Evolving a design research ecosystem: Lessons from design thinking (and birds)

There are exactly two paths to becoming a birder. For the first, midway through their thirties or forties, some people have a little biological alarm clock go off and suddenly they are wandering around a park checking an app that analyzes bird songs and excitedly saying, “I think that was a Rose-breasted Grosbeak.”

The second path materializes when your child, at only two years old, becomes enthralled with all things bird and can identify several dozen of them, including his favorite pale pink Roseate Spoonbill (or as he would say, “woze-ate spoonbill”). He compels his parents (my wife and I) into bird oblivion to the point where we are spending the weekend searching, “best places to bird watch near me” and then dragging a now-reluctant toddler (who also inconveniently dislikes mud and walking on his own two feet) around a local pond with binoculars in tow.

On one particular day, on the outskirts of the pond, we saw what I can only describe as a mini tornado of bright yellow Goldfinches dancing in the afternoon sky: a yellow and green explosion of light, movement, and energy. I felt a sort of giddiness I thought was reserved for spinning teacup rides, and from that day on, I was hooked.

A flock of Goldfinches is aptly called a charm — and now here I am, charmed, wearing my Sparrow T-shirt and checking the notifications from my bird feeder camera in our backyard. Nope, just a squirrel again.

All this to say, I have been thinking about birds a lot lately. And also research — design research and research operations more specifically. And while I might not be an expert on birds, I’ve learned enough about design research, Research Ops, and design thinking, to know that looking outside of your industry, or even your species, is often a valuable exercise in finding insight and inspiration for your own.

Paths to Research Operations

There are, of course, many more paths to becoming a birder — and equally as many paths to entering the discipline of Research Ops. My life and career have been a story of diverging, converging, overlapping design and research: from high school newspaper editor to puppet theater graphic designer, video producer and social science researcher to wood- and leatherworker, then finally combining and integrating my identities as researcher and designer into roles in Research Ops.

I currently work in-house, helping to shape design and UX Research strategy and systems in the financial services space. I spent the previous eight years at design giant IDEO, the organization started by David Kelley, who also co-founded the Stanford d.school and is often credited with the creation (or at least proliferation) of the design thinking methodology, which I still utilize today.

I’ve been in a Research Ops role of some sort for over twelve years (since before Kate Towsey popularized the term), so I’ve been growing in a similar trajectory as the discipline: from executional to strategic. I’ve made countless puppet show promotional postcards, recruited thousands of research participants across the globe, project and program managed research grants and much more, but it wasn’t until I started turning my research and design skills inward — toward the ecosystem around me — that I was able to make exponential rather than incremental positive impact.

More than just turning inward, it was also understanding how design thinking allows you to truly combine the practices of research and design together in ways that make them enmeshed and indistinguishable. I credit my immersion in design thinking, combined with my own sense of creativity and curiosity (for birds and beyond), with providing a toolkit that has helped me to elevate, and evolve, how I approach research operations.

Every organization that does research, and every Research Ops practitioner, should have design thinking in their toolkit and know how and when to use it — both in looking outward to customers, markets, and products and also looking inward to their organizational ways of working, culture, and systems. Design thinking fosters innovative problem solving inspired and informed by real people’s needs and contexts, and reduces risk of later failure through continued collaboration, prototyping, and testing. It’s helpful to think of the methodology in phases: first you empathize with people; next you converge into defining a problem; and then you diverge out to ideating, prototyping, testing, and finally (hopefully) implementing solutions. In reality, design thinking is never quite that linear and often feels more like a tangled bird’s nest.

It’s messy but often beautiful. When you look closely at the mess and the tangles, you find creativity and resourcefulness. Like in design thinking, birds make the most out of what the world has to offer — collecting discarded trash, plant fibers, or even dog hair to make their nests. Design thinking is a lot like the natural world, where species and individuals adapt and evolve over time, or in the face of adversity and opportunity.

Context: An ever-changing world

Mirroring the challenges we grapple with daily in the world are the complex challenges within Research Ops, like AI’s impact on research (including AI moderation and even AI participants). Not to mention the tension between democratization and expertise, and the growing push for more ethical, sustainable, and inclusive practices.

Meanwhile, leaders must navigate shrinking budgets, the demand for speed over quality, the ever-present need to quantify and prove impact, and what can feel like constant restructuring or realigning of teams and priorities within organizations. It’s tempting to bury our heads in the sand.

The ”State of UX in 2025” report asked us to “...think back to inventions like the printing press, the computer, and the internet: with each new tool developed, some design [and research] jobs ceased to exist, and new ones were created.” No matter the shifts and contexts, we can ask ourselves: How might we apply design thinking methods and draw inspiration from the natural world—particularly from birds—to chart a path forward in evolving design research ecosystems?

We must connect, collaborate, and experiment our way forward.

Connection: Empathize to see the change

Unlike most birds, which rely on communicating through vocalization or movement, Jackdaws can communicate and understand each other with their eyes, because their gaze is uniquely easy to follow due to the stark contrast between their pale irises and small dark pupils (they have beady little eyes!). The direct stare of a Jackdaw can even scare competitors away from nesting boxes.

