Gina Bhawalkar

San Francisco

Principal Analyst at Forrester Research

Principal Analyst @forrester focused on digital accessibility, inclusive design, and UX. Previously led in-house UX teams. All tweets are my own.

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Articles

Figma Config 2025: In An AI World, Design Matters More Than Ever

1 month ago | forrester.com | Gina Bhawalkar

“The future won’t be designed by accident.” That was the optimistic message Figma CEO Dylan Field delivered during the opening keynote at Config 2025, emphasizing the pivotal role designers will play in an era where AI is making it easier to create software than ever before. Dylan reassured the audience of professional designers that as AI accelerates everything, design will be the differentiator. Why?
Ask, Don’t Interrogate: Best Practices For Collecting Zero-Party Data

Mar 13, 2025 | forrester.com | Stephanie Liu |Keith Johnston |Gina Bhawalkar

Companies have been grappling for years with how to personalize customer interactions without being creepy, and data deprecation only adds more complexity. Though Google scrapped its plans to deprecate the third-party cookie, privacy regulations and consumer use of privacy-protecting browsers and tools motivate brands to focus on collecting data directly from consumers.
The Insurance Industry’s Data Posture Is An Existential Risk

Mar 5, 2025 | forrester.com | Rohit Makhijani |Faram Medhora |Gina Bhawalkar

Insurers collect a wealth of data, but only a few have found ways to harness its true potential. Most insurance business and technology leaders have very low confidence in their data assets’ ability to meet customer and competitive demands. Almost all incumbent insurance companies support disparate lines of business and individual parts of the value chain through a plethora of legacy systems and disjointed data silos.
Build Effective Personas To Drive Empathy

Mar 5, 2025 | forrester.com | Gina Bhawalkar |Maxie Schmidt |Martin Gill

Is everyone in your organization aligned on who your customers are? Does your organization understand your customers? Since at least the turn of the millennium, businesses have turned to personas as a way to address questions like these. Personas are insights-based, easy-to-understand representations of a group of people, including their goals, needs, and behaviors. They likely exist in some form in your organization.
GenAI Possibilities Become Reality When Leaders Tackle The Hard Work First

Feb 21, 2025 | forrester.com | Lisa Gately |Manuel Geitz |Gina Bhawalkar

When I talk to B2B leaders about their generative AI (genAI) adoption efforts, I hear a mix of frustration, FOMO, and skepticism. Many feel stuck. They’re unsure whether their organization is behind, and they suspect other leaders have cracked the code. They also field tough questions about the ROI of adoption efforts. But the conversation quickly shifts when they ask the most impactful questions: “What can we do with where we are today?
Imagine A World Where Innovation Never Sleeps

Feb 21, 2025 | forrester.com | Manuel Geitz |Gina Bhawalkar |Enza Iannopollo

Picture an innovation team that continuously screens market trends, translates them into product designs, and assesses manufacturability and pricing scenarios – all in real-time. This is the promise of the AI-orchestrated, semi-autonomous innovation lifecycle. Generative AI (GenAI) is already reshaping the different stages of the innovation process by augmenting creative productivity.
Design GenAI-Powered Experiences Responsibly

Feb 19, 2025 | forrester.com | Gina Bhawalkar |Seth Marrs |Anthony McPartlin

A chatbot dispensing weight loss advice to people with eating disorders? Ranking resumes based solely on what race and ethnicities the names on them are associated with? These are just two real-life examples of the harmful results of failing to apply responsible design when creating genAI-powered experiences. In contrast, when designed well genAI-powered experiences can do immense good.
You’re Overlooking The Key To Customer Service Automation: Tacit Knowledge

Feb 4, 2025 | forrester.com | Christina McAllister |Gina Bhawalkar |Arielle Trzcinski

Customer service leaders have long been promised that AI is the silver bullet for all their (many) challenges: streamlining workflows, enhancing customer satisfaction, and most importantly, reducing costs via lower call volumes. This enthusiasm has only intensified with the adoption of generative AI (genAI) in the enterprise. To be clear: genAI will transform the customer service landscape.
Accessibility Is Still Vital For Businesses

Feb 3, 2025 | forrester.com | Gina Bhawalkar |Arielle Trzcinski |Keith Johnston

Accessibility helps your company increase revenue, resilience, and customer trust while lowering costs. It does this by helping you win more customers and deepen relationships with ones you already have. Recent actions by the US federal government haven’t changed this. Our research shows that:There are at least 17 major ways accessibility helps companies improve their bottom line. To name just a few: It lessens the incidence of — and cost to solve — complaints from customers with disabilities.
It's Not You, It's Me - And Other Findings From The Forrester Wave™: Customer Feedback Management Solutions, Q4 2024

Nov 18, 2024 | forrester.com | Colleen Fazio |Gina Bhawalkar |Dipanjan Chatterjee

At the risk of dating myself – I’m a proud member of GenX. So, perhaps I can be forgiven for channeling Jerry Maguire and George Constanza when I think about the key takeaways from the latest Customer Feedback Management Solutions Wave™. My conversations with the customer references for the nine vendors included in this Forrester Wave™ reinforced my evaluation and what I have been hearing from our clients: The “how” is often more important than the “what” when buying CFM solutions.