Join the UXRS BoardUX Research and Strategy is seeking a new board member to join the team, and we want YOU.  As our community grows, so do our needs. We're seeking an additional board member passionate about serving the UX community, especially in event strategy and coordination. We need a strategic partner to help define, plan, and execute various non-profit board activities, willing to grow alongside our organization.
This is a great opportunity for you to give back to the UX community in an impactful way. You can help the community learn, grow, engage and connect. Are you interested in:
We are looking for a board member who will work closely with the Board of Directors and be a strategic partner to help define, plan, and execute a wide range of non-profit board activities and tasks and who is willing to evolve with the group as we continue to grow! What you’ll bring:
To start the process, fill in the application for consideration. We look forward to having you join our team!
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 This has been an extraordinary year for UX Research & Strategy (UXRS) as I imagine it has for many of you. I hope that as the year draws to an end, everyone has the opportunity for some downtime to reflect and recharge for 2024. We’ve seen change in our industry - and more change seems to be coming As many of you will likely remember, 2022 ended with the release of ChatGPT which set the tone for the “AI” discussion for 2023. Then came the spike in job reductions, the layoffs and the two topics of AI and job growth (or job risk) seem to have not decoupled themselves all year. This is especially sensitive to our community which includes a large number of researchers new to the discipline. I imagine that for those who are trying to enter the field, they feel a lot of uncertainty and tension. UXRS will continue to offer networking events for those looking to build their network and find their next mentor or UX Job. We will also continue to offer free learning events for our community with continued emphasis on the methods and issues shaping the future of UX research including AI. We’ve also seen change in our UXRS community UXRS is still growing as a community. We continue to see strong demand each month for our free and paid events. We see similar growth in our Slack community and with engagement from the community in social media. My hypothesis is that this is both a reflection of the growth in the UX industry but I also think that there is a recognition of a need for a community of practitioners helping each other learn and grow together – which is what we aspire to do with the events we host and the content we provide. UXRS had some phenomenal events in 2023 Speaking of learning and growing together, UXRS had an amazing year of speaker events. While we continued to host speakers who covered topics on UXR methods, we also hosted several topics covering career growth and the shifting job market. In case you missed it, here’s a list of our 2023 speaker events: Heidi Glynn - UX Job Market Q&A Sheri Byrne-Haber - UXR With Participants with Disabilities Alexis McNutt Unis - World IA Day and Participatory Research Bindu Upadhyay - Learning from Multicultural Research Experiences Dr. Nikki Smith - Journey Maps are Just the Output; Human-Centered Research is the input Hang Xu - Why good UX Talent Doesn’t get Hired Lisa Lokshina - AR Experiences in Museums: Designing for immersive Learning and Engagement David De Leon - Brace yourselves, Here comes the UX Feedback Tiziana d’Agostino - Empathy Is Not Enough Farai Madzami - Designing your 1:1 QQQ: Quant/Qual/Quant - UX research Mixed-Methods workshop Don Norman - Design For A Better World Changes to UXRS This has also been a year of change for UXRS organization. As a non-profit organization that is run by volunteers, there are waves of “hellos” and “goodbyes” that are to be expected as members step up and then step back as their circumstances change. In 2023, we said goodbye to some wonderful volunteers that helped us deliver on our mission in 2022 and 2023. So, our sincere thanks go out to Kelli Mijares, our former content writer, Nicole Montemurro, our former Events director, and Anthony Zablocki, our former treasurer for their volunteer work. We have also welcomed five new volunteers to the UXRS organization in 2023. Nate Eaton, Jigz Gandhi, and Domi Miranda joined UXRS as as graphic designers. Most recently, Prajakta Amin joined UXRS as our new Social Media manager and Ayesha Tak joined us as our newest content writer. Finally, there were some internal shuffles as earlier this year, Jen Blatz, one of the co-founders and long-standing president of UXRS, assumed a new role as Events Director and the board voted in Jake Rhodes as their new president. Emily Dahl moved onto the board as our new Community Engagement Director. Whew! As many of you who work in HR and service design may appreciate, that’s a lot of onboarding and I’m proud of the work the team has done in rising to the challenges with all of this change. We’re lucky to have this crew on board and we look forward to working with them in 2024. Looking forward to 2024 As I think about 2024 and beyond. I predict that we will continue to see technologies like generative AI emerge and create both opportunities and uncertainties in product making and UX research. I see our role as being an organization where practitioners can gather and learn how to best adapt our trade to this new chapter. In our most recent UXRS satisfaction survey, respondents voted two topic areas as the most important for them in 2024: 1) UX Strategy - building advanced projects 2) Using AI for generative research It's my hope that we can organize events that span this need in the community. I know we have some truly exciting speakers already lined up for 2024 who will cover both AI and strategic research topics .I’m looking forward to seeing the response from the community. But no matter the changes in the technology landscape, we remain committed to our mission of making UX research and strategy topics approachable and actionable. I look forward to seeing you in the next UXRS event in 2024. Image courtesy of Microsoft Designer. Prompt: "generate an image of a casual dinner party. Seated at the table are UX researchers dressed in lab coats, and an AI raising a cocktail as if to give a toast."
