Wed Feb 3
14:00 – 14:15
Networking 15 min
The event will be hosted on our virtual platform — please join using the unique access link in your ticket.
If you have questions or need support, please contact Irene Hatji.
Day 1
Wed Feb 3
14:20 – 14:50
Opening Keynote 30 min
SCALING UX LEADERSHIP: FROM REACTIVE TO STRATEGIC INNOVATION
- Building the Business Case for UX - Crafting compelling proposals that position UX as a strategic investment and effectively communicate value to C-suite leadership
- Strategies to shift from reactive to proactive for transforming UX culture by balancing short-term deliverables with long-term vision, moving the team from order-taking to strategic partnership
- Leveraging UX's unique ability to visualize and paint the innovative future of the organization, demonstrating how design thinking drives strategic business outcomes beyond traditional design work
Wed Feb 3
14:55 – 15:25
30 min
TOPIC TO BE ANNOUNCED
Wed Feb 3
15:30 – 16:00
Case Study 30 min
FOLLOW THE YOUTH SIGNAL: EVOLVING PRODUCTS FOR WHAT’S NEXT
- Reframing teens/young adults as a genuinely different behavioral context (not “younger versions of us”) shaped by a new social + tech environment
- Building rapport and moderating safely with sensitive neurodivergent youth cohorts using approaches that go beyond traditional methods
- Moving beyond passive trend monitoring by running deep, context-rich research on how young people communicate (private sharing, evolving photo norms, language/norm shifts) to inform product evolution
Wed Feb 3
16:00 – 16:30
Networking 30 min
Networking Break (Fluid Space)
Wed Feb 3
16:30 – 17:15
Panel discussion 45 min
REIMAGINING UX CAREER GROWTH: FROM DISCIPLINE HISTORY TO CROSS-FUNCTIONAL LEADERSHIP
- Tracing how UX evolved over time (roles, skills, and expectations), and what that history tells us about where the field is heading
- Expanding senior leadership growth beyond craft into strategy, facilitation, and organizational design across blurred boundaries
- Identifying what juniors should focus on in 2026+: foundational craft plus durable leverage skills (communication, stakeholder alignment, systems thinking, and data/AI fluency)
- Navigating careers by defining your unique value as UX roles overlap with product, research, data, and engineering—and demonstrating impact in that environment
Global Head UX/UI
Schneider Electric
Panelist
Wed Feb 3
17:20 – 17:50
30 min
TOPIC TO BE ANNOUNCED
Wed Feb 3
17:55 – 18:25
Case Study 30 min
MAKING UXR SCALABLE AND EXECUTIVE-LEGIBLE: DEMOCRATIZATION DONE RIGHT
- Building a practical “democratization framework” by clarifying which research activities can be self‑served vs. must remain researcher‑led, and setting up a simple escalation path (templates, ethics checklist, sampling/recruitment guardrails) so quality stays consistent
- Proving value in executive language by translating research outcomes into C‑suite metrics that resonate (risk reduction, faster time‑to‑decision, rework avoided, adoption/revenue impact) using crisp, exec-ready artifacts (e.g., 1‑page decision memos + counterfactual “what we would’ve done otherwise”)
- Operationalizing measurement for a scaled function by defining a lightweight scorecard that balances output (volume), quality (credibility/standards), and capacity (bandwidth/efficiency), and tying those measures back to business outcomes leaders care about
Wed Feb 3
18:25 – 19:00
Roundtable 35 min
Networking (Fluid Space) / Interactive Roundtable
Wed Feb 3
19:00 – 19:30
30 min
UX RESEARCH FOR AI-PRODUCTS: FASTER INSIGHTS, DEEPER TRUST, CLEARER BOUNDARIES
- Applying cognitive psychology to evaluation—measuring attention, decision-making under uncertainty, and the mental models people form about what an “agent” is doing (particularly under stress)
- Establishing clear boundaries between stable vs. adaptive system behavior—where the agent can improvise, where it must request permission, and which always-visible controls keep travelers oriented (itinerary truth, budget, cancellation rules, etc.)