Characteristic to many birds, Jackdaws form close bonds as mating pairs. They preen and groom each other, coordinate their movements, and stay close to their trusted partners in flight. Their survival is thanks to their flock, but they thrive because of their close connections and relationships.

In the design research world, and in design thinking, empathy is often step number one — so should be the case with Research Ops. But empathizing and connecting with people doesn’t always have a clear map. Humans are complex, unpredictable, and emotional beings. They don’t always say what they mean, or mean exactly what they say. Sometimes, meaning is conveyed through posture, tone, or a glance — without saying a single word.

Attention and focus, expressed through gaze and glances, are key aspects of empathy and social intelligence (or at least my wife tells me so). They unlock deeper understanding in humans, just as they do in birds like the Jackdaw. When design thinking emphasizes empathy, the goal isn’t just about talking to people and asking them questions. And it’s definitely not about trying to “walk a mile in their shoes” by doing a phony empathy exercise. Empathy means deeply understanding contexts, communities, history, needs, challenges, and ways of seeing the world. We empathize and connect through authentic conversation and storytelling, observation and study (watching what people do, not just what they say), reading between the lines (paying attention to tone, hesitation, and what’s left unsaid), and humility and trust-building.

With these lessons in mind, the question becomes: How might we use empathy and connection to evolve design research ecosystems? The answers might include shifting mindsets and processes away from ‘project intake’ toward proactive, responsive, and collaborative scoping of design research initiatives. Or shadowing disciplines beyond our own and immersing ourselves in more parts of the organization. Or creating ongoing formal and informal feedback loops within and between teams and departments. Most importantly, the answers will require deeply understanding the needs and contexts of researchers, designers, product managers, and other stakeholders — and actively facilitating the shared understanding of one another's needs and contexts.

The simplest and most impactful thing I do to build empathy is to proactively and regularly connect with all types of stakeholders. I prioritize getting to know them as people, understanding the challenges and opportunities they see in the environment, and building authentic relationships. I often borrow from “the snowball method,” a participant recruitment technique, for internal connections: I ask, “Who do you think I should talk with next if I want to learn more about X?” Once I establish those connections, it becomes easier to reach out with requests for feedback or help, and to be known as a trusted source for collaboration and camaraderie. I don’t usually position these conversations as “capital R Research” because while I do focus on learning, the primary goal is empathy and building authentic relationships. It’s not just about opening doors and unlocking insights; it’s about enjoying the journey of human connection along the path to our destination.

Collaboration: Go big and go together

If the first lesson in evolving a design research ecosystem is knowing how to connect and empathize, the second is about broadening our horizons, both in scope and in how we collaborate.

The European Starling is a fitting example of what it looks like to be both wildly generative and interconnected. Starlings can lay up to six eggs at a time, sometimes up to three times a year. Knowing many chicks won’t make it to adulthood due to predators, competition, or environmental conditions, they rely on numbers to increase their survival rates.

There is also a lot to learn about survival from the design thinking practice of brainstorming, especially the two rules: go for quantity and defer judgement. Judgement stifles creativity, slows down collaboration, and prevents you from diverging as widely as possible, and limits the breadth of ideas that emerge. While some ideas and directions are objectively unsuitable, it’s sometimes hard to know if the issue is at the core or just on the surface — or whether what’s bad today might not be tomorrow. Bad ideas can also inspire good ones, or even reveal new problems to solve along the way. The more ideas — or little hatchlings — you have to start, the better.

But sheer numbers alone aren’t enough. Starlings also survive by working together in motion. Murmurations, the morphing clouds of starlings flying together in unison, show how each bird reacts to subtle movements of its neighbors, shifting and influencing the flock’s flight patterns. Starlings’ ability to move as one allows them to respond to change in an instant. By working together, starlings avoid and confuse predators, communicate about food and safe passage, and conserve energy — drafting off one another like cyclists in a peloton.

My first introduction to starling murmurations, funnily enough, was from another former IDEO CEO, Sandy Speicher. The striking visuals of the flock’s organic shapes and the metaphor for decentralized collaboration were an inspiring vision she set forward for the organization (then the pandemic happened, dispersing us widely and into new unknowns, but that’s a story for another day). It’s true that, in design thinking, success doesn’t come from lone genius, but from shared learning and collaboration. Design thinking prioritizes multidisciplinary teams, co-creation with participants and stakeholders, and transparency. And just like a murmuration of starlings, design thinking helps organizations and teams adapt quickly because this type of collaboration allows for constant sensing, shifting, and refinement.

While every leadership decision cannot be made out in the open, and not everyone gets an equal vote in every part of the process, we can improve our organizations and design research ecosystems by bringing more people to the table, designing that table to support more (and different kinds of) people, and by providing people with more ways to understand, engage, and provide input. In practice, this can look like:

• cross-sharing insights (and storing and analyzing data centrally);
• research ride-alongs, group synthesis, and brainstorming;
• interactive workshops with stakeholders focused on mapping their needs and objectives;
• or something simple, like open and easy-to-use communication channels, gatherings, and digital or physical moments of connection.

