Rosenverse

Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.

Log in Create free account

100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.

A Genuine Conversation about the Future of UX Research

Wednesday, March 20, 2024 • Advancing Research Community
Share the love for this talk
A Genuine Conversation about the Future of UX Research
Speakers: Dr. Jamika D. Burge , Robert Fabricant , Peter Merholz , Noam Segal and Teresa Torres
Link:

Summary

If you’ve followed LinkedIn of late, it’s clear that UX researchers are frustrated. They feel their work is undervalued, their strategic contributions are marginalized, and their jobs have been made redundant. Multiple fingers have been pointed in multiple directions, and—as you’d expect from social media—the discussion has often ended up in a decidedly sour place. In light of The big design freakout and the UX research reckoning, there is an important conversation to be had about the changing roles of research, design, and product, and where we go from here. In light of this, Rosenfeld’s Advancing Research community is hosting a panel of respected, collaborative, and opinionated experts from the disciplines/functions at the core of this changing dynamic: Jamika Burge, Teresa Torres, Robert Fabricant, Noam Segal, and Peter Merholz—to stop litigating the past, and engage in a positive, constructive conversation about the future of UX research. Panelists: Jamika Burge, Robert Fabricant, Noam Segal, Teresa Torres Moderated by: Peter Merholz  

Key Insights

  • Aligning user research outcomes with business goals is critical for demonstrating research value.

  • AI offers opportunities for continuous discovery but raises concerns over bias and ethical transparency.

  • Democratizing research involves enabling non-researchers to conduct basic studies, freeing skilled researchers for complex tasks.

  • A mature organizational environment is necessary to successfully democratize research without sacrificing quality.

  • Research quality can be evaluated using reliability and validity concepts adapted from academia.

  • Not all research activities require advanced skills; even product managers can be trained in targeted, simple research types.

  • Organizational change management is as important as research execution for advancing user-focused practices.

  • The UX research community debates moving past the term 'democratization' to focus on evolving roles amidst technological change.

  • Measuring UX research value is complex because impact permeates across teams and is less quantifiable than engineering outputs.

  • Despite evolving roles and tools, there will always be a need for specialized, skilled researchers for longitudinal and rigorous studies.

Notable Quotes

"How do we show the value of the work that enables us to really advocate for the humans whom we are serving?"

"Building for humans is a huge challenge because humans are multi-layered, weird, and wonderful irrational creatures."

"If we are truly going to create customer-centric organizations, every single person needs firsthand exposure to customers."

"Democratization has been happening for over 20 years and it’s only going to keep happening."

"User research itself is not a single function but many disciplines that require integrity and stewardship."

"We need to move past the point of who does what and into how our roles are changing with technology."

"We know what is not good research, but defining and communicating what good research looks like is more challenging."

"The ultimate measure of our research is its impact—did we build the right thing and did it have the expected effect?"

"Organizational change management requires as much care and effort as executing good research."

"There is always more work to be done than we will ever be able to do, so enabling others to participate is beneficial."

Ask the Rosenbot
Amy Parness
Scaling Sustainability: Complementary strategies that drive long-term success
2025 • Climate UX Interest Group
Steve Turbek
Designing Interactive Graphics with AI Code Help
2026 • Rosenfeld Community
Tiffany Cheng
Designing in a Pandemic: Integrating Speed and Rigor
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Bria Alexander
State of DesignOps Panel
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
George Abraham
Design Systems To-Go: Reimagining Developer Handoff, and Introducing App Builder (Part 2)
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Joshua Graves
We Need To Talk: Managing Ludicrous Requests at Work (Part 3 of 3)
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Todd Healy
Driving Change with CX Metrics
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold
Prayag Narula
How to Empower Your Designers to Do Good Research – And Why You Want To
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Sarit Geertjes
People, not Petri Dishes: Stories from a Research Recruiter
2019 • DesignOps Community
Aurobinda Pradhan
Introduction to Collaborative DesignOps using Cubyts
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Nalini Kotamraju
Research After UX
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Amy Paris
Delivering Equity: Government Services for All Ages, Languages, Sexual Orientations, and Gender Identities
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Victor Udoewa
Radical Participatory Design: Decolonizing Participatory Design Processes
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Liwei Dai
The Heart and Brain of the AI Research
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Maggie Dieringer
Cutting through the Noise
2020 • DesignOps Community
Dan Willis
Filling the Void
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold

More Videos

Mike Oren

"Bringing something to market quickly at scale is time-consuming and expensive—failing early is key to saving resources."

Mike Oren

Why Pharmaceutical's Research Model Should Replace Design Thinking

March 28, 2023

Bria Alexander

"Without your research, feedback, and engagement, we would never have pulled together such a diverse slate of speakers."

Bria Alexander

Opening Remarks

June 9, 2021

Sarah Fathallah

"Resistance to new ideas is sometimes less about the idea’s value and more about the fears and insecurities it reveals in the listener."

Sarah Fathallah Alba Villamil

Beyond insights: Rethinking the role of researchers as stewards of organizational wisdom

March 13, 2025

Jose Coronado

"Supporting designers with basic tools like a working laptop can be surprisingly complex but hugely impacts efficiency."

Jose Coronado Julie Gitlin Lawrence Lipkin

People First - Design at JP Morgan

June 10, 2021

Indra Klavins

"There are at least six definitions for desks at WeWork—context matters."

Indra Klavins

A Design Ops Girl in a Dev Ops World

October 23, 2019

Boon Yew Chew

"Using systems tools is only about 5% of my day-to-day work; I handpick them to meaningfully engage stakeholders."

Boon Yew Chew

Making Sense of Systems—and Using Systems to Make Sense of the Enterprise

June 6, 2023

Peter Merholz

"Organizing design teams by user journey rather than by product better supports a coherent end-to-end experience."

Peter Merholz

Design at Scale is People!

June 11, 2021

Josh Clark

"Sentient design is about intelligent interfaces that are aware of context and intent so they can be radically adaptive to user needs in the moment."

Josh Clark Veronika Kindred

Sentient Design: New Postures for AI-Mediated Experiences (2nd of 3 seminars)

January 29, 2025

Mac Smith

"We had a great depth of customer understanding, but our view of partners was two-dimensional; we didn't know their needs or goals well."

Mac Smith

Measuring Up: Using Product Research for Organizational Impact

March 12, 2021