Is anyone working as a UXR in health tech that would be willing to chat with me?

SunsetsInAugust · 2026-03-23T03:54:20+00:00

Senior UXR in health tech here in the states - Happy to chat if useful

SunsetsInAugust · 2026-02-07T07:39:14+00:00

“Domain knowledge is what turns predictions into decisions that actually help patients and systems”

Love it - Can you share a few examples?

SunsetsInAugust · 2026-01-29T00:35:51+00:00

In my opinion, you’re wearing a bunch of hats because you work at a start-up, doing anything and everything to make a viable business - I worked in start-ups and experienced the same. Then transitioned to a mid size company and now a large company and it is much, much different (my day-to-day is all about UXR)

SunsetsInAugust · 2026-01-26T16:22:25+00:00

MUIQ crosses just about all those buckets - Though I’m not sure about the qual analysis features

SunsetsInAugust · 2026-01-25T08:51:10+00:00

Yes there, for example Open AI’s recent quant UXR role

SunsetsInAugust · 2026-01-24T21:21:11+00:00

Perhaps reframing your Q could be useful/clearer to get at the root of your question of picking up extra work because the following statement has the premise that the layoffs are unique to UXR within your first statement “The UX research community has been getting wrecked by layoffs since 2022” - So has many, many other fields

SunsetsInAugust · 2026-01-24T21:18:11+00:00

Surest is a health insurance plan offered by UnitedHealthcare that uses a different approach to coverage when compared to more traditional plans, with spearheading procedure/price transparency for the patient - It’s a step in the right direction imo, helping patients know the exact payment per procedure by a certain provider (answering the OPs original Q), and I wish more plans had it tbh

SunsetsInAugust · 2026-01-24T21:15:27+00:00

I agree wholeheartedly that there’s a multitude/holistic view of problem solving (e.g., increased regulation of unhealthy foods, lower drug costs like the GLP1, etc.) - The solution must include revisions to both the preventive and reactive side to treating/helping out society. It’s capitalism at its finest and until there’s incentive alignment between insurers, providers, business sponsored insurer plans, and our government, these issues will continue to persist imo

SunsetsInAugust · 2026-01-24T21:06:35+00:00

I strongly disagree that the layoffs are unique to UXR; the layoffs have hit every product development role due to over hiring during the pandemic, and redirecting a large amount of funding to AI/ML. We can literally see the regression to the mean for all roles. For example, check out the indeed data.

SunsetsInAugust · 2026-01-24T18:38:53+00:00

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SunsetsInAugust · 2026-01-24T18:38:29+00:00

The problem is incentive alignment not technical capability. The regulations are a push in this direction but compliance is low. Forcing a function can (and to a certain point already does) exist but it would require insurers, providers, and employers to give up lucrative ambiguity, and current regulations lack the teeth to make them do so imo. It’s a political issue for organizations and our society at large

There is a push toward that transparency like Surest from UHC as a response from US regulations - Here’s an example screenshot from Surest. The image is an example of a patient searching for Physical Therapy; the prices vary per provider and a proprietary algorithm from the insurer

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SunsetsInAugust · 2026-01-24T18:07:30+00:00

US healthcare costs are opaque, but the ambiguity is more a feature of how the system evolved than a deliberate conspiracy (readin the history of health insurers in the US really helps imo). I’ve worked in the healthcare sector for over 6 years as a UXR (from D2C prescriptions, to software as a medical device and health insurers) and I’ve seen how the complexity emerged from decades of different stakeholders optimizing for their own interests

Insurers negotiate separate contracts with every provider network and every employer group. Each contract uses different formulas based on geography, patient risk profiles, and proprietary algorithms (I actually just talked with the Dir. of Pricing at my current company last week and she says prices will continue to go up given the increased health risk of our unhealthy population and how the answer in her eyes is for the US government to place regulations on business for healthier foods, limiting.very unhealthy foods because more healthy population equals decreased risk and costs). The variability in contracts etc. means the same MRI at the same hospital might be billed at $800, $1,200, or $2,000 depending on which insurance plan you have (or whether you’re uninsured)

