A wise old proverb once said that we are the average of the people whose tweets we spend the most time reading. Whoever said that was obviously pretty ahead of their time. As we enter 2022, level up your UX Research chops by following the leading UXR voices on Twitter.

There are a few BNOCs (big names on campus) missing from this list - I selected my favourite accounts that tend to tweet more about research and less about how well their homemade carbonara turned out at the weekend. They're all real people, so expect a bit of that, but overall these are UXR-focused tweeters.

Instead of opening each one in a new tab, you can follow this whole list on Twitter here.

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[1] Tricia Wang - @triciawang

Dr. Tricia Wang is a global tech ethnographer living at the intersection of data, design, and digital. She's the co-founder of Sudden Compass, a consulting firm that helps companies to unlock new growth opportunities in their big data with human insights in their digital transformation. She's known for popularizing 'Thick Data' - the need for companies to integrate Big Data with qualitative and ethnographic methods in order to uncover people's emotions, stories and models of their world. She explains her perspective on Thick Data in her must-see TED talk, "The human insights missing from big data."

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[2] Gregg Bernstein - @greggcorp

Having previously led User Research at Vox Media and Mailchimp, Gregg Bernstein now looks after all things research related at Signal Messenger - a hot topic startup at the centre of the privacy and security movement in tech. A regular headline speaker at conferences, his soon-to-be-released book 'Research Practice' just hit number one on Amazon's pre-release list. He used to design albums for punk and emo bands too, which is definitely gives him a bonus point in our eyes.

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[3] Nikki Anderson - @productherapist

Nikki Anderson is a User Research Lead at Zalando in Berlin. If the name rings a bell, it's probably because she founded the online community User Research Academy, because she's a must-follow on Medium, or maybe because she's a renowned petter of dogs (in niche circles anyway). While Nikki doesn't tweet that much, I recommend following so you don't miss her next Medium drop - her last post on writing user research case studies was 10/10.

[4] Indi Young - @indiyoung

Indi Young was possibly the most suggested name by user researchers for this list, for obvious reasons. For the past 20 years, she has been pioneering ways to understand customers and employees in order to support them better. Indi is an independent qualitative data scientist and, in her own words, she wrote the book on mental model diagrams and developing empathy. Not to mention she has a kick-ass newsletter (and so do we, it's called The Full-Stack Researcher).

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[5] Roy Olende - @royolende

Roy Olende is the host of Research at Scale, a podcast Roy launched in the latter half of 2020. When he's not working on and tweeting about his myriad of ResearchOps-related projects, he's the Head of UX Research at Zapier. Roy is one of those great Twitter users that seems to read something new and interesting every day, which he also shares on his Substack Newsletter, 'System17'.

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[6] Teresa Torres - @ttorres

Teresa Torres is THE leading authority on discovery research. Her talks on continuous product discovery at conferences like Productized in 2016 are mandatory viewing for discovery researchers. If you're a fan of a framework, you'll be right at home on a deep dive through Teresa's tweets and blog post archives over on her website producttalk.org.

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[7] OpinionX - @MyOpinionX

Our own Twitter account is new to the scene, but dare we say it, there's some pretty sick content on under our name. We take our latest blog posts every week and share them out as bite-sized Twitter threads, like our deep dive on Mixed Methods Research that we shared recently as in tweet-summary format. Keep an eye out for more hot UXR content coming soon (aka every week) 👀

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[8] Aryel Cianflone - @mixedmthods

Ok, I'm cheating a liiiiiittle bit on this one too. Aryel is the founder of Mixed Methods, a UX Research podcast and 12,000-strong Slack community. We previously quoted Aryel on our deep dive post on Mixed Methods Research. While this isn't Aryel's personal account, we've got our fingers crossed that the Mixed Methods Twitter account will be more active in 2022 because their content is 🔥

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[9] dscout - @dscout

Sticking with the theme of non-human accounts you should follow, the team at dscout are constantly interviewing and featuring guests posts from the most interesting names in UXR. Their blog 'People Nerds' features loads of amazing articles from the dscout team and guest writers, updated all the time with new content.

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[10] Jen Blatz - @jnblatz

Jen is a User Experience Designer and Researcher at Fidelity Investments. 2 years ago, Jen co-founded the online community 'UX Research & Strategy,' where she is super active sharing all the top UX research resources she finds on a daily basis. Just to be even busier, Jen is the co-founder of IxDA Dallas (Interaction Design Association), was the organiser of World Information Architecture Day DFW, and has been behind the social accounts for Ladies that UX Dallas and Big Design (aka, she's a pro).

