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Do you also feel the growing tension in our field? AI tools are everywhere, teams are being asked to move faster, and, at the same time, the quality of research is under pressure.

In this talk, Tara shares striking findings from more than 200 workshops with over 2000 UX professionals across Europe. The picture is uncomfortable but important. Many teams still rely on very small samples. Basic statistical ideas are often misunderstood. AI-generated insights are sometimes accepted without checking the facts. The result is research that looks convincing, yet misses real user needs.

This session is not about pointing fingers. It is a clear invitation to strengthen our craft and rethink how we work with AI. You will hear concrete suggestions to improve quality, a simple rule for safe AI use, and a practical way to position research as essential risk management inside organisations.

AI is quickly becoming part of our daily work as researchers. We use AI tools to support research tasks, and we study products that rely on AI behind the scenes. Yet many of us still feel unsure about how AI works and why it behaves the way it does.

This talk offers a clear, friendly introduction to the core mechanics of Generative AI, presented in plain English. You will hear what tokens, transformers, and inference really mean, why hallucinations happen, and how probabilistic behaviour shapes the outputs we see.

Colman uses real examples, including well-known chatbot failures of Air Canada, to show how failing to grasp this understanding can lead to flawed insights and poor product decisions. 

This session is made for researchers without a technical background who want to feel more confident in AI projects.

Our fabulous sponsors are stepping into the spotlight — and they’ve got just 30 seconds each to win your hearts (and your curiosity).

Recognizable? You deliver a strong piece of research, the team nods along, decisions seem clear, and then, months later, the insight has vanished. It sits somewhere in a folder, never mentioned again. As the only researcher in a fast-moving product organisation, Domina noticed that this “after” phase is where most insights quietly lose their power.

In this talk, she shares a simple way to view what happens after research is delivered, based on patterns observed across multiple projects. Some insights never land in time, some lie dormant for months and return as “new” work, and others simply fade as teams or priorities shift. You will hear practical examples of how to spot these moments and keep relevant insights alive for longer, from timing decisions better to building small rituals that help teams stay connected to the work.

Many researchers feel pressure to demonstrate stronger business impact, yet the connection between user insights and strategic decision-making remains unclear.In this talk, Nidhi and Serena explore how UX researchers can expand their identity by borrowing tools from business design and applying them through a research mindset. Curiosity, critical thinking, and sensitivity to human needs are powerful assets when navigating decisions driven by revenue, risk, or efficiency.

Through practical examples, the speakers show how methods like competitive mapping, experimentation planning, and strategic validation can help researchers add a strategic layer to their work, strengthening collaboration and influence. This session offers an encouraging, practical view of how research can contribute more meaningfully at a time when organisations expect clear value and impact.

Most services depend on far more people than the “main user” we usually focus on. Caregivers, community organisers, relatives, neighbours, and support figures often take on the emotional and practical work that allows a service to function. Recognising how they hold, translate, and sustain everyday experience opens a clearer understanding of how care and trust actually operate within a system.

Drawing on research in elder support, community finance, and funerary experience, this talk shows that services succeed not because of the user alone, but because of the networks around them. Once these actors were understood as users in their own right, the research shifted. Trust-building, cultural context, and emotional labour did not sit on the margins of the work; they shaped how research was conducted and how decisions were made.

Through grounded stories and simple visual tools, this session explores how recognising these wider constellations of people helps us design with greater clarity and humility. At a time when efficiency and automation risk flattening human complexity, paying attention to the relationships that make services possible is not an extra layer of insight. It is ethical, practical, and essential.

Friction shows up in any project that involves real people and real societal challenges. Yet in many UX and innovation settings, discomfort is quickly smoothed over or turned into polite conversations that lead nowhere.

In this talk, Gabriela and Eva introduce the idea of the brave space, a space intentionally designed so that tension can be seen, discussed, and used. Through examples from public and health sector projects in the Netherlands, they show how moments of discomfort, resistance, or conflict can offer insight rather than be pushed aside.

You will hear how design practice, behavioural psychology, and simple creative rituals can help teams have more honest conversations and work through difficult moments together. This session is especially relevant for researchers who face institutional resistance, compassion fatigue, or performative participation. Instead of offering quick fixes, Gabriela and Eva share practical ways to stay with the tension and create conditions for real change to begin.

