2026 Agenda

• Understanding technology transformation cycles and why UX team have always adapted—and will continue to thrive
• Why AI's reliability is no match for human researchers' ability to question, contextualize, and solve real problems
• Shifting from proving UXR to delivering insights that inspire action and drive meaningful success

• 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

• Exploring how product teams can diagnose their discovery environment and adapt their processes to maximize success across three distinct contexts
• Assessing six critical factors (congestion, debt, constraints, competition, morale, and confidence) to identify whether you're operating in a greenfield, brownfield, or concrete jungle context.
• Tailoring strategies for each environment — from rapid experimentation in greenfields, to value regeneration in brownfields, to stakeholder alignment in concrete jungles.
• Understanding how matching your discovery process to your context can help teams avoid costly mistakes, duplicated work, and resource misallocation.

• 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.

• 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 traditional interfaces to embrace spatial computing, voice, ambient intelligence, and physical-digital hybrid experiences
• Understanding UX's critical responsibility in shaping ethical and meaningful human-machine relationships
• 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 that protect user agency and trust

• 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

• How do you expand UX influence from isolated interfaces to organization-wide strategic impact?
• Leveraging deep customer understanding as a competitive advantage that breaks down silos between UX, product, and engineering teams
• Translating UX research into engineering language that resonates with technical stakeholders and transforms routine touchpoints into strategic opportunities
• How to secure leadership buy-in and transform UX from a service function into a strategic driver of business value throughout the entire production chain

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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