UX Research Impact Course
Strategic UX Research: Turning Insights into Impact
Zero Risk Enrollment: Receive a full refund up to the end of the first day of class.
Course features
UX research often produces strong insights that do not always shift decisions. This course equips senior UX practitioners to move beyond reporting findings and into exercising the kind of judgment that only comes from human context and experience: reading people dynamics, drawing on organizational memory, and weighing company goals to make active, defensible decisions about what belongs in a readout and what doesn’t, framing implications, and influencing meaningful product and organizational outcomes. It is designed for practitioners who are already strong at execution but want their perspective to carry weight in leadership conversations.
Participants will learn to translate research into decision-ready direction, navigate organizational dynamics, and position themselves as strategic partners rather than a delivery function. Each week builds toward a capstone application in which participants apply the frameworks to their own work and develop a research influence strategy they can implement immediately.
This course assumes participants are already proficient in research execution. It does not focus on methods or reporting mechanics. Instead, it concentrates on the layer most research education overlooks: articulating judgment, making tradeoffs explicit, and translating insight into direction leaders can act on. The emphasis is strategic translation and sustained influence, not documentation.
Participants work on a real research project or case study throughout the four weeks, applying each week’s frameworks to build a complete research influence strategy. The final session includes applied presentations, peer feedback, and coaching.
Participants are expected to apply each week’s framework to either:
- A live project they are currently working on, or
- A provided complex case study designed to simulate executive-level ambiguity
Peer review and structured feedback are built into each session to reinforce applied learning and ensure practical skill development.
- Senior UX Researchers and Designers frustrated that solid research doesn't consistently influence decisions
- UX Managers and Leads responsible for positioning research as strategic
- Product Strategists, Product Managers, Service Designers, and Design Strategists who need to make research actionable for leadership
Week 1: Why Research Fails to Land And What Actually Drives Decisions
Theme:
Insight without direction is not strategy
Topics include:
-the distinction between findings, insights, implications, and recommendations
-why stakeholders struggle to act on research
-over-documenting versus under-interpreting
Week 1 Deliverable: Findings → Insights → Implications Template
Participants convert one existing research deck into a structured decision-support format.
Week 2: Turning Insight Into Decision-Ready Direction
Theme: Research should reduce uncertainty, not add to it
Topics include:
-interpretation versus synthesis
-making assumptions explicit
-framing tradeoffs and options
-executive decision needs
-handling confirmatory versus disconfirming research.
Week 2 Deliverable: Decision Ready One-Pager, a concise executive artifact that
-Frames the problem
-Surfaces key tradeoffs
-States implications clearly
-Identifies recommended direction
Week 3: Communicating Insight with Organizational Savvy
Theme: Influence requires context, not just clarity
Topics include:
-stakeholder incentive mapping
-coalition building
-handling misalignment and pushback
-stress-testing interpretations
-translating insights into leadership language.
Participants will analyze a real example of research being ignored or deprioritized and identify the non-obvious drivers behind the decision including timing, incentives, resource constraints, and narrative framing.
Week 3 Deliverable: Stakeholder Incentive Map + Sequenced Influence Plan. Using AI as an aid, students outline:
-Who needs to align first
-Who might resist
-What language shifts are required
-Timing strategy before executive exposure
Week 4: Capstone Application + Sustained Influence Strategy
Overview
Theme: Applying judgment now and building influence over time
Part 1: Participants present their research influence strategy and receive peer and instructor feedback.
Part 2: Participants develop a 6-month sustained influence roadmap covering proactive research positioning, key relationships, signature artifacts, and strategic milestones.
Week 4 Deliverable: Research Influence Strategy Deck (Capstone), a short presentation combining:
-Research summary
-Decision framing
-Stakeholder alignment plan
-6-month influence roadmap
LaKeisha Lovett
Meet your Instructor
LaKeisha Lovett is a User Experience leader specializing in human-centered AI transformation and executive research influence. She works at the intersection of UX, service design, and emerging AI systems, helping teams translate research insights into strategic decisions that stand up in executive rooms. With over 20 years of experience across enterprise product and design environments, she is known for elevating research from activity to measurable business impact.
LaKeisha holds a Master of Science in Human-Computer Interaction from DePaul University and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from the Art Institute of Atlanta. Her work focuses on helping researchers move beyond synthesis and into influence. Through her teaching and work within Fortune 50 companies, she equips UX professionals with the clarity and structure needed to operate at the orchestration layer.
By course completion, you will confidently:
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Transform raw findings into decision-ready implications aligned to product or organizational tradeoffs
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Construct a 6-month influence strategy tied to visible, strategic artifacts
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Apply contextual judgment to research synthesis to decide what to include, cut, or reframe in a readout, rather than reporting everything you found.
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Articulate assumptions, risk levels, and confidence explicitly in executive conversations
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Diagnose why prior research failed to influence decisions and redesign their approach accordingly
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Map stakeholder incentives and constraints to proactively shape framing
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Build pre-alignment coalitions before executive reviews
