User Research London is back! The event returns for the third time on Thursday 27th and Friday 28th June, with two days of workshops and talks. People for Research will deliver a half-day workshop focussed on user recruitment inspired by the idea of ‘elevating the users’.

Ahead of the event, we had a chat with founder David McCrae to find out more about User Research London 2019.

🎙️ Why did you decide to change the structure of the event and have the workshops before the talks?

We introduced the workshops last year and I’m excited to to bring them back this year. In 2018, all our workshops followed talks from the previous day (or previous year in Dan & Jo’s case). This year the workshops are more of a standalone experience, which means there are no interdependencies between the two days. With this, we’re able to offer more opportunities for the community with a greater diversity of facilitators and also an ability to partner with other organisations and offer even more for people to attend.

As an example, since last year we’ve been working closely with the Reach Network to work on how we can increase the range of events open to the design and research communities. It’s really exciting to have now paired up with GOOD19 to offer two days of complimentary conferences and combination tickets for attendees.

A final reason to move the talks after the workshops is: it’s always great to finish the conference in front of the entire audience with an amazing closing talk and celebrate together on all the new connections and insights shared.

🎙️ As usual, there is an exciting mix of speakers at User Research London 2019. How important is diversity for the industry?

Each year I’m more in wonder of all of the incredible people I talk to from all corners of the world about being involved in User Research London. Unfortunately, I can’t get everybody I speak to onto the stage each year, but I’m excited that we can get so many different stories and different experiences.

Research is all about understanding and it’s great to have a great mixture of speakers from different places, organisations and industries to give a wider picture of our industry. Our audience comes from across the globe too, which adds to the diversity of experiences in the room. It’s important that we can tell a range of stories through the event and I’m looking forward to our line-up sharing those stories in June.

🎙️ There are some different topics on the line-up, like ‘Research operations’ and ‘Psychological safety for researchers’. Can you talk a bit about this?

With User Research London I’ve always attempted to build a programme that covers the whole story of research and not just talk about methods or deliverables. The conference is about growing our practice and there are some especially important lessons to take from these talks.

You can read more about Tristan’s work in his blog post on the Home Office Digital blog.

🎙️ On of the talks will focus on ‘Collaboration between in-house and agency’. Do you see the industry evolving in this direction?

Whilst our programmes over the years have always had speakers from in-house, agency and service partners we’ve never had a talk that addresses how it all fits together in practice. This talk is another great addition to share more experience and practice and talk about all of the aspects that impact us as practitioners.

During my career I’ve seen the demand for research increase exponentially and beyond the resources of a lot of teams, so I think it is natural that we’ll need agencies and partners that are able to offer further resources and open up more opportunities. It’s likely something researchers will need to understand more going forward so I’m excited for Daphne and Emily to share more on the day.

🎙️ Can you talk a bit about the partnership with GOOD19 conference?

The Reach Network have been close friends of User Research London and have been a great help introducing our event to new audiences and speakers. Bas, Geke and myself spent some time together after last year’s event talking about how we could expand that relationship for 2019. GOOD is being brought back onto the programme for this year and I’m really excited that we’ve been able to organise our events to fit together.

I’m really excited to partner User Research London with more events. Our event has been given support and advice from a number of other events and it’s exciting to keep growing more opportunities for researchers to gather and share.

I’m also excited to announce that friends of ours in the US have begun the organisation of User Research Atlanta, creating more global platforms for researchers to get together with other researchers. The event will be in September and you can read more on their website.

If you would like to find out more about our in-house participant recruitment service for user testing or market research get in touch on 0117 921 0008 or info@peopleforresearch.co.uk.

At People for Research, we recruit participants for UX and usability testing and market research. We work with award winning UX agencies across the UK and partner up with a number of end clients who are leading the way with in-house user experience and insight.