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Dear Santa: A UX Researcher's Wish List🎅

Dear Santa: A UX Researcher's Wish List🎅

By Paulina Contreras‱

Table of Contents

Introduction: From Hopelessness to Writing to Santa

I started 2025 quite hopeless regarding the UX field in general and UX Research in particular. I won’t lie, there were moments when I thought “why keep going?”. But I surprised myself by ending the year super motivated: creating content for the blog, launching the UX Methodology Selector, preparing a free introductory UX Research course that is coming soon, and with many more ideas for 2026.

And since I think I’m Spotify (lol), I wanted to do my own year wrap up. I thought: what if I write a letter to Santa? (or the Viejito Pascuero, as we call him in Chile).

Well, here goes this letter to Santa. Because I have many wishes as Paulina
 and as a UX Researcher.

These pains have been accumulating in my heart, Santa. When I was a child, I remember seeing a doll in a shop window (it was August) and I kept that image in my heart to ask you for it in December. Poor mom when she read the letter four months later looking for a doll that was nowhere to be found 😂. But just so you see: if I want something, I can wait a long time to see my wish come true. And when I want something, I don’t lose interest easily.

Now, as a UX Researcher, the doll with clothes to change has transformed into less tangible things, but just as valuable to me.

This is going to be an open letter. I hope you grant me these wishes, Santa. I have been good all year: I have been learning a lot, I want to be a better person and professional, I eat all my food, and I haven’t fought with anyone in the kindergarten


Santa, I hope you are well up there in the Arctic. Here in Chile, we are dying of heat like every year, and we will be waiting for you with “pan de pascua” (fruitcake) and “cola de mono” (tail of the monkey - a traditional drink) 🎄

Here is my list:

1. Unlimited Access to Users (No Bureaucracy)

Dear Santa: My first wish is simple (or so it seems). If you grant me this wish, I’ll be happy.

I want a magical database where, when I say “I need 5 users from Santiago who use the app while walking their dog”, they automatically appear on my calendar. Just like that.

The real pain: Here in Chile (and I imagine throughout Latin America), user recruitment is an issue. We don’t have the panel infrastructure that they have in the United States or Europe. Sometimes I spend more time looking for participants than doing the research itself. And when I finally find them:

  • You have to fight for budget for incentives (because “do we really need to pay them?”)
  • Wait weeks for the recruitment agency to find the profile
  • Coordinate impossible schedules
  • And sometimes users don’t show up :(

The desire: Real, talkative, diverse users, ready to test. No bureaucracy. No eternal waits. Without having to explain why we do need to talk to real people and not just look at analytics.

Is it too much to ask, Santa? 🙏

2. The Superpower of Exploratory Freedom

I don’t want any more requests, or Jira tickets that say: “Validate if this button looks better in red or blue”.

The real pain: It has happened to me (more than once) that they ask me for a Benchmarking when in reality what they need is to design a product for a new segment. The benchmark would be a step within a broader Discovery, but not the step. The problem is that many stakeholders don’t know what to ask us, and we end up being executors of specific tasks instead of strategic thinkers.

“What would be an ideal outcome of this?” — This is the question that has helped me the most to redirect poorly framed requests.

The desire: I want autonomy. I want to be able to tell the Product Manager: “Hey, I think we are solving the wrong problem, let me investigate what is really happening” and have their answer be: “Sure! Take the time you need”.

I want less validation of whims and more real Discovery. I want them to trust that if I ask to explore, it’s because there is something worth exploring.

3. The Crystal Ball of Long-Term Impact

This is a nostalgic wish, Santa.

The real pain: Sometimes I deliver a report full of painful insights and golden recommendations (according to me). I present it, they congratulate me, everyone nods
 and then silence. Months pass, I move to another project, and I never know what happened with those recommendations. Did they implement them? Did they work? Did the report die in a Google Drive folder named “Research Q3 2022”?

I have written about this before: good research does not end with the presentation. But in practice, following up is difficult when you are already buried in the next project.

