How Research Can Drive Strategic Foresight

Did you know that the terms “bureaucracy” and “information worker” were both invented by sociologists, long before either thing existed? Did you know that the 2008 crash was accurately predicted by an anthropologist? Many people don’t realize that social research drives robust foresight. This is the kind of value even a very junior UX researcher can contribute. In this talk, Sam Ladner will describe how researchers can sift and track weak signals, how to create trend reports, and how to predict areas of change.

[Demo] Deploying AI doppelgangers to de-identify user research recordings

Under biometric privacy laws like BIPA and CCPA, user research recordings containing users’ faces or voices can put your company at risk for lawsuits and fines. Legal departments are increasingly requiring more stringent redaction, and in some cases banning recording outright. This comes at a high cost for UX teams who are already being asked to do more with less, as losing access to recordings can increase duplicative research effort and reduce the accuracy of results.

AI offers new solutions for UX teams who want to keep research recordings longer without violating biometric privacy laws. In this demo, we’ll show how we used off-the-shelf tools to intelligently redact users’ voices, faces, and bodies in research videos. By removing biometric identifiers, you can compliantly archive research recordings indefinitely, enabling your team to mine them for insights for years to come.

Design Systems To-Go: Indigo.Design Overview and Exploring the Developer Workflow (Part 3)

A Design system is not only about standardizing the UI or accelerating design. In the big picture, it can streamline collaboration between design and development. With this goal in mind, an effective Design system is available to both designers and developers in a format that is native to each discipline. However, getting to this point takes time. But what if we can skip ahead with a starter Design system containing both design and coded components that are ready for use?

Join our activity sessions to see how you can transform your pixel-perfect designs into pixel-perfect code for modern web applications with Indigo.Design. We will also revisit the typical developer handoff by introducing a re-imagined workflow that minimizes rework. In the end, this approach can free up our focus to run Design-Ops better and deliver value sooner.

Part 1 (Thursday): Introducing a starter Design system, and Indigo.Design overview
Part 2 (Friday): Reimagining developer handoff, and introducing App builder
? Part 3 (Friday): Indigo.Design overview and exploring the developer workflow

Design Systems To-Go: Reimagining Developer Handoff, and Introducing App Builder (Part 2)

Part 1 (Thursday): Introducing a starter Design system, and Indigo.Design overview
? Part 2 (Friday): Reimagining developer handoff, and introducing App builder
Part 3 (Friday): Indigo.Design overview and exploring the developer workflow

One Research Team for All – Influence Without Authority

Research teams are at the frontier of uncovering valuable insights that can inform products, services, and strategy choices. Few researchers in large organizations have the visibility and buy-in to exert influence across all of product, engineering, customer success, marketing, and overall organizational direction. How do you break down silos and maximize the impact of your research?

Join us in conversation with Joanna Vodopivec, Principal Design Researcher at Intuit, to learn how she makes her team’s research relevant to colleagues in product, marketing, and services, and the latest initiatives she has led to enable the research team to be truly seen in a large organization. You will also hear the creative approaches Joanna and her team take to engage and influence, even when working remotely.

Erica Jorgensen on Tools and Techniques for Testing your Content

Erica Jorgensen is one of Rosenfeld Media’s newest authors with the publication of her book, Strategic Content Design: Tools and Research Techniques for Better UX. ( rosenfeldmedia.com/books/strategic-content-design/ ) With a background in journalism, her book draws on her experiences as a content designer with the likes of Chewy, Microsoft, Slack, Amazon, Starbucks, Nordstrom, and Expedia.

Erica’s book is a toolkit of research techniques for anyone struggling to create content that makes an impact. Not all companies have dedicated research budgets or teams, yet research can save us from redos and yield more targeted, effective content.

Without research, you may be flying blind without even realizing it. We assume the words and phrases on our websites and apps are effective, and a little due diligence can confirm those assumptions or enlighten us about something that was previously completely outside our awareness.

Erica warns us to be prepared because content research will open proverbial cans of worms. False assumptions will be exposed, and what you learn may take your work in unexpected directions. Oftentimes, the whole company will need to get on board when language has to be changed or cleaned up.

In a nutshell, content research will expose problems. But it will help you make progress, and the payoff is worth it.

