Collaboration: learning from other fields beyond our own [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
For the best part of 15 years, user researchers have been experimenting with how to collaborate and join up insights and practices with data analytics, market research, CX, and more.
As ad hoc and sometimes structural collaborations start to become the norm, we will be taking a step back and asking ourselves…
- As we become more joined up are there still fundamental differences between market and user researchers?
- Are we becoming people who just do research? And if we are, what does that mean for our field?
- Where should the balance lie between generalization and specialization?
- And what might happen if we look to collaborate and learn outside of our own insight-generating field, and start collaborating with communities beyond our walls?
Attend all of our Advancing Research community workshops
Each free virtual workshop is made up of panelists who will share short provocations on engaging ideas to discuss as a group, as well as a leader in our field to moderate. If you’re looking for discussions that challenge the status quo and can truly advance research, look no further than our workshop series. (P.S. Weâll be drawing most of our Advancing Research 2025 conference speakers from those who present at upcoming workshopsâso tune in for a sneak peek of what’s to come from #AR2025!)
July 24, 4-5pm EDT | Watch Video | Theme 1: Democratization Working with it, not against |
August 7, 11am-12pm EDT | Watch Video | Theme 2: Collaboration Learning from market research, data science, customer experience, and more |
August 21, 4-5pm EDT | Watch Video | Theme 3: Communication Innovative techniques for making your voice heard |
September 4, 11am-12pm EDT | Watch Video | Theme 4: Methods Expanding the UXR toolkit beyond interviews |
September 18, 4-5pm EDT | Watch Video | Theme 5: Artificial Intelligence Passionate defenses, reasoned critiques, and practical application |
October 2, 11am-12pm EDT | Watch Video | Theme 6: Junctures for UXR Possible futures and the critical decisions to move us forward |
October 16, 4-5pm EDT | Watch Video | Theme 7: Open Call Propose ideas that donât match our other workshopsâ themes |
Democratization: Working with it, not against it [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
Perhaps no word is more likely to get researchers agitated than âdemocratization.â The debate about democratization is vigorous, though verging on pointless: itâs here and unlikely to be dialed back. And other research functions are talking to customers, running surveys, and conducting A/B testing.
In this community workshop, we take a step back and take a broader look at the field of insight. With viewpoints honed in data analytics, market research, and user research, our panelists discuss how democratization has been made to work effectively in their fields for quite some time, and what we can do to imagine a future beyond the debate.
Attend all of our Advancing Research community workshops
Each free virtual workshop is made up of panelists who will share short provocations on engaging ideas to discuss as a group, as well as a leader in our field to moderate. If you’re looking for discussions that challenge the status quo and can truly advance research, look no further than our workshop series. (P.S. Weâll be drawing most of our Advancing Research 2025 conference speakers from those who present at upcoming workshopsâso tune in for a sneak peek of what’s to come from #AR2025!)
August 7, 11am-12pm EDT | Watch Video | Theme 2: Collaboration Learning from market research, data science, customer experience, and more |
August 21, 4-5pm EDT | Watch Video | Theme 3: Communication Innovative techniques for making your voice heard |
September 4, 11am-12pm EDT | Watch Video | Theme 4: Methods Expanding the UXR toolkit beyond interviews |
September 18, 4-5pm EDT | Watch Video | Theme 5: Artificial Intelligence Passionate defenses, reasoned critiques, and practical application |
October 2, 11am-12pm EDT | Watch Video | Theme 6: Junctures for UXR Possible futures and the critical decisions to move us forward |
October 16, 4-5pm EDT | Watch Video | Theme 7: Open Call Propose ideas that donât match our other workshopsâ themes |
DesignOps in a Post-Industrial World: Crash-Coursing Complex Systems with Jeff Sussna
Lou and Jeff Sussna discuss the challenge of synthesizing development and operations in a digital world. How do you scale design as part of a responsive digital business when everyone is digital? Jeff Sussna is the author of Designing Delivery. As principal at Ingineering.IT, he helps clients apply Agile, DevOps, and Design Thinking to maximize delivery speed and service quality.
Traction Heroes with Harry Max and Jorge Arango
Listen wherever you get your favorite podcasts!
Apple podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio
What happens when two brilliant minds from the world of information architecture team up to create a podcast thatâs part leadership playbook, part intellectual high-wire act? Thatâs exactly what Harry Max and Jorge Arango set out to explore with their new podcast, Traction Heroes. Lou Rosenfeld chats with two and learns how they envision their project and how their podcast differs from traditional interview formats.
Instead of scripted discussions, Traction Heroes features Harry and Jorge reading thought-provoking passages from books to each otherâwithout prior preparationâsparking impromptu, insightful conversations. The goal? To decode complex ideas and turn them into actionable advice for leaders and decision-makers. The pair leverage their complementary strengths: Harryâs applied, results-driven approach, and Jorgeâs deep, theoretical mindset. Together, they aim to help listeners gain traction in their careers and lives, all while keeping the dialogue engaging and accessible.
