The Politics of Radical Research: A Manifesto

This session is intended to be messy and will leave you with more questions than you came in with. We shall start off by asking ourselves “what are you pretending not to know?” This question inspired by African-American scholar and activist Toni Cade Bambara will guide us into the conversation. How do we understand our role as researchers? In what ways are we complicit in reproducing structural inequities and systemic harm?

This manifesto is centered around 3 “big” themes:

At what and whose cost do we engage in research?
What right do I have to engage in this research work?
What if I refused to participate?

This is an invitation to get intimate with ourselves and investigate the privilege(s) we hold as researchers and designers. Reflecting on the power imbalances that exist, how can we move toward a culturally thriving and sustainably empowering approach to emancipatory research that centers minoritized communities? Asking these questions and sitting with their complexities is urgent and necessary. Together, we strive for less extractive, decolonial, and anti-capitalist visions for research that are rooted in liberatory harm reduction, relationship building and community empowerment.

Democratizing Research at HoneyBook

During this interview, we’ll hear how Senior UX Researcher, Nicole Wright has helped HoneyBook–a client management software company–democratize research, build a better product that led to a recent $1B valuation. Nicole will share her best practices, lessons learned and her vision for the future.

Expert Panel: Leading in and with Research

What does it take to become a great research leader? What are the different types of leaders in research? How do you grow a team from a solo researcher to a successful research team?

Growing research teams show a company’s commitment to user-centered and insight-driven decision-making. With growing teams, research leadership becomes a central topic. With user research often having the most comprehensive picture of the user, we will explore what this means for the collaboration with or leadership of other disciplines in the organization.

Today we have the chance to learn from three research leaders who share their personal perspectives on research leadership and various facets of it. Get to know our panelists:

Anna Avrekh, UX Research Manager at Meta
Dr. John Pagonis, Principal UX Researcher at Zanshin Labs
Klara Pelcl, Senior Design Research Manager at ebay

Join us live as we have plenty of room for your questions during the panel.

Design Research Strategy & Strategic Design Research (Videoconference)

When scaling and democratizing research practices, how can you help ensure higher levels of value are delivered? In this interactive session, we discuss different items we can leverage to ensure design research is providing value to an organization by driving strategic decisions. Areas we cover include:

Utilizing research repositories as strategic assets;
Leveraging quant + quo data to track success; and
Ensuring research can focus on the highest value work.

AfroFuturism and UX Research

What might a communal, speculative, Black-centred action research method look like? Reclaiming the discarded, the half-forgotten, the oppressed and marginalised is a key technique in AfroFuturism, whether for creating provocative fiction, exploring alternative technologies or developing radical means to thrive within white supremacist systems.

How might this perspective be incorporated into user research? What impact could it have on our artefacts and ways of working? This talk will take precedents from projects that range from introducing masquerade performativity to structure research activities, to early stage research into how service design might intersect with narrative to co-design local policy rooted in anti-racist practice. Join us as we explore both how AfroFuturism can be used as design research methodology and what it can offer user research on a broader scale.

[Demo] Stress-testing GenAI in user research synthesis

In this high-pressure scenario, the challenge was to conduct 17 user interviews in three days and synthesize a comprehensive report in just one additional day. I’ll explore how we used AI to streamline the research process, from transcription to synthesis, and how tools like ChatGPT contributed to efficient data processing and insight generation. We’ll reflect on the potential and pitfalls of using AI in accelerated user research, from practical aspects to more philosophical considerations on potential changes to the research process.

Takeaways

Practical insights into integrating AI with traditional research methodologies to expedite the research process
An overview of the effectiveness of AI transcription and synthesis tools in real-world research scenarios
Critical examination of AI’s role in data processing and how it compares with human analysis
Strategic considerations for service designers when employing AI to support rapid user research
Reflection on the ethical implications and potential impact on the quality of insights and researcher well-being when relying on AI to speed up research processes

Multipurpose Communication & UX Research Marketing (Videoconference)

Despite our clear value in informing product and advocating for our customers, UX Research (UXR) tends to have a lot to prove within most companies. Whether it’s our value, knowledge, or definition, there are information-holes about UXR that need to be filled. Not only that, but we have a lot to share with the rest of our company. We want to be sure that our insights are heard. With zero marketing experience, I (alongside our Centralized Research Team) took a stab at rebranding and marketing our UX Research (UXR) team with sincere intention. Collecting lessons and dodging roadblocks along the way, we tested and evolved different methods set out to evangelize UX Research insights, share findings between teams, define and demystify UX Research and prove value for UXR throughout the company. What does that even look like? Molly will tell you.

