by On Internal UX and Opportunities for UX Researchers in 2025
An interview with Novo Nordisk’s Leanne Waterton and Michelle Bergenholz Groth, who will present at the upcoming UX360 Research conference in Berlin.
UX360: What motivates you to join the UX360 conference and what is the core message of your talk?
Leanne Waterton: I attended the conference last year as a participant and came away inspired by new thoughts, perspectives, and approaches to my own work as a UX Researcher. I also saw that my field of internal UX, where we work exclusively on digital products developed for internal colleagues, wasn’t something that was spoken about a lot. I started out in B2C spaces as a UX Researcher, then into complex B2B spaces, and now in internal UX, and I can see how each of these areas share similarities and differences. I thought it would be interesting to share at an industry conference with UX peers a window into what internal UX is like and what challenges and opportunities we face in our area.
Michelle Bergenholz Groth: I believe there is so much we can learn from each other as a research community, and that conferences like UX360 is an opportunity to shine a light on perspectives that go beyond your day-to-day focus. I will talk about the topic of Internal UX, as this variation of UX has its own possibilities and challenges than doing UX for consumer or B2B products. Our users are stuck with us, so what does that mean for the way we conduct ourselves as UX professionals and how we drive product development?
UX360: How has this impacted your own work and your organisation?
Leanne Waterton: The unique aspects of internal UX impact my work daily: our users cannot get away from us, and we have a limited pool of users. Our users are also our colleagues, which create some exciting opportunities to align our work as UXers with the work of our target colleagues, all to contribute to the overall goal of our organization.
Michelle Bergenholz Groth: I am very aware in my daily work of the impact I have on my colleagues’ work environment, simply through the way I communicate and conduct UX Research to my product team members. Trust and building rapport is super important. Advocating for understanding our colleagues’ way of navigating their role and the context they operate in is one of my most important tasks in an organization where we need to remember we are building software products to help out our colleagues, but our primary goal is still to serve our patients with safe and trustworthy medicine.
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?
Leanne Waterton: My main reflection around the recent evolution of UX is that it is a time of change for our field, especially for UX Researchers. There is a growing opportunity for us UX Researchers to become partners in product strategy with our product managers or product owners. I think that is exciting; UX Researchers, by our very nature, are well positioned to provide strategic overviews of our product areas and are a natural fit to be in those product strategy discussions. It’s now about how do we establish ourselves as product strategy partners, and shift our roles into not only gathering insights but being an active part of deciding how those insights impact our products’ strategies.
Michelle Bergenholz Groth: In my perspective as a UX Researcher, I sense two waves are happening simultaneous. I on one hand see our role becoming more strategic, and a shift from being insights collectors towards contributing to defining directions by guiding PMs and POs with our knowledge and skills. This is super interesting, and a shift I think can have a big impact on organizational maturity for UX Research.
On the other hand, I unfortunately also see a recurring tendency to define UX as only design and not acknowledging the diverse competencies that make up the UX continuum. This is a shame, as I am finding this discourse to diminish the different UX competencies as singular professions, and organizations to believe that you can and should do everything from research to UI if you are a designer by profession.
UX360: Given this evolution, what are two expected and two less obvious skills UXers should possess, and why?
Leanne Waterton: For me, the two expected skills in becoming more involved in strategy are: being able to see the whole picture of your product as well as being able to plan UX research in the context of broader product development process. That means ensuring you as a UX Researcher have the full context of your product and do not conduct UX Research in isolation, away from the regular development process and disconnected from the rest of the product team & goals. This disconnection and isolation risks producing research that will sit on a shelf and missing out on being a part of the strategic discussions for your product.
The two less obvious skills can be summed up with being pragmatic and being confident. Working with qualitative research means we can have a tendency as UX Researchers to want to stick to our established research frameworks and processes. Believe me, I am a huge advocate for adhering to good research practices and ensuring you get high quality and reliable data. That said, we need to be pragmatic about what it is like conducting research inside a company and in a consumer or business setting. Sometimes that means adjusting your approach or doing what you can in the time you have. The key is to be pragmatic and make sure that if you can’t do the research in exactly the way you want to do it, you are clear about the limitations of your findings and elaborate on what that means for your product. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good!
The confidence piece comes back to the opportunity to be involved in product strategy. Take a seat at the table with your product colleagues. Be confident with your data, your findings, and your insights. Ask questions to others, and offer your reflections and your feedback. We as UX Researchers have so much to add to product strategy conversations, and we have an opportunity to bring that to the table. Let’s do it with confidence and show our product colleagues what we can offer.
Michelle Bergenholz Groth: The two expected skills I would say are being able to do foundational discovery research to understand the contextual networks in which your product is entangled, as well as solid communication of nuances in lived human experiences.
The two less obvious skills I would say are identifying and addressing bias, both in one self and in your product team, as well as being able to engage insights at a strategic level to inform roadmap planning and drive product development decisions.
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?
Leanne Waterton: Come and find me if you want to chat about backcountry hiking, cycle touring or share a similar passion for night trains and slow travel!
Michelle Bergenholz Groth: I am a big book lover, especially fantasy, and I love handicrafts of all kinds, but specifically knitting and crocheting (and no, that is not the same thing 🙂 ).
UX360: Leanne, Michelle – thank you very much. We look forward to hearing the full story at UX360 2025!
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