Rosenverse
Right horses for the right courses – how and when to democratize research
Conference ticket
Thursday, November 20, 2025 • Advancing Service Design 2025
Share the love for this talk
Right horses for the right courses – how and when to democratize research
Speakers: Ned Dwyer
Link:

Summary

“Research democratization” has become a rallying cry in many organizations — but also a source of tension. Should everyone be able to run studies, or should research stay tightly centralized? The truth is, both extremes create waste, confusion, and risk. In this talk, I’ll share a practical framework for when to democratize and when to centralize research. You’ll learn how to weigh risk, reversibility, and audience impact; how to put guardrails around democratized research; and how AI can enable broader participation without chaos. You’ll leave with a decision matrix and a “democratization charter” you can adapt to your org, so the right people are on the right horses for the right courses.

Key Insights

  • Democratization of research exists on a spectrum and must be customized to each organization's context, risk tolerance, and regulatory environment.

  • Not all research tasks should be democratized; high-risk or unclear problems require specialist researcher involvement.

  • AI tools are enabling broader roles for PMs and designers, allowing faster prototyping and product documentation, blurring specialist boundaries.

  • Effective democratization requires elegant guardrails to protect participant safety, data privacy, and research quality.

  • Democratization can massively increase organizational research capacity, as Flight Center’s example shows, tripling volume while maintaining quality.

  • Training and certification are critical to enable non-researchers to run low-risk studies effectively and ethically.

  • Bias awareness and anti-bias training are essential components of democratization to maintain the integrity of insights.

  • A democratization charter outlining who can conduct research, with which audiences and methods, helps set clear expectations and governance.

  • Research maturity assessment helps determine an organization's readiness for democratization and identifies needed upskilling.

  • Research quality control currently relies on script review and coaching but is evolving toward AI-supported automatic quality feedback.

Notable Quotes

"Democratization is here to stay, and it’s a positive force for good in product development."

"The democratization spectrum ranges from everyone accessing feedback to a free-for-all, but I don’t advocate for a free-for-all."

"We need elegant guardrails to keep the business safe, keep participants safe, and make democratization ethical."

"Flight Center went from 10 researchers running research to over 130 people trained to safely do interviews."

"When done right, democratization multiplies the impact of research rather than diluting it."

"The goal is to lower the floor for who can access research while raising the ceiling of what’s possible."

"It should be as easy to run research as brushing your teeth."

"AI will soon enable us to automatically flag leading questions and coach researchers for quality."

"Not every problem needs research; sometimes it’s fine to ship quickly and learn after."

"Training non-researchers in bias awareness and methodology is essential to prevent poor data and insights."

Ask the Rosenbot
Ben Reason
Making the system visible: The fastest path to better decisions
2025 • Advancing Service Design 2025
Conference
Peter Van Dijck
Hands-on AI #2: Understanding evals: LLM as a Judge
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Sarah Auslander
Incremental Steps to Drive Radical Innovation in Policy Design
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Jamika Burge
Embracing change: Navigating shifting landscapes with compassion and agency
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Peter Merholz
The 2025 State of UX/Design Organizational Health
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Jennifer Kanyamibwa
Creating the Blueprint: Growing and Building Design Teams
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Sarah Sgarlato Pierini
From Passion to Execution: A Story of Evolving Research Maturity at LinkedIn
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Mike Oren
Design Research Strategy & Strategic Design Research
2022 • Advancing Research Community
Mike Davidson
Fireside Chat
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Chris Geison
Theme 1 Intro
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Louis Rosenfeld
The Rosenbot and the Rosenverse: An AMA with Lou Rosenfeld
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Erika Kincaid
Connecting the Dots: How to Foster Collaboration and Build a Strong Design Review Culture
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Bria Alexander
Day 2 Welcome
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Kate Towsey
Ask Me Anything (AMA) with Kate Towsey
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Ilana Lipsett
Anticipating Risk, Regulating Tech: A Playbook for Ethical Technology Governance
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Llewyn Paine
[Demo] Deploying AI doppelgangers to de-identify user research recordings
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold

More Videos

Dan Hill

"Design is not really about problem solving; it’s about cultural imagination."

Dan Hill

Designing for the infrastructures of everyday life

June 4, 2024

Steve Chaparro

"Simplicity rarely loses to complexity in the public square—it’s about meeting people where they are."

Steve Chaparro

Bringing Into Alignment Brand, Culture and Space

August 13, 2020

Jeff Ephraim Bander

"Only 38% of people actually looked at the company review information, even though it was crucial."

Jeff Ephraim Bander Ariane Rahn Philipp Reiter

Eye Tracking Gamechanger: Why Smartphone Eye Tracking will Revolutionize Your UX Research

March 11, 2022

Patrick Commarford

"If you’re like us, you’d love to have 100% of the UX talent every project needs, but your team isn’t large enough."

Patrick Commarford

Design Staffing for Impact

January 8, 2024

Dave Hoffer

"If you don’t have any work, make some spec work just to show your skills."

Dave Hoffer Joanne Weaver

UX Job Search AMA #2 with Joanne Weaver and Dave Hoffer

April 3, 2025

Edward Cupps

"I was no longer a point person in recruiting or shaping the team, but that was okay."

Edward Cupps

The Principal Path: Journeying from Management to Individual Contributor

June 11, 2021

Aletheia Delivre

"Our edge isn’t in managing what exists; it’s in architecting new meaning at scale where process becomes infrastructure."

Aletheia Delivre

New Shapes and Emerging Identities for Design Ops

September 11, 2025

Tim Parmee

"Overlap between design leadership and ops is context based; pragmatic collaboration gets things moving faster."

Tim Parmee

Changing Our Design Pressure Points

October 2, 2023

Brennan Hartich

"A design program manager is like air traffic control making sure all the planes land in the right place."

Brennan Hartich

Communicating and Establishing DesignOps as a New Function

November 7, 2018