What you’ll learn from this episode:
• About Erica’s career journey in content design
• Case study: The impact of one company’s confusing language, and how content research came to the rescue
• How to incorporate content research into non-research roles
• How to prioritize and strategize content research
• How to harness content audits to highlight what needs attention
• Why it’s important to present your team’s work in the most flattering light possible

How to Make Research Appealing to Anyone: A Chat with Abby Covert

You’re sitting in front of a mound of user research data. How do you take that mound and make it into valuable bite-sized chunks? How do you make decisionmakers care? Abby Covert, author of How to Make Sense of Any Mess, shares her approach to packaging research in ways that get at what audiences need.

The Beautiful Mess of Product Development with John Cutler

Today’s interview is just a taste of what you’ll learn at Rosenfeld’s upcoming Design in Product conference—featuring John Cutler’s closing keynote. John is the senior director of product management at Toast, a doodler, a former band member, a UX researcher, and business analyst. He’s also the prolific writer behind “The Beautiful Mess, a Substack newsletter with over 36,000 subscribers, where he writes about cross-functional product management—especially the messy parts.

As someone who likes “messy, creative endeavors” and building things with other people, John enjoys unpacking the complicated parts of collaboration, getting to the heart of messes, and finding a way forward involves much more than identifying patterns.

John finds that each person’s frame or perspective is only one of many. This is one reason the relationship between product and design is a complicated ecosystem, and the whole system—not just a part—needs to evolve together.
In an effort to reach consensus across teams, John notes that it’s easy to fall into the alignment trap where the so-called alignment is fragile and where consensus becomes more valued than a true solution. John encourages listeners to get comfortable with the complicated mess, to truly listen to multiple frames and perspectives while holding onto their own, and then to roll up their sleeves and explore a way forward together.

What you’ll learn from this episode:
About John’s background and his brief stint in a band that opened for others
About the upcoming Design in Product conference
About the messiness of product development and problem-solving
About avoiding the traps of alignment and over-simplification

Quick Reference Guide
[0:00:24] Introduction of John Cutler and Design in Product 2023, and the back story behind “The Beautiful Mess”
[0:05:01] Patterns in messes
[0:10:23] The relationship between product and design
[0:14:11] Dealing with varying work speeds and perspectives
[0:20:32] Design Ops Summit, October 2-6, 2023
[0:21:45] The alignment trap and the simplification trap
[0:30:50] A new metaphor for looking at teams in organizations
[0:34:04] John’s special words for listeners

Resources and links from today’s episode:
Design in Product 2023 rosenfeldmedia.com/events/
The Beautiful Mess, John Culter’s Substack cutlefish.substack.com/
Images of Organization by Gareth Morgan www.amazon.com/Images-Organizati…an/dp/0761906320/

From Users to Shapers of AI: The Future of Research

Discover the transformative power of shifting from passive users to active shapers of AI in Tricia’s compelling closing keynote. Unveiling the insidious “User Trap,” Tricia exposes the pervasive sense of powerlessness entrenched in our tech-driven world. She champions a radical shift in the researcher’s mindset, advocating liberation from the confines of being “user researchers” to versatile professionals adept at navigating the complexities of human-tech interactions, especially ones that force people into becoming users. As AI tooling improves, Tricia envisions a future where human ingenuity stands as the cornerstone, complementing and enhancing the capabilities of advanced AI tools. In this world, researchers who can truly understand human beings, gather thick data, and communicate complexity and context-loss with clarity, will become even more indispensable.

What’s Next for Research? (Videoconference)

For the next Advancing Research Community Call, we’re going to switch things up. We’ll be breaking into small discussion groups to get thoughts from you about the current challenges, opportunities, and key themes for the future of research. You’ll have the opportunity to facilitate or contribute to your group’s discussion of the burning issues in our field.

How are you thinking about users, participants, stakeholders, and communities we serve? What changes do you see to the frameworks, toolkits, and methods we apply to understanding the problem space? Into which areas (e.g., industry, academia, government, nonprofit) can research move and from which areas can research borrow; where are the opportunities for us to bridge divides? Join us on June 17th to share and learn what’s next for the practice of research.