# Design Research 2026 > A one-day conference dedicated to design research and evidence-led design practice. ## Overview - **Dates**: 2026-08-26 to 2026-08-26 - **Location**: Sydney, Australia - **Speakers**: 10 - **Sessions**: 11 - **Tracks**: ## Session Types - talk: 9 - break: 2 ## Links - Conference website: https://webdirections.org/design-research/ - Registration: https://webdirections.org/register/?eventName=uxaustralia26&eventTitle=Design+Research+2026&selectedTicket=designresearch26inperson - Full LLM context: https://data.webdirections.org/design-research/llms-full.txt - All sessions (JSON): https://data.webdirections.org/design-research/sessions.json - All speakers (JSON): https://data.webdirections.org/design-research/speakers.json - Schedule grid (JSON): https://data.webdirections.org/design-research/schedule.json - Calendar (iCal): https://data.webdirections.org/design-research/calendar.ics - Semantic embeddings: https://data.webdirections.org/design-research/sessions-embeddings.json - MCP server: https://data.webdirections.org/design-research/mcp ## MCP Tools Agents can connect to the MCP server at `https://data.webdirections.org/design-research/mcp` and use: - `get_conference_info` — conference metadata - `list_sessions` — filter by track, date, type, speaker - `get_session` — full session detail - `list_speakers` — filter by track, employer - `get_speaker` — full speaker profile + their sessions - `get_schedule` — day or full conference schedule - `search_sessions` — semantic search over session content - `search_speakers` — semantic search over speaker bios - `whats_happening_now` — time-aware current/next session ## Build your own All data is free and open. Build your own schedule app, agent, or tool — and share it with us. --- ## All Speakers ### Ania Mastalerz **Lead Researcher, Atlassian** Pronouns: She/her Type: Speaker Ania Mastalerz is a Lead Researcher at Atlassian, working at the intersection of technology, design, and human behaviour. She’s spent the past decade partnering with product teams at Atlassian, Xero, and Optimal Workshop to shape experiences used by millions of people around the world. With a background in applied psychology and a passion for qualitative methods, Ania brings a pragmatic approach to uncovering insights that help teams balance rigour with speed. When she’s not diving into complex research questions, you’ll find her tackling DIY renovations, heading to the beach with her dog, or snowboarding down a mountain. Links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aniamastalerz/ | https://www.linkedin.com/in/aniamastalerz/ ### Anna Lee Anda **Senior Manager, UX Research, Zendesk** Type: Speaker Anna Lee Anda is a UX research leader with more than 15 years of experience helping organisations understand customers and make better decisions. As Senior Manager of UX Research at Zendesk, she leads international teams focused on product strategy, customer experience, and business impact. Her interests include research leadership, organisational influence, and the intersection of AI and human insight. Anna is passionate about helping researchers move beyond delivering insights to driving meaningful change across their organisations. Links: http://askwhy.substack.com | https://linkedin.com/in/annaleea ### Bhaven Chauhan **Senior Service Designer, Transport for NSW** Type: Speaker Bhaven Chauhan is a Senior Service Designer at Transport for NSW with over 16 years of international experience across the UK, France and Australia. As an industrial designer, he worked across kitchenware, homeware, furniture, consumer electronics, tools for home improvement and supporting start-ups. In recent years he entered the world of service and customer experience design, giving him the opportunity to influence the entire end-to-end customer journey and apply his passion for inclusivity across public transport fleet, infrastructure and services. ### Chanel Lee Type: Speaker Chanel Lee is a human-centred design practitioner who helps organisations turn complexity into clarity. With a career spanning industrial design, design management, brand strategy and communication, she has worked with some of Australia’s leading brands and more recently at Transport for NSW, where she focused on service design, complex systems and engagement. Chanel craves simplicity with integrity; creating solutions that are thoughtful, practical and inclusive. She is passionate about improving experiences for organisations, employees and customers alike, with a particular focus on advocating for vulnerable communities. ### Dr Asma Qureshi **Research & Insights Principal, A2 Online** Pronouns: She/her Type: Speaker I am a research strategist who partners with businesses, technology organisations, and SaaS teams to turn research into clear strategic direction and measurable impact. I work hands-on across the full research lifecycle, spanning academic, consulting, industry, and policy research, with a strong focus on evidence-based decision-making. My expertise brings together data-driven insights, UX and CX (Voice of Customer) research, strategic research planning, stakeholder engagement, and robust survey and measurement design. Using a mix of primary and secondary research methods, I help organisations move beyond surface-level insights to understand what truly drives customer behaviour, product adoption, and long-term value. As a customer-centred, insights-led researcher, I focus on uncovering human behaviours, habits, motivations, and attitudes to help teams design products, services, and strategies grounded in real-world needs. I’m particularly drawn to emerging technologies and