Prajakta Amin joins UXRSWe are excited to have Prajakta join the team as our Social Media Manager  1. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I am a User Experience Researcher with four years of Consumer Insight experience. I consider myself an avid learner, consumer enthusiast, logical thinker, and humble and flattered receiver of 'Great Energy' compliments. My past three years of experience as a consumer insights strategist, coupled with my current education degree in human-centered design, has solidified my passion for understanding the users, their behavior and drawing out the “Why?” of research. 2. What attracted you to get involved with UXRS? Since I was transitioning to a career in UXR, UXRS offered me a vibrant UXR community that could provide insights into the industry, facilitate my learning, and offer opportunities to connect with professionals in the field. 3. What was your favorite thing about UXRS and why? What I love most about UXRS is how they make learning about UX research and strategy easy and accessible. They offer free courses taught by experts, and the community is super engaged. It's a welcoming and practical place to learn and connect with others who share a passion for UX. 4. What would you like to see in UXRS's future? I would love to have beginners and new members of the community, more engagement, more learning and more stories! Ayesha Tak joins UXRSWe are thrilled to have Ayesha join the team as a Content Writer  1. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I'm Ayesha and I currently work in government administration mostly on the HR operations side, but my tasks vary day-to-day as I work with many different teams from IT to management, which I like. I completed grad school with an M.A. in Sociology where I fell in love with UX in a design anthropology course. What stuck out to me about UX research was empathy being at the core of research design and strategy. 2. What attracted you to get involved with UXRS? As someone who is not in a direct UX role (yet!), UXRS acted as a bridge for me to connect my already existing knowledge and experience of academic and applied research to the world of UX. While the organization serves mainly other UX professionals, their way of presenting information is clear and relatable enough to welcome people of all academic or work backgrounds. I've done content writing in the past and it's the best feeling being given an opportunity to write something you are genuinely excited about. 3. What is your favorite thing about UXRS and why? While I've read books on UX and research, the content and events that UXRS puts out has contributed to my knowledge on an ongoing basis as the field continues to grow and change. The organization exemplifies how knowledge isn't just passively transmitted, but is also actively gained when we listen to each other and learn from our peers. 4. What would you like to see in UXRS's future? More community engagement and interactive content. There's so much we can learn from the community. UXRS wants your help to write content for our UX Community UX Research and Strategy is growing again, and we want YOU to be a part of this expansion.  Our community has talked, and we are listening. UXRS wants your help to produce high quality valuable content for all of our community members and that’s where you come in! We’re looking for a Content Writer to help us create and curate a wide variety of content for our global community!
This is a great opportunity for you to give back to the UX community in an impactful way. You can help the community learn, grow, engage and connect. Are you interested in:
If you answered yes to any of these, then we want YOU! Content Creation for the Content Writer includes:
We are looking for a committee member who will work closely with the Graphic Designers and Social Media Manager to help grow and evolve our content What you’ll bring:
Read the volunteer job/role description to determine if this position is a good fit for you too. To start the process, fill in the application for consideration. We look forward to having you join our team! UXRS wants your help to manage Social Media channels for our UX community UX Research and Strategy is growing again, and we want YOU to be a part of this expansion.  Our community has talked, and we are listening. UXRS wants your help to manage the Social Media for our rapidly growing global community and that’s where you come in! We’re looking for a Social Media Manager to help us manage our social media channels and engage with our community!
