2026 Agenda

• Bridging market research with UXR/D to build product-native, omnichannel communication ecosystems as OEMs shift to direct-to-consumer relationships and customer communications become integral to the product experience
• How to frame and research customer communications as an experience layer across the end-to-end journey, not isolated touchpoints
• Methods for identifying the right channel, timing, and value exchange using insight, data, and experimentation.
• Ways UX research teams can influence internal alignment—connecting product, CX, marketing, and commercial stakeholders around shared customer outcomes

• Rediscovering the irreplaceable value of deep user research
• Understanding how traditional brands risk losing market relevance without renewed commitment to user-centricity
• Transforming organizational decision-making from gut feelings to customer truth through proven frameworks and evidence-driven insights
• Building unshakeable customer loyalty through authentic listening and research-driven empathy that creates lasting competitive advantage

• Tracing how generative AI is shifting expectations from utility to emotional reassurance and cognitive partnership
• Examining the shift from browsing to goal-seeking and from searching to expecting answers
• Exploring what these changes mean for trust, decision-making, and the future of UX design

• Mapping the emotional experience: identifying the feelings the brand must create, protect, and recover when things go wrong
• Turning brand values into product behaviors: how tone, microcopy, interaction patterns, and service moments express the new brand
• Researching trust and vulnerability: methods for evaluating credibility, safety, and “human” connection in real contexts
• Aligning the organization: building shared principles so product, design, and research teams deliver one coherent experience from vision to execution

• Understanding how UX research for AI and conversational interfaces fundamentally differs from traditional digital product design — and why adaptive systems require continuous validation rather than one-time testing
• Shaping trust, tone, and expectations in chatbot interactions by balancing artificial intelligence with emotional intelligence
• How Flix leverages continuous user insight through UserTesting to understand the customer perspective at scale and iteratively optimize chatbot trust, clarity, and performance across 40+ international markets
• Turning empathy-driven design into measurable business impact by embedding real user feedback into AI development cycles

• Five to six high-impact, actionable practices teams can implement immediately to improve accessibility and meet EAA requirements
• How to embed accessibility into every stage of the design and development lifecycle, from discovery and design to QA and release — without slowing teams down
• How to include users with disabilities in research and testing to uncover issues that guidelines alone cannot reveal

As AI transforms the design landscape, the most valuable skills we possess are uniquely human—our ability to connect, empathize, and understand one another. This highly interactive workshop explores how vulnerability, compassion, and empathy serve as essential human superpowers for truly understanding users in our current technological age. Through hands-on exercises and collaborative activities, participants will:

• Reconnect with their human superpowers that AI cannot replicate
• Practice listening more deeply and seeing the world through another's eyes through improvisation techniques and games
• Develop practical frameworks for bringing empathy back to the center of digital experiences

  This interactive session brings the human element back into conversations about design and technology, creating space for authentic connection and reflection. Participants will leave with renewed confidence in their irreplaceable value as your ultimate superpower.

Most market research asks people to remember experiences after the fact. But what if insight could be captured while it’s actually happening? This case study, based on 75 Quick Service Restaurants, will show how AI-moderated qualitative research can surface real-time customer thoughts, emotions, and decisions - at scale.

• Learn how to enable real-time, in-context customer feedback
• Gain a deeper understanding of AI's multi-modal video analytics
• Discover potential use cases that can apply to your business

• How to define the new career pathways for UX researchers?
• How Businesses should rethink and replan recruitment &  retention in response to AI-led industry transformation?
• How can senior leaders mentor and uplift the capabilities of the younger generation to continue to thrive and adapt to the future changes?

• Strategic Scoping: How to align global stakeholders on unified objectives while identifying the "local nuances" that define a market’s success.
• Precision Recruitment: Navigating the cultural and logistical hurdles of finding the right participants in diverse regions without sacrificing speed.
• Adaptive Fieldwork: Moving away from rigid templates to flexible data collection methods that respect local specificities
• Actionable Analysis & Reporting: Transforming complex, cross-border data into a unified report that informs global strategy and empowers local execution

• Why screens as we know it are no longer the centre of digital experience
• How design moves from interfaces to relationships and context
• What the post-screen era means for UX, products and organisations
• Why care, vulnerability and dissidence are becoming design skills, and why this shift changes not only what we build, but how we think, decide and lead.

• Expanding UX research frontiers beyond screen based interfaces to measure spatial computing, ambient intelligence, and physical-digital hybrid experiences
• Understanding UX's critical responsibility in shaping ethical and meaningful human-machine relationships in the physical space
• Reimagining UX research methodologies—new approaches, tools, and frameworks needed to understand and validate invisible interactions
• Navigating the privacy implications of always-on, context-aware AI systems and establishing UX principles

• Fostering organizational growth through strategic UX team development
• Building future-ready UX professionals through continuous learning and skill advancement
• Establishing clear career pathways that align with emerging industry trends and requirements
• Harmonizing team sustainability with meaningful personal and professional growth opportunities

• Defining what strategy truly is—and what it isn't—based on foundational business principles
• Identifying the characteristics that distinguish good strategy from bad strategy
• Understanding where AI can inform strategy vs where a Researcher's point of view is indispensable
• Outlining the various research activities that are most impactful at shaping business strategy

• Integrating UX in safety-first, siloed industrial enterprises with rigid engineering processes
• Building & evolving DesignOps and UX research for decentralized teams
• Legitimizing design through UXUI Governance in the development lifecycle
• Bridging disciplines with Community Management to weave design into global operations

• Embracing the messy reality—designing through uncertainty, iteration, and the chaos of real-world constraints, especially as AI reshapes our workflows
• Navigating blurred boundaries—understanding where AI transforms traditional design stages and where human insight remains irreplaceable
• Prioritizing rapid learning—moving fast with early feedback loops instead of chasing elusive perfection
• Mastering strategic trade-offs—balancing ambiguity, effort allocation, and knowing exactly what to keep human

• Conducting UX research in unpredictable physical environments—barns, fields, and working farms—where mud, machinery, and seasonality shape every study
• Understanding farmers as unique users: highly skilled experts juggling traditional practices with cutting-edge technology, often with limited digital fluency
• Navigating recruitment and stakeholder challenges to access time-constrained end users while advocating for their voice within the organization

• Making qualitative insights actionable through collaborative, rapid journey-based problem prioritization with stakeholders to align on focus areas. 
• Transforming subjective UX decisions into data-driven strategy using Outcome-driven innovation (ODI). 
• Converting user pain points into outcome statements, calculating opportunity scores, and identifying the highest-impact areas.
• Elevating UX maturity and turning ambiguous discovery findings into a clear, high-impact product roadmap.

• Each panelist sharing impact stories of UX Research's rebirth—new vision, new roles, new reality
• Demonstrating transformational value—positioning researchers as drivers of company evolution and innovation, not service providers
• What role should user research play in guiding critical business decisions to navigate uncertainty?
• Building influential research practices as a transformational force within the organization