As the holidays are upon us, it seems fitting to talk about one of the popular presents young people especially will be asking for: games. Join us on the last episode for 2025 as we discuss how UX research for gaming differs from other industries, how gaming UX has changed over the years, future trends, and most importantly, what games we are all playing at the moment.

In this extended episode of UX Soup, we talk with Professor Gary Burnett from Loughborough University, who is a pioneer in the use of immersive technology, especially social virtual reality, as a means to engage and teach Higher Education students in new and meaningful ways. We talk with Gary about two recently published research articles: one on hologram teachers and the other on utilising virtual worlds for team-building exercises.

The first instalment of Spilt Soup, which breaks down UX reasons for spectacular product and service failures. Where better to start than Quibi? In 2020 Quibi was launched with massive financial backing as a streaming service to compete with Netflix and other video streaming platforms. But after only 8 months it was gone. We analyse what went wrong from a UX perspective and lessons that can be learned.

In Condensed Soup we discuss our biggest UX research wins.

A recent study out of Dongchedi in China evaluated how effectively 36 cars handled 15 obstacles in both highway and urban settings. We discuss the results of the study, the strengths and weaknesses of it, and what it means for safety and human factors in the design of these systems. In Condensed Soup, we share our most proudest or most memorable research findings.

In this episode, we discuss fake people. No, not people who pretend to be somebody they're not, but true fake people and their potential use in UX research. AI-powered participants? AI researchers? There are companies creating these fake participants for usage in product and market research, and we discuss the pros and cons. Then we contemplate other use cases for fake people, and Oprah and ABBA become involved. In Condensed Soup, we tell the one thing we would want our own fake double to carry out.

We are all aware of issues with data privacy on the internet and on your mobile devices, but how aware are you about the data being collected from your car? We discuss how this data is different from that of your other connected devices and how well automakers are protecting your data. We review a benchmarking report from Privacy4Cars which evaluates how effectively automakers honor your privacy rights.

Zoe is a personalized nutrition program which uses at-home tests and blood sugar monitoring to help users understand how their body responds to food and provide personalized dietary recommendations. Chris and Derek interview Lisa about her positive and negative experiences with Zoe, and what she would change for future releases. In Condensed Soup, we discuss our favourite recent health care tech.

In this episode, we discuss an opinion piece written by Nick Hodges lamenting the decline of the user interface, providing our analysis of the main points regarding where UI has gone wrong and how we can fix it. In Condensed Soup, we discuss the most misused UX research phrases.