Program

UX has changed before, and it's changing again. Roles are blending, titles are losing their meaning, and the org chart you're working inside of is more of a guess than a fixed structure. In this keynote, Catt Small makes the case that this moment calls for designers to stop waiting for direction and start defining their own value. She'll share how to treat career ladders as an ongoing conversation rather than a fixed path, and how to communicate that value upward so leadership can actually act on it. You'll leave with a clearer sense of what to do when nobody hands you the new playbook.

We spent years getting better at producing insight—but what happens if insight is no longer the point?

Research has shifted. Not simply because of AI, democratisation, new tools or shrinking teams, but because organizations are awash with evidence. Research studies sit alongside behavioural data, customer conversations, market intelligence, support tickets, experiments, lived experience, signal, feeling and a growing amount of machine-generated synthesis. The scarce and valuable thing isn’t data. Increasingly, it isn’t insight either.

It’s the ability of an organization to turn what it knows into better decisions: its knowledge health.

This talk puts some of the changes happening to research into that bigger picture. It will track how we have evolved from data, to insight, to knowledge, and ask what it means to work in a knowledge ecosystem where research is increasingly a skill practised across an organization rather than an activity contained within one team.

For researchers, that changes the job. For everyone now expected to research as part of their role, it changes the skills and responsibilities that come with it. For agencies and consultants, it changes the partnership. And for leaders, it raises a bigger question: if knowledge is becoming a commercial advantage, how do we build organizations that are actually good at knowing things and acting on it?

Suddenly, everyone is doing research. Designers are doing it. Product managers are doing it. Sales teams are doing it. People who used to consume insights are now creating them. Research is showing up in new roles, new teams, and places we wouldn’t necessarily have called “research” before.

So what happens to research when it no longer belongs to researchers? It means research is bigger than the methods, deliverables, teams and job titles we’ve used to define it.

Brooke will explore what changes when we think about research as a skill that can move around an organisation, rather than work that has to live within a particular discipline.

Drawing on parallels from design, a field that has been grappling with its own increasingly blurry boundaries, we'll ask what we might gain by loosening our attachment to who owns the work and what it produces. And what becomes possible when we define our value less by the work we do ourselves, and more by what we enable others to do.

While everyone's talking about AI taking our jobs, what aren't we talking about?

What about how it might be impacting critical thinking or our ability to hold nuance. The space to sit with a question instead of prompting our way past it. The permission to not have an opinion on everything, immediately, publicly.

For so long, research has helped us hold contradictions, interrogate bias, and be comfortable not knowing yet. But in a world that increasingly rewards speed and certainty—where a new tool or update drops every hour—are those skills quietly under threat, and what does that mean for all of us?

This talk makes space for slightly uncomfortable truths: what it means to accept you can't be an expert in everything. What if you don't want to make AI your entire personality? How to stay authentic when everything sounds the same. How to look after yourself through layoffs and uncertainty. And why caring a little less about some things might be how to care more about what matters. Part coach, part design leader, part person who is deeply interested in humankind—I don't have this figured out. But I do believe these are the conversations we're not making enough space for. So, let's do that. Together.

Much of the debate within the UX community during this period of transition has been focused on redefining our “what,” as in: what are the critical UX skills we need to acquire for the future, or what are the most important ways to increase our value to business leaders again. This can be seen as a reflection of the deep desire amongst our community to “get back to where we were” in the increasingly AI dominated tech sector. But, as many are finding, you can't really go back.

This talk will focus on the “where” and “how” instead of the “what,” as in: where else can we apply our skills for the greatest impact and how will this offer new pathways to grow. It will draw on Robert’s deeply personal journey to explore the frontiers of UX, user research and strategic design in social systems in a diverse, global context. Drawing from his 15+ years in social impact and systems design, Robert will tease out dimensions of design practice that have been hiding in plain sight, and might open up the dialogue about where we go next as individuals, and as a community.

With three diverse perspectives laid out on the modern research and knowledge management landscape by our Thursday morning speakers, we will collectively take a step back and get practical. Join information architect Dan Brown as he leads us through what he sees as the ties that bind the stories speakers shared around this theme, as well as what the tangible take-aways are when you get back to work on Monday.

As AI reshapes how organizations design, decide, and deliver, human-centered outcomes can no longer be the responsibility of a single team or discipline. In increasingly complex organizations, awareness is becoming the currency of organizational health and the shared understanding of how people, systems, AI, policies, data, and decisions influence one another. The shift from operations to orchestration is about building and sustaining that collective awareness: coordinating people, knowledge, technology, and judgment so organizations can remain adaptable, accountable, and human-centered amid continual change.

Organizations have spent decades getting better at understanding customers. Today, the next challenge is helping organizations understand themselves. Sean McKay introduces Architecting Organizational Understanding—a practical framework for connecting customer insights, business strategy, operational context, and AI into shared organizational awareness. Drawing on his Whole Product Thinking framework, Sean explores why collective understanding is becoming a strategic capability, how AI amplifies both strong and weak organizational thinking, and why human-centered practitioners are uniquely positioned to architect the systems that improve alignment, decision-making, and organizational resilience.

As organizations accelerate product delivery with AI, research can no longer remain a siloed practice responsible for carrying the human perspective alone. Jamika Burge explores how research evolves into a shared organizational capability by distributing accountability across Product, Design, Data, and Engineering. Through practical governance models and enterprise research strategies, she demonstrates how organizations can balance speed with rigor, scale human-centered decision making, and ensure that AI-enabled innovation remains grounded in evidence, ethics, and real human needs.

AI has dramatically increased our ability to generate ideas, content, and decisions—but speed alone doesn’t create better outcomes. Alison Rand argues that the next frontier for operations is not oversight after the fact, but embedding judgment into organizational operating models from the beginning. Drawing on foresight, systems thinking, and living systems, she explores how organizations can establish decision rights, governance, and intentional operating practices that keep human wisdom at the center of increasingly automated work.

Join Sophia Prater, creator of the Object-Oriented UX (OOUX) framework, as she brings together the key themes from the Operations as Orchestration speakers. Through live sensemaking, Sophia will connect the ideas of organizational understanding, shared governance, and embedded judgment into a cohesive perspective on the future of human-centered operations. Attendees will leave with a clearer picture of how these ideas fit together—and what they can begin applying immediately within their own organizations.

Cap off day one at our Opening Night Reception in the CityTech Lobby, Sponsored by Bloomberg L.P. After a full day of sessions, join the entire Shift UX 2026 community—attendees, speakers, and sponsors alike—for drinks, food, and the kind of hallway conversation that's as valuable as anything on the agenda. Open to everyone at the conference, no extra ticket required; just show up and dive in.

Looking for an escape from the digital world? Time to get tactile! Join host Dan Brown and your fellow Shift UX attendees for some friendly tabletop gaming. Whether you prefer deep strategy or casual fun, we have a wide selection of games for you to choose from including Wingspan, Azul, Flip 7, Splendor, Spaceteam, and many more!. Come meet colleagues, enjoy a refreshment, and play a great game or two. No experience necessary!

Aboard: 215 Park Avenue S, Suite 2001 (20th floor)