David Wenk

🔥 Hot Tips on Building a Participant Panel 1. Understand your research panel requirements In addition to sorting out who should be on the panel and how to effectively communicate with them (both big considerations), you should also map out all the technical requirements needed to meet to get a panel up and running. This means: • A professional-looking sign-up form and screeners • A means to get the sign-up form in front of customers (a web page and other marketing initiatives) • Secure storage of participant data • The ability to pull lists of participants, based on specific criteria • A way to delete participants, when requested 2. Define research panel ownership roles and responsibilities A successful research panel is built on strong relationships, and we all know that relationships don’t manage themselves. It takes commitment, attention, and intention to make sure they flourish. Here are just a few of the tasks that fall to a research operations or panel manager: • Recruiting new participants to the panel • Keeping existing panelists engaged with relevant communications • Priming panel members for upcoming studies • Fielding panelist questions before, during, and after studies • Keeping the panel up to date as members are added, leave, or change roles 3. Choose the right users for your research panel  Your research panel should be an accurate reflection of your larger user base. This means you’ll want to recruit for diversity, and not just in terms of demographics.  When building your panel, be aware of all the attributes that can affect how someone might experience your product and respond to questions, including: • Which plan are they on? • Are they a power user or a less frequent user? • Do they have specialized knowledge about your product? • Are they already predisposed to have a better-than-average opinion of your product or organization? 4. Develop your participant incentive plan While cash or gift cards are frequently offered as incentives for user research participants, financial compensation for research panelists is less common and can be less effective than other methods. A User Research Incentive Calculator (https://lnkd.in/gM4tfsak) can help you determine the right incentive amount for your particular study. Source: Building and Managing a Research Panel for Faster, Easier Research https://lnkd.in/gkrrprTy #ux #research #ReOps

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Lack of autonomy. After mentoring dozens of designers this year, the pattern is impossible to ignore. So I recorded a short video on one of the most powerful articles I’ve read. How communicating intent is the key to earning real autonomy. https://lnkd.in/e7zqVCk2 #productdesign #designcareer #clearcommunication #growth

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🔍 Top 3 Trends Shaping UX Research in 2025 From real-time data to unified platforms, the research game is evolving—and fast. Here’s what the most agile teams are already doing differently: 1️⃣ Acting on live feedback 2️⃣ Prioritizing emotional responses over surface-level opinions 3️⃣ Saying goodbye to siloed tools Get started with #Decode Try your Free Trial now: https://lnkd.in/g3mVvQ8M #Entropik #UserResearch #UXResearch #InsightsAI #UnifiedPlatform

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If you’ve ever felt held back by unclear expectations or wondered "what's next?" for your role, you are not alone. In collaboration with Kaleb Loosbrock (AIxUXR), we’re working on a practical UX Research Career Guide to help you move forward.  We’re launching the full guide in January, but we wanted to share a First Look Preview today. Get a first look at the 𝐨𝐧𝐞-𝐩𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰 𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: the 5+1 core UXR competencies + their key sub-skills. What you can do today: ✅ Pick one competency and map your current strengths ✅ Spot skills you want to grow in 2026 ✅ Use the overview as a quick reflection tool for your next 1:1 What you’ll get in January: ➡️ Clear descriptions of what good looks like for 5 career levels ➡️ Examples to help you recognise where you are today ➡️ Signals that show when you’re ready for the next step ➡️ Guiding questions you can use for planning, performance talks, or self-reflection It is a helpful guide for managers as well. Defining clear job descriptions is just one example. 👉 𝐆𝐞𝐭 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐠𝐮𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐉𝐚𝐧𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐲: https://lnkd.in/eEe9vq4z 👉 PDF version of the Preview edition: https://lnkd.in/eP6t4QNP ​#UXResearch #CareerGrowth #UXR #Leadership #AI

