What researchers can learn from other fields
Editor’s note: Sam Salama is insights lead at the Met Police, where he uses research to improve the effectiveness of the Met’s comms and engagement. He is also the founder of Uncommon Thread, a free library of inspiration that helps researchers access creative thinking. Find Salama on LinkedIn.
If you wanted to become a better researcher, where would you look?
Most of us would probably list off the same things: conferences, books, training courses or perhaps the latest AI tool.
All sensible answers.
But over the past few months I've found myself learning a whole lot more from people who have never worked in research at all.
Each has helped me think differently about the problems researchers face – not because they share our methods, but because they share our challenges. After all, we’re not the only profession obsessed with understanding people.
Here’s what I learned from those who do it for a living.
The screenwriter: Attention is not the same as distraction
When I spoke to screenwriter Danny Stack, I assumed we'd spend most of our time discussing cliff-hangers and plot twists.
Instead, he focused on a very simple distinction: Attention is not the same as distraction.
A video of a cat falling out of a tree might make us stop scrolling for a few seconds, but that's distraction. It's fleeting. Real attention is something deeper. It comes from authenticity, emotion and giving people a reason to care about what happens next.
Researchers might be able to grab attention with a provocative chart or unexpected headline, just as a cat falling out of a tree might stop someone scrolling.
But for insights to really land we need to explain what they mean for our audience. We need to connect with them on an emotional level (and no, this doesn’t necessarily mean reducing them to tears).
Stack also referenced the romantic comedy “Anyone but You.” The film follows one of cinema's oldest formulas – two people meet, misunderstand one another and eventually fall in love. But audiences embraced it because it played with those expectations, having the couple meet in the very first scene.
It was familiar enough to feel comfortable, but different enough to feel fresh – exactly as research should.
If we tell people only what they already know, we've wasted their time. If we present something so unfamiliar that it feels disconnected from reality, we lose credibility.
Finding that sweet spot is a much harder challenge than simply grabbing attention.
The game designer: Stop optimizing for engagement
If Stack changed how I thought about communicating insight, game designer Rami Ismail changed how I thought about designing research.
Good game designers, he argued, don't start with engagement metrics. They start by asking what kind of experience they want people to have. And yet, researchers inevitably focus on the numbers. Response rates. Drop-out rates. Time spent answering questions.
The provocation, then, is to start designing research as an experience and not a collection of KPIs.
This framing raises an entirely different set of challenges. Were the questions interesting? Did participants feel understood? Did they leave feeling that their contribution mattered?
Game designers know that people willingly invest hundreds of hours in an experience when it feels meaningful.
Researchers probably don't need participants to enjoy a survey for hundreds of hours. But perhaps we should aspire to create experiences that people at least look forward to.
The investigative journalist: Don't ignore the odd thing
The most memorable line from investigative journalist Iain Overton wasn't about war reporting or undercover investigations. It was about spoons.
While researching gun culture in the United States, he found himself wandering around a gun show in the Midwest. Under one tablecloth was a collection of spoons taken from Adolf Hitler's Eagle's Nest. Nearby were shooting targets featuring Nazi zombies.
This seemingly odd observation didn’t show up in any dataset, but it revealed how the gun industry was marketing itself on deep rooted ideas of fear, identity and imagined threats. The anomaly didn't contradict the data. It explained it.
The story is a reminder that the most interesting insight is often the thing that refuses to fit. The respondent who behaves differently. The answer that seems out of place.
It’s also a timely reminder that research requires presence. As Overton put it later in the conversation, in a world increasingly dominated by AI and searchable information, the real advantage often comes from leaving your desk, putting your phone away and talking to people. Some things simply can't be discovered through a search bar.
Looking sideways
One of the reasons I enjoy working in research is that no two projects are the same. But, if we're honest, many of the ideas we use to solve them come from the same places.
The conversations I've had over the past few months have reminded me that innovation happens when ideas travel – when two seemingly unrelated worlds collide.
If screenwriters can teach us about communication, game developers about designing experiences and investigative journalists about interpreting evidence, what might we learn from negotiators?
Or detectives? Therapists? Magicians?
I suspect we've only scratched the surface.