Why Research Repositories Need Humans (and AI) with Maria Rosala

What happens when someone moves from government UX research to shaping research for the broader industry? Lou talks with Maria Rosala, Director of Research at Nielsen Norman Group, about her role, her career path, and the value of research repositories.

Maria shares what it means to lead research at NN/g and how her experience as a UX researcher in the UK Home Office shaped her perspective on research maturity and real-world practice. They explore how research repositories help organizations surface knowledge, avoid duplicate work, and support collaboration—and why people and culture remain just as important as the tools. Maria also discusses how AI could make repositories more powerful by surfacing connections and insights.

 

What You'll Learn from this Episode:

• What the Director of Research role at Nielsen Norman Group involves
• How government UX work shaped Maria’s perspective on research maturity
• Why research repositories help organizations reuse and share knowledge
• Why research librarians and curators remain essential even with AI
• Where AI could improve research repositories in the future
• A book recommendation on qualitative research analysis

 

Quick Reference Guide:

0:10 - Meet Maria Rosala and learn about the UXR Tool Summit

3:23 - What it’s like being the research director of Nielsen-Norman

7:58 - Gauging and comparing research quality

10:18 - How the volume of research at Nielsen Norman compares to the Home Office in the UK

15:54 - What’s special about the Rosenverse and the Rosenbot

18:10 - What research repositories do for organizations

22:08 - Why we need both tools and a culture that is curious and collaborative

27:07 - Thoughts on surfacing and utilizing AI in defined, constrained spaces but with a human architect

33:31 - Maria’s gift for listeners

 

Resources and Links from Today's Episode:

The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers by Johnny Saldana https://www.amazon.com/Coding-Manual-Qualitative-Researchers-Third/dp/1473902495 

Advancing Research 2026 https://rosenfeldmedia.com/advancing-research/ 

 

Quotes:

“Because we're very small, we do have a lot of oversight of the research that we're doing.”

“People would go through and critique the design and say, ‘Why have you designed it like that?’ And you would need to have a good reason.”

“It's about ensuring that research can be consumed by not just the immediate team that are doing it to inform some of the key decisions that they're trying to make, but that it could potentially benefit others who might be thinking about that problem in a slightly different lens.”

“I think people are going to continue to play an important role, regardless of AI implementations in curating and drawing connections.”