How Journalism and Playwriting Sharpen My UX Research Skills
When I was a high school senior, I won the NIPA High School Journalist of the Year award for North Dakota. The irony is that I’m naturally shy. But journalism forced me to cross thresholds I would’ve avoided: talking with classmates experimenting with illegal drugs, bar managers serving underage students, and a local doctor who provided abortions. To get to the heart of those stories, I had to become fearless—to approach strangers, ask hard questions, and listen for what wasn’t being said.
As an undergraduate actor, director, and playwright, I discovered a complementary muscle: to inhabit a character fully I had to build what I call a 360-degree empathy field around them—what shaped them, who surrounded them, the forces that pushed and pulled at their decisions. That practice taught me to hold complexity without flattening people into tropes.
Today, those two disciplines—journalism’s rigor and playwriting’s empathy—power how I work as a UX researcher.
What Journalism Taught Me…
NIPA prize for Outstanding Journalist for the state of North Dakota
Courageous contact.
As a reporter, I learned to approach anyone with respect and purpose. That same comfort with new people makes leading focus groups, field studies, ethnographic interviews, and usability tests feel natural. If a research plan requires knocking on doors or striking up conversations on the street, I’m in my element.
Precision in questioning.
Reporting trained me to separate fact from interpretation, to keep peeling back with follow-ups, and to triangulate sources. In UX that means crafting interview guides that probe assumptions, laddering from behaviors to motivations, and verifying signals across participants and data types before calling something an insight.
Listening for subtext.
In those high-school investigations, the most important details were often between the lines. During usability sessions, I watch for hesitations, glances, and off-hand remarks—the telltale cues that a flow is confusing or a message isn’t landing. The transcript gives you what was said; subtext tells you what mattered.
What Playwriting & Filmmaking Taught Me…
Empathy with edges.
On stage, characters are never “users”; they’re particular, contradictory, vividly human—contemporary voices, historical figures, people you could meet on the street. That discipline helps me transform market segments into living personas with backstories, goals, constraints, and quirks that design teams can actually feel.
Motivation and conflict.
Drama lives where goals collide with obstacles. In product terms: friction. When we surface the tension a persona experiences—limited time, fear of making a bad choice, organizational rules—we’re better at designing moments that lower the stakes or provide clarity at exactly the right beat.
Causation, consequence, and coherent arcs.
Playwriting and screenwriting are exercises in cause-and-effect. That instinct is invaluable when I build customer journey maps. Every touchpoint has a “because” and a “so that.” If this step confuses, then trust erodes; when trust erodes, then abandonment rises. Mapping the story arc exposes where a supportive intervention will change the ending.
Where the Disciplines Reinforce Each Other…
Both journalism and playwriting are commitments to truth—one through verification, one through emotional honesty. Together, they keep my research grounded and human:
Rigor × Empathy: We validate before we generalize, and we humanize before we prioritize.
Voice × Evidence: We present findings as cleanly structured narratives backed by quotes, clips, and data—stories that stakeholders can both feel and defend.
Curiosity × Craft: We go wide to discover patterns and then shape those patterns into a form the organization can act on.
Quick Snapshots…
View my blog about my experiences at the Museum of Science:
Designing for Visitors: Insights from Field Research at the Museum of Science >>
Museum of Science: ticketing & wayfinding
Observing visitors struggle to buy tickets or find exhibits showed how daunting “everyday” tasks become without supportive software. I reframed the journey like a scene—setup, rising tension, climax, denouement—and redesigned purchase and wayfinding flows to release friction earlier and make the storyline enjoyable.
State Street Bank: trading workflows
Shadowing traders as they bought and sold stocks, was revelatory: for certain tasks, a phone call beat the software. My journalism training—thinking on my feet and pivoting mid-interview—let me scrap the script, ask better questions, and realign the design toward speed, shortcuts, and real-world decision paths.
View my blog about my experiences working with the Harvard Medical School:
Advancing Autism Care: Insights from Harvard Medical School’s TEAMS Project>>
Harvard Medical School: autism research
Interviewing autistic participants, I leaned on an actor’s craft to project myself into their world—a 360-degree empathy field. We adapted sessions with clear structure, sensory-aware environments, and choiceful communication. The result: richer insights and recommendations that respected lived experience.
Practices You Can Steal:
Treat transcripts like scripts. Mark beats: where a participant’s energy spikes or falls. Ask, “What’s the motivation behind this click?”
Build the 360-degree empathy field. For each persona, write one page on life context: constraints, influences, recent events. Make them specific enough to cast.
Write your journey map as a logline. “A time-starved parent, determined to compare options in eight minutes, battles broken filters and jargon to find the plan that won’t blow the budget.” Now fix the conflict.
End with a “scene.” When presenting findings, close with one before/after moment—what a user’s day looked like, and how the design changes it.
Jim Dalglish and Lynda Sturner acting in their award-winning play “Superlubricated” at the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival.
Why This Background Still Shapes My Day-to-Day
I didn’t outgrow journalism or playwriting; I integrated them. Journalism taught me to approach strangers, ask better questions, and honor evidence. Playwriting taught me to hold a whole human in mind and to craft arcs that make sense. UX research sits right at that crossroad: the fearless pursuit of what’s true and the compassionate rendering of who it’s true for.
The work is better when we’re both brave and tender—brave enough to ask, tender enough to hear.
Jim Dalglish, Director of UX Research & Strategy, Playwright, Director, Producer, Filmmaker.
Get to know some of my plays, screenplays, and films…
Discover my productions in New York, Boston, London, Dublin, and beyond—explore my films and screenplays, and download the scripts to read anytime.