This year's program

If your role is about getting people to improve the user experience, stories will help you do a better job. They’ll help you connect with other teams, help them to understand your research and embrace the need for change.  

That’s because stories affect us on all levels of our being: rationally as well as emotionally and neurologically. (For example, through hormones, mirror neurons and by activating specific areas of our brains).  

In this expanded version of Sabine’s popular Storytelling Masterclass, you’ll learn how to find a story worth telling and how to structure it for maximum effect. And you’ll have even more opportunity to try out techniques in an interactive, safe environment.  

After completing this training you’ll have:  

• + A clear process and “story engine” to present your findings in a more engaging way
• + Tools to respond to objections and perceived risks voiced by your stakeholders
• + A list of useful resources to deepen your storytelling practice 

UX researchers have powerful tools for understanding people, but their training often lacks key skills needed to navigate and influence the business environments in which they work. 

This workshop will provide you with the business acumen around 1) corporate finance and 2) corporate strategy so you can learn the “language of business” and amplify the impact you have within your own organization or your clients’ organizations.

Participants will leave the workshop with concrete frameworks they will be able to apply in their research roles. 

Stakeholder engagement is crucial for the success of our research projects. But how do you help stakeholders to become involved and contribute? As researchers, we often invite stakeholders to observe user interviews. Yet there are more ways and more moments to get stakeholders’ buy-in. To do so, a researcher must wear a different hat: that of facilitator. 

Facilitation is not just for workshops. You can facilitate any kind of session to get better outcomes. This training workshop will give you practical facilitation tips and tools. These will help you engage stakeholders at those crucial moments before and after your fieldwork. Such as when planning a research project or when sharing research insights. 

In this training workshop we will: 

• + Look at the differences between being a researcher and a facilitator 
• + Discuss the practical, social and motivational side of facilitation, with tips and tools to help you engage stakeholders 
• + Break into groups to dive into a practical facilitation challenge: creating the agenda for a briefing session with stakeholders, when you can only get 1 hour of their time  

“Insight” is a term bandied about by researchers across the industry – but how do we define an insight? How do we know when we have a good insight that can drive product and/or strategic impact? And is there a codified process for getting there?

In this workshop we seek to answer these questions, and to propose frameworks and a method for moving from raw data to synthesized, impactful insights. We organize this interactive workshop around two frameworks, providing theory as well as a process – and hands-on practice – for moving from raw data to synthesized, impactful insights. 

We know that articulating our design decisions or presenting the learnings from our user research to stakeholders can sometimes be a challenge. Spontaneous Talks Frameworks have been around for years. They help people think of answers or tell stories fast and smart.

In this workshop, Jen will not only teach attendees about a few Spontaneous TalksFrameworks, attendees will also get some hands-on practice using the frameworks. Applying these simple frameworks can help a person avoid anxiety by quickly organizing a thought and moving forward to articulating that thought in a cohesive and eloquent manner. 

This talk will explore a design ethnographic approach to understanding how people experience possible futures, and what we might learn from this in relation to designing with people for uncertain times.

Secondary research is chronically underused in user research. I am willing to bet that when you think about secondary research the first methodologies that come to mind are competitor analyses and stakeholder interviews, but there is so much more.  

Secondary research takes us beyond users’ behaviours and attitudes and helps us understand the world and context our users live in. It can also enable us to have a more robust influence in our organizations, nudge our stakeholders to ask the right questions and to build the right products, and even helps us better connect to the purpose and vision of our solutions.  

Most of us don’t like saying no. Nor are we used to it. We have all (and some of us are still) been working hard to create opportunities to conduct studies, proving the worth of the work we do. Squeezing ourselves into tiny little gaps in product roadmaps to bring real users, real humans into product decision making. We’ve all said yes to impossible timelines, impossible stakeholders, unmanageable scopes.  

But, there is a transition happening: we’re moving from push; to pull. The demand for user insights is rising. The tiny snowball we worked so hard on is becoming an avalanche of research questions and projects. 

