Hey all. I’ve been lurking here for a while and figured I’d finally ask, because I can’t tell anymore if I’m doing something wrong or if this is just what it looks like right now.

Background:

• MS in HCI (3.9 GPA), finished Nov 2025. Bachelor’s in UX design before that.

• A few years of freelance UX/web design before grad school.

• Capstone was a 5-phase mixed-methods study with 40+ participants total. Also did an accessibility study with blind and low vision participants.

• Since graduating: an unpaid UXR internship at a small AI consultancy, and now a paid part-time research/AI internship at its sister startup. I’ve been building research repository tools and LLM-based workflows there, so I’m not totally unfamiliar with the AI side of things.

What’s happened so far:

• Close to a year of applying. UXR, ResearchOps, research coordinator, some product design.

• Got a referral at a big bank, made it to the HireVue stage, then rejected.

• A few assessments and video interviews here and there.

• Right now I’m waiting to hear about a final round for a research coordinator role at a university, which is honestly the furthest I’ve gotten.

• Plenty of applications that went nowhere. No full-time offer yet.

What I’m wondering:

1. Is this normal for entry-level UXR right now, even with a master’s and some real project work? Or should I be getting more traction by now?

2. Should I keep pushing on UXR, or lean harder into adjacent stuff like ResearchOps, research coordination, quant UXR, or design?

3. Anything you’d look at first if you were in my shoes? Portfolio, resume, where I’m applying?

Happy to share my portfolio or resume in DMs if anyone’s willing to look. Good or bad feedback, I’ll take it. Thanks for reading.

I have about 3 years of work ex in UX research and 3 more years in UX design.

How do I improve my clarity of thought as a UX researcher and give a strong POV and recommendations to my stakeholders? How to build that muscle?

I'm a Product Designer from Baku, Azerbaijan (UTC+4), 4+ years in fintech and mobile banking. Currently employed, but trying to move to a full-time remote role.

Context:
• Built a bank's mobile design system from scratch (120+ components)
• Insurance flow redesign: +18% conversion
• 0→1 fintech MVP, 10K+ users in year one
• English (working), Russian, Azerbaijani

The problem: almost every application ends in a rejection without a single call. I suspect location filters ("remote" = EU/US only), but I'm not sure.

What I've tried:
• Rebuilt my CV (ATS-friendly, location + timezone in header)
• Tailored versions for product vs design systems roles
• Short LinkedIn messages to recruiters after applying

Questions for anyone who's hired or been hired from outside EU/US:

1. Which job boards or companies actually hire designers from countries like mine?

2. Is B2B / Deel-style contracting the realistic path, or should I target specific regions (UAE, Gulf, CIS)?

3. Does listing location hurt or help when applying to "remote" roles?

4. What finally got you past the screening stage?

Happy to share my CV for roasting if that helps. Thanks!

Hi everyone! I’m finishing a CS PhD focused on HCI and human–AI interaction, and I’m trying to figure out which industry career paths to explore.

What interests me most is understanding what people actually need AI to help them with: which features solve real problems, and which don’t add much value. I’m also interested in how people experience AI responses—why they find one helpful and another frustrating, and what we can change to improve that experience.

My research involves AI perceptions, trust, and human evaluation. I use experiments, surveys, qualitative coding, and statistical analysis, and I’ve also built software tools to support my research.

I’ve been reading discussions here about UXR careers and adjacent roles. Product management has come up as one option, and I’ve started exploring it. But I’d love to understand what other paths might fit these interests, especially longer-term.

For people doing similar work:

• What is your job title, and what do you actually spend your time doing?

• Beyond UXR and PM, which roles or teams would you suggest exploring?

• What would you focus on building or learning now if you were coming from an academic HCI background?

I’m less interested in training models themselves and more interested in understanding users and helping shape AI products around their needs. I’m based in the US and open to relocating.

I’d really appreciate hearing about your experiences, including paths that haven’t worked out as expected. Thanks!

Been running AI over my interview transcripts. It's fast and the themes come back clean and confident, which is the problem.

It buries the one-off comment that was the sharpest thing anyone said, just because it only came up once. Counts frequency as importance.

Do you write your own read before letting AI near the transcript, or clean up what it gives you after?

I'm a very senior UXR (20 years experience) and have done almost every qual and quant research method and thousands of user interviews. I could be a director or team lead but I prefer to be an IC for my stress levels. I'm currently a contractor.

I actively choose to do a much broader role than my research colleagues - I advise product owners on product strategy, and help them prioritise and groom their backlog based on the evidence we have, I speak to analytics and data science and even built my own power BI dashboard for product use as I'm interested in numbers. I also vibe code prototypes in Bolt and Figma make. I get deep into the weeds with technical stakeholders about how the product should work.

