Rosenverse

Research Repositories

Gold
Thursday, March 12, 2026 • Advancing Research 2026

This video is featured in the UX metrics & analytics playlist.

Share the love for this talk
Research Repositories
Speakers: Maria Rosala and Shivanjali M.
Link:

Summary

Dive into what’s next for research repositories at the UXR Tools Summit. Maria Rosala, Director of Research at the Nielsen Norman Group, will be joined by ResearchOps expert Shivanjali M. to discuss how repositories are evolving to connect insights across teams and organizations in smarter, more integrated ways. If you’re a UX, design, and market researcher, bring your questions, thoughts, and concerns about repositories to the discussion.

Key Insights

  • Research repositories vary widely, from libraries of reports to rich knowledge bases integrating multiple data sources.

  • One major challenge is motivating researchers and non-researchers to consistently populate repositories with relevant, contextualized data.

  • Adding contextual metadata—like methodology, market, and date—is crucial for meaningful repository content.

  • The term ‘research repository’ is evolving into ‘customer knowledge base’ reflecting integration across organizational knowledge.

  • Using templates to structure research entries simplifies data input and improves AI’s ability to parse and summarize content.

  • AI agents can help maintain context when searching repositories and flag when no relevant answers exist, reducing hallucinations.

  • Human oversight remains essential to verify the relevance and accuracy of AI-generated search results, especially with dated data.

  • Integrating AI bots with communication tools like Slack increases repository adoption by enabling on-demand access to research insights.

  • Context retention by AI is necessary to prevent misleading conclusions, such as mixing up different customer segments or outdated information.

  • Scoring research impact and linking recommendations to outcomes in repositories can improve organizational learning but is still emerging.

Notable Quotes

"Personally, if I was gonna go into some aspect of UX research, I would jump in with both feet into research repositories."

"There are so many different variations of repositories, from research libraries to databases cataloging atomic insights."

"Research knowledge by itself is not enough. You need to add other sources like user voice, surveys, and customer feedback."

"You cannot just put this 5% of users did not want this without knowing why or where this insight came from."

"AI agents should understand the entire context and, if no suitable result exists, come back honestly without lying."

"We made it mandatory to have a one-pager summary for every research project to make insights easy to manage."

"To motivate people to populate the repository, be annoyingly persistent and sometimes create the template for them."

"Connecting the repository to Slack and building an AI bot to answer questions fascinates users and drives usage."

"We have been good with not having fake or hallucinated answers so far, and retaining context is key."

"Human oversight is crucial because no single metric like date alone can determine if research is outdated or still relevant."

Ask the Rosenbot
Sydney Lawson
Anatomy of a Strong User Panel
2026 • Advancing Research 2026
Gold
Veevi Rosenstein
Building for Scale: Creating the Zendesk UX Research Practice
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Jemma Ahmed
Convergent Research Techniques in Customer Journey Mapping
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Jorge Arango
Meeting of the Waters: Designing for Successful Inorganic Growth
2021 • Enterprise Community
Tristin Oldani
Turning awareness into action with Climate UX
2025 • Climate UX Interest Group
Bria Alexander
Opening Remarks
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
James Chudley
Decarbonising User Journeys: How minimising enables us to do more with less
2025 • Climate UX Interest Group
Erin Hauber
Design is Not the Frosting on the Scaled Agile Layer Cake
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
Jon Fukuda
Design Planning and Management Support
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Maria Rosala
Research Repositories
2026 • Advancing Research 2026
Gold
Lisa Gironda
Opener: Chief of Staff–An unexpected journey
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Frances Yllana
DesignOps–Leading the Path to Parity
2023 • DesignOps Community
Nick Lewis
Designing and building low-carbon websites independently
2025 • Climate UX Interest Group
Iain McMaster
Design and Product: from Frenemy to Harmony
2023 • Design in Product 2023
Gold
Chris Geison
What is Research Strategy?
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Erin Weigel
Failure Friday #6: 90% of Everything I Do is Either Broken or Pointless
2025 • Rosenfeld Community

More Videos

Amy Brana Stuart

"Reducing flights isn't about abolishing travel, but about reducing carbon emissions and building resilience."

Amy Brana Stuart

Rest in Peace Fly-in-fly-out Design

June 9, 2022

Jon Fukuda

"It’s about making researchers, designers, cross-functional collaborators more efficient and more highly performant."

Jon Fukuda

Theme One Intro

September 8, 2022

Sam Proulx

"For users with physical challenges, hover states can be very difficult, especially for eye, head tracking, or voice control users."

Sam Proulx

Prototype Reviews, People With Disabilities, and You

December 8, 2021

Florence Okoye

"I desperately needed a specifically Black centered ethos of design to avoid being a pair of hands contributing to imperialistic white supremacist capitalist patriarchy."

Florence Okoye

AfroFuturism and UX Research

March 27, 2023

Eduardo Ortiz

"Trauma among participants and practitioners is an industry problem we can no longer ignore."

Eduardo Ortiz

Theme 3 Intro

March 13, 2025

Samuel Proulx

"Testing with a screen reader is fine for QA, but user research must be with actual screen reader users."

Samuel Proulx

Designing beyond caricatures: Embracing real, diverse user needs

December 4, 2024

Jemma Ahmed

"Without ongoing, deep investment in our education, we risk losing credibility with increasingly methodologically fluent stakeholders."

Jemma Ahmed Megan Blocker Eduardo Ortiz

Redefining the research toolkit: Expanding methodologies for a changing world

March 12, 2025

Joe Elmendorf

"S****y maps are a Trojan horse for sense-making because they’re disarming and inviting."

Joe Elmendorf

Shitty Maps: A Trojan Horse for Sensemaking

July 9, 2026

Pippa Lomas

"There is no big idea — sometimes we just need to get the basics right and reset expectations."

Pippa Lomas

Paving the Path for Neurodiversity in Design

October 4, 2023