Understanding Users: The UX Podcast

"Although it's understandable that this technology brings all sorts of concerns and anxieties and worries with it, and I share those, by the way, as well. It's not all excitement. I really think this is going to transform the entire tech industry...And honestly, I'm really hoping that what AI brings is, it finally brings to fruition what technology was always supposed to do, but didn't. I've always felt that technology's promise is to make our lives, both personal lives and professional lives, significantly easier,  significantly simpler in everything we do, and even significantly more fun." Noam Segal began his UX journey in the mid-2000s, working on the user experience of missile defence systems. He has since worked across multiple spaces, including travel (Airbnb), AI customer support (Intercom), Fintech (Wealthfront), Social (X & Meta.). Most recently he was Senior Research Manager at Upwork. In this episode we talk at length how AI it is impacting, and will continue to impact, the work of UX researchers. He shares his views on the need to embrace and experiment with these tools and the exciting, bewildering and opportunities they present to researchers and design teams, focussing on 3 tools in particular: Sprig, Genway and Julius.  Read the transcript.  Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.  Mike Green    

'From an internal perspective we're using AI everywhere from marketing to writing code..' 'I think because everybody is trying to get in the AI game you're just throwing things at a wall and seeing what sticks..' 'There's a good portion of my job that could be automated, so I'm just trying to get a little bit ahead of the curve..' 'My concern is that AI is going to be used not as an accelerator but as the end point for design..' 'It's a bit calming to understand that people are just as confused and scared as I am...' In this episode join me as I speak to a whole range of attendees at UX Brighton 2024 about why they came to this year's event on AI & UX, how they use AI at the moment and what their hopes and fears are for the industry and their own roles in an artificially intelligent future. Read the transcript. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.  Mike Green

"What we're aiming to do is answer the question, what do UX practitioners need to know about AI? I want to reduce people's anxiety in the same way that my anxiety has been reduced by confronting the the subject...I'd really like people to leave the conference feeling less anxious about [AI] than they felt coming in." Danny Hope, Curator of the UX Brighton conference, talks to me about Artificial Intelligence in UX - the theme of this year's event, the speakers those attending will be hearing from and what the audience can hope to take away to try out in their own work.  View the transcript. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.  Mike Green    

Join me chatting with author and cultural expert Chui Chui Tan around researching and designing products for international markets. What do design teams need to consider to ensure the best cultural fit and customer uptake for what they're building? How can they better understand local market differences? What potential pitfalls should they watch out for?  You can find out more about Chui Chui's most recent book here.  You can also read the full Transcript.  Thanks for listening.  Mike Green

"The only reason I sometimes shy away from the words 'qual' and 'quant' is I think they present this dichotomy that is not the full truth, right? I think people then start to think 'qual' means talking to people about fuzzy feelings and doing personas, whereas 'quant' means you sit on billions of data points and you put graphs and fancy charts out and you speak in ways that normal people don't understand. Whereas in reality, obviously, it's a continuum, right? That's why I prefer to talk about the whole dimension as product insights, because we're all trying, at the end of the day, to understand people so that we can make better decisions for our product and for our businesses." Join me chatting with Ben Dressler around all things quantitative research: how it differs from qualitative research, when to use it, what to watch out for, how to run A/B tests, how and why to use surveys, how to think about confidence intervals, the perennial dangers of correlation vs. causation, and lots more besides... I hope you find something thought-provoking here to consider in the context of your own work.  You can also read the full Transcript.  Thanks for listening.  Mike Green    

Tina Lickova is an independent researcher and service designer. She is also host of the excellent UX Research Geeks podcast.  In this honest and candid episode, Tina talks with me from personal experience about professional burnout working as a researcher: what it is, how to acknowledge it, what the warning signs are and how to take action. We also discuss some positive strategies to adopt to minimise the risk of it in the first place.  I hope you find something thought-provoking here to consider in the context of your own life and work.  You can also read the full Transcript.  Thanks for listening.  Mike Green    

Steve Portigal is an experienced user researcher who helps organisations to build more mature user research practices. He is principal of Portigal Consulting, and the author of two books: Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries and Interviewing Users, the second edition of which is now out. He’s also the host of the Dollars to Donuts podcast.  In this episode, Steve and I discuss the latest edition of his classic book 'Interviewing Users'. Some highlights from this episode: > 05:20 - How user research has evolved in the last 10 years and the genesis of the second edition of the book > 11:00 - Remote research and the impact of COVID  > 17:22 - Developments in user research tooling > 23:40 - Emergence of ResearchOps as a career path  > 31:40 - Navigating challenges in running user research > 39:37 - Steve’s own key takeaway from the book  > 45:11 - Feedback loops and ways of building rapport with users > 50:35 - The joy and privilege of researching and learning  > 57:25 - The impact of AI on research as a discipline I hope you will find plenty here that's thought-provoking to consider in the context of your own work :)   And there's a SPECIAL LISTENER OFFER: until 4 March 2024, you can purchase Steve's new book with a 20% discount here with the code understandingusers. :)  Thanks for listening! Mike Green @ Researchable FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT HIGHLIGHTS TRANSCRIPT    

Julian Della Mattia is a UX Researcher specialised in Research Operations. He helps companies of all sizes build their user research practices from scratch. In this episode he explains the ResearchOps function, when and how it can add value to product teams, and he shares his experiences of advising and working with organisations across Europe to elevate how they gather and action insights from their users.   I hope you find something thought-provoking here to consider in the context of your own work.  Thanks for listening.  Mike Green

This time I'm chatting with some of the attendees at UX Brighton 2023, themed around Creativity and Innovation. They share with me why they came to this year's event and what they have taken away from it.  I hope you enjoy the episode and find something thought-provoking here to consider in your own work. Thanks for listening.  Mike Green

"I think because of the gravitas of what AI can bring to the world in terms of social impact leaders have to be extremely humble...As a leader in this space, you have to kind of understand that you're going to have to hire people who aren't the typical employee. The other thing too - it's very important to the leadership team to hire a diverse group of people and I really mean diverse, because if you're designing for essentially the whole world, you need to represent the whole world on the team." Chris Reardon was formerly Head of Product Design, Responsible AI @ Meta and is now Design Director - AI Envisioning Studio, Technology & Society @ Google. This is the final part of a series of four revealing AI-related conversations with Chris as he discusses his own career journey at the cutting edge of designing artificial intelligence products, his views on the impact of AI on design as a discipline, the roles and responsibilities that will be needed for design leadership in AI, how AI might influence individual design careers.   In this episode we talk about the role of leadership in AI product teams.  Chris is hugely experienced, impassioned and persuasive, and he shares plenty of nuggets of his hard-won wisdom that anyone in any organisation considering working in the AI space should reflect upon. I hope you enjoy this episode and find something thought-provoking to consider in the context of your own work.  Thanks for listening.  Mike Green