This is a great opportunity for you to give back to the UX community in an impactful way. You can help the community learn, grow, engage and connect. Are you interested in:
If you answered yes to any of these, then we want YOU! Social Media responsibilities for the Social Media Manager includes:
We are looking for a committee member who will work closely with the Graphic Designers and Social Media Manager to help grow and evolve our content What you’ll bring:
Read the volunteer job/role description to determine if this position is a good fit for you too. To start the process, fill in the application for consideration. We look forward to having you join our team!  UXRS started as a small Meetup group in Texas which grew into a large online community during the COVID 19 pandemic. Since moving online, we have produced a regular cadence of learning and networking events - mostly free of charge - for the UX Research community. Behind the scenes, it requires a lot of work to develop, plan, and run our events. None of this could be done by one person or even three people in a sustainable way. Our staff has grown along with UXRS to help provide new energy and capacity to meet these needs. Last year, Emily Dahl joined UXRS as a content strategist and has been an awesome contributor and collaborator - both backstage as a strategist and frontstage as a presenter.
We are very excited to share that Emily has stepped into a leadership position as the new Community Engagement Director. We are looking forward to working with her in 2023 and 2024 as UXRS continues to evolve. Here’s a little more about Emily Dahl, the incoming Community Engagement Director: 1. Tell us a little bit about yourself. I have spent much of my career focused on UX Strategy at the intersection of business operations, employee experiences, and the impact they have on customer experience. I am currently a Service Designer focused on end-to-end customer experiences at The Home Depot. Outside of work you can find me hiking on MN trails with my husband and son or baking an overly complex dessert. 2. What attracted you to get involved with UXRS? Transitioning into UX from other professions can be a bumpy journey or at best a winding road. As an operations professional turned Employee Experience & Digital Strategy consultant, I was looking for a place to learn and network with others who had found their way into UX strategy positions. After my first event, I knew UXRS was the community I would want to stay with. When a chance came up to join the UXRS team, I jumped at the opportunity as I wanted to be able to give back to the community that helped me feel more connected and confident in the field. 3. What was your favorite thing about UXRS and why? UXRS’s ability to create bite-sized learning such as the Method Mondays is one of my favorite things, as it is something I can easily share with non-UX team members to help them understand the value I and other UX researchers/strategists can bring. 4. What would you like to see in UXRS's future? UXRS has grown tremendously over the last few years and has been a place for many researchers to meet others in our field. As we look to the future, my hope is that we can continue to not only be a place to meet others, but also a place to build deep connections through conversations, feedback, and shared learning. Congratulations Emily!  Former Community Engagement Director, Jake Rhodes, is Taking the Reigns as the New President
UX Research and Strategy started out as a crazy idea. Jen was attending design meetups in the local Dallas, Texas area, when people would comment to her, “I would love to have meetups cover topics like UX research: interviewing participants, creating journey maps and personas, knowing which research method to use when. That sort of thing....” That was the early spark that inspired the co-founders of UX Research and Strategy to form this group over 4 years ago. A lot of growth has happened since that local meetup group had its first meeting in May 2019. Mainly, the pandemic hit. Pow! All events went online immediately and UXRS became the global community you are part of today. Not only did our events go online, we popped up all over social media too, offering educational tidbits and a community to meet other friendly UX folks. UXRS likes to shake things up. Jen never would have guessed that UX Research and Strategy exploded into what it is today. And it’s still growing and packing a positive punch in the UX world. And we are shaking things up again here at UXRS. It’s how we roll. We are excited to let you know we have a new president taking the reins for UXRS, Jake Rhodes. Don’t worry, Jen is not going anywhere. She is still going to be heavily involved in the group, planning fantastic events to bring the UX community together in 2024. Jen is extremely excited to see the next phase of UXRS develop. We hope that you will support all of the changes and growth as well. Here’s a little more about Jake Rhodes, the incoming UXRS president: 1. Tell us a little bit about yourself. I’m Jake Rhodes, the former Community Engagement Director for UXRS. By day, I’m a UX Researcher for Microsoft’s developer division. I’ve worked in program management or UX roles since 2007 for products ranging from Bing Search Ads, Windows content experiences, and developer tools. I’m more passionate about people than technology, but I get energized by the merging of science, technology, and creativity in human centered design. These days, my customers are mostly software developers and I get to see first hand the challenges and rewards of making products that fuel the modern information economy. I feel lucky to be doing this work and living in this era. 2. What attracted you to get involved with UXRS? Like many researchers in our community, I discovered UXRS during the pandemic while looking for ways to adapt contextual inquiry to remote research methods. I attended my first UXRS event and discovered a community that felt like a welcoming home for established practitioners and new URs entering the field. I was hooked. Since joining the board last year, I’ve been inspired by the passion and energy of the founders and the volunteer board and committee members who make our monthly events happen. 