It’s time to switch from finding and creating battles to picking the right ones – and saying no to all the rest. Cause by saying no to one project – we can say yes to those that truly matter.  

Ilse will provide you with a clear and practical approach to setting your team’s mission and goals – and by doing that creating a clear and transparent vision on what research requests and ideas would help you move in that direction – and which ones won’t.  

This talk is aimed at providing a framework for growing oneself as a researcher by collaborating with other disciplines, positioning yourself as an expert, and scaling research to impact more of your organization than if you were to do it alone.  

I’ll share true tales about being the first researcher in the NYC office for Lyft. With tons of examples, clear and engaging visuals of the process, and plenty of “Dos and Don’ts” you will leave this talk with a new approach to your research requests that can be put to immediate use.  

While many researchers see the value of a central research repository, how to introduce one in an organization is still a big question. Today we have the chance to learn from researchers who have done it.

A panel discussion moderated by Alexander Knoll, co-founder of Condens.

How can we explain why most UXR candidates cannot even make the first round of tech calls while the companies complain about not getting enough promising applicants? What quick wins might candidates be missing in their UXR job applications?

In this short talk, Meltem will expose the patterns she detected by reviewing hundreds of CVs throughout her career. She shares with the audience how they can improve their CVs to make their candidacy significantly more attractive – whether they’re switching companies, transitioning from another field, or starting off their careers. 

Industry standards for implementing UX research methods need updating to make the field more accessible to talented and insightful neurodivergent professionals. Because disorders like ADHD and Autism are underdiagnosed, accommodations need to be available for all members of a team. Diversity and inclusion can only be achieved if we fundamentally change the way we work to accommodate everyone interested in the field. 

At the end of this talk, you’ll have heard about UX research methods and standards that can be harmful to neurodivergent professionals and you will walk away with a few ideas for what successful UX research can look like even if it’s not what you’re used to. 

As our teams grow more distributed, observing live research sessions often falls to the wayside. Team members make decisions based on assumptions rather than evidence-based user insights. We need to think about how to immerse our cross-functional partners in research so that they can continually hear the voice of the user. It’s not just about inviting stakeholders to be a black square on Zoom or watching a pre-recorded video. One solution is a well-planned research immersion event with structured activities and unstructured discussion time. 

How? Remote tools allow for not only flexibility in engagement but also inclusivity for the needs of both participants and attendees. Jennifer will share practical steps and strategies!

Growing a Pan-African research and design agency is a challenge at many levels: growing your multi-language team, your processes, your skill sets, your revenue, the geographies you cover and growing in expertise as the design maturity of your clients grows.

In 2021 YUX worked for clients with high levels of in-house design expertise but little knowledge of the African continent. One such client was the Wikimedia Foundation. We want to tell the story of how we were able to meet the design requirements of mature clients, in multi-language, multi-country, global impact projects, from the perspective of a young African agency

As our careers develop, we must shift focus from simply doing research to realizing the full value of our insights. But, what is the true value of research? How does actual and perceived value vary across stakeholders? What are the key value-adding activities, and how can we organize ourselves around them?

Jacob introduced new frameworks to answer each of these questions, which can then be used to enhance the value generated by individuals and teams 

The talk aims to introduce the very first Insights Core team piloted in Glovo’s Customer Cluster. Glovo is the app that allows you to get the best products in your city in a few minutes: from food to pharmacy, groceries, flowers & more.

The Insights Core initiative brings together User Experience Research (UXR) and Product Analytics (PA), closely working side by side to generate actionable, more comprehensive insights (qualitative + quantitative research) to drive Glovo’s product strategy. These insights strive to inform Glovo’s future-facing questions and to uncover opportunities for the business.

The talk gives a sneak peek at the steps we went through to set up this pilot from scratch, the challenges we faced along the way, and the learnings gathered from our first projects. It’s a tangible case that intends to guide anyone ready to step up the game of UXR in their own organisation and context by fostering internal synergies with complementary disciplines. 