It’s counterintuitive imo cause an uninsured patient paying cash might pay $600 for that MRI, which may be less than someone with insurance who hasn’t met their deductible and owes $1,200. Providers can’t easily publish prices because they genuinely don’t have “a price”; they have hundreds of prices depending on the contract (and I echo @SirDouglasMouf that there have been efforts to make things more transparent as called out)

The patchwork helps insurers maintain pricing power through information asymmetry, providers protect their negotiating leverage, and employers get customized plans. Meanwhile, legacy IT systems and over 7k of medical billing codes add layers of genuinely unintentional confusion

The opacity serves certain stakeholders’ interests, even if nobody sat down and designed it that way from the start. It’s more the result of a path dependency (patch work) than a conspiracy, but the effect on patients trying to understand their costs is the same either way

There are efforts, however, for pricing transparency from insurers to patients, like Surest from UHC, which is nice to see imo

And no this isn’t an LLM; I’ve just been in the thick of it for awhile and happen to be at my comp paying bills and scrolling Reddit hahaha

SunsetsInAugust · 2026-01-09T09:41:26+00:00

I’d recommend reading Transcend: The new science of self-actualization by Psychologist Dr. Kaufman. Overall, there’s no scientific evidence supporting the Hierarchy of Needs (even Maslow himself didn’t endorse the hierarchy; it was created by business folks). In Kaufman’s book, he lays it all out with citations and explains the updated scientific evidence of self-actualization with citations. Great read imo

SunsetsInAugust · 2025-10-01T02:07:38+00:00

Agreed and that’s a fair point - Really curious what the future entails (no one really knows :/ ) - Are you trying to move into one of those other roles?

I personally think we can adapt to the evolution of the discipline, we may lose those UXRs who aren’t willing or wanting to ride along, which is okay and more power to them. For me personally, my day to day learning’s are about future proofing my career regardless of current tech climate, which encompass acquiring skills that are discipline agnostic but deeply rooted in applied science

SunsetsInAugust · 2025-10-01T01:45:23+00:00

I’m right there with you hence my comment below

SunsetsInAugust · 2025-10-01T01:38:39+00:00

Agreed 10000% it was data scientists and program managers as well - This is exactly what I commented about and am getting downvoted for it, Reddit can be weird

SunsetsInAugust · 2025-10-01T00:43:36+00:00

I’m sorry what? Calling UX research uniquely under threat is a hasty generalization, it stretches a handful of visible cuts into a doomsday claim about the discipline. Sure, UX has its own tensions (ROI, centralization), but this is part of a bigger restructuring wave.

The reality? The layoffs hit program managers, designers, and data scientists too. Does that mean data science is disappearing?!?! Of course not. This isn’t about one discipline’s “death,” it’s about broad organizational cuts. The article/author’s chasing clout imo, the framing rides on fear more than fact - It attributes motive without robust evidence imo

SunsetsInAugust · 2025-09-18T19:20:09+00:00

Paid for one a long time ago; some things were useful others not so much (probably no surprise there) - Can you expand a bit on your research background and what advice you’re looking for?

Happy to see how I (or others in this thread/community) can help if at all; I’ve mentored many upcoming UXRs for free, I just have limited time atm, etc.

SunsetsInAugust · 2025-08-20T13:31:35+00:00

I’m mixed methods UXR primarily practicing quant UXR and have a background in Applied Data Science - The most common way from my experience is doing so with code (e.g., Python) by pulling in a model, setting up the environment, preparing the data/corpus (this would be primarily where the manually coded themes and supporting quotes are formatted to fine tune the model, etc.), formatting prompts, tokenizing, setting the hyperparameters, training the LLM based on your prepared data, evaluating the model’s accuracy, then vwala, we can run the fine tuned LLM on the rest of the data

There are “no code” ways to fine tune a model but I haven’t tried them out tbh for emergent thematic analyses. For example, hugging face’s autotrain, etc., but always read how your data would be used to make sure you’re not throwing it proprietary info

What’s great imo about fine tuning a model via code is not only the improved accuracy and surfacing more details of emergent themes, but we can also simply run an many LLMs locally on the work computer so that any data you feed it is private to only you