Experimentation: Adapting quickly, adapting slowly

The starling murmuration’s directional shifts teach us both about the power of collective collaboration and about how to adapt in real time. But the world can change in unpredictable ways on unpredictable timelines. As Barbara Kingsolver wrote in her novel, Flight Behavior, “You never [know] which split second might be the zigzag bolt dividing all that went before from the everything that comes next”). Observing birds shows us that by acknowledging subtle changes and making decisions intentionally, we have an opportunity to meaningfully evolve over time, rather than just react or pivot — adapting to and with an ecosystem in both quick and slow ways.

During his voyage on the HMS Beagle in 1835, Charles Darwin observed the various species of finches while exploring the Galápagos Islands. He noticed an important difference among them that he and others came to understand as generational adaptation through natural selection. Depending on which island the finches inhabited across the Galápagos, their beak shape and size varied correspondingly to the seeds, fruit, insects, or nectar most easily sourced on that island. The finches with subtle trait differences that adapted to their particular environment, by random chance or otherwise, lived long enough to create more equally well-adapted ancestors (survival of the fittest).

Changes and adaptations like these can be barely imperceptible over centuries or can dramatically change a species almost overnight. Evolutionary biologists Peter and Rosemary Grant proved the latter in the 1970s when they headed back to the Galápagos to study Darwin’s finches and saw the impact of a severe drought. As the vegetation died and food became scarce, only the hardest, toughest seeds remained and the finches without strong, large beaks struggled to survive. In just a couple of years, the population of finches as a whole had a noticeably larger average beak size.

So if we ask ourselves, “How can we adapt and evolve design research ecosystems quickly and slowly?” we will be more resilient in the face of change. We can plant seeds of culture and organizational transformation to shift mindsets towards more ethical, human-centered, and evidence-based practices. Like a finch colony’s beaks morph over time, we can transform the tools we use and how we use them. We can thoughtfully adopt responsible AI technology in our workflows and infrastructure, bundle or unbundle design and research tech stacks, and advocate for or build more open and interconnected platforms and internal systems.

Adaptability can start with the simple step of not putting all your eggs in one basket. Whether that means encouraging a variety of specializations in skill sets, experimenting with new tools and flexible short-term contracts instead of unyielding agreements, or partnering with a diverse mix of stakeholders rather than working in isolation. Expanding the diversity of experience, thought, and approach strengthens resilience and fosters innovation and new ways of working through cross-pollination.

Like Darwin's finches, resilient design research ecosystems must be able to pivot quickly in response to immediate challenges while also evolving strategically over time. There is a key difference in responding versus reacting, too. It can be tempting to say that long-term planning is futile because everything always changes, but without a clear vision (with flexible means), you’re flying in the dark. General Dwight D. Eisenhower famously said, “...plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." The simple acts of collaborative prioritizing, goal setting, and communicating a long-term strategy (even if it’s later flipped upside down) build the interconnectivity and collective resilience that make pivoting even more possible.

Bringing it all together

The bad and the good news is that change is never-ending. "The State of UX 2025“ report also told us that, “...only one thing has remained constant: how Design [and research] is done is completely different decade after decade.” More challenges, and more opportunities, will come and we will all individually and collectively change. Whether you’re a Research Ops practitioner, a research leader juggling Research Ops on top of managing a practice, or a researcher leaning into a decentralized Research Ops function, I encourage you to face the realities but also embrace the opportunities to come. As we continue to experience change, we can control how we respond to it; we can choose what we do next, and how we organize and design ourselves and our systems. The world of design thinking (and birds) teaches us important lessons:

• Deep connection and observation drives meaningful understanding, laying the groundwork for better communication and collaboration.
• Collective creativity outperforms individual genius, and ecosystems thrive when they embrace diversity and abundance.
• Adaptability requires both intentional iteration and quick reactions — evolving strategically over time while responding nimbly to new contexts.

To evolve our design research ecosystems we must connect, collaborate, and experiment together to survive and thrive in new environments. Even our means of adapting must evolve: design thinking as a framework has changed over time — its human-centered focus, once (perhaps mistakenly) applied primarily to individuals, now often includes concepts from systems thinking to better contextualize people within their communities, organizations, and flows of information.

What we learn from a Jackdaw, a starling, or a finch is actually less important than recognizing that we have the capacity to learn from unexpected sources. Surgeons can learn from airlines, the restaurant industry can learn from race car driving, and we can continually remix and reapply the lessons of history, physics, and the whole of human knowledge to the challenges and opportunities of today.

While design thinking has been a meaningful guide to my work and perspective, I see it as one tool in my toolbox. Today, my son is fascinated by birds, but tomorrow it might be monster trucks, slime, or something entirely new. I expect my toolbox, and my inspiration, to evolve both intentionally and serendipitously. My hope for myself, and for others, is to continually seek out new connections and inspiration, regardless of the source. May we all find ways to evolve and discover the wonder, magic, and charm along the way.

Edited by Kate Towsey and Katel LeDu. 

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