Member-only story
The four themes that defined UX Research in 2022
If you review the UX content and discourse from any year, you will find some consistent topics. Education about the value of good user experience, current best practices, methodological how-to guides, and reviews of software and tools are typical any year. Beyond this, every year has its defining movements and topics.
There were four themes that defined UX research discourse in 2022.
- Increased demand & scaling
- Emerging technologies
- Increased focus on historically underrepresented groups
- Changing trajectory

Before diving in, I’ll give a brief overview of what went into determining these themes. Over the past month I…
- Read every article or white paper I could find that made predictions, reported trends or commented on the state of the UX Research industry
- Sampled the topics of the articles shared in popular UX newsletters
- Developed a set of the most common topics and compared them to the topics from previous years to get a sense of what is quintessentially 2022 vs. an every year thing
From this process, I found four standout themes that were top of mind for the UX research field last year.