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There is a significant change already here in the regulatory landscape, around the world, that is already making a huge difference. It breaks an incumbant lazy logic that took hold in all things digital (including AI driven experiences): if we disclose the risks, we've discharged our duty. Everything from long Ts&Cs with obfuscated language, telling users the AI might hallucinate, warning them their data will be processed, to making them tick a box. The logic is that the responsibility transfers and your job is done, arses covered. The regulatory and legal precedent is moving decisively in the opposite direction which is of course great for customers (in other words everyone) and whilst painful in the short term for the CFOs who need to account for the fines, will also - I belive - result in more sustainable growth for business. The EU AI Act now centres on reasonably foreseeable use rather than intended use. The FTC's action against Amazon's Prime cancellation patterns established that deceptive design is culpable even when the terms of service disclose the truth. The UK's Consumer Duty places an active obligation on firms to prevent foreseeable harm, not merely to warn about it. The principle running through all of this is consistent: if you know how people will behave, you're responsible for designing accordingly. This matters because AI systems reliably trigger predictable cognitive biases. People over-trust conversational agents, they anthropomorphise, and they disclose more than they intend to, despite being told they're speaking to a machine. These aren't edge cases or failures of user attention—they're systematic, well-documented effects. So the question for leaders isn't whether your legal team has drafted comprehensive disclaimers. It's whether your design choices actually anticipate and mitigate the foreseeable ways people will misunderstand, over-rely, or be harmed by the systems you're deploying. Foreseeability creates responsibility, and asymmetry of knowledge creates a duty of care. Choice architecture—the way interactions are structured, the friction you add or remove, the persona you present—is itself now regulatable conduct. "We warned them" is no longer a defence. The question that matters is "what did you actually design for?" #design #deceptivepatterns #consumerduty #regulation #derisking #principles #FTC #FCA #amazonprime https://lnkd.in/eFAHq8vr

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Peter Merholz recently wrote that design leaders are failing the next generation. Figma's State of the Designer 2026 quietly confirms it — the designers doing the deepest strategic thinking are the least recognised and least satisfied. The invisible work stays invisible when leaders don't illuminate it. So here's what I'm doing about it with my team: → North star designs: creating a shared vision of excellence before delivery pulls us in. Something to problem-solve toward, not just execute against. → Talking craft regularly: in all-hands, in team chats, as a live conversation. Not a value on a wall. What does good look like here? What made this better? → Naming excellence publicly: when someone asks the question that reframes everything, I call it out. None of this needs a big budget. It needs intention. If we only celebrate what ships, we're only teaching people to ship. What are you doing to make space for craft? Link to Peter's article: https://lnkd.in/e4jx4iXq #DesignLeadership #Craft #UXDesign #DesignCulture

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Good design, tech, and support make products successful. We love Thomas Sutton’s argument that product design teams need to define what design quality means, take accountability for it, and connect it to user and business value. Otherwise, it’s easy to be misunderstood, undervalued, and ineffective. Check out his article and framework: https://lnkd.in/gSbWdAry Thomas defines six key dimensions of design quality as aspects of the user value a product delivers: 1. Usability, Can people use it easily? 2. Accessibility, Can all people use it, regardless of ability? 3. Usefulness, Does it help them reach their goals? 4. Enjoyment, Do they like using it? 5. Context-fit, Does it work well in their workflow? 6. Net-simplicity, Does it reduce complexity in their lives? However, rather than saying “good design = good business,” he explains a causal chain:  → If the design is good, and the tech and support are good, people will use the product. → If people use it and it works, it will lead to user benefits, business results, and societal impact. Design is one part of a larger system, but it plays a big role in making products both usable and valuable. 💬 We asked Thomas why he wrote the article: “Primarily to address confusion I could see in the discourse about product teams and their goals, which seemed to leave no space for the specific goals and quality criteria of different professions, with everything being poured into one big “product goals” bucket. This leaves no space for any kind of quality criteria- for design or any other profession. So I wanted to explicitly talk about the causal chain from quality in individual disciplines to product success to business success, and show how understanding the top level business goals doesn’t replace design specific goals, but it shapes them to the context.“ This is great thinking. Helio helps you test designs quickly with users using UX metrics like usability, usefulness, and enjoyment. It shows what’s working and what needs fixing before you ship. #uxresearch #productdiscovery #marketresearch #productdesign

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