3. What was your favorite thing about UXRS and why? It's the diversity of the community that I love. It’s easy to get into an echo chamber in your organization but in UXRS, there’s a range of practitioners that come from different industries, occupational backgrounds, methodological philosophies, who you can connect with and grow. It’s a great place to ask questions, connect with new people, and learn. In addition to the practical news of networking and career building, there’s an underlying respect for the kind of work we’re doing that seems to bind folks in the group together which is really rewarding. 4. What would you like to see in UXRS's future? UXRS has a mission to help grow the UXR community through education and networking events. The founders have done a remarkable job of establishing this community and I’m humbled by the responsibility to help keep this group moving forward. My goal is to preserve and advance that core goal of helping our membership learn and connect with each other. Looking forward, I also hope to work with the board to adapt our organization to new challenges on the horizon. The online community that most of us know as UXRS formed during the pandemic, during economic conditions that are shifting rapidly. Organizations that hire researchers are changing and the technologies, methods, and demands on the UXR practitioner are likely to shift in response. My vision is that UXRS can be a hub of growth and adaptation to these changes -whatever they may be. Nate Eaton joins UXRSWe are delighted to have Nate join the team as a Graphic Designer  1. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Work-wise, I have been a graphic designer since the early 2000s, having earned my Bachelor's degree from Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, CA. I have worked as a copy center technician, an in-house designer for a non-profit camp and retreat center, and as a full-time freelancer, working in both paid and volunteer capacities for numerous non-profits. Personal-wise, I have been married since 2007 and have 5 kids, one of whom we adopted in 2013. My life experiences have led me to become an advocate for adoption, Down syndrome awareness, and Leukemia survivors. I care about people and their stories and what led them to where they are right now. On the lighter hobby side, I enjoy playing music (guitar and drums), reading, gardening, and building things (Legos, Woodwork, Ikea furniture). 2. What attracted you to get involved with UXRS? As a freelancer, I have to be intentional about finding community to connect with in my field. I've been pivoting more into the world of user experience design and research and seeking out events where I could create genuine connection with people who have been in that world for a while. After attending a UXRS event with Heidi Glynn from User Interviews, I logged off feeling that I had found a place where that connection with others could happen. 3. What was your favorite thing about UXRS and why? I've touched on it a little already, but UXRS struck me as straightforward and genuine in its pursuit to connect people and provide resources around user research. That's what I've been looking for and I look forward to growing within the UXRS community. 4. What would you like to see in UXRS's future? I would love to see more and more events featuring voices from the margins of society—women of color, people working within the disability community, people working in low income communities, people working in elderly communities, people working within the criminal justice system. There are a lot of areas within user research and strategy that I think these voices could and should be amplified, and I think UXRS has a unique platform for such a purpose. Learn more about Nate on LinkedIn Jigz Gandhi joins UXRSWe are thrilled to have Jigz join the team as a Graphic Designer 1. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Hi my name is Jigz! I am a Graphic Designer based out of Calgary, AB & Yes, the Rocky Mountains are in my backyard. I have over 10 years of professional experience from India, Dubai, Toronto & Calgary specializing in Print & Digital designs. I am also Certified in Visual Design, UX/UI Design & Digital Marketing. I have solid command over design techniques and visual elements coupled with a fearless creativity to bring designs to life. 2. What attracted you to get involved with UXRS? When I read about this role I was instantly interested as I've been looking for a Volunteer position that enables me to use my technical expertise to make a higher impact on the community. I know in return it will help me with personal growth and career advancement. 3. What was your favorite thing about UXRS and why? I love how this idea evolved & I am very impressed by how dedicated, hardworking and committed the team is along with their full time jobs. 4. What would you like to see in UXRS's future? More members and more community engagement Learn more about Jigz on LinkedIn |
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