Top communities to follow for UX Research

Helpful UX Research communities from you to connect and learn from your peers

Mar 16

It’s often good to connect with peers and people more advanced in the same field. I use these communities as a way to learn, see what comes up commonly and also from time to time share my own knowledge and experience.

Source: XKCD

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Slack

I’d recommend these Slack groups, and link them up with your Slack App so it’s easier to check in one spot. Some of these groups are really popular so I’d make a regular habit to check back frequently.

Advancing Research Community - this is run by the Rosenfeld Media group so it will include authors and consumers of their publications.
UX Australia - UX Australia run a lot of conferences and workshops. Their Slack group is targeted for those who work in UX in Australia. It’s useful for discovering jobs and sharing jobs in Australia.
Field Studies - a very small and niche group started by Jan from Studio D Radio Durans. The focus tends to be around ethnographic research done in a few regions.
Better UX Community - A really large group with 4500+ users who are in both UX, UI and UX Research.
Research by Learners - This group is started by Learners who focus on learning and sharing UX research online from those in the industry.
Community – Dovetail - Dovetail is a software company for researchers to help with analysis and insights. The community is really focused on Dovetail users but still has valuable resources and is very targeted for researchers.
Research Ops (application form) - This Slack is very comprehensive both for Researchers and Research Ops people. There’s a lot of discussion ResearchOps Community
UX Research and Strategy (application form) - The UX Research and Strategy group is another huge group. They have great events and discussions. This Slack group has a lot of jobs listed by it’s community members.
People Nerds - Another Slack group by a research software company. This time it’s dscout. You might have to look for the invite via signing up to their newsletter or reviewing their blogs.
Ethnography Hangout (application form) - A group by the people behind EPIC with a huge Slack community. This community has a good range of topics really focused on researchers.
UXDX - A course and conference provider with a group that focuses on the networking part and learning from the conference speakers.
UXPA - This group is for UXPA members. The UXPA membership has a a lot of benefits, including mentoring matching and access to this Slack group. There’s about 1000+ members in there.

Facebook

User Research Collective - A really active Facebook group with people from all kinds of backgrounds giving feedback on portfolios, resumes and also practical advice on different researching challenges.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn Groups tend to be less active compared to the Slack communities but are nonetheless a great source of information.

Global User Research
Radical Research Summit - Impacting UX Design & Business Strategy
User Experience
Design Research Group - this is one of the bigger groups on LinkedIn
UX / HCI Researchers - this is by far the biggest group I have found so far with 30k plus members.

Medium

I find it helpful to see what people are writing regarding research. These two publications focus on all aspects of UX including research.

Other

These are other communities that are more designer specific but might have some topics around research in there.

HCD Slack Community Slack group
Designer Hangout Slack group
ADPList - this is a platform where you can find 1:1 mentoring, events, or group sessions. They also have a Slack group.
Singapore Design Telegram - this is a Singapore specific Telegram chat group. It can get a bit noisy in there as there’s no threading. It’s just messaging.
Design Sprints APAC Slack group - another regional focused community. Great for discovering events in the APAC timezone.

Discord

Two very huge Discord communities. Design Buddies has events which might be useful to those early on in their career. Again, it’s mostly focused on UX and design but there is some research content in there.