SaaS environments, where strong research can shape how people learn, work, and interact at scale. Beyond UX and customer research, I bring deep experience in strategic research program design, vendor management, and cross-sector collaboration. I work closely with senior stakeholders and interdisciplinary teams to ensure research findings are translated into actionable strategy, product roadmaps, and policy-ready recommendations. I actively contribute to the research and technology community through thought leadership, including writing on Medium and publishing a LinkedIn newsletter focused on research practice and emerging industry trends. I also partner with SaaS companies to evaluate user research platforms and capabilities, providing practical, real-world feedback that informs product innovation. Forward-thinking and outcomes-focused, I bridge academic rigour, industry innovation, and strategic insight to help organisations build better products, make confident decisions, and deliver meaningful customer experiences. Links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/draaq/ | https://www.a2online.au/ ### Dr Chandra Harrison **Managing Director / Researcher, Access Advisors** Pronouns: She/Her Type: Speaker Chandra Harrison, PhD, is a design researcher and accessibility specialist based in Aotearoa New Zealand. As Managing Director of Access Advisors, she leads disability-focused research that uses lived experience and participatory methods. Her work combines academic and applied research to improve understanding and inclusion. She has published research in books and journals and has presenter work at conferences around the world in many different areas from appliance design to human computer interaction. Links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chandraharrison/ | https://accessadvisors.nz/ | https://www.linkedin.com/in/chandraharrison ### Melissa Voderberg **Director of Customer Experience & Innovation, Publicis Sapient** Pronouns: she/her Type: Speaker Melissa Voderberg is a senior design executive with over 20 years leading customer experience and service design transformation programs across education, retail, utilities, health, transportation, hospitality, and government sectors. Links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissavoderberg/ ### Rebecca Klee **CX Researcher & Designer, Meridian Energy / Independent Consultant** Pronouns: She/Her Type: Speaker Rebecca Klee is a design researcher with over 15 years’ experience helping organisations understand customer behaviour and make better decisions. She currently works as a CX Designer across Meridian Energy and Powershop, and also leads research programs through independent consulting engagements. Over her career, Rebecca has worked across energy, fintech, SaaS, e-commerce, tourism, and public sector organisations, helping teams navigate complex customer, commercial, and delivery challenges. Her work sits at the intersection of research, experience design, and strategy, with a particular interest in translating customer insight into practical decisions and meaningful change. Rebecca has spoken at UX and research conferences across New Zealand, Europe, and North America, and is known for sharing honest, practical perspectives on what works in research - and what doesn't. Based in Wellington, she spends her time balancing customer conversations, design thinking, and life with her young daughter. Links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebeccaeklee/ | https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebeccaeklee/ ### Weiyan Chee **ResearchOps Lead, Bupa** Pronouns: she/her Type: Speaker Weiyan Chee is a research operations leader with a background in cognitive neuroscience and UX research. She has spent over 16 years executing and scaling research across academia, tech, and global organisations. Her work focuses on making research rigorous, ethical, and actually usable at scale Links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/weiyanchee/ | https://www.linkedin.com/in/weiyanchee/ ### William Anthony Yanko, PhD **CX/UX Research Leader, Flight Centre Travel Group** Pronouns: He/Him Type: Speaker William Yanko is a CX/UX Research leader and PhD-qualified Anthropologist who has spent over a decade figuring out why people do what they do, and making sure that actually matters to the organisations he works with. His path hasn't been a straight line. Along the way, he's embedded himself in contexts most researchers don't get near, from wearable technology and city-scale tracking systems to emergency safety tools in mining and early-stage fintech at a Southeast Asian super-app. He currently heads the Centre of Excellence for Research at Flight Centre Travel Group - Leisure, working closely with senior leadership to ensure major business, product and technology decisions are grounded in real human behaviour. His PhD from RMIT University, where he researched the sociopolitics of Indonesian hip hop, is what shaped his conviction that good research is ultimately about listening carefully to people who are rarely asked. Links: @drwillyanko | https://www.williamyanko.com | https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-yanko-phd-886b108a/ --- ## All Sessions ### What Can’t AI See? Ethnographic Research in a Post-Screen World **talk · Design Research · 2026-08-26 09:30 · 30 min** Speakers: Melissa Voderberg (Publicis Sapient) As UX design becomes more automated and digital interactions move beyond screens and into experiences that are auditory, kinaesthetic, and sensory, what does the future of UX research look like? What is the right balance of researcher