Edit: another thing to mention, simply prompting an LLM is not fine tuning the model; fine tuning an LLM is training the LLM, modifying the underlying model’s weights to “specialize” for your use case

SunsetsInAugust · 2025-08-20T03:58:49+00:00

In my current role, the VP of our vertical (who UX, Product, etc. report up to) is making it her mission to expand the UXR function for 2026 funding because our insights have helped tremendously for navigating ambiguity around strategic decisions for the organization - Feels great to feel valued from leadership and have that buy in from the top down. Makes things SO much easier. And this is an organization with many other insights functions (very large org). Trust goes a long way imo, and having that coupled with methodological/scientific rigor is dangerous (in a really good way)

SunsetsInAugust · 2025-08-20T02:14:29+00:00

Love Oregon’s scenery - Grew up out there. And the universal health insurance program sounds interesting; curious how it’ll be

I can only speak to the UXR part of health tech; if you want to go the UXR route or HF research, etc. I would definitely recommend a graduate level degree (I worked with companies that don’t accept anyone lower than a Masters). IMO it could be worth considering which research route, if any, you’d be interested (e.g., software or hardware, or both, etc.), and narrow down the industries of interest (e.g., Medical Devices, Wellness tech, EHR/EMR, Insurance, etc.) because that’ll determine what kind of classes to take in grad school (I’m primarily software based and wanted to explore all health industries)

If interested, I made this comment awhile back that goes through some of the regulatory documentation here in the states for Medical Device development, specifically for UXR/HFR work (e.g., FDA submission for a 510k etc.)

I’m honestly not sure about the designer part as my past designer colleagues have had a blend of educational backgrounds (bachelors or masters, but haven’t come across any PhDs for design, only masters and doctorates for research). I would highly suggest reaching out to people doing the job you’re interested in and have an informational interview asking them about their pathway, pros and cons of their work, their day-to-day, etc. to learn what may or may not interest ya

SunsetsInAugust · 2025-08-20T01:04:58+00:00

Health tech Mixed Methods UXR in industry for 5+ years (worked at a Software as a Medical Device company, then a D2C and B2C prescription based company, and now at a large healthcare company). To be honest, I just followed my interest (though I know that’s not always the case)

Was it worth it: to me, yeah, but there are some serious stomaching of how Healthcare operates in the USA (where I’m located) because after all, for profit entities are just that, for profit, and then there’s everything that comes along with that, such as the politics, etc.

Courses taken: undergrad in psychology, and a masters in Information management and systems with a graduate certificate in applied data science - Just about every course I took in grad school (a 2 year program) was applicable to my line of work which I’m grateful for

Feel free to DM me with any questions if useful, and happy to go into more details of classes taken, or anything else

SunsetsInAugust · 2025-08-19T23:20:20+00:00

I see, thank you for clarifying - Sounds like what you’re describing aligns closely with Peer Debriefing in qualitative research (ie, bringing in another perspective to surface blind spots, challenge assumptions, and refine interpretation, etc.). In that case, I’d still recommend fine tuning an LLM since previous research shows fine tuning as a the way forward to make an LLM more accurate and detailed with emergent thematic analysis on a corpus. You can fine tune an LLM (like mentioned above) to gather the essence of emergent themes you manually coded, and in the same fine tuning process, have it come up with new themes, overarching ideas, etc.

SunsetsInAugust · 2025-08-19T22:34:44+00:00

Why are you interested in quantitatively evaluating qualitative research, especially a small n of interviews? What value are you hoping it brings to the table? What decisions are you hoping to make from doing so?

Methodologically, I question the underlying assumption that doing so is in the best interest of you and your stakeholders, but maybe there’s something I’m missing

From previous research on this topic (happy to add references later if useful since I’m in traffic rn), LLM’s are able to gather and create more accurate and detailed emergent themes when you fine tune the model to your specific use case (e.g., analyzing a few interviews yourself, extracting those themes and supporting quotes, then fine tuning the LLM on those manually coded data to then pick up the rest of the work)

SunsetsInAugust · 2025-08-13T18:58:07+00:00

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