Contribution & recognition

Current recognition

Kameleoon UX-Pert 2026 nomination

I have been nominated for Kameleoon’s UX-Pert 2026 recognition.

This is lovely, unexpected, and still a phrase I remain emotionally unprepared to say out loud.

The nomination recognises people contributing to the UX, experimentation, and optimisation community through education, insight, public work, and practical industry contribution.

Previous accolades

Kameleoon Top A/B Testing Influencers 2024 - UX & User Behaviour

In 2024, Kameleoon included me in its A/B testing, UX and user behaviour influencer list. I’ve never thought influence should be measured only by audience size; if one useful idea helps one person challenge groupthink or see a problem differently, that matters

You can read my thoughts on it in this here

Zuko Analytics UX Thought Leader List 2023

In 2023, Zuko included me in its list of 22 UX Thought Leaders to Follow, recognising my work around conversion killers, accessibility and usability. The write-up also referenced my 20 years in UX and optimisation, my focus on accessibility and digital inclusion, and the UX Autopsy series as part of my public contribution to practical UX education.

You can review the full list here.

Speaking and conference involvement

I regularly contribute to industry events, conferences, and community discussions across UX, experimentation, optimisation, research, and AI-shaped digital change.

This has included involvement with:

• Experimentation Elite
• Conversion Hotel
• MeasureCamp London
• TLC
• industry webinars and panel discussions
• community events and practical learning sessions
• talks and workshops on UX, optimisation, AI, trust, retention, and decision-making

My talks usually sit somewhere between strategic wake-up call, practical diagnostic tool, and controlled demolition of whatever comforting nonsense the industry has been telling itself that month.

Featured talks

Your website is dead. So now what?

A keynote exploring how customer journeys have shifted upstream, why trust is shaped before the click, and why websites now act less like the start of the journey and more like the place where promises are tested.

The talk introduced the idea that modern optimisation needs to look beyond the interface and examine the wider decision environment:

• what is actually true
• what the world repeats
• what machines infer
• what people believe before arrival
• where the interface confirms or breaks the story

It also introduced C.O.R.P.S.E, a practical triage model for diagnosing weak claims, unclear offers, operational mismatches, missing proof, contradictory signals, and entity drift.

Have I got your retention?

A keynote about why brands struggle to keep customers, even when they are armed with loyalty schemes, engagement tactics, dashboards, and all the usual retention theatre.

The talk challenges the idea that retention is just a numbers game. It looks at the difference between transactional loyalty and emotional loyalty, and argues that true loyalty is built through trust, connection, respect, and genuine value, not just discounts, points, or incentives.

The themes include:

• emotional loyalty vs transactional loyalty
• why engagement does not automatically mean loyalty
• what brands misunderstand about customer needs
• why retention is relational, not just tactical
• how anthropology and human behaviour can reveal what dashboards miss
• the invisible cost of ignored emotions
• why observation often tells you more than assumption

At its core, the talk asks whether brands are really serving their customers, or just measuring the easiest things and calling it insight.

Mentoring, judging and emerging voices

Alongside speaking and publishing, I’ve contributed to the industry by judging awards, supporting emerging practitioners and helping surface new voices in experimentation.

I was involved with TLC’s speaker development initiative in 2024 and 2025, judging newer practitioners and offering mentorship time to help develop ideas, confidence and conference-ready talks.

I was also invited to judge Speak Up to UpLevel, a contest supporting emerging female and non-binary voices in experimentation by encouraging thoughtful public contributions through posts and articles.

I’ve judged several industry initiatives and awards, including:

• Conversion Elite Awards 2020 — recognising individuals, brands, agencies, tools and technology contributing to CRO and conversion marketing.
• Experimentation Elite Awards 2025 — vendor category judging.

This year I have been invited to judge speaker applications for the Women in Experimentation Summit 2026, an online summit focused on widening the stage for women, non-binary practitioners and allies in CRO, experimentation, UX, research, analytics, accessibility, behavioural science and AI. The judging process is designed to spotlight strong, real ideas from both first-time and experienced speakers, with applications scored independently by three judges before the final line-up is reviewed for quality and diversity.

Community contribution

I contribute to the UX, experimentation, and optimisation community through:

• speaking
• mentoring
• judging
• conference participation
• practical workshops
• public critique and analysis
• educational content
• industry discussion
• supporting peers and newer practitioners
• translating complex ideas into plain English without sanding off the useful edges

I care about helping the industry get better at thinking clearly.

Not louder.

Not shinier.

Clearer.

Education and practical teaching

I enjoy helping people understand complex, technical, or strategic topics without making them feel stupid.

That has included workshops and explainers on:

• UX research
• usability
• experimentation
• CRO
• AI and automation
• prompt design
• structured thinking
• evidence-led decision-making
• accessibility and inclusive design
• practical use of tools and frameworks

My teaching style is usually direct, visual, pragmatic, and mildly allergic to jargon.

If people leave with a clearer mental model than they arrived with, the work has done its job.

Why this matters

Recognition is nice.

Contribution matters more.

The reason I speak, write, teach, mentor, and show up in community spaces is because a lot of digital work still suffers from the same avoidable problems:

• vague claims
• weak proof
• unclear offers
• broken journeys
• inaccessible interfaces
• research theatre
• dashboard worship
• strategic cowardice
• and a disturbing tolerance for bullshit in expensive shoes

My public work is usually an attempt to name those problems clearly enough that people can actually do something about them.

The useful bit

If you are looking for someone to contribute to a conference, panel, workshop, podcast, webinar, awards discussion, judging panel, mentoring initiative, or industry event, I am usually interested in topics around:

• UX research
• usability
• conversion and experimentation
• upstream optimisation
• trust and evidence
• AI-shaped discovery
• digital decision-making
• customer retention
• emotional loyalty
• content clarity
• interface critique
• menopause and work
• the human reality behind digital systems

I am especially interested in work that makes people think harder, question lazy assumptions, or look at a familiar problem from a less beige angle.

Short bio

Abi Hough is a UX researcher, optimisation strategist, speaker, and founder of We Are Corpus.

She has over 20 years’ experience helping teams understand user behaviour, diagnose digital problems, and improve the clarity, trust, and usability of websites, products, and journeys.

Her work combines UX research, interface critique, content clarity, experimentation thinking, and strategic diagnosis. She is particularly interested in how trust is formed before the click, how AI is changing discovery, and why many conversion problems are really evidence, expectation, or organisational reality problems wearing a UX hat.

She is known for sharp, practical talks that combine serious strategic thinking with humour, scepticism, and a healthy intolerance for bullshit.