"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, 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

“If I think about five years from now, I would say that UX as we know it today will be radically changed....Things that deal with rote tasks are definitely going to be something of the domain of AI in the future.... [but] I think the space that we [as designers] work in is around intuition, empathy, emotion, and that's much much harder for AI. You know, it's a scary time for everyone, right? Everybody's a little nervous. But the reality is that a lot of what we do already is still very valuable in this future world that's already here." 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 third of my 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 career planning for designers and researchers working on AI-based products.   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

“Design is really going to be the practice of ethics in AI...Designers bring into reality these esoteric concepts, and so while an ethicist sitting next to you is helpful in the sense that they can help you think about these things, the designer's role is actually going to be how you implement those things..  We will also start to build UX AI tools that will help us iterate at a much larger scale...So imagine being able to create numerous scenarios where you can test your model against them in real-time, iterate and fine-tune...” 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 second of my short series of 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 importance of ethics in building AI-based products and services.    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

“I think the biggest thing is that with AI, you are definitely going to create net new roles in the in the team that you had never thought of before. And there's not going to be a playbook for that, and the HR person and the recruiter is not going to know how to help you with that and you're gonna have to figure those things out together as a team…Design will be less about UI in the future and more about different methods of communicating…” Chris Reardon was formerly Head of Product Design, Responsible AI @ Meta and is now Design Director - AI Envisioning Studio, Technology & Society @ Google. Over the course of the next four episodes I talk to Chris about 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 his career and how AI is likely to impact the makeup of 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

"Something that's colliding is definitely that sense of artificial intelligence and particularly generative AI, and what that means for creativity... I'm much more in the kind of William Morris view of the world, I think we need more thinkers and crafts people. And my positive view of AI is that it will get rid of some of the drudge work we do and it will free up time for people to be more imaginative and more creative. As a result of that we can spend more time with the people we're trying to solve problems for, coming up with more imaginative ideas.." This time I'm chatting with some of the speakers at UX Brighton 2023 in advance of the event. They talk to me about what insights they plan to share, what they hope the audience will take away and share their views how creativity, innovation and artificial intelligence are starting to intersect. My thanks to: Elizabeth Churchill Alice Helliwell Stefanie Posavec Chris How Tricky Bassett  and Tom Kerwin.    Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoy the episode and find something thought-provoking here to consider in your own work.  Mike Green

"Speak to your users directly and ask them specifically what their challenges are. That was that was probably the biggest takeaway [from today] for me.... I think, certainly in my [small business] sector we tend to assume rather than ask, and I think asking directly what users have feedback about, or reviewing how they how they use services or how they don't use services specifically, is really [important]." "I'm just really enjoying being around other digital professionals and being able to talk about a lot of the things that are affecting us in our industry." This is the final episode in a three part mini-series about the Lion+Mason event at the Leeds Digital Festival 2023. Recorded on the day, you'll hear from a variety of event attendees as they they reflect on what they learned from the sessions and what practical tips they plan to take away to use in their own organisations. My thanks to all the attendees who agreed to share their thoughts, and to Alisha Moran and Jana Petrova from Lion+Mason for doing the recordings for me.  Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.  Mike Green  

Danny Hope is a Product Strategy Consultant and Founder of UX Brighton, a long-running annual one-day UX conference on the south coast of the UK.  The theme of this year's event is Creativity and Innovation, and in this episode I chat with Danny about the kinds of talks attendees can expect and what learnings they can hope to take away to try out in their own work.  "I've seen time and again the damaging effects on teams where innovation and creativity aren't recognised as important. I've seen the limiting effect that that can have on the quality of the output of those teams - and to some extent the happiness of the individuals contributing. Creativity and innovation are such important concepts, but the terms are so misused. I'd like to ask people to be able to talk about these things comfortably, and with a kind of sound framework of understanding..." Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.  Mike Green

