Anticipatory UX Research: How To Look Around Corners
Learn how to create new business opportunities and drive product roadmaps by “looking around corners” with UX Research — building, scaling, and communicating anticipatory research programs that uncover blindspots and power future bets.
- Investment
- $395
- Format
- Weekly for 4 weeks
- Sessions
- 2 hour meetings
Cohort starts October 20, 2026. Sign up to hear when enrollment opens.
Lifetime access to recordings & materials
Revisit every session and resource, for good.
Full refund up to the first day of class
Change your mind any time before week one.
Certificate of completion
A shareable credential when you finish.
Anticipatory UX research aims to identify entirely new priorities and roadmaps for an organization rather than finding gaps in existing strategies. It surfaces three types of opportunities: blindspots, frontiers, and bets. UXR Institute offers a four-week live course in anticipatory UX research, taught by Preeti Talwai.
Anticipatory research is distinct from anticipatory design: anticipatory design predicts an individual user's next action, while anticipatory research anticipates an organization's unmet strategic needs.
Check out Preeti's talk on Anticipatory Research from Learners' Research Week 2026
Senior individual contributors are often told to “look around corners” as a way towards leadership and amplifying strategic impact. But most of us never have a playbook on what that means or how to do it effectively.
This course will teach you how to do anticipatory research — anticipate organizational needs to build impactful research programs. It covers three types of anticipatory research: blindspots, frontiers, and bets, which are characterized by different degrees of executive conviction and time horizons, from present to future-facing.
By the end of this course you’ll have the tools to proactively identify anticipatory research opportunities in your work, and understand how to carry it out from end-to-end: seed a project, demonstrate initial impact, secure investment to deepen and scale the research, and storytell the impact.
Doing anticipatory research can boost a UX researcher's career.
It’s straightforward to imagine the impact anticipatory research has on the product: new products, markets, and revenue opportunities. Through this course, you’ll learn how it can be equally defining for your career, helping to deepen relationships and elevate your reputation. By guiding your team to visualize possibility in a data-driven way, you become the portal to new directions, giving people permission and inspiration to build towards it. Your value proposition shifts from being just a researcher to a product owner, and a trusted thought partner — indispensable skills in the AI era.
Anticipatory research is not blue sky visioning or futures research that's free of all product and organizational constraints. In fact, it is deeply rooted in latent needs that the organization has that they just may not see yet. This is also what sets it apart from other types of strategic research, which typically focus on existing product gaps that are high-conviction for leadership (think: aligned to OKRs, roadmaps, and strategic priorities). Anticipatory research aims to create new priorities and roadmaps through the insights it generates.
The strategies you’ll learn in this course are generalizable beyond anticipatory research. Anticipatory research tends to be some of the most difficult to get buy-in for and to scale, so you can also find success using the same strategies for more traditional research projects.
- 01
Identify different types of organizational “corners” in their present professional context (or past portfolio), their unique characteristics and challenges, and how to select impactful anticipatory research projects
- 02
Learn how to pitch, secure buy-in for, deepen, and scale different types of anticipatory research, including strategies for overcoming common roadblocks
- 03
Understand how to define, quantify, track, and storytell impact for future-facing research that may not be tied to a launch
- 04
Understand and apply mindsets and methods for future-facing “bets” research
→ Built for you if
You are an Individual Contributor UX Researcher with at least 2 years of industry experience and at least one of the following resonates:
- Interest (or existing involvement in) leading impactful anticipatory research programs — including emerging technology and futures UXR
- Desire to have an indispensable human edge in an AI-driven area by effectively navigating complex orgs and cementing your value with stakeholders
- Interest in gaining a sharper vocabulary and framing to build impact narratives for past work in a UXR portfolio
Assumed going in
- At least 2 years of industry experience as an Individual Contributor UX Researcher.
Your continuous project
You’ll bring 1-2 projects from your current work that align with one or more of the types of anticipatory research. Or, you can build a narrative around a past project for a portfolio. If you don’t think you have a relevant project right now, don’t worry! We will have a mock case study to use.
01
What is anticipatory research?
Identify different types of “corners” (blindspots, bets, and frontiers) using a 2x2 framework, and how to proactively identify them
- Understand what anticipatory research is: how it’s different from traditional strategic research, and the impact it can have on organizations and careers
- Outline the process of an anticipatory research project (from seeding the idea through scaling the research program)
Deliverables: Identify 1-2 current or near-future projects that fit into one or more of the “corners.” Or, select a past project that you may want to build a narrative around in your portfolio.