In UX research, we often focus on what people think and say, yet much of human experience is shaped by the body. This short talk introduces a more embodied way of understanding users, where physical cues, emotions, and sensory responses become part of how we explore experiences. 

Yang will share simple examples from his work to show how paying attention to the body can reveal layers of insight that traditional interviews or surveys may overlook.

Rather than offering a fixed method, this session opens up a space to think about how researchers can notice more, listen differently, and include the whole person in their practice. It is an invitation to reconnect research with human presence and to consider how embodied awareness can support deeper understanding in a fast, technology-driven world.

As researchers, we often focus so much on understanding others that we rarely pause to look at ourselves. In this short and personal talk, Anuoluwapo explores how the quirks and traits we usually try to hide can quietly shape the way we listen, question, and connect. Rather than aiming for perfection, she invites us to consider what happens when we bring our full, human selves into the work.

This session offers a warm reflection on how our so-called “problem bits” might hold unexpected value in research. It is an encouragement to stay honest, stay curious, and recognise that our own chaos could be part of what makes us effective in the first place.

Most of our favourite UX metrics were designed for a world that no longer exists. Users completed clear tasks in one sitting on a desktop website. Today’s app-first journeys are fragmented, habitual, and shaped over time. That shift means some of our most familiar measures can miss — or even distort — what users are actually experiencing, especially when the scores look reassuringly high.

In this talk, Natasha shares examples from legal and financial services where trusted UX metrics created a false sense of confidence. Not because the tools themselves are flawed, but because they’re often used outside the contexts they were designed for.

Rather than throwing existing measures away, the session introduces a set of practical questions researchers can use to sense-check whether a metric fits the behaviour, journey shape, and decisions it’s meant to inform. You’ll also see how pairing behavioural and attitudinal data can surface a more honest picture of experience — one that reflects how people really use products today, not how we hope they do.

In user research, we often focus on making studies inclusive for participants. Yet, we rarely stop to ask whether the research process itself is accessible to the researcher.

In this personal and practical talk, Nicola shares her experience of developing a chronic upper-body condition that made traditional research tools difficult or impossible to use. Learning to work with voice assistive technology reshaped every part of her workflow, from planning sessions to analysing data.  

Through this journey, Nicola highlights both the possibilities and the real barriers that still exist for researchers with disabilities or chronic conditions. The talk offers simple adjustments that can support healthier, more accessible working practices for everyone, along with examples of where current tools fall short. She invites the community to broaden its understanding of inclusion and to consider how our tools and ways of working can better support a broader range of people.

We often use ideas from behavioral science to design better products, but we don’t always apply those same insights to our own research practice. This talk explores a simple question: what would happen if we did?

Vidhika explores how behavioral science can help us design studies that better reflect the messy realities of how people think and behave — rather than the neat, ideal conditions we often assume in our research.

You’ll learn how subtle choices in study design can unintentionally introduce bias, even among experienced researchers, and how small adjustments can make our work more reliable and human-centered. Through concrete examples, Vidhika will share practical, behaviorally-informed tweaks you can try in your own studies. She invites us to look at our methods with fresh eyes and to design research that gets closer to how people actually live and make decisions.

UX researchers often find themselves balancing competing priorities, translating different viewpoints, and trying to influence decisions they do not directly control. In many ways, we already work like diplomats, even if we do not call it that.

In this talk, Ania explores what diplomatic practice can teach us about stakeholder relationships, trust, and influence. She shows how diplomatic principles can help researchers shape strategy through relationships rather than struggle for visibility. You will hear practical reflections on navigating power dynamics, negotiating priorities, and keeping influence when timelines and budgets are tight.

Every researcher knows the feeling. You deliver a solid study, the room nods politely… and nothing happens. Larry argues that the issue is often not the quality of the research, but the way it is communicated. A study with perfect methodology but poor communication is a zero-impact study. 

How can researchers win that elusive seat at the strategy table? Insights only create change when people feel motivated to act. 

Drawing on more than twenty-five years of both presenting research and receiving it as a client, Larry shares real moments where communication either opened doors or quietly closed them. You will hear practical techniques for shaping your message from the first project conversation through everyday check-ins to the final readout. The session introduces communication tools grounded in both classic and modern frameworks, including Aristotle’s ethos, logos and pathos, the P.E.S.O. media model, and Google’s E.E.A.T. guidelines.

You will leave with clear, usable tactics to help insights travel further within your organisation.