- Pairing behavioral analytics with psychologically informed qualitative research to explain why behavior changes—combining metrics (drop-off, retries, undo/cancel rates) with probes around confidence, perceived control, and understanding of system state
Research Director, AI Experience
Expedia
Speaker
Wed Feb 3
19:35 – 20:05
Case Study 30 min
THE INVISIBLE GUARDRAIL: HOW UX RESEARCH PREVENTED AUTOMATION BIAS IN A STATEWIDE AI JUDICIAL SYSTEM
- Defining the interface as a safety guardrail in high-stakes AI systems—clarifying what the UI must not do (e.g., auto-merge records, imply confirmation) as much as what it should do
- Treating explanation as the trust mechanism—showing a score without clear reasoning drives overconfidence and automation bias; pairing each AI signal with an understandable “why” prevents people from filling gaps with assumptions
- Making confidence legible (not just accurate)—raw percentages create false precision; communicating uncertainty and ambiguous states helps people calibrate trust appropriately
- Embedding UX research early (before design locks in) to surface risks and establish interaction guardrails—reducing reversals and enabling scalable, consistent AI interaction patterns
Lead UX Researcher
AJ Boggs / Michigan Supreme Court
Speaker
Wed Feb 3
20:10 – 20:40
Presentation 30 min
THE UX RESEARCH ANTI-HANDBOOK: RULES WORTH BREAKING
- Challenging outdated UX research “rules” that no longer fit fast-moving, hybrid, resource-constrained teams.
- Reframing dogmatic methods and deliverables with practical, modern alternatives grounded in real-world stories.
- Encouraging researchers to examine why they follow certain rules and to experiment intentionally to unlock innovation.
- Empowering attendees to work more adaptably, transparently, strategically, and fearlessly to increase research impact.
Principal UX Researcher
BECU
Speaker
Wed Feb 3
20:40 – 21:20
Roundtable 40 min
Roundtable 1: When AI Makes Everyone Feel Like a Researcher: How to Scale UX Research Without Losing the Craft
Wed Feb 3
20:40 – 21:20
Roundtable 40 min
Roundtable 2: Blending qual + quant in an AI world and where the convergence helps and distorts
Wed Feb 3
20:40 – 21:20
Roundtable 40 min
Roundtable 3: What have global teams misunderstood when doing UX research in Asia
Wed Feb 3
20:40 – 21:20
Roundtable 40 min
Roundtable 4: How are you capturing emerging behaviors continuously (weak signals) without becoming a ‘dashboard factory’
Wed Feb 3
21:30 – 21:35
Networking 5 min
End of Day 1 and Open Networking
Day 2
Thu Feb 4
14:00 – 14:15
Networking 15 min
WELCOME & VIRTUAL COFFEE
Thu Feb 4
14:20 – 14:50
Opening Keynote 30 min
REBUILDING THE UX LAB: A MODERN FRAMEWORK FOR INTEGRATING QUALITATIVE DEPTH, QUANTITATIVE RIGOR, AND BUSINESS IMPACT
- Evolving the research mix deliberately: move from ~90% qual to ~65/35 without losing depth—and meet demand for sizing, benchmarks, and decision thresholds.
- Closing the biggest gaps fast: sampling, instrumentation, experiment design, survey quality, and analysis—using lightweight standards (not heavyweight process).
- Making quant repeatable: reusable templates + checklists that answer “how big / how often / compared to what” quickly, with rigor and comparability.
- Rebooting the UX Lab: a practical model (people, rituals, intake, tooling) that separates signal from noise and keeps quant grounded in lived experience.
Thu Feb 4
14:55 – 15:25
30 min
TOPIC TO BE ANNOUNCED
Thu Feb 4
15:30 – 16:00
Case Study 30 min
Reserved Session
Thu Feb 4
16:00 – 16:30
Networking 30 min
Break and Open Networking at Fluid Space
Thu Feb 4
16:30 – 17:15
Roundtable 45 min
Roundtable 1: Turning UXR as trusted advisors to coach citizen researchers
Head of User Research – Global Engineering
SAS
Speaker
Thu Feb 4
16:30 – 17:15
Roundtable 45 min
Roundtable 2: What would a “successful” cross-region study look like in practice?