The desire: I want a magical notification system that, three years later, sends me a message: “Remember that change you suggested in 2021? They finally implemented it and conversion went up by 20%!”.

I want to know that my work had real impact. I want to close the loop. I want to stop wondering if what I do matters.

4. The Celestial Choir of Organizational Empathy

This is the big one, Santa. The Christmas miracle.

The real pain: Sometimes I feel like I am the only person in the room asking “and what would our user say about this?”. As if empathy with the user were the exclusive responsibility of the UX team. The rest of the world can talk about metrics, revenue, and OKRs without mentioning once the person who is going to use the product.

The desire: I want to walk into a strategy meeting —one of those where there are only Business, Finance, and Marketing people— and suddenly, the CEO stops, looks at infinity (imagine sunset in the background, soft CEO KDrama music) and genuinely asks:

“Wait a moment
 And what would our user say about this?” (sparkles around)

I want that question to be the organizational mantra. I want stakeholders to get emotional watching a usability video and not just ask “how much does it cost to fix that?”.

I want organizational UX maturity. I know it is a long process (I have seen organizations advance and retreat), but one can dream, right?

5. The End of the Research Vending Machine

I have had this wish saved for a long time, Santa.

The real pain: When they treat you like a validation vending machine. You put the coin in (a Jira ticket), press the button, and out comes the result they already wanted to hear. It has happened to me that they call me on Friday to test something that launches on Monday, just to check the box that research was done. (Yes, more than once 🙃)

That is not research. That is theater (silence in the room).

UX Research should not be a formality to comply with, but a tool to make better decisions.

The desire: I want to stop being the last-minute validator. I want a seat at the table before the first line of code is written. I want that when someone says “we need to do research”, it is not to confirm a decision they already made, but to inform a decision that does not exist yet.

I want to be a strategic partner.

6. Time to Think, Not Just to Do

This is the wish I am most ashamed to ask for, because it sounds like laziness (but it’s not, I swear, Santa).

The real pain: The frenetic pace of Agile Sprints forces you to jump from one test to another, from one report to the next, without time to digest. You finish a study and you already have three more in the queue. Cross-referencing data between projects? Doing meta-analysis? Connecting findings from 6 months ago with today’s? A luxury I can’t afford.

I became a deliverables factory. And that is not right.

The desire: Give me a real “Sprint 0” week. Time to look at the wall full of post-its without someone asking me “and the deliverable?”. Time to synthesize, connect dots, re-read old notes, and discover patterns I didn’t see at the time.

I want to stop being a report factory and feel like a strategist again.

Conclusion: Is It Too Much to Ask, Santa?

Probably yes. I know it’s easier to bring me socks or a renewed Figma license lol (not that I’m complaining).

But dreaming is free, and if there is something that UX Researchers know how to do, it is imagining better scenarios. It is literally our job: understanding the present to design a kinder future.

Meanwhile, we will continue here: evangelizing the importance of research, recruiting users as we can, and defending that insight that definitely was important even if no one implemented it (yet 😅).

Thank you for reading this far, Santa. And thank you to you who reached the end of this letter. If you identified with any of these wishes, or have your own, I would love to read you.

Merry Christmas to all colleagues who make the world a slightly easier place to use! 🎄✹

And You, What Would You Ask Santa?

If you have your own impossible wishes as a UX Researcher (or designer, or PM, or whoever works in this business of creating digital products), tell me in the LinkedIn thread.

I love reading colleagues’ experiences, especially from Latin America where we share similar pains. Let’s talk! 💬

References and Related Resources

  1. Ideas I had about UX Research
 and no longer do — My reflection on learnings along the UX Research path.
  2. How I built User Personas — The complete process of building Personas for a retail company in Chile.
  3. UX Methodology Selector — Free tool to choose the right methodology according to your context.
  4. Nielsen Norman Group. (2021). The ResearchOps Framework.
  5. Rohrer, C. (2022). When to Use Which User-Experience Research Methods. Nielsen Norman Group.