Let's Meet Up Virtually: UX Research Meetup & Event Guide March 2026

"​​Join Book Group host Lija Hogan and our guest Jake Burghardt, author of "Stop Wasting Research: Maximize the Product impact of Your Organization's Customer Insights."

Lija and Jake will discuss the book and take a deeper dive into how to use AI in research knowledge management."

"Two sessions that help bridge the gap between Product, UX, Design and Dev to build better products, faster together:

• The Neuroscience of Attention in AI-Driven UX: Julianna Goodman explores how the brain filters information in a world of endless content, and how neuroscience and emotion can be used to design clearer, more intuitive, and more trustworthy digital experiences with AI playing a supportive, human-centered role.

• The New User Is an Agent: Rethinking Product Design for Human + AI Collaboration: This talk explores the implications of designing products that support both humans and AI agents as active users."

"In this session, Sam Padmore explores what it means to design trustworthy agentic experiences, focusing on the moments where support quietly becomes delegation.

Rather than leaning into hype or doomsday narratives, the talk offers a practical, design-led lens for understanding how autonomy, transparency, and control show up in real products and how small UX decisions can either preserve or erode user agency over time."

"This one-hour webinar (45 min + 15 Q&A), led by industry market research leaders, was made for savvy marketing executives and UX researchers who need to do UX research that gets qualitative data from large sample sizes.

Yes, there are some amazing AI tools out there. But as you will see from this webinar with real examples of research that have been done on app design, web page design, and video design, these are techniques that even today’s best AI won’t come up with."

"The tools you choose influence more than how insights are generated and interpreted. They also influence how decisions get made, how teams collaborate, and ultimately how your research culture evolves over time.

In this webinar, Dr. Llewyn Paine will share a practical framework for evaluating AI-powered research tools.

She’ll explain:

• Where the real risks lie

• The safeguards to look out for in tools

• How these tools actually work in areas like qualitative analysis and reporting"

"In this session, you'll learn how to apply UX and Product Strategy to your UX portfolio so you can stand out and get more interviews.

Most portfolios don't give UX recruiters and hiring managers what they want. By applying principles from UX research, product strategy, content strategy, content design, and visual design, you can create a portfolio that stands out."

"An informal workshop that addresses some of the challenging issues around how qualitative research should be (or can be) evaluated

This informal and discursive event will draw directly from Karen O’Reilly’s book, Qualitative Research Methods for Everyone, Chapter 2. It argues that qualitative research should be evaluated on its own terms not using criteria imported from other approaches."

"A workshop on how being ethical is an ongoing practice that shapes and informs qualitative research in an enduring process

This workshop addresses how being ethical is an ongoing practice that shapes and informs qualitative research in an enduring process from inception, through design and implementation, all the way through the various interactions that constitute research, to conclusions, dissemination and beyond."

"Two sessions that help the gap between Product, UX, Design and Dev to build better products, faster together:

• Building AI for Democratized Research: This talk walks through how to use AI to create tools that empower product teams to own their research while keeping the quality bar high. You'll learn what guardrails actually matter, how to drive adoption when teams think they don't need help, and how to go from idea to working MVP fast.

• How to make UX matter in places where it isn’t expected: In this talk, Vinni shares what she’s learned about building trust, creating small wins, and turning imperfect projects into meaningful influence. "