We began by reviewing customer lists to identify participants:
1. Selection criteria: Customers providing critical product feedback or at pivotal adoption stages
2. Focus areas: Insights on collaboration challenges, data workflows, and team dynamics.
We coordinated with internal teams to align on company strategy:
1. Key areas of focus included Atlan’s vision for collaborative data management and its roadmap for new features.
2. We discussed how insights could directly influence product iterations and marketing narratives. These insights directly shaped engineering cycles for new features and marketing initiatives, such as the ‘Data in Transit’ LinkedIn series.

2. Variables to consider (we never worried about these in the Zoom world!)

Travel constraints:
1. Navigating city-to-city logistics was a stark contrast to Zoom’s convenience. On Zoom, we could conduct multiple meetings on the same day.
2. In the real world, we had to account for delays, meeting reschedules, and unforeseen issues like lost luggage. How do you really get things done if you lose your luggage and have nothing to wear? (This happened twice with us, haha!)
Customer dynamics:
1. Creating psychologically safe environments was crucial for honest discussions. Power dynamics within customer teams influenced how openly feedback was shared.
  1. When leaders from various business vertices join the same room, they may not share openly.
  2. Workplace dynamics also come into place – no one wants to appear as if they don’t know about something. In the real world, this adds a lot of friction in getting to know the true feelings.
2. Icebreakers became essential to bring everyone together (physically and mentally) in the same room, so they can truly collaborate.
Material preparedness:
1. We designed custom engagement tools, such as scribble cards to encourage brainstorming.
2. Supplies like sticky notes, markers, and whiteboards supported on-the-spot ideation.
Human dynamics:
1. Energy management was critical. Post-breakfast or post-lunch lulls were real. How do we ensure folks can participate and do it well? How do we bring the energy to the room?
2. Maintaining attention was also crucial. How do we ensure we can continue to capture the attention of the individual especially when in a physical room? Just because folks are not on their phone or laptop doesn’t mean they are present. So, we designed special physical cards where people could scribble without judgement from peers.
3. Right at the beginning of the conversation, we also established that these notes are meant for scribbling, drawing, ideating, so the mind can be agile and has space for imagination.
Environment design:
1. From curated music to welcoming activities, we aimed to create a space that felt open, positive, and inspiring. When the customers enter the room, they need to feel the space is for them to free up and let their thoughts flow. If we fail here, we can’t spend any quality time together.
2. We planned meetings around customers’ schedules, ensuring peak energy levels. We meticulously designed each 15-minute part of the day we spent together. As a result, customers had space to engage in deep focus, let their minds run wildly, and imagine future worlds together.

3. Execution

On-site activities:
- Hosted icebreaker sessions to relax participants and build rapport.
- Conducted structured feedback sessions focused on:
  - Usability of Atlan’s features.
  - Challenges with data collaboration and workflow management.
  - Suggestions for feature improvements.
  - Strategic alignment with customers’ long-term data goals.
- Leveraged physical tools (scribble cards, stationery) to encourage participation and creativity.
Customer feedback highlights:
- Several customers praised Atlan’s intuitive interface, but highlighted a need for better cross-departmental data sharing. Because multiple teams were together, we could do deep discovery!
- The scribble cards were a huge hit–one participant even took extras home for her daughter, saying “My daughter will love these”!

We learned tons of things from the roadshow about usability, company strategy, and more. And all of that is great of course, but this was my absolutely favorite moment from the workshop!

A customer taking some of our scribble cards home for her daughter.

At Berlin airport, as we said our goodbyes, something really stayed with us – it is such a privilege to have customers like we do, but also such a responsibility. In-person discovery really really works, but we must start by building a lot of trust upfront before we are able to build the trust with the customer to invest their time.

With all of these learnings, now, we are on our way to plan a USA roadshow!

If you’re excited about solving meaningful challenges and building tools that empower modern data teams, we’d love to have you on our team. Check out our careers page to explore opportunities and join us on this incredible journey!