Are you tired of designing screens based on guesswork and vague stakeholder directives? You know that direct user research would clarify the project’s goals, but time and budget are always tight. Sound familiar? Many UX designers feel like Oliver Twist, timidly asking for more user contact. But there’s a smarter way to get stakeholders on board: make them realize the risks and complexities themselves. This listicle reveals a proven technique using two simple questions—What are the objects? and What are the relationships between those objects?—borrowed from the ORCA (Objects, Relationships, CTAs, Attributes) design methodology. Follow these six steps to collaboratively expose misalignment and hidden gaps in your team’s shared understanding, turning stakeholders into enthusiastic champions for user research.
1. Recognize the Pain of Design Without Research
Every designer knows the frustration of crafting screens with only a fuzzy idea of how elements connect across the system. You attend stakeholder meetings, receive conflicting directives, and feel the weight of unresolved assumptions. Without user research, the team operates in the dark, making decisions based on intuition rather than evidence. This pain point is your opening. By acknowledging this struggle, you create a shared sense of urgency. The first step is not to ask for more research budget directly, but to help stakeholders see the costly consequences of guesswork. Once they feel the pain, they’ll be more receptive to solutions that promise clarity and confidence.
2. Introduce the Two Simple Questions
Here’s the core trick to selling research: get stakeholders to identify high-risk assumptions themselves. The two questions—What are the objects? and What are the relationships between those objects?—serve as a diagnostic tool. Objects are the core content units your users interact with (e.g., project, invoice, message). Relationships define how objects connect (e.g., a project has multiple invoices). By guiding the team through these questions collaboratively, you expose misalignment and hidden complexity. Suddenly, everyone sees the gaps in their understanding. This shared discovery naturally sparks the question, “How do we get the real answers?” and that’s when user research becomes the obvious next step.
3. Align the Team with the ORCA Process
The ORCA process (Objects, Relationships, CTAs, Attributes) is a systematic methodology that brings research and design together. It consists of four iterative rounds and fifteen steps that progressively clarify your product’s structure. Think of ORCA as a gauntlet between research and screen design: with solid research, you sail through; without it, the process reveals your uncertainties. When you walk the team through the first steps—defining objects and relationships—you create a shared language and visual map. Color-coding (blue for objects, yellow for core content, pink for metadata, green for CTAs) makes the structure tangible. This collaborative alignment builds momentum for the research needed to validate the map.
4. Let the Process Expose Research Gaps
ORCA is a “garbage in, garbage out” system. If you skip research, the resulting prototype will fail. But the beauty is that the process itself highlights exactly where research is missing. As the team tries to define objects and relationships, they hit walls: “Do users consider this an object? How do they group these tasks?” These unanswered questions become powerful selling points. Instead of you arguing for research, the process demonstrates its necessity. Stakeholders see that without user data, the design is built on sand. This organic discovery method is far more persuasive than any plea for more time or money.
5. Build a Collaborative Object Map
With the two questions in hand, gather the team to create a preliminary object map. Use sticky notes, whiteboards, or digital tools. Start by listing all potential objects the user might encounter. Then draw connections to show relationships. This visual artifact captures everyone’s assumptions, making hidden contradictions visible. For example, one stakeholder might assume “order” includes payment details, while another sees them as separate objects. The map surfaces these discrepancies, and the team naturally agrees: “We need to check with users to settle this.” The object map becomes a research agenda—each uncertainty is a question for user interviews or usability tests.
6. Translate Insights into a Research Brief
Once your team has a solid object map with clear unknowns, you’re ready to formalize the research needs. Create a simple research brief that lists the key assumptions to validate, such as “Do users perceive ‘project’ as a single object or a collection of sub-objects?” and “What are the most common relationships users need to navigate?” This brief should be co-authored with stakeholders, ensuring buy-in. Then propose a lean research study—user interviews or a card sorting session—to answer these specific questions. Because the stakeholders helped identify the gaps, they’ll champion the research as a logical next step. Congratulations: you’ve just sold UX research without begging, using the power of collaborative discovery.
Conclusion
Selling UX research doesn’t have to be a painful negotiation. By using the ORCA method’s two simple questions—What are the objects? and What are the relationships?—you can turn stakeholders into allies who actively seek user insights. The numbered steps above provide a practical roadmap: from recognizing design pain to co-creating a research brief. Next time you face resistance, gather your team around a whiteboard and ask those two questions. Let the process reveal the gaps, and watch as everyone becomes motivated to fill them with real user data. That’s the secret to becoming a successful UX research advocate.