What's up, UXR? What's next?

It's a moment.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have a front-row seat to the series of evolutions and revolutions that Design and UX Research has undergone over the past couple of decades. It’s been a wild ride, plenty of ups and downs. But this moment is like nothing I can recall. Our numbers have swelled as we matured from a niche role -- even a novelty in the early days -- to an accepted and funded practice across industries [[pats self on back]]. We got a lot wrong as we did so [[looks uneasily into mirror]]. We are also facing unsettling headwinds and uncertainty from without and from within [[stares into the void]].

It's enough to give even the most rabid UXR stan [[raises hand]] some pause to look around and see businesses breaking up with UXR, and even some UXRs wanting to break up with UXR, while leaders in the field talk of reckonings and radical proposals and all manner of rethinks, from the organizational structures we reside within, to the inherent complexity of the situation). What gives? What’s next?

We are a brilliant, resilient, passionate bunch. We worked, and are working, so hard to define ourselves, build up this field, and lift each other up. I am filled with hope that our practices will continue to grow in size and influence. And also, I am filled with questions and apprehension. What do we need to rethink, solve, abandon, attempt in order to thrive? What does a revitalized field look like? The things that worked and our ways of thinking in 2022 just feel so…2022. (2019 is ancient history, obviously!)

I’ve always idealized the work we do in UX and Design as a vanguard of humanity in business, authenticity in experiences, and in some senses as the ethical conscience of an organization. In the years just prior and even in the early stages of the pandemic when I was running the UXR team at LinkedIn, much to my own amazement and delight we were acting as and valued as such. We had become a pretty well-oiled, insight-producing powerhouse. Not that it was always easy or perfect (my god!) but I felt like we were collectively moving in the right direction. But now, I talk to a lot of people across companies and industries, and I sense fear, insecurity, and a scarcity mindset creeping in. Are the progress and advances we made rolling back? Must they? We do have agency, but some very real stuff is going down.

Stuff that's going down.

My lofty way of thinking about my work, and our work, actually does now feel pretty 2022. I still believe it, but it’s not enough. As I talk to researchers and research leaders (admittedly, mostly in the tech sector, mostly larger orgs) I am hearing about some very immediate challenges. And what it all boils down to is our long-standing struggle to convincingly communicate the value that we have as a business function. Because we continue to grapple with reconciling the humanistic and the capitalistic, today's macro-realities are compounded. All of this surfaces questions and will have consequences. The echoes are ringing across the UXR landscape.

• Layoffs and hiring pauses/freezes. Junior UXRs as well as strong, proven leaders are being let go, sometimes quite unceremoniously, sometimes with great compassion. Team growth has slowed or stopped. This all has a chilling effect even for those not directly impacted. It’s a paradox that there is, at the same time: more and more work to be done than we can handle, and, as noted above persistent gaps in understanding the value of our work (and fewer people to do it). Mixed messages! What are the long-term implications of these market shifts? How can we support each other? How much will the field hollow out as people pivot away, discouraged? What is our obligation to incoming talent, as what was a promising career feels, at the moment, less so? How are we, a bunch of well-known people-pleasers, communicating our boundaries and limits within organizations given these dynamics?
• Flattening, reorgs and shifts. Flattening through managing Managers out or transitioning Managers to ICs, reporting structures up for grabs, UXR absorbed by x, distributed across y, folded into z, and so on. Every reorg or structural change is temporarily destabilizing, distracting and disrupting our flow and impact, even in cases where it ends up being for the better. What do these disruptions say about the types of structures and team working-models we created in the past (centralized, decentralized, embedded, aligned, etc)? How do these emerging org structures affect our ability to be successful, positively or negatively?
• Budget cuts. Tightening belts is necessary and healthy in times like these. But radical slashes can instantly and radically impede a team's ability to run research at the scope and scale expected, and their access to the state of the art innovations in the field. Tools, vendors, and contractors help teams automate and scale, so losing them can be another impediment as teams shrink while expectations continue to accelerate. How is our thinking about budgets evolving, and how are we prioritizing spend trade-offs? How are these cuts affecting innovation on both the supply and demand side of the marketplace?
• Managing disruptive tech. The dawn of GenAI and LLMs is exciting, daunting, unsettling, magical, a tidal wave upon us. We're all up in our feelings about it. I'm personally a little bit Reid Hoffman (inspired to advance humanity), and a little bit Tristan Harris (alarmed at what this means for humanity). But the fact is that, while there's so much to learn and understand -- get truly fascinated, Researchers, this is once-in-a-lifetime kind of stuff to study -- the truth is that it's also causing fire drills and extreme pressure from the top (it's a GenAI arms race), and existential questions about the future of our work. This tech has the potential help UXR unlock so many persistent problems and prove value, but our nature is to be wary of it, even as we work on it and with it in droves. And the way we work on this has to be different. Is our natural skepticism/wariness serving us well right now? What does GenAI mean to how we work, and what we work on? What shifts can we make as an industry with greater automation and computing power? What questions do WE have right now? What the heck are we learning about humanity as we encounter artificial intelligence?

