uxcon vienna 2025: My Key Takeaways – From Career Hacks to AI Futures
December 18, 2025
Vienna’s uxcon 2025 was a blast! It was packed with fresh ideas, career boosters, and a solid dose of future-gazing, especially concerning AI and the evolving role of the UX professional. If you missed it, no worries—I’ve boiled down the most actionable lessons into this post. Get ready for some honest insights, from tackling usability testing contradictions to becoming the office's next UX influencer!
Lessons for Work, Life, and Research
The "Joy-Learning-Money" Job Triangle
This was one of the biggest lightbulb moments for career satisfaction: your job should always check the boxes in a triangle of:
Joy (Are you passionate about it?)
Learning (Are you growing and upskilling?)
Security/Money (Is the compensation fair and stable?)
The Hack: If you can tick off at least two of these three boxes at any given moment, you’re in a good spot. If you’re only hitting one (or zero!), it’s time to re-evaluate. Simple, but super powerful.
Upgrading Your UX Research Game
How do we move beyond the usual methods? The talk at uxcon suggested we need to get more experimental:
Mix it up: We need to stop relying only on qualitative data. Try more things and make sure to cross-check insights with quantitative surveys to validate them at scale.
Context is King: The idea of using a "Shopping Diary" (a form of diary study) for certain projects came up, proving that deeply contextual methods are still vital.
What I did: The conference inspired me to try something new myself. The community survey included questions from the SUS and UEQ as well as the top tasks. I would now like to compare this with the qualitative survey with quantitative results. Let's see what comes out of it.
Becoming a Visibility Ninja
You can do the best research in the world, but if nobody knows about it, what’s the point?
Spread the word: We need various communication channels to boost visibility: quarterly newsletters, quick "Little Spits" in team channels, simple one-pagers, or even internal podcasts.
New job title alert: The mission should be clear: shift your self-perception "From Researcher to Customer Centricity Enabler." We’re not just reporters; we’re catalysts for change!
My impact: A blog about Microsoft Clarity increases visibility. It shares analyses, tutorial videos, and everything you need to know about the tool.
The Future is AI – Are You Ready?
The tech trends were loud and clear, especially thanks to the inspiring insights from Andy Budd:
Be an Influencer: We have to stop being passive. We need to actively become a UX influencer within our organizations to drive the agenda and secure resources.
AI Upskilling: Time to jump on the AI train! I'm planning to start an AI upskilling journey soon. Who knows, maybe the next big role will be AI Product Researcher?
Cool Tech Spotted: The AI Search feature by Zalando was fascinating—definitely something worth passing on internally to see if it’s an option for us.
I am constantly working on expanding and improving my prompting goals. It is always super exciting to think about where AI can help me in my daily work. Building my own gems is also super exciting and valuable.
The Truth About Usability Tests
Every UXer knows this pain:
The Contradiction: When the customer says, "Wow, that was super easy!" but you just watched them struggle for 30 seconds and miss the main call-to-action button. It’s a hilarious, yet crucial reminder that we must always observe actions over listening to opinions.
Making UX Research Stick & Accessibility Wins
The Struggle is Real: Getting UX Research properly established and securing a strategic position is a recurring challenge. Maybe developing a formal UXR Strategy for 2026 is the key to finally cementing our value.
Accessibility Highlight: Microsoft’s presentation on the hardware side of accessibility was mind-blowingly cool and showed a path to designing for truly everyone.
What’s Next on My Plate?
The uxcon vienna gave me lots of ideas and plans. Here’s what I’m focusing on moving forward:
AI Research Dive: I’m kicking off my AI training to stay ahead of the curve and explore new research methodologies.
Strategic Communication: Implementing those short, high-impact communication methods (newsletters, internal homepage, blog posts..) to increase the visibility and influence of our UX research.
