25 Jul Conversation V — What Research Forgets
Interviewer: There’s a quiet belief in UX research:
That once we’ve gathered findings, we can preserve them.
Store them.
Share them.
That insight is something permanent — something that can be “handed over.”
But you’ve said that what research remembers isn’t always in the report.
That sometimes what mattered is what disappears.
What does UX research forget?
Zulberti: We forget tone.
The rhythm of how something was said.
The hesitation before the insight.
The tension that didn’t resolve.
We remember what was easy to capture — the quote, the click, the path.
But the emotional shape of the session? That’s often gone.
Even when we document everything —
we flatten what was alive.
It reminds me of Stalker —
the Tarkovsky film.
There’s a space called the Zone.
You can’t map it.
You can only move through it if you remember how.
That’s the researcher’s role.
Not just to gather, but to remember the movement.
And if the person who walked it leaves —
you lose the memory of how the insight was found.
Interviewer: So forgetting isn’t just about omission — it’s about erasure of context.
But what about misremembering?
When we preserve a version of the research that’s too clean —
or too useful?
Zulberti: That’s worse.
Because it feels like remembering — but it’s not.
It’s a cleaner version of something messier.
We don’t just forget.
We replace.
A quote that was spoken in doubt gets rewritten with confidence.
A moment that was unresolved becomes an “aha.”
And once it’s in the slide deck, that becomes the truth.
Even if it wasn’t.
That’s Solaris, to me —
another Tarkovsky film.
A planet that reflects your memory back to you.
But distorted.
More like a haunting than a record.
That’s what research should do sometimes.
Hold the uncomfortable part.
The contradiction.
The not-knowing.
But instead we clean it.
And in cleaning, we misremember.
Interviewer: Let’s talk about what’s passed on.
In most projects, the researcher leaves, but the report stays.
Another team takes over.
They inherit findings — but not the decisions, tensions, or conversations that shaped them.
What’s lost in that handover?
Zulberti: The memory becomes shallow.
The report says “we didn’t test this.”
But it doesn’t say why.
Budget? Time? A debate in the room?
I’ve seen this happen:
The insight everyone quotes was actually the one I had the most doubt about.
But the doubt never made it into the deck.
So the next team reads it as truth.
They act on it.
But something vital — the uncertainty — is gone.
And the repository?
It holds the data.
But not the atmosphere.
Not the contradictions we chose not to resolve.
That lived in the room.
And when I left — it left with me.
Interviewer: So how do we work with that fragility?
We can’t preserve everything.
But we also can’t pretend the report is complete.
What do you try to leave behind?
Zulberti: Traces.
Not just findings — but conditions.
I write down where things broke.
Where the question didn’t land.
Where I hesitated.
I try to name the silence — even if I don’t know what it meant.
Sometimes I leave a note:
“This felt important, but I don’t know why.”
Or: “We dropped this line of inquiry. It stayed with me.”
It’s not insight.
It’s atmosphere.
And maybe — if the next researcher reads between the lines —
they’ll feel it too.
Interviewer: You’ve said forgetting is inevitable.
But does that mean we accept it?
Or resist it?
How do you think about forgetting — not just as loss, but as part of the ethics of research?
Zulberti: Not everything should be remembered.
Some moments belong to the participant.
Some feelings are too private to translate.
But we should be conscious of what’s being forgotten —
and why.
The danger is when we forget without knowing we have.
When we confuse the report with the experience.
When we think a repository is the same as memory.
That’s where ethics comes in.
Not perfection.
Not preservation.
But care.
Did we treat the fragile parts with respect?
Did we let some things stay unresolved —
without pretending they didn’t matter?
That’s the responsibility.
Not to remember everything.
But to leave a trace that says:
something more happened here.
Interviewer: You’ve said research often forgets what shaped it — tone, doubt, atmosphere — especially when the researcher moves on.
Is there a moment from your own work that stayed with you, even though it never made it into a report?
Zulberti: Working with charities and non-profits has left that kind of trace.
You can’t rely on imagined journeys — you have to immerse yourself in the cause.
That immersion shifts the way you observe.
Some insights from those sessions weren’t findings. They were a way of seeing.
And even if no one else remembers them, I do — because they changed how I pay attention.
Position in the Series
This piece is the quietest — and perhaps the most personal.
It looks at what research cannot hold: nuance, atmosphere, the unsaid.
Drawing from memory, film, and loss, it becomes the emotional hinge of the series — setting the tone for the final, fragmentary conversation that follows.