[11] Alba Villamil - @albanvillamil

Alba Villamil is an independent User Experience Researcher who specializes in designing for the social sector. Her projects focus on underserved populations such as refugees, low-income parents, and domestic violence survivors. In addition to working with community organizations, Alba has also worked on projects with the Harvard Kennedy School and Rochester City School District. Her tweets are a fantastic resource on topics such as research ethics and addressing race in UX design.

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[12] Alec Levin - @al_clevin

Alec Levin is the CEO of UXR Collective, the team behind UXRConf (which featured as a big not-to-be-missed event on our list of Top UX Research Conferences to Attend in 2021) and the new UXRC subscription learning platform for learning about all things research-related. Considering the calibre of speakers featured on UXRC, it's not surprising that Alec's Twitter is full of golden nuggets and inspiring insights.

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[13] Sam Ladner - @sladner

Dr. Sam Ladner is Principal Researcher for Strategy at Workday and has held similarly senior roles at other heavyweight tech players such as Amazon and Microsoft. Sam is a particular favourite tweeter for the team here at OpinionX as she is the leading authority on Mixed Methods Research (she literally wrote the book on it).

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[14] Kate Towsey - @katetowsey

Another leading authority for the list, Kate Towsey is the big name in the ResearchOps world. Not only did she basically define the term, she also started the ResearchOps Slack group (which, as a proud member, I'd highly recommend). If you'd like to catch Kate on stage soon, she's a headline speaker for UX Brighton later this year. Keep an eye out for her book "Research At Scale: The Research Operations Handbook" coming in 2022 👀

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[15] Holly Cole - @hollyface1975

Now at the reins of the same ResearchOps Slack group is Holly Cole. As well as being co-chair of the ReOps community, Holly is Director of Research & ResearchOps at 15five, a performance management startup based in the Bay Area. She's super active in the research community and her 'Research Unicorn' thread below is a great precursor to the Full-Stack Researcher (which we predict at OpinionX will become the hottest UXR role in the coming years).

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[16] Tomer Sharon - @tsharon

Tomer Sharon was one of my first introductions into the world of user research 😊 Until recently, Tomer was Managing Director and Head of User Research & Metrics at Goldman Sachs, before which he held UX and research roles at WeWork and Google. He's gone stealth mode on his current venture, which he lists himself as Co-founder and Chief Experience Officer of. Follow for the fomo alone, I say. He also wrote the book "Validating Product Ideas through Lean User Research." Need I say more?

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[17] Behzod Sirjani - @beh_zod

Behzod is the founder of Yet Another Studio (I'm not being sarcastic, that's the real name) - an independent research agency that provides research partnership to a select number of clients around the world. Before he jumped into the founder's seat, he was Head of Research & Analytics Operations at Slack and a Senior UX Researcher at Facebook. Bezhod is a contributor to heavyweight resources like Reforge's course on customer insights.

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[18] Laura Faulkner - @laurafaulkner

Laura Faulkner, PhD is the Head of Research at Texas-based cloud-giant Rackspace Technology. While Laura doesn't tweet that much, she's a regular on podcasts and interviews with big names in the industry such as Steve Portigal and in communities like UX Research & Strategy. Add her to your Twitter list so that you never miss out on the recordings of her talks!

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[19] Sofia Quintero - @sofiaqt

Sofia is the CEO of EnjoyHQ, a research repository tool that powers UX and product teams to search, organise and share all of their feedback and user research data in one place. As a fellow founder in the user research startup world, Sofia is quite the generalist - you can find topics from repository strategies to customer acquisition to UX design topics all mixed together on her timeline.

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[20] Emma Boulton - @emmaboulton

I love Emma's tweets for her no-nonsense approach to UX (and her lovely family updates too!). Emma is a Design and User Research Leader based near Cardiff, Wales. Another ResearchOps community leader, during the day she is Director of User Research at Babylon Health, having previously filled research roles at Monotype and in the BBC’s Audience Research team.

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[21] Jeff Sauro - @MeasuringU

Sneaking one last company one in, Jeff Sauro is the author of 6 UX books and is a Principal at quantitative research firm MeasuringU in Denver, Colorado. Jeff and his team are focused on the statistical analysis of human behavior and quantifying the user experience. The MeasuringU account is a high-volume tweeter, so possibly not for everyone, but there are some real nuggets in their posts.

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Yes, we made a Twitter thread about tweeters you should follow on Twitter. Retweet to your hearts content to share it with others:

When we're not doom-scrolling on Twitter, we're busy thinking and writing about the future of user research. Sign up to our fortnightly newsletter roundup of our latest ideas and favourite links from across the web:

✌️ - Daniel Kyne, Co-Founder & CEO of OpinionX