Thu Feb 4
16:30 – 17:15
Roundtable 45 min
Roundtable 3: Where do you draw the line between self-serve research and researcher-led work—and what are your ‘red flag’ criteria that triggers escalation to a trained researcher?
Thu Feb 4
16:30 – 17:15
Roundtable 45 min
Roundtable 4: On behavioral economics: where do you draw the line between persuasion and manipulation in hospitality/travel experiences—and what guardrails or review process helps enforce it?
Thu Feb 4
17:20 – 17:50
30 min
Reserved for Sponsor
Thu Feb 4
17:55 – 18:25
Case Study 30 min
FROM INCREMENTAL TO INSPIRING: CRAFTING PRODUCT VISIONS THAT TEAMS ACTUALLY BELIEVE IN
- Transforming research, data, and constraints into solutions that balance user and business impact - not a compromise between them
- Structuring a clear story arc from today’s pain points to bold “big bets” so stakeholders understand the why, not just the what
- Humanizing user data into resonant characters and journeys that build empathy and prevent feature-first decision-making
- Identifying the right first steps and features to take your vision from ideas to reality
Senior Manager User Experience
YouTube
Speaker
Thu Feb 4
18:30 – 19:00
Networking 30 min
FROM INVISIBLE TO IMPACT: USING CREATIVE RESEARCH TO BRING SELDOM HEARD VOICES INTO DESIGN
- Over-representing easy-to-recruit participants, leaving seldom-heard audiences out of decisions and increasing the risk of unrepresentative insight
- Running targeted, audience-specific studies (using an intersectional lens) and synthesizing across them to surface shared barriers and group-specific challenges
- Recruiting via trusted community partners and using creative, participatory methods (drawing, visual storytelling, co-creation, prompts) to reduce barriers and elicit deeper emotional insight
- Producing a clearer evidence base for systemic exclusion and practical redesign direction (simplifying journeys, improving accessibility, offering alter
User Research Lead
Social Security Scotland
Speaker
Thu Feb 4
19:00 – 19:30
30 min
Networking (Fluid Space)
Thu Feb 4
19:30 – 20:00
30 min
THE SPECTRUM FRAMEWORK: MOVING BEYOND PERSONAS TO UNDERSTAND USERS
- Replacing static personas with a spectrum model that tracks how user intent and context shift moment to moment.
- Mapping users across the spectrum using qual to define behaviors and quant to size where people actually cluster
- Deepening insight with Jobs-to-be-Done to test whether needs diverge enough to justify separate products vs one solution
- Validating what to build via opportunity/fit checks (market, feasibility, delivery/channel, monetization, and MVP scope) before committing
Senior UX Researcher
The Weather Company
Speaker
Thu Feb 4
20:05 – 20:35
30 min
DESIGNING INCLUSION ACROSS CULTURES: HOW GLOBAL UX RESEARCH INFORMED PINTEREST’S PRODUCT STRATEGY
- Recognizing inclusion isn’t culturally universal—markets value respect/representation/accessibility, but define “inclusion” differently
- Noting default-embedded inclusion can outperform “labeled” inclusion—labels/filters help some, but can feel reductive or spotlight difference
- Showing qual explains the “why” behind data—mixed methods reveal motivations, emotional nuance, and context beyond metrics
- Emphasizing localization is strategic, not just translation—adapting imagery/language/content and cues
Senior Staff Researcher (Product Belonging)
Pinterest
Speaker
Partner & Managing Director
The Hatch Studio
Speaker
Thu Feb 4
20:40 – 21:20
Panel discussion 40 min
THE GREAT UXR RE-BLEND: WHEN QUAL AND QUANT FINALLY SPEAK THE SAME LANGUAGE
- Reconnecting UXR work to first principles: observation, behavior, and context, what is lost in the current generation of UXRers?
- Combining interview depth with behavioral data to answer both “why” and “how much”
- Designing hybrid studies that run fast without sacrificing rigor
- Defining what good evidence looks like when tools can generate patterns instantly
Thu Feb 4
21:20 – 21:25
5 min
End of UX360 Virtual Summit 2027
Agenda To Be Announced Soon
The event will be hosted on our virtual platform
If you have questions or need support, please contact Irene Hatji.