Conducting strategic research typically entails tackling some of our companies’ most complex problem areas. We need to understand the nuanced technological, financial, organizational, competitive and cultural constraints under which our companies operate. We may collaborate with stakeholders who have conflicting perspectives, whilst our product teams receive signals from many different sources that point us in seemingly different directions. As qualitative Researchers, we are adept at recognizing complexity and processing divergent feedback. Yet bringing these nuanced, layered findings to our organizations is not always an easy task. Attention spans are short and many colleagues prefer to communicate in quick TL;DRs.

If we as Researchers don’t properly consider and communicate to stakeholders the nuances and complexities of our products, business models, markets, users, and environments – we risk oversimplifying the problem. And if we’re presenting research insights that are very easy to digest, that’s perhaps a sign we’re not tackling the hard questions. The most impactful strategic findings often are controversial and question established ways of thinking.

This talk will cover how Researchers can think about research complexity, approach ambiguous problem spaces, and apply strategies to communicate complexity in order to shepherd our organizations through a learning process.

It’s hard to think of anything more engaging for people than listening to a good story.

The problem is that human beings tend to create narratives even from incomplete data and are susceptible to being persuaded by personal stories, even when statistical evidence points to the contrary. For example, in Psychology, the “identifiable victim effect” shows that people are much more sensitized to helping a single identified person than an anonymous group. Detailed narratives of real people tend to capture more attention and evoke strong emotional responses, which make people more likely to react and take action.

In this talk, Tania discusses the tendency for human beings to be attracted to stories, what UX researchers need to do to avoid being wrongly influenced by user stories, and on which occasions stories can be a good tool to illustrate the results. 

How do we understand where we are when it comes to our organisations’ UX Research (UXR) maturity? How do we then communicate this to others in the organisation? Does our leadership team understand the changes that are required to improve, and the value these changes will bring?  

More and more organisations are investing in establishing a UXR research function, but many find it hard to progress beyond certain stages of maturity and can find it challenging to move forward in their practices and ability to impact their organisation. 

Tom, Director of UX Research Partners in EMEA for UserZoom, has been a consultant and advisor to many of the world’s leading digital organisations. During this session he will introduce and share examples from leading brands, of how using a UXR maturity model can help give direction, create buy-in and help drive a user-centred culture. 

Video games offer novel research challenges, different to any other industry. Games are intentionally difficult, and friction is an intended part of the experience. High levels of secrecy introduce methodological challenges we don’t find in traditional UX. And how do you even begin to define a user need for art? All of these factors mean that video games require a unique approach from user researchers. 

In this talk, we’ll explore what those differences are between games and other sectors, and how to gain relevant experience for running research in games.  

More and more organisations are starting to recognize the value of UX research and opening up new headcounts in departments that didn’t previously have dedicated research support. However, as the first UX researcher in a department, there are several challenges that might await you. In the best-case scenario, your team might be unfamiliar with the research practice and not know how to involve you in the product development process. Worst case they might have unrealistic expectations of the “magic” of research and then feel disappointed… 

In the past few years, Bo has been mostly working with newly-formed departments, helping them establish the research process from scratch. These experiences of being the first researcher in the team, though sometimes kept her up at night, have taught Bo how to level up research maturity and lead strategic efforts without the lead title.

She’s ready to share her learnings and experiences with many other UX researchers who’re facing similar challenges!

What makes a digital moment truly valuable? We ask ourselves that question every day. But how do you define value? And how do you add more value to your digital product? Paul van Sommeren shares how Valsplat tries to find answers to these questions. 

Our world is more meta, and so is user research! Over the last two years, the world’s largest UX research archive, Research Bookmark, has focused its resources on the lives of UX researchers. We are researchers conducting research on researchers. With the goal of improving our daily workflow and quality of life, we dove into the day to day of UX researchers around the globe. 

What do researchers read? What type of music do they listen to? How do they study? What type of snacks are their favorites? Where and how do they find their inspiration? What do they aspire to be in their future? 

Interested in what we found? Let’s take a holistic view of today’s researcher!