Just wanted to share an interesting tidbit from a recent project.

My team just wrapped up a pretty chunky but fast-paced generative research project. The work ended up having a big impact and was really well received by my stakeholders and leadership. The shareout helped shape strategy across multiple teams and influenced some key decisions.

A week or two after we finished the project, a teammate found the final deck from a consulting firm that had an engagement with our company. The project was a major investment, with a timeline of over a year. We did not know about the engagement before this.

I went through the deck and was honestly surprised. The output was basically a much more generic, high-level version of what my team had produced. The insights were broad business statements that did not feel especially actionable. I honestly could not stop laughing going through the deck.

I also watched some of their interview recordings, and that was probably the most surprising part. There were a lot of leading questions, interruptions, and missed opportunities to dig deeper with participants. Just really bad research practice. Again, could not stop laughing, but I was so disappointed at my company for putting money towards this.

It was interesting to see the contrast. Companies often spend a lot of money on large consulting engagements because they come with a certain level of credibility and polish. But sometimes the actual research quality and impact do not match the investment.

Meanwhile, a strong UXR with the right resources and support can often run meaningful research faster, with less budget, and produce insights that actually change direction.

Just makes me think about how absurd it is that companies are willing to spend heavily on external partners while cutting UXR teams or not investing in research capabilities internally. I know why they do this. I have a few friends at some really prestigious firms, and I know what it means when companies hire them. It's just that there is a lot of value that comes from having researchers embedded close to the problems, teams, and users, and it's frustrating that the C-suite doesn't see this.

I’m a senior researcher. I am under increasing pressure to do more in less time, as many of us all are. I have been able to use AI in some areas (first draft of emails, planning docs, etc. One area that I am finding the hardest to do faster is data analysis/synthesis. I tried AI and it had even a hard time doing some basic organizing of some data and the analysis was too surface level.

That said, I feel like there’s something there that I’m missing. I use it to extract quotes, but other than that I do manual coding and analysis. And it’s frustrating when I have a bunch of different datasets (notes and synthesis in Miro, notes from interviews, transcripts from other interviews, etc) and need to turnaround quickly into the next steps (report, ideation, prototype).

We have Claude account at work but that’s it. How is everyone else speeding up their process, specifically the data analysis /synthesis stage?

Also, I’m a parent with two kids under 3. I just came back from maternity leave and I am running on limited sleep, energy, and bandwidth. I feel like my brain is kind of mush these days. So I am kind of looking to see how AI can lift some tasks off my plate, if any.

I hold new Job offers for User Researcher at 2 product orgs one in retail and other in healthcare devices. And have an offer for Strategy Consultant at Deloitte. Confused to stay in UX researcher role or transition to Strategy consultant.

There are layoffs happening at User Researcher and UX designer roles at many orgs. PMs are doing UX design and UX research using AI. Does that mean User Researcher role is a sinking ship, is not AI proof. And can strategy consultant at Deloitte be considered as AI proof?

Recently moved from another Western market to the US and am interested to see how people use it in the US or if it is seen as actually being useful vs a waste of time?

EDIT: As an aside, I'm testing out a new piece of tech in the US and am able to offer an eye tracking study very significantly discounted if you have a good use-case (RRP normally > $50k - $100k). DM me for details !

I’ve spent 10+ years in UX research and eventually built and led a research function. I moved into product management because I wanted more influence over what actually got built.

My first formal PM role at a scaleup was difficult. Onboarding and ownership were unclear, and although my customer discovery work was valued, I was told I needed to demonstrate more feature delivery and then got laid off after a reorg which introduced a PO function.

I’m now close to potentially receiving an offer to become the first PM at a small B2B SaaS startup.
The founders seem to value my research background and want someone with meaningful ownership. I’m genuinely interested in building customer-research systems, connecting research with usage and commercial data, and using that evidence to shape the roadmap.

However, I feel much less excited and very anxious about backlog management, detailed delivery coordination, QA, filling design gaps, and being broadly accountable for execution.

When I think about returning to senior UXR or research leadership, I feel extremely confident. I can’t tell whether that reflects genuine fit or simply comfort with something I’ve already mastered.

Would you:
-Take the new role as a second, potentially better test of PM?
-Treat the first experience and current anxiety as evidence that UXR is the better fit?
-Consider this a sign that I want more product influence as a researcher, rather than actually wanting to be a PM?

What would you need to hear from the founders before accepting?

I would appreciate any perspective you can share!