Launched in January 2025, the podcast avoids technical or siloed jargon, and focuses on practical tools for structuring decisions and creating meaningful outcomes. Available on major platforms and at TractionHeroes.com, the show promises a fresh take on leadership and decision-making.
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
- The story behind Jorge and Harryâs collaboration and how Traction Heroes came to life
- How their unique podcast format fosters unscripted, thought-provoking conversations
- Why theyâve chosen to avoid technical or industry-specific jargon to reach a broader audience
- What inspired their focus on leadership, decision-making, and practical insights
- How they plan to make complex ideas accessible and actionable for listeners
Quick Reference Guide:
0:00 – Meet Jorge and Harry
2:35 – Introducing Jorge and Harryâs podcast
6:20 – How this podcast will be different
11:03 – The broadness of information architecture
15:25 – 5 reasons to use the Rosenverse
18:18 – The format of the podcast
26:46 – Traction Heroes
28:38 – Gifts for listeners
The Tale of Two Companies: Building a Successful UX Practice in a Century-Old Enterprise
How do you establish a thriving UX organization in a century-old company? Our opening presentation is a tale of two organizations and two different UX leaders. They followed very different paths and come from different industries, yet their stories of success and lessons for others have a lot in common. Rob Mitzel spent his entire career at Ford, starting from a Safety Engineer and changing roles to evolve into a Design Ops Manager, as the company evolved. Sébastien Malo parachuted to CN (Canadian National Railway) only a couple of years ago, but has already changed the course of his organization. Rob and Sebastien compare and contrast stories of how UX adapted and iterated their teams, skills and service to meet the needs of an evolving enterprise IT organization and the business at large.
What It’s Like To Be a User Researcher at Compass
Join the moderator, Kayla Farrell (Sr User Researcher), as she runs a Q&A session with Chelsey Glasson (Staff User Researcher), Sean Fitzell (User Research Manager), and Jared LeClerc (Sr User Researcher), as they discuss life as a user researcher at Compass.
Changemakers: How Leaders Can Design Change in an Insanely Complex World
Authors Maria Giudice & Christopher Ireland join Lou to discuss their new book, Changemakers: How Leaders Can Design Change in an Insanely Complex World, which comes out on January 17.
Get a taste of what they cover in the book, from systems thinking to navigating change, and how to look broadly at patterns to understand the context in which you are establishing change. The authors explain the wide range of industries they drew from in their research and interviews, as well as the highly emotional aspect of changemaking in society today. Bonus: they share some tools you can use to become a changemaker.
The Past, Present, and Future of DesignOps: a 2-part DesignOps Community Call (Part 1) (Videoconference)
If youâve been wondering just how DesignOps has evolved to its current state, where itâs going, and how you can influence its future, you wonât want to miss our upcoming two-part series of DesignOps community calls. Itâs your chance to learn from expert panelists and participate in a community exercise centered around mapping out the practice of DesignOps.
Esteemed emeritus DesignOps curator Dave Malouf and emcee Meredith Black provide a firsthand account of the trends and factors that have influenced the direction of the practice over the past five years. We then begin working on our own mapping of DesignOps as a community, led by curator Farid Sabitov.
A Mixed Method Approach to Validity to Help Build Trust
Quantitative instruments are frequently sought because 1) they can be quickly fielded to lots and lots of people, and 2) when carefully sampled, they can be generalizable to the population of users/customers. However, because many times the focus is on speed to launch because decision-makers need results quickly, there is not much depth given to their development, nor an investigation of the validity evidence. In the session, I will share a framework that centers validity and is necessarily a mixed methods approach to research. I will also share ideas on how to scale the research over time so that findings and insights are able to be iteratively delivered to stakeholders, while also iteratively informing one another in a qual-quant research dance that brings more trustworthy, user-centered evidence to decision-makers. Finally, I will share ideas for a course I am developing for supporting qualitative researchers to become more mixed in their approach.
AI in Real Life: Using LLMs to Turbocharge Microsoft Learn
Enthusiasm for AI tools, especially large language models like ChatGPT, is everywhere, but what does it actually look like to deliver large-scale user-facing experiences using these tools in a production environment? Clearly they’re powerful, but what do they need to make them work reliably and at scale?
In this session, Sarah provides a perspective on some of the information architecture and user experience infrastructure organizations need to effectively leverage AI. She also shares three AI experiences currently live on Microsoft Learn:
- An interactive assistant that helps users post high-quality questions to a community forum
- A tool that dynamically creates learning plans based on goals the user shares
- A training assistant that clarifies, defines, and guides learners while they study
Through lessons learned from shipping these experiences over the last two years, UXers, IAs, and PMs will come away with a better sense of what they might need to make these hyped-up technologies work in real life.