Leveraging AI in your Research Practice: What Hiring Managers Actually Want to See (and Won't Tell You)

​Every UX researcher has heard it: "Just use AI." And most of us have — we've drafted discussion guides, summarized transcripts, and prompted our way through synthesis. But it's not enough anymore, not in this landscape.

​In this fireside chat, we’re going behind the scenes with two UX research leaders actively shaping how AI shows up in modern research practice.

​We’ll be joined by Sabah Merchant, who is building AI into her team’s research workflow at Eightfold AI and brings previous experience from PayPal, alongside Faith McGee, Principal Product Researcher focused on AI/ML, agentic and semantic systems at Salesforce. Faith leads strategic research for Tableau Next and the future of AI-powered business intelligence, with previous experience at Google, Electronic Arts, and Meta, and is also the Founder of Early Feedback, where she is building the design intelligence layer for enterprise UX, compliance, and AI governance.

​Join us on May 14th for an honest conversation about what AI competency actually looks like in a research practice, what hiring managers are really looking for in 2026, and how to position yourself as the researcher who can't be replaced.

​What we'll cover:

​→ How AI is being used across the real research workflow (not just the hype)

​→ Behind the scenes of the UXR hiring process — and how teams are assessing AI literacy

​→ Where AI falls flat — and where human judgment still wins

​This one's for the researchers who are ready to stop using AI as a shortcut and start using it as a strategy.