vs AI to conduct sense-making when cultural and tacit behaviour live outside LLMs? This talk draws from the ethnographic fieldwork of Jane Goodall, Margaret Mead, and Sarah Pink to explore how AI can play a role in expediting components of research, so that we get the rigour of ethnographic observation combined with AI-assisted tools to help researchers in the field. Attendees will leave with a practical introduction to mixed methods research that combines AI-assisted synthesis with contextual, on-the-ground observation, and a clearer sense of when contextual research methods outperform digital ones. ### Designing research for AI moderators: Lessons from running 100 interviews a week **talk · Design Research · 2026-08-26 10:05 · 30 min** Speakers: Rebecca Klee (Meridian Energy / Independent Consultant) AI can now conduct interviews at a scale that would be impossible for most research teams. But what happens when you stop being the moderator and start designing the moderator instead? Over the past year, I’ve been running a continuous research program generating around 100 AI-moderated customer interviews every week. Along the way, I discovered that scaling research isn’t simply a matter of handing conversations over to AI. It requires new ways of thinking about prompts, quality, participant engagement, analysis, and the role of the researcher. In this session, I’ll share what actually happens when AI becomes part of the research process: where it excels, where it struggles, and the challenges that emerge at scale. Drawing on real-world experience rather than theory, I’ll explore how researchers can design systems that produce meaningful conversations, maintain research quality, and create insight that teams can trust. If you're wondering what AI-moderated research looks like beyond the demos and headlines, this talk offers a practical look behind the curtain. ### Bridging the Gap Between Product, GTM, and the Bottom Line **talk · Design Research · 2026-08-26 10:40 · 30 min** Speakers: Anna Lee Anda (Zendesk) As UX Research matures, the biggest threat to our impact isn't automation—it’s isolation. For too long, research has been confined to the "Product Development" bubble, while the most critical business levers - Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success—operate on a parallel track. This session moves beyond the tactical execution of studies to explore a strategic approach to connecting dots across the entire organization to drive measurable business impact. I’ll share how our research team stepped outside the product org to partner with Go-To-Market (GTM) teams. We’ll look at practical ways to align research outcomes with revenue KPIs, such as deal velocity and renewal outcomes, by translating user insights into the language of value propositions and market positioning. Attendees will walk away with a techniques to identify key non-product stakeholders and a toolkit for "closing the loop" between field conversations and product strategy. This is a guide for senior practitioners ready to transition from having impact in one sole area to having an company wide impact who builds the connections and bridges that no algorithm can replicate. ### Brunch **break · 2026-08-26 11:10 · 65 min** ### In defence of a long pause: Designing better through lived experience **talk · Design Research · 2026-08-26 12:15 · 30 min** Speakers: Bhaven Chauhan (Transport for NSW), Chanel Lee Designing inclusive public transport requires more than testing in controlled environments. To inform the next generation of suburban trains in NSW, our team conducted contextual research interviewing people with disability, travelling on active train services. Researchers journeyed alongside participants, many with multiple disabilities, observing real trips from planning through to boarding, travelling, and alighting. Each session lasted up to 4 hours, allowing time for silence, reflection, and trust to build, surfacing insights that shorter, task-based research would not. This approach exposed barriers often missed in traditional research, including the complexity of the platform-to-train interface and the ways "priority" extends beyond seating to include space, visibility, and confidence. Delivering research in a live operational environment required navigating risk, aligning with operators and frontline staff, and designing tailored support for participants. Over two weeks, participants shared unfiltered experiences of frustration, exclusion, and resilience, providing a level of depth not typically achieved in structured testing. In this session, we will share how to design and deliver contextual research in complex environments, work respectfully with participants with lived experience of disability, and translate qualitative insight into practical design decisions. ### Designing ResearchOps for uncertainty **talk · Design Research · 2026-08-26 12:50 · 30 min** Speakers: Weiyan Chee (Bupa) The pace of change in tech right now is wild. AI is reshaping how teams work, entire functions are being redefined, and layoffs and restructures have become part of the cycle rather than exceptions. Ways of working are shifting just as quickly—what worked six months ago can feel outdated today. In this kind of environment, how does one build systems while everything around you is still moving? This session is about how to do ResearchOps when things aren’t stable. I’ll share how I think about designing governance, tools, and processes that can flex as things change. That includes things like tying governance to teams instead of individuals (because people move), documenting decisions so context doesn’t get