by Reframing Qualitative Research: Insights from UX Leaders at Banc Sabadell
As we head into UX360 in Berlin, we caught up with two of our featured speakers to gain fresh industry insights.
Horaci Polanco and Katherine S. Vegas G lead the UX and Research efforts at Banc Sabadell Corporate Bank, driving human-centered innovation in the financial sector. With over 20 years of experience, Horaci brings deep expertise from design consultancy and banking, focusing on scaling design mindsets and integrating research into organizational strategy. Katherine, a senior design researcher, specializes in futures thinking and service design, guiding her team to embed user insights into every stage of the product lifecycle. Together, they champion a culture where design and research shape business decisions and user experience at scale.
UX360: What motivates you to join the UX360 conference and what is the core message of your talk?
Horaci: This conference is the perfect excuse for us to open the window and expose to others our practice inside the organization we work with. It’s also an opportunity for us to learn from our colleagues from other industries and countries.
Katherine: By attending this event, we hope to gather insights from researchers in many different fields, to see how the research teams face different challenges and how they take the next step forward.
Katherine: The core message of our talk is how we can mix different research methods to improve the basic tools we use in our day-to-day practice, and how that can help us understand better the archetypes of behavior in our users, and how those tools can help us convey the message of user needs to people outside the field.
Horaci: We will provide a straightforward message: there are no engraved-on-the-stone ways of working, nor are there two equal organizations or work cultures. As designers and researchers, we must embrace a creative approach to solving problems and making a meaningful impact in our ecosystem.
UX360: How has this impacted your own work and your organisation?
Katherine: In our organization, it has been a journey to spread the qualitative research methodology, studies with small samples, continuous learning, etc. User personas have helped in this journey to demystify assumed stereotypes about our users and truly understand the complexity and variety of users through simple archetypes based on qualitative data and supported by quantitative data. In a financial organization, this has facilitated easy comprehension and dissemination among stakeholders from other fields.
Horaci: We are experiencing varying levels of impact, initially within our design teams and product management. Informing strategic decisions with user insights should be the starting point; however, our ultimate goal is to participate in these decisions.
UX360: How has UX as a practice evolved in the last couple of years, and how would you like to see it evolve in the next few?
Horaci: I worked in Spain, Switzerland, the Middle East, and I’ve seen many times that the state of the art can be quite different depending on where you are and who you are working with. Evolution has different meanings in different places. Geographic areas, work cultures, and industries shape what it means reality for you.
Katherine: I believe our profession has been gaining ground across various fields. There is an increasing need to listen to and understand the user, and we are increasingly present at the discussion tables. Personally, I would like research and researchers to be more heard and have a bigger agency in our organizations, moving from product validation to having a more strategic vision and contributing to decision-making. I also hope we delve more into foresight and futures, listening to users not only in the present but identifying micro-signals and trends that will eventually affect our products, thus contributing even more to our organizations’ strategies.
UX360: Given this evolution, what are two expected and two less obvious skills UXers should possess, and why?
Horaci: Despite the atherogenic reality I mentioned previously, there is a common situation we often encounter: companies, regardless of their industry or size, are structured into teams, tribes, and so on. To break the natural tendency towards silos, understand complexity, and connect the dots, we need to develop soft skills. Empathy remains our greatest strength, as it enables us to identify both obvious and hidden problems.
Katherine: Obviously, strategic foresight is a great tool we can include in our field, adapted to our way of working. Additionally, I believe it is important to learn about futures design. As my team leader says, researchers are also designers and having a long-term vision and knowing how to identify small clusters of behaviors that can turn into emerging signals and develop into trends impacting on a large scale is key to the development of our profession and what we can contribute to our product teams.
UX360: Apart from work, what can delegates at the event talk to you about? Do you have any particular personal interests, hobbies or extracurricular activities and engagements?
Horaci: I live on the coast near Barcelona. Most of the time, the Mediterranean is a calm sea where you can swim and sail. Apart from that, I enjoy cooking and gardening.
Katherine: Given my futures designer training, I love world-building and scenarios, so reading fantasy and sci-fi is one of my biggest hobbies. Also, spending so much time in the digital world, I enjoy physical experiences like cooking at home, hiking, and eating at innovative restaurants.
UX360: Last but not least, favourite recommendations to make to industry colleagues for inspiration, innovation, guidance and leadership:
Katherine:
- Must read – Book/Blog: “How to Future”- Scott Smith- Madeleine Ashby
- In your ears – Podcast: “All about love”- Bell Hooks
Horaci:
- In your ears – Podcast:
“Great Intentions”. Jonas Lund and Roel Wouters.
“Diseño y todo lo demás”. Anxo López y Patricia Izquierdo.
“Lenny’s Podcast”. Lenny Rachitsky.
“Lingthusiasm”. Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne.
“El Comidista”. Mikel López Iturriaga.
- Must read – Book/Blog:
“Continous Disvovery”. Teresa Torres
“Thinking In Systems: A Primer”. Donatella Meadows
“Los detectives salvajes”. Roberto Bolaño
UX360: Thank you so much, Horaci and Katherine! We look forward to hearing more from you at UX360 Europe 2025!
It’s your last chance to register for the UX360 Research Summit 2025 and meet UX research leaders in person!
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This year, the summit features 30+ industry leaders from global powerhouses such as Google, Roche, IKEA, Meta, Nestle, and many more.
Network with world-class UX professionals from around the globe. Whether you’re a researcher or designer, this event is a must-attend for anyone looking to stay ahead in the field. Last chance to register!
