The Wales UXR Summit 2026

Powered by Admiral and sponsored by Askable.
We’re bringing together user researchers, service designers, UX professionals and leaders from organisations including Google, Lloyds, IBM, HMRC, Cardiff University, Made Tech and Admiral for a one-day event in Cardiff.
Expect a mix of inspiring talks, practical ideas and plenty of time to connect with people who care about understanding people, improving services and creating meaningful change.

What makes this day special?

• Explore how AI is changing the role of research, and what new opportunities and challenges this creates for researchers.
• Hear how organisations are rethinking research operating models and moving from reactive research towards more strategic influence.
• Learn practical approaches for embedding AI into ways of working through experimentation, collaboration and continuous learning.
• Discover how opening research up to designers, stakeholders and delivery teams can create stronger ownership, richer insights and greater impact.
• Explore how human-centred design can help organisations develop and deploy emerging technologies responsibly and ethically.
• Take away new approaches for researching increasingly complex and unpredictable experiences, moving beyond static reports and turning insight into lasting action.

And much more..

Whether you’re a researcher, service designer, UX designer, product professional, student or simply curious about the future of research, there will be something here for you.

Why come along?

You will leave with:

• Fresh perspectives on how AI and emerging technologies are changing research
• Practical methods and frameworks to apply in your own work
• Real-world stories from industry, academia and the public sector
• New ideas for making research more visible, actionable and influential
• A stronger network of research and design peers from Wales and beyond

All of this will take place in a relaxed and friendly setting, with opportunities to learn, exchange ideas and meet others from across the community.

Join us in Cardiff on Thursday, 12 November 2026, as we come together to challenge current thinking and reimagine what research could become.

Info: Check in at the reception. A member of the team will be there to direct you to Floor 1. Do not forget a digital or paper copy of your tickets!

Info: Grab a cup of coffee or tea, meet fellow researchers & designers and settle in

Info: Amazon starts new products by writing a press release from the future. Ben applies the same back-casting logic to research: begin with an insight that could change your organisation's direction, picture the sea change it could bring, then map the steps backwards to where you are today. Instead of throwing research over the wall, you learn to work with the grain of your organisation, patiently, at the right moment and with the right intention. You'll leave with the method, a template, and the questions you need answered to turn the ship around.

Info: Generative AI is pushing the industry into a post-product excellence era. This talk applies an economic approach—the bifurcation of work—to the UX discipline. Through this lens, research is undergoing a definitive trifurcation into three distinct archetypes: the Strategic Solution Architect, the Outcome Evaluator, and Model and Experience Governance. To thrive in this landscape, researchers must move beyond optimizing specific UIs and instead collaborate with AI as a strategic Framework Coach to orchestrate holistic experiences and craft clear, compelling Points of View grounded in business and technology context.

Info: Prof Morgan will share how researchers and service designers can play a critical role in ensuring AI and related technologies are designed and deployed within organisations ethically, responsibly, and securely. With 25-years’ experience of human factors and cognitive science research, spanning >50 funded projects (>£40Million funding), he will draw upon many examples from AI agents, cybersecurity, autonomous vehicles, and robotics, and explore how human-centred design, ethics, and an understanding of cognitive bias, maladaptive behaviours, and trust miscalibration can help organisations anticipate risks while maximising the benefits of emerging technologies – leading to optimal acceptance, adoption and continued use.

Info: As AI automates more of the research process, what will make researchers indispensable? This talk explores why the future of UX research lies not in faster execution, but in developing a deeper understanding of culture, behaviour and context. Drawing on anthropology, I'll share practical ways researchers can uncover the human dynamics that technology and traditional research methods often miss.

Info: Research delivers the greatest value when it becomes everyone's business, not just the responsibility of researchers. Drawing on our experience in a bilingual public sector service, we'll share how we involved designers, product teams, subject matter experts, and stakeholders throughout research and analysis. We'll explore practical approaches to collaborative research, inclusive bilingual practices, and stakeholder engagement that helped embed evidence-based decision-making into everyday team culture.

Info: Get a proven approach from a regulated environment (banking) that works for teams dealing with compliance, ethics concerns, and leadership pressure for AI strategy.

Reframing AI adoption as a social learning journey, not just a technical rollout
Empowering teams through experimentation and collaborative discovery
Experimenting with AI safety with practical tips
Anchoring success in cultural change to avoid AI becoming shelfware

Info: For decades, UX has been built around predictable journeys and the mantra that "consistency is key". Then generative AI threw out the rule book. When the same prompt can produce different outcomes, what does it mean to design and research the experience? This session explores practical approaches to UX for non-deterministic AI.

Info: This talk shares a technique for the time after a playback, when it seems the research is done. I will walk through a real example from my work leading research, where a finding led to a decision that a team owned and acted on, one that is still being referenced months later. Attendees will leave with a technique for making their next playback drive action even after the meeting ends.

Info: Stop mapping journeys. Start running them.

Every organisation has a journey map, and almost nobody does anything with it. A map is a picture of a journey. It isn't the journey running. This is the story of a Welsh youth-arts charity that stopped mapping and started conducting. It had six systems, six versions of the same form, and a team patching the gaps by hand. All of it was rebuilt into one living service and system. It's about what happens when research stops describing the journey and starts running it.

Info: Optional

Event venue & nearby stays

Ty Admiral, Floor 1, Ty Admiral, Cardiff, United Kingdom

Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.

Get the app →

Discover more events by tag