Advancing Research 2024

Advancing Research 2024

March 25-26, 2025 • New York, NY

About

Are you frustrated with the state of UX research? Does it feel like things have stagnated? We have good news and bad news — and they’re the same news: you’re not alone. Many of the research leaders and senior practitioners we speak with are feeling the same way.

Advancing Research is dedicated to how we can collaboratively re-assess the state of the practice, consider the increasingly complex demands being placed upon research teams and leaders, and work together to define clear roles, set goals, and establish scalable solutions for achieving them.

Videos

March 25, 2024

Monday, March 25, 2024 • Advancing Research 2024

From Users to Shapers of AI: The Future of Research

Tricia Wang • Tech Ethnographer

Monday, March 25, 2024 • Advancing Research 2024

Beyond Insights: Researchers as Organizational Change Catalysts

Robin Beers • Customer Insights and Experience Design Lead, Wells Fargo

Monday, March 25, 2024 • Advancing Research 2024

The Future of ReOps as a Strategic Function: A Roadmap for Getting There

Fatimah Richmond • UXR Programs & Strategy, Google

Monday, March 25, 2024 • Advancing Research 2024

Under My (Research) Umbrella: The Benefits and Challenges of Building a Unified Insights Function

Andy Warr • Director of Portfolio Research & Insights, Dropbox

Monday, March 25, 2024 • Advancing Research 2024

Solve a Problem Here, Transform a Strategy There: Research as an Occasion for Expanding Organizational Possibility

Peter Levin • Principal Researcher, HubSpot

Monday, March 25, 2024 • Advancing Research 2024

Widening the Aperture: The Case for Taking a Broader Lens to the Dialogue between Products and Culture

Neil Barrie • Co-founder & Global CEO, TwentyFirstCenturyBrand

Monday, March 25, 2024 • Advancing Research 2024

Research After UX

Nalini Kotamraju • Senior Vice President, Research & Insights, Salesforce

Monday, March 25, 2024 • Advancing Research 2024

Panel: Excellence in Impact

Megan Blocker • Director of User Research, DigitalOcean
Mujtaba Hameed • Senior Research Consultant, Stripe Partners
Victor Udoewa • Service Design Lead, CDC

Monday, March 25, 2024 • Advancing Research 2024

Opening Remarks Day 1

Bria Alexander • DesignOps Curator
Louis Rosenfeld • Principal, Rosenfeld Media

Monday, March 25, 2024 • Advancing Research 2024

Christopher Geison • Staff Researcher, ServiceNow

March 26, 2024

Tuesday, March 26, 2024 • Advancing Research 2024

Frameworks for Excellence: Using Visual Thinking and Communication to Elevate Your Research

Mujtaba Hameed • Senior Research Consultant, Stripe Partners

Tuesday, March 26, 2024 • Advancing Research 2024

Future Orientations to Everyday Life: Futures Anthropology as a Methodology

Nicole Aleong • Senior Design Researcher, TPXimpact

Tuesday, March 26, 2024 • Advancing Research 2024

Getting to the “So What?”: How Management Consulting Practices Can Transform Your Approach to Research

Megan Blocker • Director of User Research, DigitalOcean

Tuesday, March 26, 2024 • Advancing Research 2024

Beyond Methods and Diversity: The Roots of Inclusion

Victor Udoewa • Service Design Lead, CDC

Tuesday, March 26, 2024 • Advancing Research 2024

Harnessing AI in UXR: Practical Strategies for Positive Impact

Savina Hawkins • Strategic UX Researcher & Prompt Engineer, Meta

Tuesday, March 26, 2024 • Advancing Research 2024

Keeping the Body in Mind: What Gestures and Embodied Actions Tell You That Users May Not

Dane DeSutter • Data Scientist, Catalyst Education

Tuesday, March 26, 2024 • Advancing Research 2024

Looking Back…to Look Ahead

Steve Portigal • Author of Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries and Interviewing Users

Tuesday, March 26, 2024 • Advancing Research 2024

Panel: Excellence in Communicating Insights

Robin Beers • Customer Insights and Experience Design Lead, Wells Fargo
Nalini Kotamraju • Senior Vice President, Research & Insights, Salesforce
Andy Warr • Director of Portfolio Research & Insights, Dropbox

Tuesday, March 26, 2024 • Advancing Research 2024

Opening Remarks Day 2

Bria Alexander • DesignOps Curator
Louis Rosenfeld • Principal, Rosenfeld Media

Tuesday, March 26, 2024 • Advancing Research 2024

Jemma Ahmed • Advancing Research Curator

Speakers

Excellence in Strategic Influence

The layoffs that have disproportionately affected research and insights teams have only exacerbated an existential crisis that was brewing long before recent events. For years we’ve been asking how we can have more strategic influence because we fundamentally believe that evidence-based decision making and businesses that prioritizes humans are the best ways out of the extractive and unsustainable systems we’ve inherited and advanced. The talks on day one approach this challenge from a plurality of perspectives. Whether you wield positional authority or lead through influence, these talks recommend tactics that are appropriate for all of us to consider, advocate for, and apply. If you’re eager for Research/Insight teams to yield more strategic influence in your organization, today’s talks are for you. Curated by Chris Geison.

Excellence in Our Craft

User research as a discipline is still in its infancy, with much to learn—from adjacent fields, our roots in the social sciences and HCI, and those emerging voices advocating for new practices. To defend against the swingeing contractions like those which have plagued our field in recent years, we need to ensure that the human insight we craft is undeniable in rigor and richness, and indispensable in how it tells this story. The talks on day two will challenge us to advance the methods we use and the way we communicate insights, based on non-extractive and transformative approaches. Our speakers will push you to reconsider the core foundations of our craft in order to achieve excellence in our day-to-day work, advance the ways in which we do research, and prepare ourselves for a future where, now more than ever, we must mature. Curated by Jemma Ahmed.

Quotes

"We have a new opportunity where we can be insight driven instead of purely data driven."

"We're really the only thing that we can control any of us is how quickly we learn and how we adapt based on that learning."

"Research ops is the people, mechanisms, and strategies that set user research in motion."

"To quote Bill Buxton, does the fact that you can count the change in your pocket make you a mathematician?"

"Cell phones were going to directly compete with personal computers and Intel should both accommodate this new communications medium and also adjust its strategy."

"The emergence of youth culture and the internet has drastically changed how people participate in culture."

"Uncoupling theory involves identity and how one defines oneself and is defined by others."

"Learning to navigate the organization and building relationships is key to demonstrating influence."

"When we started this conference, we called it advancing research because that's really what we are about."

"We've been collectively traumatized, and I think we should name the trauma."

"Drawing my ideas unlocked a skill that I never thought I had and that skill became a strength."

"We all experience time differently, shaped by our past."

"User researchers often stop at the findings. They need to advocate for a direction."

"There's something beyond diversity at the roots of inclusion."

"I bet every researcher in this room will add prompt engineering to their skillset by the end of 2025."

"Gesture and embodied actions serve as a window into the embodied mind."

"To understand the present, we have to understand how we got here."

"When the world is silent, even one voice makes a difference."

"Let's all stand up and scoot over one or two seats"

"Difficult people change things."