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Reimagining research: What does the field need to grow? [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
Summary
As the field of research evolves rapidly, maintaining a shared understanding of our foundational principles becomes crucial. Our panelists will explore key principles, including uncovering insights from unexpected business settings, prioritizing outcomes over rigid methodologies, and using foresight to envision our futures. They will invite us to contemplate what our future as researchers could look like if we reimagined these fundamental aspects of our practice. 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!) 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
Key Insights
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Cross-cultural research reveals significant gaps as many products overlook local norms, especially in Asia-Pacific, leading to mismatched user experience.
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Researchers must question if they are the right person to conduct research in a given culture to ensure ethical and accurate data collection.
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UX research teams often operate in silos, missing opportunities for collaboration with product management, growth, and customer-facing teams.
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Knowledge repositories designed for researchers rarely meet the actual needs of the broader organization, limiting adoption and impact.
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Continuous data collection without curation reduces research impact; researchers should focus on storytelling and framing insights relevant to specific organizational contexts.
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Building relationships with stakeholders is crucial for research influence and credibility, often more than presenting data alone.
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Researchers should actively follow how insights are interpreted and applied throughout product development rather than seeing their job as done after handing off findings.
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There is value in embedding cultural intelligence into product development processes rather than relying on static cultural playbooks.
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Recruitment for user research in underrepresented regions requires leveraging local networks and researchers to diversify participant pools.
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Training stakeholders on research methods is less effective than demonstrating the value of insights through direct project partnership and collaboration.
Notable Quotes
"Am I the right person to conduct this type of research for this culture? That’s a question most companies don’t have researchers asking."
"We as researchers have gotten good at delivering answers but lost sight of where the learning loop connects into the bigger organizational context."
"There’s so much knowledge in organizations; research is not the sole source of truth, and we need to catalog and integrate that information effectively."
"Building relationships with stakeholders influences research impact far more than just presenting data or methods."
"When participants interact with researchers of different backgrounds, it can deeply affect their responses and the authenticity of data."
"A research repository solves researchers’ needs but rarely the needs of the organization as a whole."
"If we make it our goal to teach methods, we do ourselves a disservice; instead, we need to communicate how insights help achieve their goals."
"Instead of continuous collecting, we need intentional curation and framing of insights that fit the work at hand."
"Cultural intelligence could be embedded as a core functionality in product development rather than static culture playbooks."
"We need to develop a theory of how research work unfolds in the organization to be proactive and opinionated partners."
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