All times are in CET (Central European Time)
Day 1
Wed Feb 3
14:00 – 14:15
Networking 15 min
WELCOME & VIRTUAL COFFEE
Wed Feb 3
14:20 – 14:50
Opening Keynote 30 min
SCALING UX LEADERSHIP: FROM REACTIVE TO STRATEGIC INNOVATION
- Building the Business Case for UX - Crafting compelling proposals that position UX as a strategic investment and effectively communicate value to C-suite leadership
- Strategies to shift from reactive to proactive for transforming UX culture by balancing short-term deliverables with long-term vision, moving the team from order-taking to strategic partnership
- Leveraging UX's unique ability to visualize and paint the innovative future of the organization, demonstrating how design thinking drives strategic business outcomes beyond traditional design work
Wed Feb 3
14:55 – 15:25
30 min
TOPIC TO BE ANNOUNCED
Wed Feb 3
15:30 – 16:00
Case Study 30 min
FOLLOW THE YOUTH SIGNAL: EVOLVING PRODUCTS FOR WHAT’S NEXT
- Reframing teens/young adults as a genuinely different behavioral context (not “younger versions of us”) shaped by a new social + tech environment
- Building rapport and moderating safely with sensitive neurodivergent youth cohorts using approaches that go beyond traditional methods
- Moving beyond passive trend monitoring by running deep, context-rich research on how young people communicate (private sharing, evolving photo norms, language/norm shifts) to inform product evolution
Wed Feb 3
16:00 – 16:30
Networking 30 min
Networking Break (Fluid Space)
Wed Feb 3
16:30 – 17:15
Panel discussion 45 min
REIMAGINING UX CAREER GROWTH: FROM DISCIPLINE HISTORY TO CROSS-FUNCTIONAL LEADERSHIP
- Tracing how UX evolved over time (roles, skills, and expectations), and what that history tells us about where the field is heading
- Expanding senior leadership growth beyond craft into strategy, facilitation, and organizational design across blurred boundaries
- Identifying what juniors should focus on in 2026+: foundational craft plus durable leverage skills (communication, stakeholder alignment, systems thinking, and data/AI fluency)
- Navigating careers by defining your unique value as UX roles overlap with product, research, data, and engineering—and demonstrating impact in that environment
Global Head UX/UI
Schneider Electric
Panelist
Wed Feb 3
17:20 – 17:50
30 min
TOPIC TO BE ANNOUNCED
Wed Feb 3
17:55 – 18:25
Case Study 30 min
MAKING UXR SCALABLE AND EXECUTIVE-LEGIBLE: DEMOCRATIZATION DONE RIGHT
- Building a practical “democratization framework” by clarifying which research activities can be self‑served vs. must remain researcher‑led, and setting up a simple escalation path (templates, ethics checklist, sampling/recruitment guardrails) so quality stays consistent
- Proving value in executive language by translating research outcomes into C‑suite metrics that resonate (risk reduction, faster time‑to‑decision, rework avoided, adoption/revenue impact) using crisp, exec-ready artifacts (e.g., 1‑page decision memos + counterfactual “what we would’ve done otherwise”)
- Operationalizing measurement for a scaled function by defining a lightweight scorecard that balances output (volume), quality (credibility/standards), and capacity (bandwidth/efficiency), and tying those measures back to business outcomes leaders care about
Wed Feb 3
18:25 – 19:00
Roundtable 35 min
Networking (Fluid Space) / Interactive Roundtable
Wed Feb 3
19:00 – 19:30
30 min
UX RESEARCH FOR AI-PRODUCTS: FASTER INSIGHTS, DEEPER TRUST, CLEARER BOUNDARIES
- Applying cognitive psychology to evaluation—measuring attention, decision-making under uncertainty, and the mental models people form about what an “agent” is doing (particularly under stress)
- Establishing clear boundaries between stable vs. adaptive system behavior—where the agent can improvise, where it must request permission, and which always-visible controls keep travelers oriented (itinerary truth, budget, cancellation rules, etc.)