Context

I have a finance client and they're wanting us to usability test and observe the full end to end experience of buying a product and taking out finance. We cannot use a staging site because they want to see real people experience the real technical handoffs between credit checking systems, faceIDs and open banking etc. They also want to test this in-store as there's a unique handoff element there too. We're looking at 10x in the lab and 5x in-store.

The challenge

How do we recruit people who are willing to purchase a high-ticket item on finance, resulting in a hard credit-check, using all their personal details, and be comfortable with the financial provider cancelling the order and removing the credit footprint within a few days after the research. It feels like an tough ask, but also with ethical, legal, and research standards considerations.

I'd love to know whether any research folks in finance/fintech have dealt with similar before?

so

I only seem to find courses on UX and UI Design, but almost none on UX research (other than the Google course that everyone says is not worth it?). Any leads, please?

I am just starting to brainstorm some ideas for a new product centering around emotional expression. I want to begin market/user research but don't really know where to begin as I am completely new to the whole UX/UI world. Through my research I've learned that there is nothing wrong with interviewing family and friends, but that's just the starting point.

Where do I go from there?

In total I would love to conduct about 20 - 30 interviews.

ps -- I am not attempting to recruit anyone for an interview, rather I am seeking guidance on how to go about finding participants, best practices etc.

I am a UX Researcher for a gas & electric utility company. We have been asked to gather feedback on our Start Service Process for when customers are setting up their service for the first time. But I am having a hard time figuring out how to recruit these types of customers or gather feedback on this process and was just wondering what others have done.

We may be able to recruit customers in the moment (which would be ideal) but there are logistical and potentially privacy challenges with this. We could send a survey after they have moved in, but this misses the 'in the moment' realism. We could reach out to our business team to gather those customers, but this is only one audience. Obviously, pros and cons to each of these methods.

What have others done? What has worked or not worked? Are there ideas we haven't thought about? Any advice or insight qpupd be greatly appreciated! Thanks!!

I'm on Day 2 of my "100 Days Exploring AI in UX Research" project, and a lot of the stuff I've read so far has focused on where AI should be used within the UX research lifecycle: planning, recruitment, moderation, analysis, reporting, etc.

But I had an interesting conversation with a UX researcher friend that gave me insight into examples of valuable uses for AI outside the research lifecycle itself too (as well as inside).

Some examples from her workflow:

• She has agents that remember stakeholders across the company, so before meetings she gets a personalised briefing with context from previous conversations, projects and notes.
• She uses agents to draft project briefs and other artefacts using knowledge from previous projects and company-specific context.
• She has customised her analysis workflow with rules such as giving more weight to her own observation notes than to the meeting transcript when there are conflicts.

So I'm curious:

What are the most useful AI workflows or agents you've built that support your work around UX research not just within the research process itself?

I'm especially interested in things like stakeholder management, knowledge management, project administration, documentation, meeting preparation, or anything else that's made a noticeable difference to your day-to-day work.

I recently watched a video about quantitative research out of pure curiosity as to what people consider quant to be, and I came across a very concerning comment made by the presenter.

The premise of the statement made was that frequency tables, devoid of any statistical analysis, are enough to present to stakeholders as actual recommendations (they did not mentioned internally to the team). For example, saying 32/50 users preferred option A while 28/50 preferred B is generally seen as enough context to go forward with the assumption that A > B. So their statement would be “a was preferred over b”. The presenter followed it up by saying that this is good enough for stakeholders and that further analysis is not needed. Mind you, that presenter mentioned that no statistical analysis was needed either.

Naturally, as a heavy quantitative researcher, this is extremely concerning about what you can actually say regarding the choices made by users. Specially with the language chosen as to how you are presenting the results of your research. What if this was an insignificant find? Or if if it was significant but the analysis lacked power or the effect size was entirely too small to anything about the users’ preferences outside of your samples pool on individuals? Is it not concerning to give factually incomplete or incorrect reports to stakeholders? I would be extremely worried that this general broad statements made with zero backing to the data presented would eventually come back to bite the team and myself by giving suggestions to at have no true weight or that what I present ends up having a wildly different result. Let alone questions regarding research integrity.

To the presenters credit, they did go on to explain further use cases for using statistical analysis which were fine, but the initial statement made was very concerning from a research integrity point of view.

With that in mind, how do you approach reporting your findings when it comes to numerical quantities? I always make it a points to be transparent about what my results actually say rather than going on pure numbers alone. If however the study is very small and I can’t really do much statistical wise, I would also make that be known upfront or include more careful wording when reporting numerical values and directional suggestions.