02
Seeding the research and making initial impact
Understand and create strategies for kicking off, getting buy-in, and showing initial value for an anticipatory research project. Identify unique strategies for frontiers, bets, and blindspots
- Identify common challenges and pitfalls at the “seed” and “value demonstration” stage, and ways to overcome them
Deliverables: Using your selected research project(s), you will map out a strategy to get buy-in and demonstrate initial value for an anticipatory research project OR the a narrative about how you did this for a past portfolio project. We will discuss, raise questions and critiques, and learn from each other as a group.
03
Achieving depth and scale for anticipatory research programs
Understand and create strategies for going deep and subsequently scaling an anticipatory research topic. Identify unique strategies for frontiers, bets, and blindspots
- Identify common challenges and pitfalls at the “depth” and “scaling” stages, and ways to overcome them
Deliverables: Using your selected research project(s), you will map out a strategy to go deep and scale an anticipatory research project OR the a narrative about how you did this for a past portfolio project. We will discuss, raise questions and critiques, and learn from each other as a group.
04
Deep-Dive: Special Considerations for Emerging Technology & Bets Research
What makes “bets” research methodologically different from traditional UX Research
- Specific methods, mindsets, and approaches for emerging technology research (e.g. taking a “matchmaking” mindset, decoupling users' attitudes towards the product experience from their attitudes about the enabling technology).
Deliverables: You’ll apply these methods to specific research questions or projects that you’re currently working on.
Pitfalls this course addresses
Different types of anticipatory research have different pitfalls and challenges that will be covered in this course, along with strategies to address them. Two examples include:
- A research program stalling at a local maximum, because scaling it requires structural or organizational change.
- Difficulty defining impact with futures research that doesn't find immediate readiness
Preeti Talwai
Preeti Talwai is a UX Research leader with 13 years of experience in emerging technology and early-stage products. She spent nine years at Alphabet focusing on human-centered AI and futures research across Google X, Google AI, and Google Ads, most recently as Staff UX Researcher. Trained in architectural design and theory at U.C. Berkeley and the Yale School of Architecture, she is particularly interested in the messy, situated ways humans encounter technology.
Weekly for 4 weeks
2 hour meetings
Tuesdays 3–5pm ET, October 20 to November 17, 2026. No session on Tuesday, October 27. Times are US Eastern: EDT on October 20, EST from November 3.
The first week will introduce the anticipatory research framework and three types of ‘corners’ (blindspots, frontiers, bets), and the 4-step process of a typical anticipatory research program (seed, initial value demonstration, depth, and scale). Subsequent weeks will walk through each stage of this process. Within each week we will engage with the specific challenges and strategies for each type of ‘corner.’
Through this format, you’ll be able to see your selected case study project through all of the steps of a research program. The fourth week is dedicated to special methodological considerations for emerging tech and bets research that can help achieve organizational impact.
Across all classes, discussion and learning from others in the group will be critical.
Projects from your current work that align with one or more of the types of anticipatory research will be the real-world anchor. Or, you may work to build a narrative around a real, past project for a portfolio.
What is anticipatory research? +
Anticipatory UX Research is research that identifies and acts on latent organizational needs that are not yet set priorities. It’s often referred to as “looking around corners.” Anticipatory research may be future-facing, or it may highlight current organizational blindspots.
How is anticipatory research different from strategic UX research? +
Anticipatory research falls under the broad umbrella of strategic research, but not all strategic research is anticipatory. While most strategic research focuses on existing product gaps that are high-conviction for leadership (think: aligned to OKRs, roadmaps, and strategic priorities), anticipatory research aims to create new priorities and roadmaps through the insights it generates.
How do you get buy-in for research that isn’t on the roadmap? +
Building relationships both top-down and bottom up, demonstrating value through small case studies, and building a critical mass of colleagues who are invested in your research vision are all strategies we will discuss in depth in this class.
How do you measure the impact of research that isn’t tied to a launch? +
Impact can be thought of as a shift in an organization’s state as a result of research insights. Launching a product is one example of a shift, but there are many other types of shifts that can be quantified. For example, research that drives strategic prioritization (e.g. narrowing from 20 concepts down to 3), or research that helps pivot a product toward a use case that has more user value. In this class, we’ll talk about these and other categories of impact that do not require a launch to be valid and measurable.
Enroll with confidence. Full refund right up to the first day of class. No form, no friction. Once the course starts, lifetime access to every recording and resource is yours to keep.
Building, scaling, and communicating anticipatory research programs.
Cohort starts October 20, 2026. Sign up to hear when enrollment opens.
Get notified4 live sessions · Tuesdays 3–5pm ET
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