lost, and choosing tools with the assumption that your requirements might look completely different in six months. I’ll also talk about how to rethink research competencies and operating models when org structures shift, without losing research quality along the way. ### The Researcher as a Diplomat **talk · Design Research · 2026-08-26 13:25 · 30 min** Speakers: Ania Mastalerz (Atlassian) In the world of UX research, we often act as diplomats - navigating competing interests, translating perspectives, and persuading without authority. This talk explores what diplomacy can teach us about stakeholder management: how to build trust across power dynamics, negotiate research priorities, and maintain influence when decisions aren’t ours to make. Drawing from real diplomatic principles - like soft power, coalition building, and framing narratives - I’ll share how researchers can use these techniques to move from “fighting for research” to shaping strategy through relationships. ### Afternoon Tea **break · 2026-08-26 13:55 · 65 min** ### Insight Is Not Enough: The Next Chapter of Design Research **talk · Design Research · 2026-08-26 15:00 · 30 min** Speakers: Dr Asma Qureshi (A2 Online) My talk will focus on how design research is evolving from a tactical, project-based discipline into a strategic capability that shapes organisational decision-making. I will explore how leading organisations globally are embedding design research earlier in strategy formation, not only to test ideas but also to inform prioritisation, investment decisions, and risk management in increasingly complex digital and AI-enabled environments. Drawing on real-world examples from enterprise, government, and regulated industries, the session will unpack why traditional research models are no longer sufficient and what is changing in how research operates at scale. The presentation will also examine the specific implications of this shift for the Australian context. I will share emerging global practices, such as continuous research systems, AI-assisted synthesis, and integrated insight operating models, and discuss how these can be pragmatically adopted within Australian organisations. The talk is designed to be both reflective and practical, offering conference attendees a clear perspective on where design research is heading over the next five years, the strategic role researchers can play, and how organisations can elevate research from producing insights to influencing direction and outcomes. ### Applying Anthropology in Design Research: Why Culture Is the Conversion Strategy **talk · Design Research · 2026-08-26 15:35 · 30 min** Speakers: William Anthony Yanko, PhD (Flight Centre Travel Group) Why do people really behave the way they do? Not because the UX was frictionless, but because the experience spoke to something about who they are, who they want to be, and what their choices mean within their world. This talk applies anthropological thinking to design research, unpacking the cultural narratives, social performances, and identity tensions that shape human decision-making. The argument: understanding culture isn't a nice-to-have. It's the strategy. ### Nothing about us flying, without us: establishing a baseline for disabled travel through inclusive design research **talk · Design Research · 2026-08-26 16:10 · 30 min** Speakers: Dr Chandra Harrison (Access Advisors) Air travel remains one of the least understood and most stressful service environments for disabled people. While airlines often invest in accessibility improvements, they frequently do so without reliable baseline data grounded in disabled people’s lived experience. This presentation shares findings and reflections from a mixed‑method design research project undertaken with Air New Zealand to establish a baseline understanding of disabled travel across the trans‑Tasman route. The research was designed and led using a disability rights and participatory research lens. It combined an accessible online survey offered in multiple formats, in‑depth interviews, ethnographic travel research with 12 disabled people flying between Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia, and a disability leadership workshop with advocates and sector leaders. Participants represented a range of physical, sensory, cognitive, and psychosocial impairments, as well as intersecting identities. The study focused on the end‑to‑end travel journey, including booking, check‑in, security, boarding, in‑flight experience, arrival, and recovery after travel. Rather than treating accessibility as a set of isolated problems, the research examined how systems, policies, staff practices, digital touchpoints, and social attitudes combine to either enable or restrict safe and dignified travel. This paper contributes three key outcomes to design research. First, it demonstrates how inclusive research methods can generate richer and more trustworthy data than standard customer research approaches. Second, it provides rare baseline evidence of common barriers and points of harm experienced by disabled travellers, including emotional labour, risk transfer, and loss of autonomy. Third, it reflects on the role of disabled leadership in shifting research from extractive consultation to shared authority. By situating disabled people as experts of their own experience, this research challenges deficit‑based models of accessibility and offers a replicable approach for designers and organisations working in complex service systems. The findings are relevant to design researchers, service designers, and industry practitioners seeking to move beyond compliance towards meaningful inclusion.