DRC — Dave's Research Co. — is based in Porto, Portugal and works with product teams across the globe, remotely and on-site.
I help teams make sense of their situation, get unstuck, and move forward strategically — with the right tools for the job.
We gain clarity with rigor to match the risk and build insight to match the opportunity. There is no one-size-fits-all answer, but there are patterns of action well-suited to each challenge.
About Dave
I'm a practicing brown belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, amateur winemaker, and read widely and avidly. My approach to work and all creative projects draws heavily on Christopher Alexander's architectural theory. During my time as a Boa
Consulting as DRC lets me work with interesting people and continue to learn what makes teams and organizations work well. Through my projects, I get to help design unfold from ideas and insights into reality. I reflect and write about what I learn in Loops and Cycles.
I'm fascinated by the creative process and the notion of skill. Larger questions drive my work and play:
- How do we make good things?
- How does that work when groups of people are involved?
- What does it mean to master a craft?
- How do we effectively teach and share our understanding?
Conference / Speaker Bio
Dave Hora is perpetual Employee of the Month at Dave's Research Company: as a consultant, he helps leaders run strategic product initiatives and teams build well-informed product processes.
In 2011, Dave was the first researcher at a mobile startup in San Francisco, then went on to work as the first research hire at five more companies including ResearchGate, PlanGrid, and Instacart. In 2020, he went independent and founded Dave's Research Company in Porto, Portugal.
Dave co-led and co-designed the Research Skills Framework during his time as a Research Ops Community board member. He runs a small mailing list about how we make good software, and each year he takes a short sabbatical for winemaking or sake brewing season.
Talk and Workshop Index:
- Our Discomfort with Research Democratization Podcast — October 2023, Scaling Research
- Re-integrating Research into Product and Design — Miro Design Talk (internal), August, 2023
- Research That Influences Workshop — Rosenfeld Media Advancing Research, March 2023
- Advice for Establishing Research — December 2022, Rosenfeld Media Advancing Research
- Research Ops: Research Skills Framework Workshop— May 2022, UX LX Conference
- A Research Skills Evolution — March 2021, Rosenfeld Media Advancing Research
- The Research Skills We Need to Succeed — February 2021, UXRConf Anywhere
- The Power of Pattern Language — September 2020, EuroIA Conference
- Working with the Research Skills Framework workshop — September 2020, UXinsight Festival (with Tomomi Sasaki)
- Tools for the Trek — February 2020, Interaction 20 Milan (w/ Tomomi Sasaki)
- Shaping Effective Research — October 2019, IXDA Berlin
- Elevating Design: Create a strategic plan to increase your impact — September 2019, EuroIA 19 (w/ Alissa Briggs)
- Considering Research: function & impact — June 2019, User Research London
- Research: Goal, role, having an impact — June 2019, Strive UX Research
- Lean Learning: Applied UX Research — October 2018, Develop Denver
- "Maps & Markers: enacting a strategy to transform your design team" — August 2018, Adaptive Path UX Week (w/ Alissa Briggs)
- Lean Learning: Applied Product Research — May 2017, NASDAQ's "The Center"
- UX Research for Live Products — January 2015, ConveyUX
