Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.
Log in Create free account100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.
The Future of UX Research
Summary
Monty Hammontree will share his take on the future of User Experience Research and how that extends out beyond traditional UX researchers to everyone trying to bring the customer to the forefront of decision making—to everyone striving to be customer connected and data-driven. It extends out beyond traditional research roles to everyone involved in the product making process, such as, Designer, Product Managers, and Software Engineers. He believes the heart and soul of the future of user research as a discipline lies not in trying to create a dynamic where, “the few endeavor to learn on behalf of the many but rather lies in expanding the role to focus on empowering the many to learn.”
Key Insights
-
•
UX research at Microsoft shifted from a specialist role to a collaborative team sport driving continuous learning and customer connection.
-
•
Satya Nadella’s cultural pillars—growth mindset, empathy, and inclusion—strongly influenced UX research transformation.
-
•
Microsoft's developer division used UX research to triple engaged developers from 2.5 million to nearly 18 million over five years.
-
•
Empathy efforts focus both on customers and internally within product teams to bridge cross-functional collaboration.
-
•
The team created a research playbook emphasizing hypotheses, assumptions, and experiments as common language across disciplines.
-
•
Democratizing research empowers non-researchers but raises concerns about diluting rigor and recognition of researchers.
-
•
Monty’s approach trusts that a critical mass of good learning practices will self-correct poor research behaviors in organizations.
-
•
The research culture prizes learning over being right, celebrating invalidated hypotheses as valuable insights.
-
•
Complementing big data with ‘thick data’ makes research relatable and drives emotional engagement and advocacy.
-
•
Encouraging researchers to become generalists and try skills from other disciplines enriches the team and culture.
Notable Quotes
"Our mission is to empower everybody to learn; not the few learning on behalf of the many."
"Closing the distance is about connecting not only with customers but also between cross-functional team members."
"Satya Nadella’s leadership feels authentic—he puts empathy at the center of everything he does."
"We changed the culture by changing the language, introducing common terms like hypotheses and experiments."
"The fastest way to gain influence is to get somebody else promoted."
"If you get enough good behavior going on, the system corrects itself and susses out the bad."
"People will work harder for people than they will for a number."
"Learning invalidates being right as the currency of research and product decisions."
"We built a Mount Rushmore of design thinking engineers to help the culture resonate with developers."
"Everybody involved in product making should have empathy for each other, not just for the customer."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Without these rules and conventions, we wouldn’t be able to improvise."
Jim KalbachJazz Improvisation as a Model for Team Collaboration
November 6, 2017
"People saying you should write a book is nice, but it’s not the real reason you should write one."
Louis RosenfeldCoffee with Lou: Should You Write a (UX) Book?
March 7, 2024
"If you’re sitting there thinking I need to build out this project and nobody else is saying the same thing, it means you have to do it, period."
Catt Small Micah Bennett Brian Carr Jessica HarlleeWhat's Next for ICs: Exploring Staff and Principal Designer Roles
February 22, 2024
"Finding out more about these most active users is a key priority this year, said our CEO at the board presentation."
Marieke McCloskeyUser Science: Product Analytics & User Research
March 11, 2021
"DeepFakes can look too realistic and might introduce new privacy risks if donor faces come from real people."
Llewyn Paine[Demo] Deploying AI doppelgangers to de-identify user research recordings
June 5, 2024
"Synthetic controls create counterfactuals using historical data when no suitable control group exists."
Joshua NobleCasual Inference
October 6, 2023
"Empathy doesn’t come from reading a report—you don’t get close to users by just reading data."
Sara LogelYour Colleagues are Your Users Too
March 29, 2023
"Learning is a marathon, not a sprint, especially in the context of online conferences."
Bria Alexander Louis RosenfeldWelcome
January 8, 2024
"Timely interactions that log users out without saving progress cause abandonment, especially for people with disabilities."
Sam ProulxOnline Shopping: Designing an Accessible Experience
June 7, 2023