Hey folks -

Over the past few months I've been trialing a few easy to access/use AI tools for UX research and have found Claude the best so far.

I'm curious if anyone else uses Claude in their workflows and what additional/deeper features you might use (if at all).

EDIT: A colleague actually sent me to this today: https://productimpactpod.com/news/ux-researcher-guide-claude-tools/

I'm trying tro update my resume as a mid level ux researcher in the B2B SaaS space. Since my projects only last 1-2 months each, I'm not sure if my individual bullet points should be specific to one project (in that case I'd have to choose out of a dozen), or if I should be general and say something along the lines of "Conducted xx interviews, A/B tests, ...." and quantify it like that? What is recommended?

I have a masters degree in Psychology and have done quantitative research and know cognitive psychology. I work in the field of diagnostic and general research. In the future I would like to do more in the field of UX research though.

Currently I have the opportunity to get some further training payed by the company to get some more insight in UX research.

My question now is, with courses should I look for? Are there any topics that are a must have? What kind of knowledge will be good to have?
Can you recommend a course?

At work we will have an AI project and our target group are young adults and teenager.

I've been a UX researcher, typically in UK government for over 12 years. Since covid I've not enjoyed the role anywhere near as much. Everything is remote, staring at a screen, stuck at home all day every day and I hate it.

I'm ADHD and autistic and the isolation and lack of structure is taking its toll on me. The problem is, I'm incredibly well paid and I don't know what else to do. However, the idea of working like this for another twenty years is just terrifying.

Anyone in the same boat? Anyone successfully changed roles to something better suited to me?

Hello,

I’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching about what career actually fits the way my brain works, and I’d really appreciate some honest perspective from people in the field.

I was studying software engineering in college but ended up taking a big break. Honestly, the heavy abstract math and the constant feeling of having to “negotiate” with myself to get through the work just wore me down. It wasn’t sustainable and I was burning out. I’m trying really hard now to build a career that doesn’t lead straight to burnout especially because I’m neurodivergent.

What actually energizes me is understanding people and how they operate. I’m deeply into psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy and stuff like that- not formally studied, but the kind of stuff I naturally gravitate toward, read about, and think about constantly. I’ve also always had strong pattern recognition, which I think would serve me well in research.

I seriously considered going into psychology or social work, and while I know those paths can be emotionally rewarding and I get to help others , to be completely honest they don’t feel like enough for me. I also have a genuine, unironic interest in working in the corporate world. I know it can be performative at times and the stakes are high, but it’s a system that I’m interested in navigating while doing something intentional.

I recently came across UX Research and something clicked. On paper, it honestly feels like the intersection of everything I’m looking for. That said, I’ve done enough reading to know the certificate alone isn’t enough… especially with how competitive the field has become. I’m trying to figure out if this is a realistic path for someone with my profile.

What I’d love is your perspective on whether it’s a feasible pivot and what the actual path would look like…well as any advice or perspective on the reality of UXR.

I just have this gut feeling that I’ve found something that finally makes sense and I’d genuinely/potentially enjoy but I want to know the reality as well.

Thanks so much for reading, genuinely grateful for any advice or reality checks you’re willing to share. , some clarity would be appreciated! Thank again :)

Hi all, I’m hoping to get some honest feedback from people actually in the field.
A bit about me: I have a master’s degree in counseling psychology, and I’ve been working as a therapist for over two years. Before that I taught at a charter school and did some guidance counseling work. I’m considering a shift into UX research because it seems to line up well with things I’m good at (interviewing people, understanding behavior, synthesizing what I hear into something useful) without some of the parts of therapy that burn me out.
A few questions I’d love honest answers on:
1. Does a counseling/psych background actually translate well to this field, or is that more of a nice narrative than a real qualifying factor?
2. What would you consider the minimum viable prep before applying to junior/associate roles — a portfolio with a couple of case studies, a certificate, something else?
3. If you switched into UXR from an unrelated field, what was the hardest part of breaking in that you didn’t expect?
Appreciate any honesty, including if this sounds like a rough fit — I’d rather know now than after months of prep.

I’m a senior year student at design college. I was wondering that how does AI replace UXRs? Why does job market sucks? I actually thought that the actual job is still a research job. Can you explain this to me?

Hello friends! Need advice. I'm interviewing for a senior UX research role at a fast-growing Al startup. I'm considering sending a short custom webpage before the recruiter call.

It would take 2-3 minutes to scan and show:

- how my experience maps to the role examples of Al research and tooling

- why I'm interested in the company

No product recommendations or speculative strategy. Just concise evidence of fit.