Advancing Service Design with Ben Reason and Patrick Quattlebaum

Is it time to advance the practice of service design?

Ben Reason and Patrick Quattlebaum think so. They’re veteran service designers and co-authors of a pair of Rosenfeld books—Service Design: From Insight to Implementation and Orchestrating Experiences: Collaborative Design for Complexity respectively.

Ben, founder of LiveWork Studio, and Patrick, who founded Harmonic Design in Atlanta, join Lou to talk about launching a new Rosenfeld conference—Advancing Service Design—designed to highlight the service design’s potential for a new generation. They see opportunities for service design to go deeper—by integrating with and strengthening existing practices, like product management and agile, and broader—by better connecting systems that span multiple organizations (think healthcare).

Working with the Rosenfeld team, they’re creating a conference program that you can be a part of—they describe the kinds of presentation proposals they’re looking for from prospective speakers. Patrick and Ben hope you’ll join them in advancing service design; the conference will take place virtually December 3-4.

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

The real meaning of service design
How service design is evolving
Some crucial differences between the work in North America and Europe
Why communication between organizations is so important
How the upcoming conference will inspire and support you
How to contribute and become part of the upcoming case studies
How the panel discussions at the December conference will be different

Quick Reference Guide:
0:15 – Introduction to Ben and Patrick
1:50 – Being change agents to take Service Design to the next level
5:03 – Announcing a new conference: Advancing Service Design– Looking at Service Design Through Different Lenses
6:05 – Perspectives on different sides of the Atlantic
11:30 – Why service design exists in the first place
12:38 – More about the upcoming December virtual conference
17:40 – Call for proposals for the case studies and what they are looking for
19:00 – Ben’s ideas for the conference: The next iteration of service design going from within an organization to between multiple organizations
21:09 – Patrick’s ideas for the conference: Getting the people who want to transform things to communicate and the complexity of partnering together
23:05 – Bringing success from the inside
24:45 – Commercial break
27:10 – Personal story from Patrick about communication highlighting the broader concept of the case studies for the conference
32:30 – Personal story from Ben about connection across systems
37:16 – A different type of panel discussion to be at the conference
40:15 – Gifts for listeners

Anticipating Risk, Regulating Tech: A Playbook for Ethical Technology Governance

IFTF’s Ethical OS Toolkit has been used by many organizations and agencies across the civic sector, including the California state legislature, the United States Conference of Mayors, and other local governments, to bring more foresight and long-term thinking to policy decisions about new technologies. In response to high demand from government entities, and with support from the Tingari-Silverton Foundation, the IFTF Governance Futures Lab has developed this Playbook for Ethical Tech Governance. Adapted from the original Ethical OS, the Playbook will equip civil servants with the skills and tools to proactively resolve ethical dilemmas emerging from the constantly evolving landscape of new technology and new social and political dynamics. It’s intended to help those working in government, or leaders in the public sector, to make better long-term decisions by increasing their foresight capacity, allowing them to develop future-facing regulatory structures that help them anticipate the worst consequences of technology before they happen.

In this session, Ilana Lipsett will present Institute for the Future’s Playbook for Ethical Tech Governance, a decision-making guide for governments and leaders who are charged with regulating change and mitigating risk, all while encouraging innovation. The guide was designed to help safeguard against both intended and unintended consequences of techno-social shifts. This session will include an overview of the Playbook, along with a live demo of how to apply these principles and put them into action using a Decision Tree worksheet that accompanies the guide.

Liftoff! Practical Design Leadership to Elevate Your Team, Your Organization, and You

Top designers are often thrust into leadership roles, and it’s easy to forget that these two roles do not require the same skillset. In this episode, design managers and Liftoff! co-authors Chris Avore and Russ Unger discuss the mistakes and lessons they—and MANY others—have made in their new book, four years in the works. Liftoff! is a guide for new leaders looking for guidance about managing design teams effectively, and established managers who want to level up their expertise.