👩🔬 Speaker: Megan McLean, UX Research Manager at Spotify (Advertising)
📢 Hosted by: University of Chicago / Human-Computer Interaction Series
📺 Watch on YouTube
⏱️ Full Talk Length: 23 mins
⏱️ Summary Reading Time: ~6 mins
🧠 Key Concepts
“Our job is to make sure we don’t float too far downstream chasing the wrong work.”
- The Rivers & Roads Metaphor
- Rivers = Insights work: dynamic, flowing, full of energy and unpredictability, yet informative and rich with signals.
- Roads = Strategy: man-made, directional, structured execution pathways (aka product roadmaps).
- Research should act like a river: informing, shaping, and even rerouting the roads of business decisions.
- Spotify’s Reality Check
- 5 researchers supporting 500+ R&D stakeholders across 1,500 people.
- Multiple user segments: listeners, advertisers, creators.
- Prioritisation is not a luxury—it's survival.
- Rivers & Roads Prioritisation Framework
- Developed to focus limited resources on maximum-impact, high-risk decisions.
🛠 Spotify’s 3-Step Prioritisation Framework
| Stage |
What It Means |
| Current Assessment |
Prioritise projects with low clarity and high uncertainty. Identify risk early. |
| Destination Evaluation |
Evaluate expected business outcomes, user impact, and decision-making value. |
| Decision Reversibility |
Only take on projects with one-way doors—hard-to-reverse bets that matter. |
🧭 Ask before starting:
- Will this shape a roadmap?
- Can we define the impact and metrics now?
- Are we doing what only we can do?
💭 My 5 Cents