Note from UXRS President about 2020

2020 Year in Review

Looking back on changes, growth and success

The founders of UX Research and Strategy: Jen Blatz, Lorie Whitaker and Lauren Singer, look back at 2020 with all smiles.

The goal for UX Research and Strategy has always been to be there for the UX community. 2020 has been a tough year for many people in a variety of ways, but in times of adversity, your community can help you through some rough patches. Our 2020 meetings have focused on providing opportunities for our community to upskill, make connections, expand their education, and make new friends. We hope our events have provided a way for our community members to make 2020 a bit more palatable. 

Our events would not have been possible without everyone who supported us in 2020: 

• Those who stuck with us as we pivoted to an online platform 
• Those who attended our events, asked great questions, and shared their experiences with their friends and colleagues, encouraging them to attend as well
• Those who taught, helped, and connected with others in our Slack workspace
• Those who liked, shared, and commented on our social media content
• 500+ people who donated to help UXRS pay our bills this year. Those contributions ensure we can provide one free event each month and help defer the operating costs for our group. 

When thinking about UXRS in 2020, three words come to mind: 

• Adaptive
  
• Community
  
• Growth
  

Adaptive
Prior to the pandemic, UX Research and Strategy was primarily a local organization, hosting our events in Dallas, Texas USA. As some organizations pivoted to online engagements in the face of the pandemic, UXRS decided, for the safety of our attendees, to shift all of our events online. In doing so, UXRS expanded around the globe in a matter of a few short months. 

Our first online event was the UXR Portfolio Review in February. Lorie Whitaker, co-founder and Treasurer, pivoted the already fully scheduled event from occurring in a local corporate office to an online-only event. 

After this successful event, and the unimpeded spread of COVID 19 around the globe, the founders decided to take all events online for the remainder of 2020. The founders discussed the logistics and started planning to move all of the remaining events to an online platform. Zoom was purchased, social media accounts were put into place, and UXRS moved online for the future, keeping our mission at the forefront:

Our goal is to make topics related to User Experience research and strategy both approachable and actionable by ensuring our community members come away with concrete examples of how to implement research and strategy methods.

Community
Moving our events virtually allowed us to reach a much broader audience. Our online events have enabled us to provide the opportunity to create a broader global network with people who share a similar interest: UX Research and Strategy. 

We’ve had attendees from countries around the world: Australia, Indonesia, New Zealand, Japan, India, United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa - just to name a few.

Growth

Moving online allowed us to increase our meeting attendance from approximately 75 people in person to over 500 for online meetings! And it’s not just our attendance that’s grown. Our social media influence has exploded, going from virtually zero followers on LinkedIn to over 22,000. We’ve seen 5-fold increases in followers on our other channels - YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. The UXRS Slack space has grown from just hosting the three founders to being a dynamic place for over 1,100 people to share their thoughts, help each other, and ask for feedback. This growth allows us to bring our mission to a wider audience, enabling our community members to help each other and make meaningful connections during these trying times. 


We have brought in some pretty fantastic speakers like:

• Debbie Levitt
• Eric Ellis
• Jim Kalbach
• Andy Vitale
• Amy Ross
• Mike Kendall
• Indi Young
• Adrienne Guillory
• Adam Polansky
• John Sarmiento
• ​Donna Spencer
  
• Deb Gelman
• Ashley Connor
• Carri Craver
• Meghan Rennie
• Carol Smith
• Amanda Dorsey
• Kevin Liang

Our fabulous speakers talked about tons of interesting topics like:

• Getting hired in UX
• Information architecture
• Design thinking
• Jobs to be done
• Analyzing data after research
• Mental models and thinking styles
• Remote contextual inquiry
• Value stream discovery loop
• Artificial Intelligence and UX
• When to use which research method
• How to break into UX research

As you can see, 2020 has been a very busy year for us. And we are not stopping there! We are in the process of planning some pretty amazing events in 2021 too. 

Let me just take one more moment to thank all of those who have supported us in 2020.

• For those who beared with us through technical issues and adjusting to a new virtual platform.
• For those who show up to our events, ask great questions and told your friends and colleagues they should come to our events too.
• For those who contributed to the conversations in our Slack channels: teaching, helping and connecting with others.
• For those who comment on, like, share and view our social media content.
• And finally, for those who donated to help keep us going. Over 500 people chipped in to help us financially this year. Woot! Those contributions help us to keep most of our events free, and they help pay for operational costs like Zoom upgrades (permitting more viewers) and our website.

Looking forward
Our founders are hard at work planning our 2021 events. We hope they will bring our community more educational experiences and chances to connect with each other. We are truly grateful for your support. You give us your most valuable asset, your time and attention, and we don’t take that for granted. Thank you again for your support and we look forward to seeing you in 2021 and beyond.