UX Impact Network is building a body of research around the real-world usability and accessibility challenges public institutions face, and what actually fixes them.
Every engagement deepens our understanding of how community-serving organizations approach digital experience; the common patterns, the recurring barriers, and the gaps that remain underexplored. We translate those insights into resources the field can use: methodological frameworks, published findings, and practical guidance grounded in applied work.
Our goal is to become a recognized voice in the UX community, not only as a service initiative but as a source of original research that shapes how the field understands and addresses the challenges of designing for public-serving organizations in an era of rapid technological change.
UX Impact Network pursues an active research agenda organized around the questions that matter most to the field and to the public.
Aggregating findings from partner engagements to produce annual reports documenting usability and accessibility trends, common failure patterns, and improvement trajectories across public-serving digital systems. This data will serve as a benchmark for the field and inform national policy discussions.
The same accessibility failures appear at institution after institution. We will document which ones recur, what conditions produce them, and which remediation approaches are still holding a year later rather than quietly reverting. Follow-up assessments are built into every engagement, which means the question of whether a fix lasted is one we can actually answer.
Researching how public digital systems can better serve users with varying levels of digital literacy, cognitive ability, and access to technology — going beyond compliance to genuinely equitable user experiences.
Studying the effectiveness of supervised service-learning models in producing job-ready UX and accessibility professionals, contributing to the broader conversation about how universities can better prepare students for the realities of applied UX work.
UX Impact Network is committed to open knowledge sharing, making our research available to practitioners, policymakers, and the academic community.
A flagship publication documenting aggregated findings on usability and accessibility across partner organizations, emerging trends, and recommendations for the field.
Original research will be published on platforms such as ResearchGate and submitted to conferences organized by ACM SIGCHI, UXPA, HFES, and IAAP.
Anonymized, aggregated engagement data made available for researchers and policymakers. Findings presented at national and international UX and accessibility conferences.
Original articles, research findings, and perspectives on the challenges shaping UX, accessibility, and human-centered design in public-serving organizations.
We'll be publishing on topics including the state of digital accessibility in public organizations, how AI is reshaping user experience, inclusive design practices, and lessons from our partner engagements.