- Pairing behavioral analytics with psychologically informed qualitative research to explain why behavior changes—combining metrics (drop-off, retries, undo/cancel rates) with probes around confidence, perceived control, and understanding of system state
Research Director, AI Experience
Expedia
Speaker
Wed Feb 3
19:35 – 20:05
Case Study 30 min
THE INVISIBLE GUARDRAIL: HOW UX RESEARCH PREVENTED AUTOMATION BIAS IN A STATEWIDE AI JUDICIAL SYSTEM
- Defining the interface as a safety guardrail in high-stakes AI systems—clarifying what the UI must not do (e.g., auto-merge records, imply confirmation) as much as what it should do
- Treating explanation as the trust mechanism—showing a score without clear reasoning drives overconfidence and automation bias; pairing each AI signal with an understandable “why” prevents people from filling gaps with assumptions
- Making confidence legible (not just accurate)—raw percentages create false precision; communicating uncertainty and ambiguous states helps people calibrate trust appropriately
- Embedding UX research early (before design locks in) to surface risks and establish interaction guardrails—reducing reversals and enabling scalable, consistent AI interaction patterns
Lead UX Researcher
AJ Boggs / Michigan Supreme Court
Speaker
Wed Feb 3
20:10 – 20:40
Presentation 30 min
THE UX RESEARCH ANTI-HANDBOOK: RULES WORTH BREAKING
- Challenging outdated UX research “rules” that no longer fit fast-moving, hybrid, resource-constrained teams.
- Reframing dogmatic methods and deliverables with practical, modern alternatives grounded in real-world stories.
- Encouraging researchers to examine why they follow certain rules and to experiment intentionally to unlock innovation.
- Empowering attendees to work more adaptably, transparently, strategically, and fearlessly to increase research impact.
Principal UX Researcher
BECU
Speaker
Wed Feb 3
20:40 – 21:20
Roundtable 40 min
Roundtable 1: When AI Makes Everyone Feel Like a Researcher: How to Scale UX Research Without Losing the Craft
Wed Feb 3
20:40 – 21:20
Roundtable 40 min
Roundtable 2: Blending qual + quant in an AI world and where the convergence helps and distorts
Wed Feb 3
20:40 – 21:20
Roundtable 40 min
Roundtable 3: What have global teams misunderstood when doing UX research in Asia
Wed Feb 3
20:40 – 21:20
Roundtable 40 min
Roundtable 4: How are you capturing emerging behaviors continuously (weak signals) without becoming a ‘dashboard factory’
Wed Feb 3
21:30 – 21:35
Networking 5 min
End of Day 1 and Open Networking
Day 2
Thu Feb 4
14:00 – 14:15
Networking 15 min
WELCOME & VIRTUAL COFFEE
Thu Feb 4
14:20 – 14:50
Opening Keynote 30 min
REBUILDING THE UX LAB: A MODERN FRAMEWORK FOR INTEGRATING QUALITATIVE DEPTH, QUANTITATIVE RIGOR, AND BUSINESS IMPACT
- Evolving the research mix deliberately: move from ~90% qual to ~65/35 without losing depth—and meet demand for sizing, benchmarks, and decision thresholds.
- Closing the biggest gaps fast: sampling, instrumentation, experiment design, survey quality, and analysis—using lightweight standards (not heavyweight process).
- Making quant repeatable: reusable templates + checklists that answer “how big / how often / compared to what” quickly, with rigor and comparability.
- Rebooting the UX Lab: a practical model (people, rituals, intake, tooling) that separates signal from noise and keeps quant grounded in lived experience.
Thu Feb 4
14:55 – 15:25
30 min
TOPIC TO BE ANNOUNCED
Thu Feb 4
15:30 – 16:00
Case Study 30 min
Reserved Session
Thu Feb 4
16:00 – 16:30
Networking 30 min
Break and Open Networking at Fluid Space
Thu Feb 4
16:30 – 17:15
Roundtable 45 min
Roundtable 1: Turning UXR as trusted advisors to coach citizen researchers
Head of User Research – Global Engineering
SAS
Speaker
Thu Feb 4
16:30 – 17:15
Roundtable 45 min
Roundtable 2: What would a “successful” cross-region study look like in practice?