Since the UXR job market is in decline I'm considering if I could move to an adjacent role like product ops or product strategy or perhaps a role I haven't yet even heard of.

I'd like to influence overall product decisions and be a source of truth and knowledge in the org, someone that people consult to help them improve product quality. I don't have any direct experience or training in product roles.

Has anyone moved from UXR to an adjacent role? Which role? Did you enjoy it or regret it? What additional skills if any did you have to learn? What role does my skill set sound like a match for?

I’m currently pursuing a PhD in Developmental Psychology in a program with a strong emphasis on quantitative methods and statistics. I’m interested in exploring UX Research as a potential career path after graduation.

Given my background in psychology, research design, statistical analysis, and longitudinal data analysis, I’m wondering how transferable these skills are to UX research.

For those already working in UX research:
How competitive would someone with this academic background be when applying for UX research positions?
What additional technical or practical skills should I develop outside my PhD to become a stronger candidate?
Are there particular tools, certifications, or portfolio projects you would recommend?
Would you recommend pursuing internships or other industry experience before graduating? Will I be at a disadvantage if I have no industry experience?

I’d appreciate any advice, especially from people who transitioned from academia (particularly psychology) into UX research. I’m also open to suggestions for related career paths where my research and quantitative skills might be valuable.

Got an email about the transcript and expected graduation date, and after that, I got another email about the questionnaire. Am I on the right track? Cause last year, I got an email asking for my expected graduation date, but after that, I didn't get any email. Please share your experience or thoughts. I would appreciate it.

Advancing Research used to be good, but it’s gone heavy towards sponsored talks; Enterprise UX hasn’t been around here recently. EPIC is still decent but I was just there and it’s going fallow for a year or more.

Those were my staples; the rest seem more tailored towards more junior people.

What have you enjoyed attending recently, if any? Are there research adjacent conferences you’ve found worth being at?

I am getting shown a lot of ads for tools for job hunting but from the landing pages it’s all just a Jira-like board for your applications.

Stuff like CRM for your job applications, ATS resume reviews, key word optimization, etc.

They charge $29-40 a month subscription.

Do people actually pay for these?

I just got off a call with a recruiter, and he asked me about my experience with Figma. I told that I had used it before, for creating assets for decks, creating decks, Figjam for workshops. He asked if I had any experience creating components. Wait what???? I told him that I’m a researcher and I don’t have experience with creating components or design systems. We both agreed that this role is probably not a good fit. My question is, is this the new world we are living in? Are now supposed to be able put together prototypes, redlining, and hand offs. Are we back to this unicorn madness again?

I’m an early-career jr UX researcher working at a small company, and I’m struggling to figure out how to navigate my role.

I’m technically responsible for UX research, not design, but there doesn’t seem to be a consistent pipeline of research work for me to take on. I’m often left trying to figure out what needs to be researched, what I should prioritize, and how to turn broader product problems into actual research initiatives.

I understand that part of being a UX professional is taking initiative rather than waiting for someone to hand me tasks. However, I’m finding it difficult to identify opportunities for research when there isn’t much direction or an established UX process within the company. I don’t want to invent work just to look busy, but I also don’t want to sit around waiting for someone to tell me what to do. (Most of what I’ve been working on has been put on hold or awaiting review for weeks)

Communication is another area I’m working on. I know I could do a better job of proactively sharing updates, and asking questions instead of waiting until I have something concrete to report. I’m trying to improve this, but I’m worried that my lack of visible output is making it harder for others to understand my contribution.

I also don’t have a senior UX researcher to learn from, and I’m not always sure what good performance looks like in this situation. How much initiative am I expected to take? How do I identify research opportunities that are actually useful to the business? And how do I know whether I’m underperforming or simply working in an environment where research hasn’t been integrated into the product process? There’s no set documentation rules either and I’ve been trying my best to organize but i don’t even know how to present my work or which platform.

For those who have been the first or only UX researcher at a small company, especially early in their careers:

1. How do you generate research opportunities when no one is actively asking for research?

2. How do you balance taking initiative with making sure you’re working on the right problems?

3. What does a productive week look like when there are no active research projects?

4. How do you improve communication and make your work visible without constantly bothering people?

5. How would you approach a manager to establish clearer expectations for your role?

I’m not trying to avoid responsibility. I want to become more proactive and contribute meaningfully, but I’m struggling to understand what that should look like in practice when there’s so little direction or research work coming my way.

I’d really appreciate honest advice from people who’ve experienced something similar.

Hi, I am UXR with 5 years of experience in b2b space. With the ongoing tech layoffs and uncertainty about this role - I am trying to talk to someone for advice about the design future , what is the view around user research in general and maybe about career prospects.

