What’s keeping research leaders up at night in 2026?

In this honest conversation, Mateja Milosavljevic, CEO and Co-Founder of Lyssna, is joined by Julian Della Mattia (DuckDuckGo) and Nikki Anderson (Drop In Research) to explore the biggest challenges facing research teams today and the practical approaches they’re experimenting with to meet them.

Together, they explore:

• How to get research insights actually used in decision-making

• Scaling research practice across growing organizations

• Demonstrating ROI and business impact

• Democratizing research (and AI) responsibly

• Integrating AI into workflows intentionally and ethically

Designed for research leaders, senior practitioners, and ResearchOps professionals, this session offers grounded strategies and honest insights from peers navigating the same realities.

About our guests

Julian Della Mattia is a researcher specializing in Research Operations. Throughout his career, he has focused on building research practices from scratch, from infrastructure to culture and processes. He has helped technology companies across Europe and the Americas improve and expand their research practices by developing systems, educating teams, and guiding their efforts in learning more about their users. He is currently the Senior User Insights Manager at DuckDuckGo.

Nikki Anderson is a user research consultant and founder of Drop In Research, where she helps product teams make faster, clearer decisions through practical, business-aligned research. She partners with companies to build AI-enabled research systems, raise research maturity, and turn insights into decisions that actually move a roadmap forward. She leads widely used training programs and writes the User Research Strategist newsletter, read by thousands of UX researchers. Known for transparency and actionable insights, she’s shaping the future of research while chasing waves and geeking out over Pokémon.

About our host

Mateja Milosavljevic is the Co-Founder and CEO of Lyssna. He co-founded the company (then known as UsabilityHub) in 2012, and it has since grown to become one of the leading user experience research platforms used by startups and enterprise companies around the world.

Transcript

Transcript