Democratization: Working with it, not against it [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]

Perhaps no word is more likely to get researchers agitated than “democratization.” The debate about democratization is vigorous, though verging on pointless: it’s 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. We’ll be drawing most of our Advancing Research 2025 conference speakers from those who present at upcoming workshops—so tune in for a sneak peek of what’s to come from #AR2025!)

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 that’s part leadership playbook, part intellectual high-wire act? That’s 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 other—without prior preparation—sparking 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: Harry’s applied, results-driven approach, and Jorge’s 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 Harry’s collaboration and how Traction Heroes came to life
• How their unique podcast format fosters unscripted, thought-provoking conversations
• Why they’ve 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 Harry’s 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.

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 you’ve been wondering just how DesignOps has evolved to its current state, where it’s going, and how you can influence its future, you won’t want to miss our upcoming two-part series of DesignOps community calls. It’s 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.

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.

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.

Make Things Better, Not Just Different with Erin Weigel

Have you ever thought about the similarities between art and science? Or about how math is the language of the universe? No? Welcome to a perspective shift. Ultimately this episode is about making things better, not just different. But how we get there is through a thoughtful and entertaining discussion with the witty and philosophical Erin Weigel.

Erin Weigel wants us to make things better, not just different. But how do we get there?

Lou had a thoughtful and entertaining discussion with Erin, always witty and philosophical—and often funny as hell. Join them on a perspective-shifting conversation that bridges disciplines and challenges conventional thinking, all in the pursuit of genuine improvement.

Erin is the author of the recently published Design for Impact: Your Guide to Designing Effective Product Experiments. She brings a fresh, accessible, and humor-filled take on what may seem like a dry topic: experimentation. Erin digs into the role of experimentation in design, advocating for always defaulting to experiments even if they’re the quick and dirty kind.

Erin and Lou also cover the following:

• Wonky stuff like normal distributions, the central limit theorem, and what can be learned from outliers
• The power of experiments to unite multidisciplinary teams by getting away from opinions and finding the truth
• How professionals can use the principles of experimentation to navigate uncertainties and drive meaningful improvements
• Discerning the impact of changes made

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• How Erin, with a fine arts background, became the principal designer at Booking.com and the Senior Group Product Design Manager at Deliveroo
• The fundamental similarities between art and science
• Why you should never skip the experimental phase
• How experimentation unites people across disciplines
• The difference between making things different and making them better

Quick Reference Guide:
[0:32] – Introduction of Erin; similarities between art and science
[4:05] – Barriers between art and science
[5:58] – Statistics is fun!
[12:37] – Defaulting to experimentation
[18:06] – Break – 5 reasons to use the Rosenverse
[20:36] – Experimentation as a uniting force
[25:49] – Make things better, not just different
[28:32] – Erin’s gift for listeners