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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
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UX research must balance human-centered insights with business alignment to demonstrate practical value.
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AI presents opportunities for continuous user research but raises concerns about biases and transparency.
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Democratizing research helps more team members engage with customers but requires quality safeguards.
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Specialized UX researchers remain essential for complex studies and longitudinal work despite broader participation.
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Organizational maturity influences how successfully research democratization can be implemented.
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Change management is a critical and often overlooked skill for advancing UX research’s role in organizations.
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There is no single clear framework for defining good research quality across contexts and roles.
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Research quality can be evaluated through reliability, validity, and ultimately the impact on product outcomes.
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Terms like 'democratization' may oversimplify evolving roles and should give way to conversations about role evolution.
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Effective sharing and storytelling of research insights is crucial for driving organizational learning and ethical decision-making.
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; people are multi-layered, weird, and irrational."
"We need all of the above: skilled research and everyday conversations with customers across the org."
"There will always be more work to do than we can do; democratizing allows better leverage of our skills."
"If you’re just having a beer with someone, that’s not research, but collecting data for decisions is research."
"The ultimate measure is did we build the right thing and did it have the expected impact?"
"I’m not teaching teams to do longitudinal studies; I’m teaching fast, specific interviews for quick answers."
"Change management is the work to be done to move organizations towards being insight-driven."
"AI may begin offsetting the role of researchers by acting as proxies, aggregating data and conducting interviews."
"We should move past democratization as a word and instead focus on how our roles are evolving."
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