Insights Unlocked

Susana La Luz-Hawkins is the Research Department Director of Design & Customer Experience at J.P. Morgan Chase. Susana gave a talk at the Epic Conference 2015 titled “The Missing Tool in the Design Leadership Toolbox: Integrating Conflict Management into Collaborative Design.” As design and UX teams continue to grow, managing conflict might be even more critical today, and in this episode, Susana shares some best practices for managing conflict.

Kevin Newton is Manager of UX Research Practice at LinkedIn; in this episode, he shares insights on how he’s scaling a research team at a large and growing company. His team is also working on a unique effort to quantify what it means to have a “simple” user experience, and its relationship to LinkedIn's metrics and revenue.

Temitayo Olasimbo is instrumental in advocating for measured Inclusion and Diversity goals with Best Buy's research platforms, as well as leading the work on exploring inclusive terminology to implement in Best Buy's I&D roadmap. In this episode, we talk with Temmy about doing the good and difficult work of DE&I and how it impacts research and larger strategy design and business decisions.

Jakob Nielsen takes us on a journey into the history of UX from the past, the present, to the beyond--offering predictions of what UX will look like in 2050. Last year, Nielsen gave a keynote speech titled UX 2050; sharing fascinating predictions about what the UX profession might look like in just a few decades. Nielsen predicts growth from the current 1.5 million UX professionals to a monumental 100 million over the next 30 years. We dig into that prediction and what it means for innovation, research and the world economy.

Announcing the launch of UXpeditious: A UserZoom podcast, bringing you quick, insightful interviews with design, product, and UX leaders. Check out the trailer, and please click subscribe to make sure you don't miss our first episode featuring Jakob Nielsen, dropping June 21st.

For more information, visit UserZoom.com

Help us improve the show and suggest topics or guests! Click here to take our quick survey. https://s.userzoom.com/m/MSBDMzAxUzI4NyAg

Today we’re recapping our fifth season of the Human Insight Podcast.

Maybe the biggest change to the podcast this season you’ll have noticed is we started including into episodes more clips from our opt-in contributor network. These are people from around the world, responding to questions we asked either related to that episode’s guest and topic, or to a current news event or trend.

This season's episodes: 

Thank you to all the listeners of the podcast, wherever you may be. And thank you to all the guests for making time for us and sharing their stories.

Ethan Song, Co-founder and CEO of RareCircles, joins the Human Insight Podcast this week. 

Ethan was previously the co-founder and CEO of Frank And Oak, a leading direct-to-consumer brand, and he’s an active investor in Web3. As the RareCircle’s CEO, Ethan empowers a new generation of entrepreneurs and brands to build deeper relationships with their communities through NFTs and blockchain technology. Its intuitive platform allows anyone to make, sell and manage powerful NFT memberships under one operating system.

We asked Ethan about what brands and the general public should know about NFTs, as well as:  

Adam Thomas believes the role of a product manager is one thing only: how do you help the organization make better decisions consistently? 

Part of that is knowing when to stop work on a product idea, when to pivot on a product, and when to double down on a product initiative. Adam, lead product manager at SmartRecruiters, as well as a speaker, consultant and technologist, has developed what he calls  Survival Metrics to help product managers do just that. 

Adam joined Janelle Estes, UserTesting’s Chief Insights Officer, on this week’s episode of the Human Insight Podcast. They talked about his Survival Metrics, the difference between them and success metrics, and more.

Good UX writing begins with usability and accessibility. 

Bobbie Wood, founder and CEO of UX Content Collective, joins the Human Insight Podcast this week to discuss UX writing and the importance of making it inclusive to everyone and all abilities. 

Bobbie and co-host Janelle Estes, UserTesting’s Chief Insights Officer, also discuss how Artificial Intelligence will impact UX writing.

We also solicited feedback from UX writers and content writers from around the world, asking their thoughts about AI and how it may affect their careers.

You can watch highlight reel videos of what they said. In the first, they answer whether AI will take their job. And in the second, we ask what advantages do you think humans have over AI when it comes to writing.

One of the rules of product research is “insights are best shared,” says C. Todd Lombardo.

The subtext is never write a report that no one is going to read. 

C. Todd is the vice president of product and design at Openly, an insurance-tech company empowering agents to deliver a higher standard of service through cutting-edge technology and comprehensive options.

He joined UserTesting’s CEO Andy MacMillan on the Human Insight Podcast to talk about all things product management, such as how he shares insights and aligns the company with what customers want. 

Instead of writing reports, C. Todd said, product leaders should ask themselves how do you bring people along for the ride? How can you share the insights you’re getting from your customers? Can you involve others in your organization before the insights are even generated? 

For example, he is often asked how he involves an executive in a design sprint. 

His strategy, he said, is to apply a multitouch inclusion strategy.

Include them the first half hour of the first day when you are doing your assumption storming and trying to understand the problem you are solving so that they have the opportunity to co-create with you and shape the problem you’re trying to solve. 

Bring them in again at the end of the third day when you’ve gotten your sketches ready and your starting prototyping. “These are the solutions we think we’re going to to try and build, prototype and test, what do you think.”

And then bring them in again at the end of the last day. “We tested this and here are some of the videos from our conversations, these are some of the things we learned.”

By doing that, they’ve had more visibility — and buy in — into the whole journey. It’s not easy, C. Todd says, but it’s the best way he’s seen teams get executives involved. 

Listen to the episode to get more insights from C. Todd. Also, in a new podcast segment we’re calling UserTesting Insights, you can also hear what podcast listeners thought about the Human Insight Podcast’s old introduction and its replacement.