President of UXRS 2022 Year in Review

Looking Back at 2022

Jen Blatz, president of UXRS shares her fondest memories of the last year

I know that in year’s past, I have talked about how much UX Research and Strategy (UXRS) has grown, and 2022 is no exception. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights of the fantastic things that UXRS did in 2022.

Events
UXRS continued to thrive online in our events, and we had 14 events, showcasing a number of speakers and topics. UXRS were the Long Beach representative of WIAD (World Information Architecture Day) in March and the Dallas representative of WUD (World Usability Day) in November. You can check out the “Past Events" section of the UXRS website to see the recordings, photos and slides of most of our events. 

Speakers
Our speakers represented a number of industries including finance, government, UX agency, market research, software, information technology, social media and more. Our speakers talked about: 

• Recruiting participants
• Deep listening
• Empowering product teams to embrace research
• Resume and career tips
• Spontaneous talks frameworks
• Alternative data analysis methods
• Challenging research norms
• Creating a UX research portfolio
• Clinical UX
• Better UX Surveys

Meena Kothandaraman's event, "Challenging UX Research Norms" was one of the highest-attended events in 2022.

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In case you missed it, check out the recordings of our 2022 speakers: 

• Indi Young 
• Matthew Morrison 
• Debbie Levitt 
• Amanda Gelb 
• Amy Santee 
• Jen Blatz 
• Michele Ronson 
• Meena Kothandaraman 
• Lorie Whitaker 
• Gyles Morrison 
• Austin Leslie 
• Melanie Medina 
• Gianca Gay 
• Jean E. Fox 

Board and Committee Growth
To meet the demand of creating social media content, to continue having free events, and to engage in our community, UXRS grew from five board members to 12 fantastic folks who are volunteering their time to help UXRS succeed. I am thrilled to have so much stellar expertise as part of the UXRS crew. Read more about our newest board and committee members below: 

• Jake Rhodes - Community Engagement Director - Engaging and educating the UXRS community on all of our channels
• Kelli Mijares - Content Strategist - Creates social media and website content 
• Emily Dahl - Content Strategist - Also creates social media and website content
• Anthony Zablocki - Treasurer - Helps the team manage finances and bookkeeping 
• Nicole Montemurro - Event Director - Leads the committee to organize the group’s events 
• Emily Carmody - Event Speaker Liaison - Communicates with speakers around the group’s events
• Enna Post-Gutierrez - Events Communication Coordinator - Updates the website about events and send out communications to inform the community about upcoming events
• Trista Lam - Graphic Designer - Designs all graphics for social media and events 
• Rebekah Hickey - Chief Technology officer - Addresses technology and security issues for the group

Social Media
Just like in 2021, all of our social media channels saw a tremendous amount of growth. We continue to engage community members on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Email, Slack, Youtube and LinkedIn. Our largest growth has been on LinkedIn, where we now have over 65,000 followers. On LinkedIn where we share definitions of terms and methods, as well as some pretty fun quotes from UX-industry giants. I would like to think we have such massive growth because of the quality content that we deliver on a daily basis. Huge thanks to all of you who have been engaging with us on social media. If you’d like to follow UXRS on social media, check out our linktree to see how to connect with us on your favorite social media channels. ​

Networking has become an important part of our monthly events.

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Networking Community
We have a sizable Slack channel community, where people can ask questions, answer questions or just make general connections with UX-loving friends. We also provided additional networking opportunities at our monthly events, with special breakout rooms to make more intimate professional connections. We also had special networking-specific events that we call “Networking Extravaganzas,” that were certainly a lot of fun. We understand how challenging building your professional network can be in our remote world. So, at our networking events, we created smaller rooms for more intimate settings for people to get to know each other better and replicate that “build your professional network” experience. 
I think that UXRS events are not just about learning. I also want us to host a supportive community where people can make new UX friends and connections – from all around the world. 

Mission
As the group has changed from its inception as a monthly in-person meetup in Dallas, Texas, USA, to one of the largest user experience communities in the world, we needed to review our mission for the group. Our new mission is: 

UXRS is dedicated to making UX research and strategy topics approachable and actionable. We create a space for people to engage and learn from each other.

We look forward to embracing this new mission through events, social media, community and more. Thank you to all of you who have been on this journey with us so far. And we are excited to see where the journey takes us in 2023. 

Support
Finally, I wanted to extend a massive thank you for all who have donated to UXRS in 2022. UXRS is a non-profit organization, and we function completely on donations. Several people donated to help keep our monthly events free, as well as cover the admin and operational costs. I cannot emphasize enough that your donations keep us going. We are completely run by volunteers, so your donations are what keep the lights on. If you would like to donate to help us out in 2023, we gladly accept donations via Paypal.

Thank you and see you again in 2023!