Thu Feb 4
16:30 – 17:15
Roundtable 45 min
Roundtable 3: Where do you draw the line between self-serve research and researcher-led work—and what are your ‘red flag’ criteria that triggers escalation to a trained researcher?
Thu Feb 4
16:30 – 17:15
Roundtable 45 min
Roundtable 4: On behavioral economics: where do you draw the line between persuasion and manipulation in hospitality/travel experiences—and what guardrails or review process helps enforce it?
Thu Feb 4
17:20 – 17:50
30 min
Reserved for Sponsor
Thu Feb 4
17:55 – 18:25
Case Study 30 min
FROM INCREMENTAL TO INSPIRING: CRAFTING PRODUCT VISIONS THAT TEAMS ACTUALLY BELIEVE IN
- Transforming research, data, and constraints into solutions that balance user and business impact - not a compromise between them
- Structuring a clear story arc from today’s pain points to bold “big bets” so stakeholders understand the why, not just the what
- Humanizing user data into resonant characters and journeys that build empathy and prevent feature-first decision-making
- Identifying the right first steps and features to take your vision from ideas to reality
Senior Manager User Experience
YouTube
Speaker
Thu Feb 4
18:30 – 19:00
Networking 30 min
FROM INVISIBLE TO IMPACT: USING CREATIVE RESEARCH TO BRING SELDOM HEARD VOICES INTO DESIGN
- Over-representing easy-to-recruit participants, leaving seldom-heard audiences out of decisions and increasing the risk of unrepresentative insight
- Running targeted, audience-specific studies (using an intersectional lens) and synthesizing across them to surface shared barriers and group-specific challenges
- Recruiting via trusted community partners and using creative, participatory methods (drawing, visual storytelling, co-creation, prompts) to reduce barriers and elicit deeper emotional insight
- Producing a clearer evidence base for systemic exclusion and practical redesign direction (simplifying journeys, improving accessibility, offering alter
User Research Lead
Social Security Scotland
Speaker
Thu Feb 4
19:00 – 19:30
30 min
Networking (Fluid Space)
Thu Feb 4
19:30 – 20:00
30 min
THE SPECTRUM FRAMEWORK: MOVING BEYOND PERSONAS TO UNDERSTAND USERS
- Replacing static personas with a spectrum model that tracks how user intent and context shift moment to moment.
- Mapping users across the spectrum using qual to define behaviors and quant to size where people actually cluster
- Deepening insight with Jobs-to-be-Done to test whether needs diverge enough to justify separate products vs one solution
- Validating what to build via opportunity/fit checks (market, feasibility, delivery/channel, monetization, and MVP scope) before committing
Senior UX Researcher
The Weather Company
Speaker
Thu Feb 4
20:05 – 20:35
30 min
DESIGNING INCLUSION ACROSS CULTURES: HOW GLOBAL UX RESEARCH INFORMED PINTEREST’S PRODUCT STRATEGY
- Recognizing inclusion isn’t culturally universal—markets value respect/representation/accessibility, but define “inclusion” differently
- Noting default-embedded inclusion can outperform “labeled” inclusion—labels/filters help some, but can feel reductive or spotlight difference
- Showing qual explains the “why” behind data—mixed methods reveal motivations, emotional nuance, and context beyond metrics
- Emphasizing localization is strategic, not just translation—adapting imagery/language/content and cues
Senior Staff Researcher (Product Belonging)
Pinterest
Speaker
Partner & Managing Director
The Hatch Studio
Speaker
Thu Feb 4
20:40 – 21:20
Panel discussion 40 min
THE GREAT UXR RE-BLEND: WHEN QUAL AND QUANT FINALLY SPEAK THE SAME LANGUAGE
- Reconnecting UXR work to first principles: observation, behavior, and context, what is lost in the current generation of UXRers?
- Combining interview depth with behavioral data to answer both “why” and “how much”
- Designing hybrid studies that run fast without sacrificing rigor
- Defining what good evidence looks like when tools can generate patterns instantly
Thu Feb 4
21:20 – 21:25
5 min