UXR in the Age of AI
Threat, Opportunity, or Both?
Whether or not you’ve watched Game of Thrones, you probably know the meme.
It might sound overly dramatic to swap AI for winter in this context, but recent months have shown how much product development is shifting. If you work in UX research, this warrants your attention.
AI x Winter
To be clear, I’m less concerned about AI performing UXR tasks and more curious about how AI changes the way companies build products. Here’s the domino effect we currently see playing out:
AI’s ability to write code is fundamentally challenging assumptions about the role of developers.
PMs are rethinking what tasks are core to their role, given the shifting landscape of writing code.
Designers are considering whether they should lean into engineering tasks given the speed of building with AI.
Against that backdrop, UX research is also bound to shift.
What Now?
I’m bringing back the Scaling Research newsletter and podcast to address this moment. We need more open conversation, ideas, and examples to show how the UXR practice can navigate this AI era.
Winter is coming, and we have the agency to do something about it.
Here’s how you can help:
Publish your thoughts and experiences. LinkedIn, your own Substack, Medium, wherever: we need more people sharing their perspectives.
If you’re working in settings where AI has fundamentally shifted your work and have thoughts about where UXR sits in the present and future, I want to have you on the Scaling Research podcast. Please reach out to opata.olende@gmail.com or connect with me on LinkedIn.
If you have teammates or UXR friends who would benefit from this conversation, share Scaling Research with them.
I’ll be back in a few days with a longer post about the shifts in product development that we should be paying attention to. Thanks for reading!