Name: Mariana Morris and Nanami Nakamura
Start: 2025-11-13T19:00:00Z
End: 2025-11-13T21:00:00Z
Location: Old Fire Station

Talk 1:
**From insight to impact: How user research drives competitive advantage**
**by Mariana Morris, CEO at Fruto**

UX has the power to do more than fix friction; it can define the future direction of a business. This talk explores how user research can move beyond usability to uncover what users and customers truly value: insights that inform product strategy and drive competitive advantage. You’ll learn techniques for framing “blue ocean” research questions, synthesising findings into strategic clarity, and using customer understanding as your organisation’s edge in an AI-driven world where barriers to entry are lower than ever.

**About Mariana**
**[Mariana Morris](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marianamota/)** is the Founder and CEO of **[Fruto](https://fruto.design/)**, a Oxford-based UX & Product Design Consultancy helping organisations achieve customer-centred transformation through strategy, research, and design. With over 20 years of experience, she’s led UX strategy for complex products across sectors and co-founded UX Oxford, which she’s been co-organising for 14 years. Mariana is passionate about putting humans at the heart of technology, ensuring it delivers real value and positive impact.

Talk 2:
**Getting buy-ins from stakeholders to do the right UX and accessibility**
**by Nanami Nakamura, Lead Designer at the University of Oxford**

As a UX professional, you know what you need to do to make the right UX and accessibility, such as conducting user research to understand the problem, building a prototype, and user testing it, shipping it, and measuring the impact. However, in the real world, getting buy-in from stakeholders could be your first challenge to do the right thing. And you cannot deliver UX by yourself. So how could we get buy-ins from stakeholders for us to do the right thing?

**About Nanami**
[Nanami Nakamura](www.linkedin.com/in/nanami-nakamura-49694a5a): Lead Designer at the [User Experience Centre of Excellence](https://staff.admin.ox.ac.uk/ux), University of Oxford. UX Oxford co-organiser. Global Talent Visa Exceptional Promise. Before she joined the University, she worked for Thomson Reuters, IBM, startups, and design studios both in Japan and the UK. She designed the first e-signature App for the public services in Japan in 2019 at Graffer, where she got passionate about accessibility.

***

**Schedule:**

* 7.00pm - Doors open. Join us for drinks and friendly chat with peers
* 7.30pm - Talk 1 and Q&A
* 8.00pm – Talk 2 and Q&A
* 8.30/9pm - Ends

❤️ Thank you [Fruto (Product Strategy & UX Design)](https://fruto.design/) for sponsoring UX Oxford!

Mariana Morris

Nanami Nakamura

James Morris

UX Oxford

Technology

Web Design

Interaction Design

Web Development

User Experience

Usability

User Research

UX Design

UI Design

Service Design

Product Management

Product Design

Product Strategy

Mariana Morris and Nanami Nakamura

Old Fire Station

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UX Oxford

Mariana Morris and Nanami Nakamura

UX Oxford

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