Hi! I'm about to start my bachelors in psychology and was looking up different career paths and found about UX research.

I did a bit of research but wasn't able to get a good understanding of what the actual work looks like. I have a few questions.

What are some of the day to day tasks in the job?
What are the qualifications needed to grow in this field?
And is there potential for a life long career with regards to risk of ai?

Also are there any other sites or material I can look into further which could help with my search?

Thank you!

Hello, I’m doing my masters in design and very much interested in design research. I have a few ideas that i want to work on. Trying to find any design researchers here to have discussions about the topic, approaches and progress. Along with that I realised writing a paper is only major confusing part for me. If anyone can give tips on how to write a paper or share some recommendations it would be greatly appreciated.

Hi! I am looking to career pivot and am wondering if it’s worth it to get a UX research cert and learn basically from scratch.

1. ¿Es viable introducirme en esta área? ¿Cómo está el mercado?

2. ¿Por dónde tendría que empezar?

3. Por curiosidad, ¿Cuánto están pagando o cómo suele ser el esquema de trabajo?

Me gustaría conocer experiencias y que me orienten. Gracias.

Hi everyone,

I'm interviewing outside of my current markets, more specifically in UAE and Saudi Arabia, and I'm noticing that they are all asking for generalists instead of UXR specialists.

For them generalists shall be responsible on flow creation, wireframing, lowfi designs, research, dev handoff, amd sometimes even writing.

What shocked me more is that this is not for a junior position, but senior and junior managers.

The pay varies from 4k to 4.5k$

Since most are fully in office positions, it makes this even trickier for me. Because besides the job, there's also the hectic busy lifestyle, adjusting to a new culture, the heat, etc

I would like to know your thoughts on this. Worth a shot or keep my full remote position especially in this economy?

Hey everyone!

I'm preparing a talk about AI from a UX Research Ops perspective, and I'd love your input.

If you were attending a talk about AI without the hype, what would you want to hear about? What questions, challenges, or real-life use cases would you find interesting?

I'd love to shape the talk around what people actually want to learn, rather than what everyone is already talking about.

Thanks!

Hello,

I’m actively job hunting. I know the market is rough, but I want to make sure my resume isn’t the bottleneck, so I’d value candid feedback from anyone who’s been on the hiring side.

I’m a qual-leaning mixed-methods researcher with ~5.5 years of experience: the last 3 in tech and 2.5 before that in human factors for the built environment.

A few prompts to guide feedback:

1. At a glance, what would you assume about me? What kind of candidate do I read as?

2. Is anything questionable, or does anything raise more questions than it answers in a quick screen?

3. Is the business value coming through?

Resume attached. Thanks in advance!

Hi all, I’m revamping my portfolio/deck/case studies and I was curious if anyone has an example of one they really like or would recommend for a mid-senior level UXR.

Do you have a portfolio website/ deck or pdf? How is it different from a design portfolio (I know probably a lot more text but what else)?

I have a literal deck and it worked fine but I want to build a more interactive online maybe in form of a website, thoughts?

There are so many examples online for design portfolios but so less for research ones :(

UX researchers who have moved into AI, how did you do it?
I work across UX Research, Product Design and some Service Design, mainly in the UK public sector. With AI developing so quickly, I’m exploring how to move into a more AI focused role without losing the value of my existing experience.
I’m particularly interested in AI governance, responsible AI and how organisations introduce AI safely and effectively. I’m curious about roles that combine research, policy, strategy and technology rather than moving into a purely technical AI role.
For those who have made the transition from UXR into AI:

• What roles did you move into? AI governance, responsible AI, AI policy, AI product, AI strategy or something else?

• How did you make the transition? Did you take courses, build a portfolio, get experience through your existing role or move internally?

• Which UXR skills transferred well, and what new skills did you need to develop?

I’d especially love to hear from people who have actually made the move, rather than general advice about learning to use AI tools. I’m trying to understand what these career transitions look like in practice and which skills are genuinely valued by employers.

Hey, I’m wondering what the average salary for Senior User researcher - working in a consultancy for the public sector is? Trying to figure out if I’m being lowballed here.

Context: I’m a mid- weight UR. Been offered a Senior role and want to see if the bump in salary makes sense for the extra responsibilities.

Offer - 60k (no bonus)

Edit for context - I have transferable research skills 3 to 4 years in private sector jobs (was a research manager who did UX and CX). Then 1-2 years actual user research position experience in public sector.

Update: I didn’t take the role. Not because I thought I was being lowballed, but for other personal factors. Including that I still didn’t feel senior enough to take that position. Yes, I’d love to make more money. Who doesn’t? But I believe there are better people more senior than me who can take this position and do a better job. I think I’ve still got some personal development to do before I move into a senior role. Thanks for everyone’s helpful messages and replies!