Embracing change: Navigating shifting landscapes with compassion and agency
This video is featured in the PDI 2026 playlist.
Summary
What it means to be a researcher and how we understand research are rapidly changing. Jamika Burge will help you embrace these changes with compassion, and explore how you can exercise agency so you shape this transition, not just endure it.
Key Insights
-
•
User research is not declining but evolving and remains crucial for understanding human experience.
-
•
Researchers should view AI as a tool to augment, not replace, their work.
-
•
Building strong partnerships with business stakeholders by understanding their language is essential to increasing research influence.
-
•
Collaboration within and beyond organizations strengthens skills and advances the discipline.
-
•
Ethical interrogation of AI, including biases and socioeconomic impacts, is a unique opportunity for user researchers.
-
•
Applying empathy inward towards colleagues helps build trust and fosters more open, effective collaboration.
-
•
Tools like Dovetail can help speed up research synthesis, freeing researchers for more strategic work.
-
•
Communicating research value effectively means aligning insights with business needs and decision-making frameworks.
-
•
Embracing uncertainty and challenging the status quo are inherent parts of impactful user research.
-
•
The analogy of surgeons using robotic arms illustrates that expertise remains fundamental even as research methods incorporate AI.
Notable Quotes
"User research is not going anywhere. It isn’t a sinking vessel in need of saving."
"There’s an African proverb that says if you wanna go fast, you go alone. But if you wanna go far, go together."
"AI is the new electricity, transforming multiple industries much like electricity powered the industrial revolution."
"The tools that are AI inspired will not replace those who understand how they work or apply complex skills requiring human creativity and judgment."
"We’re trading empathy for algorithms… Personalization has gotten so complex that it’s now out of human control."
"Turn ethnography inward and learn how your peers and leaders make decisions before you try to use data to influence those decisions."
"Meeting partners where they are and folding what they understand into how we connect with them is how we can show influence."
"Sometimes people aren’t willing, and you get a whole lot more with honey than you do with vinegar."
"Navigating uncertainty is part of our work; uncertainty actually becomes a catalyst we didn’t think we needed."
"Surgeons don’t stop healing people because they’re assisted by robot arms. We get new tools to support us and need to learn how to use them."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"We need to stop centering ourselves in research and start fighting to pay participants, ensure representation, and use real data."
Jemma Ahmed Megan Blocker Eduardo OrtizRedefining the research toolkit: Expanding methodologies for a changing world
March 12, 2025
"Design systems are the language of implementation; they allow us to communicate ideas in a common format and process."
Mitchell BernsteinOrganizing Chaos: How IBM is Defining Design Systems with Sketch for an Ever-Changing AI Landscape
September 29, 2021
"WMBE is a certification that requires paperwork but helps bring more diversity to contracting."
Emily LessardRFPs Without Tears: Writing Inclusive RFPS that Don't Scare Away Talent
December 9, 2021
"Invest in brand unification as a strategic tool to build stakeholder confidence and increase engagement."
Jenny PriceFrom Tradition to Transformation: Unlocking Startup Agility in a Legacy Enterprise
September 10, 2025
"We are the problem we’re trying to replace — some legacy digital systems we created 20 years ago are still running."
Sarah Auslander Betsy Ramaccia Gordon RossInsights Panel
November 18, 2022
"Giving ChatGPT custom instructions is like training your alien."
Soma Ghosh Savina Hawkins Dave Hoffer Rob Thomas Victor UdoewaWhat emerging methods are advancing UX research [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
September 28, 2023
"We kept feeling the same consistent pain around some truths for our design system."
Charles Lee Jennie YipBuilding a New Home for the Atlassian Design System
October 22, 2020
"In Western modernity, if something is not an object, it is not real research or real knowledge."
Victor UdoewaBeyond Methods and Diversity: The Roots of Inclusion
March 26, 2024
"Burnout isn’t just an individual issue; managers must actively help employees say no and manage workload."
DesignOps and The Great Talent War of 2021
August 19, 2021
