Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.
Log in Create free account100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.
Summary
Three of your research colleagues discussed and defended their respective positions (below) on what UX research can learn from other research practices. Participants engaged with them in a discussion and Q&A, facilitated by Brianna Sylver. "UX research is inherently future-oriented. An anthropology of the future can offer more distinguished and nuanced ways to explore the meaning of users' expectations, anticipations, hopes, and speculations." – Nicole Aleong "UX research should learn more from market research, a larger and more mature field in which it has roots. Market research is a multidisciplinary field with an extensive collection of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies that have been used to support product development decisions to deliver business outcomes for decades—no need to reinvent the wheel." – Michaela Mora "UX research is often viewed as cute, charming and 'nice to have.' For that perception to change in the market, we need to learn from those charging millions of dollars for their strategic research skills: management consultants." – Prayag Narula
Key Insights
-
•
Management consultants gain strategic influence and high fees by positioning as problem solvers, not just researchers.
-
•
UX research teams often do impactful work but lack visibility and influence at the executive level.
-
•
Market research offers a century of methods focused on integrating product, price, place, and promotion for business decisions.
-
•
Digital UX research focuses narrowly on product interfaces, missing broader brand and market factors shaping user experience.
-
•
Integrating market research and UX research can produce a holistic understanding of customer experience.
-
•
Futures anthropology breaks down user views of the future into expectation, anticipation, hope, and speculation to avoid oversimplification.
-
•
Recognizing different future orientations allows more intentional research design and richer insight generation.
-
•
Organizational silos limit research impact; cross-disciplinary collaboration and integrated teams are emerging as solutions.
-
•
UX researchers should adopt a strategic mindset, focusing on framing research outcomes to appeal to C-suite priorities.
-
•
Confidence and communication skills are key for UX researchers to assert their unique closeness to users and strategic value.
Notable Quotes
"Why do management consultants get all the time and resources to do basic research while UX teams fight for every resource?"
"Market research is a hundred-year-old multidisciplinary field with many qualitative and quantitative methods supporting business decisions."
"User experience is shaped not just by product interaction but also by pricing, promotion, distribution, and brand communications."
"UX research often becomes tactical and siloed, limiting its strategic influence and risking burnout."
"Futures anthropology teaches us to separate users' expectations, anticipations, hopes, and speculations about the future."
"Management consultants sell solutions to problems, not just research data, which is why they command high fees."
"We need to think of ourselves as strategic leaders who know customer needs better than anyone in the organization."
"Integration is coming: research teams will drop labels and collaborate across disciplines to deliver richer insights."
"There’s a lot of potential in UX research to go beyond product and influence strategy and C-suite decision making."
"Our deepest fear is not that we’re inadequate, but that we’re powerful beyond measure."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"The intellectually honest answer to most questions about information architecture is, I’m not sure, or it depends."
Sarah BarrettThe "How" of Enterprise Information Architecture
June 6, 2023
"If we balance qualitative depth and quantitative breadth, we get a yin-yang harmony that strengthens research and practice."
Mohammad Hossein JarrahiContextuality problem: Exploring the Benefits of Qualitative and Quantitative Research
January 20, 2023
"It doesn’t happen very often, but I’m speechless. I’m truly impressed by the clarity, structure, and impressive synthesis of the Homeowner Playbook."
Katie HansenFinding the unknown in the known: Harnessing meta-analysis and literature review
March 12, 2025
"We took thousands of hours of curated content and built a chatbot around it so it’s not garbage in, garbage out."
Louis RosenfeldThe Rosenbot and the Rosenverse: An AMA with Lou Rosenfeld
June 5, 2024
"The digital sector’s compounded impact on carbon footprint exceeds industries like airlines when aggregated across millions."
Ned Gartside Mike Gifford Zoe Lopez-Latorre Tzviya SiegmanNavigating accessibility and climate
April 17, 2024
"UX researchers are really good at applying their methods to people outside the business but terrible at applying them to the leaders they work with."
Sarah Alvarado Nalini P. Kotamraju Anne Mamaghani Peter MerholzHow to make UX research leadership more effective [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
October 26, 2023
"Our journey into Wonderland has been wild, wonderful, and requires constant reflection and looking outward for inspiration."
Carla Casariego Sarah SpencerDesignOps in Wonderland
October 24, 2019
"Embedding our design philosophies into our communication docs acts as a constant reminder to designers."
Prayag Narula Abhinav KrishnaDialing for Research: How to Reach the Unreachable
March 10, 2022
"Many times when planning to hire, we first assess our team competencies to identify the necessary talent."
Ebru NamaldiDesigning the Designer’s Journey: Scaling Teams, Culture, and Growth Through DesignOps
September 11, 2025