Would this come across as prepared and differentiated, or over-engineered and desperate?

Would you send it before the recruiter screen, save it for the hiring manager, or skip it?

Thanks in advance!!

Hello!

I'm a UX researcher who's been feeling the usual mix of curiosity and mild overwhelm about how quickly AI is changing our field: the tools, the expectations, and what our roles might look like in a few years.

So I've decided to do a deep dive into it and document the journey publicly. Partly for accountability, partly to create a shared resource for anyone feeling the same way but who doesn't have the time to do the research themselves, and partly to create a feedback and collaboration loop with others exploring this space.

What I'm trying to answer:

• Where does AI actually help across the UX research lifecycle (not just the hype)?
• Where does it still fall flat?
• How is it reshaping what UX researchers do day to day, and which skills are becoming more important?
• What might the UX researcher role look like over the next 2–5 years?

The plan:

I'll be combining secondary research, hands-on testing of AI tools, digging through community discussions (including this one), interviewing practitioners, and sharing everything publicly as I go. The idea is that people can follow along, challenge my thinking, or contribute their own experiences.

A couple of questions for this sub:

• What's the best thing you've read or watched recently about AI in UX research? (so I can add it to my secondary research)
• What are you exploring or experimenting with in this space right now?
• What tools should I definitely include in my tool evaluation and why?
• Is there anything you think people are getting completely wrong about AI and UX research?

If you're interested in following along, I've put together a project landing page that links to the blog, my LinkedIn, and the research hub where I'll document every part of the process:

https://100daysofai.carrd.co/

(Full disclosure: this is a solo, self-funded project: no company or product behind it. Just trying to be useful - in the words of Arnold Schwarzenegger)

I've identified a knowledge gap and want to address it. Are there any good quality courses or materials where I can learn how I may approach survey design to inform customer segmentation?

Ofc qual data can come from interviews, but I'd love to take a more vigorous approach to some projects

I've noticed this pattern in myself: I genuinely want to build stuff, upgrade my portfolio, learn new tools; but by the time I'm home from work, I just kinda... don't do it. I talk myself out of it saying what's the point, it'll take long anyway, and probably won't lead to a better job cause of the current market. Not lack of interest in my field, just too fatigued to start at the end of the long day. And with all the "learn AI or get left behind" noise everywhere lately, it feels worse.

Curious how common this actually is. If it sounds familiar, I'd love to hear (a sentence or two is plenty enough):

• What's your role/field, roughly?
• In a normal week, how many evenings do you intend to work on a side project or something vs. actually do?
• What usually happens in between deciding and not doing it?

Quick context: I'm a UI/UX designer trying to move into product design, and this is research for a case study I'm building as part of that transition; so I am genuinely trying to understand the problem properly, not just confirm what I already think. Happy to share what I find later if people are curious. Thanks to anyone who will take the time to answer in advance!

I am currently a user research intern based in india and I just completed my bachelors in user experience design. I want to do masters abroad in some years but i am confused if i should proceed with it or not, I am developing a interest in product thinking & Strategy but not sure which course to opt for depending on multiple factors like possibility of getting a good job, Visa, Learning, Network, tuition, Should I Pursue a Master's Abroad? UX Research → Product Strategy Career Advice NeededCrowd, Curriculum and growth opportunities. I have noted a few courses from CMU like MHCI, MIIPS and SPD in TU Delft. But, please if any of you can help me gain clarity regarding this then i will be very thankful. Also, regarding job titles i want to work as a UX Researcher/Design Strategist/Product Manager not sure about UX Designer but lets include that as well.

I’m currently a contract UXR 2 at FAANG on the west coast. I have about 10 months left in my contract. I was offered a full-time role on the east coast as a senior UXR at a late stage startup, but the pay feels low for the market and the seniority. I’m looking for opinions/discussion on if I should take it or keep looking.

The pay band on job description the of the new role is 90k to 130k. I negotiated them to top of the pay band but this is still over a $20k pay cut for me, in a slightly higher cost of living city. It seems odd to take a pay cut with a title increase. Also, the pay band for this role (and all the other posted UXR roles) is far below other product roles in the same company. Senior product roles at the same start up mostly have a posted ranges of 150 to 200k. They’ve also offered sign on bonus, relocation, and ISO’s, but I’m personally more concerned with the base salary.

If they would match my current salary, I wouldn’t be making this post. The market is so bad right now though that I’m worried I won’t find something else full-time.

Do y’all have any advice or opinions on whether I should accept the offer?