UX Research, AI, and Strategy: What I’ve Been Working On

Fuel Your Curiosity Newsletters
Written By michele ronsen

I've missed you. Here's where I've been.

I've missed this.

The last 18 months have been some of the most interesting, challenging, and at times exhausting of my career. A genuine hairball, and I suspect at least some of it will sound familiar.

  • Frontier AI research at Cohere.ai. A year-plus of global trust and safety work, evaluation frameworks, and in-language research across the US, East Asia, and the Middle East that directly shaped how enterprise LLMs handle safety and localization.

  • Two back-to-back Right-to-Win studies. Competitive intelligence and strategic positioning research for fintech and field service/vertical SaaS clients navigating high-stakes market decisions. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

  • A Right-to-Win presentation. Delivered privately to a global design and research agency. If you're interested in bringing this to your team or joining a public event on this topic, please let me know.

  • A landmark usability study for a university. 76 unmoderated sessions across 12 prototypes and 6 segments, preceded by a 516-respondent survey. The kind of study that reminded me exactly why trained researchers are irreplaceable, and that tools don't do research. Researchers do. Here's the skinny: Part 1,Part 2.

  • A 74-page UXR Enablement Playbook. Built for a fintech client's customers to research independently, repeatably, and well. Tools, templates, the whole nine yards, with built-in feedback loops that help my client stay ahead of the curve.

  • Published articles. Five commissioned pieces for industry publications. More coming.

  • Ghostwriting a keynote for a qualitative research platform's CEO. I did the research, wrote every word, and someone else gets to deliver it on stage in the US and Europe. I'm totally fine with it. It's really funny and timely ;)

  • ​1:1 coaching. Accompanying Ask Like A Pro On Demand students and many others through real research challenges, from starting new practices, building better tool stacks, to supporting projects and improving processes.

  • ​Ask Like a Pro. Now fully on-demand so that you can learn at your own pace, on your own schedule.

  • A new individual and team workshop. Coming soon. More details shortly!

  • New territory. I'm increasingly interested in bringing research into private equity, helping firms make smarter portfolio decisions. More on this soon.

  • ​Still consulting. Taking on new projects across AI research, competitive intelligence, and research enablement.

​With all of the above, I burned out.

Not dramatically, just the slow, cumulative kind that sneaks up when you're doing work you love at a pace that isn't sustainable.

March gave me a much-needed breather. Time to think, reflect, plant cherry tomatoes from sliced tomatoes, propagate herbs from live clippings, start a small vegetable farm, and figure out what's next.

What's next is this: I'm recommitting to showing up here, regularly, with you. Sharing what I'm learning, what I'm building, what's worth your attention in research, innovation, and entrepreneurship. I've missed this outlet. I've missed hearing what's on your mind.

One more thing. I'm planning new events and would love your input. What topics are you hungry for right now? Who would you like to hear from? Hit reply and tell me.​

Speak up, get involved, and share the love!

And that’s a wrap!

We try to alternate between a theme and Insights/UX/UXR jobs, events, classes, articles, and other happenings every so often. Thank you for all of the feedback. Feedback is a gift, and we continue to receive very actionable input on how to make Fuel Your Curiosity more meaningful to you.

What do you think? We're constantly iterating and would love to hear your input.​


michele ronsen
Previous

How I Found My Way Into UX Research
Next

Learn the lingo: UXR/User Experience Research