Back to that agency thing.

None of these are surprising and I'm not the first to note them. If we are vanguards of the humanity, usability, and checks on the consequences of our products we must now deal with these realities, and take agency where we can. We're not buoys bouncing helplessly in the water, we are sailboats, adjusting to the shifting winds of the day, and even of the minute.

As UXR has gained credibility and traction as a field in the first part of the century, we have done a great job of creating a strong community with each other, being laser-focused on people's needs/dignity/humanity, communicating among ourselves how to do high quality work, and maturing the skills in the craft. We've learned to wield a soft influence in organizations, but we're learning that soft influence is not gonna cut it when the going gets tough. When the going gets tough, the tough...

• Tie. Their. Work. To. The. Business. Full stop. So much great thinking is being done about this right now (a couple examples here and here). Know the business, map your work to business metrics, and watch what happens next. If you aren't sure if an effort matters to the business and can't draw that line, don't do it, now's not the time.
• Explore new models for insight integrations. Work alongside Market Research, Data Science, CX, and other feedback and insight-generating functions. I've been preaching this for awhile now, and know it's easier said than done, but the key to strengthening our position is not to isolate ourselves, but to find new collaborative models that allow for differentiation and also amplification.
• Embrace democratization. This is settled law. Our debates and discussions around this seem old-fashioned. It's fair to be concerned about low quality data being generated to make decisions and the participant experience, but it's not a matter of debating pros and cons, nor can we gate-keep. Democratization is ON. Let's not throw up our hands. Let's go. We must embrace it, own it, control it, deploy it, and on top of that, find additional ways to add flexibility into our practices. Think about the principles of judo (softness, maximum efficiency, mutual welfare and benefit), not boxing (dominate, live to fight, smack 'em right in the ol' kisser).
• Confront burnout. This is all very taxing, impacting the health, safety and well-being of our community. I have spoken to a number of researchers and research leaders who have had to take breaks or make pivots for their own physical and mental health. Burnout means things have gone too far. “Do more with less” is not a winning formula. Why oh why does this mantra persist? I'm all for efficiency and focus, but when we hear these words we know it really means "be willing to accept an unacceptable workload." Start to learn to stand up to it. Don't deprioritize your self-care, find strong community to lean on and discuss strategies, and demand confident leadership (of yourself and others), set boundaries. We cannot thrive if we're broken. Please don't break.
• Keep momentum on inclusive, trauma-based, justice-focused research practices. I've heard that some of these efforts on in-house teams are being ramped down or shut down completely. Though there are pockets where steadfast progress continues, and the popularity of the programming of organizations like HmntyCntrd in our community speaks to the importance within UXR. When we are collectively fearful or nervous, we tend to retreat inward and fall back on old ways and habits. We mustn't, for the sake of efficiency or whatever the reason, allow a backslide into a world where products are not inclusive of historically marginalized or excluded groups, which contributes to so much harm and replicates injustices. We have to get better at making a business case for inclusive research and accessibility.

How'd I do?

Alright, I said what I said. My take is my take. What's yours? I'd like to think I got this all just exactly perfect, but I'll bet I said something in this article that you disagree with or have a totally different perspective on. In fact, I hope that's the case!

Whoever you are, wherever you sit, if UXR matters to you, please add your take to dscout's broad UXR Landscape 2023 survey (desktop only). This will help us better understand where we're at and where we could go. For each response, we will donate $10 to One Tree Planted. Want to make sure 10 trees are planted on this fine Earth of ours? I thought so. I look forward to hearing from you.

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Many thanks to Taylor Klassman, Ben Wiedmaier, and Michael Winnick for your feedback and encouragement as I put this article together. You rock!