"AI has existed for a long time. It's built into so many design tools that we use these days...It's just a case of exploring it, seeing what works for you and what doesn't - and obviously, getting a good understanding of, is this helping me or is it hindering me?" "In terms of AI, I don't know (and I don't want to know) how AI is going to affect people who write about funerals. Because you cannot replace that human empathy...I'm one of those content designers who doesn't like it and who really believes in the skill and the experience that we bring to our profession." "We're still learning how to use AI. And I think it's going to be really, really key to be able to work alongside it and just kind of understand how we can utilise these features to our benefit."   The Leeds Digital Festival is returning this year: an open, collaborative celebration of digital culture in all its forms held across the city. In association with Leeds Building Society local digital design agency Lion+Mason is hosting an informal in-person event to hear from leading specialists discussing some of the key digital challenges facing businesses - including how AI holds immense potential for enhancing product capabilities and how it can directly impact user experience. In this episode I chat with the speakers about what they will be covering in their talks and what relevant, practical tips they hope attendees can take away to use in their own organisations. The speakers are: Joe Deadman Senior Creative UX Designer at Leeds Building Society Marc Bowers User Experience Consultant at LION+MASON Helen Lawson Lead content designer at Co-op and Me!   More details about the event are here.   If you wish to attend, you can register here.  The blog post about AI which Marc mentions is here.  Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.  Mike Green

Andy Curry is Managing Director of product and design agency Lion+Mason. L+M are returning this year to the Leeds Digital Festival, an open, collaborative celebration of digital culture in all its forms held across the city. In association with Leeds Building Society, L+M are hosting an informal in-person event to hear from leading specialists discussing some of the key digital challenges facing businesses - including how AI holds immense potential for enhancing product capabilities and how it can directly impact user experience. In this episode I chat with Andy in advance of the event about the kinds of talks attendees can expect and what learnings they can hope to take away. More details about the event are here.   You can register for the event here. Listen to Andy's previous appearance on this podcast here, where he chats engagingly about his career in UX and his work.    Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.  Mike Green  

"We're not going to be replaced by AI, but we might be replaced by humans who know how to use AI." This is the final part in a series of bite-sized conversations with UX design and research leaders, recorded live at the UXDX conference in New York in May 2023. In this episode Chrissy Fleming, an independent product management consultant and Erin Eisinger, Founder and CEO of design studio Four By North, share their views on product management, approaching design problems in a user-centric way, and how a new generation of AI-based tooling could help us unlock the way product teams plan and conduct research with their users.    They also reflect on the role of AI in the design space, where we are with it and where we may be going... Thanks for listening, and enjoy the episode.   Mike Green

Claire White is Product Design Lead @ Exscientia, an AI-based Pharmatech research company.  She shares with me her experiences of moving into the rapidly-evolving world of AI-powered Pharmatech, her views on the importance of rapid, ongoing prototyping when designing products, and why User-Centred Design is not just UX Design.  Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.  Mike Green

"This is an arms race and no one's taking their foot off the gas..." This is the sixth in a series of bite-sized conversations with UX design and research leaders discussing a range of topics, recorded live at the UXDX conference in New York in May 2023. In this episode John Crouch of Entropik shares his views on how a new generation of AI-based tooling can help us powerfully rethink, democratise and unlock the way product teams plan and conduct research with their users.    He also reflects on the role of AI more generally in the design space and beyond: where we are with it and where we may be going..... Thanks for listening, and enjoy the episode.   Mike Green This podcast is brought to you by Researchable UX.

“What would I say is, first of all, be kind to yourself because that stuff is hard...It’s not a case of just going in and dialling it in every day...You require a deeper set of resilient skills to be able to survive in those kinds of places, especially if you've come from a place where design is accepted, that could be from university or academia, whatever it is...You have to really figure out where the opportunities lie for you to play, to deliver value to both the customer and the business…To start it off, I would really try and identify the least amount of effort that you can actually do to get the most amount of reward for the business..” Gerry Scullion is a long-standing Podcast Host, and Founder of The Human Centered Design Network & the Makers & Doers School.  He shares with me his fascinating journey into UX and Service Design during the early years of the 'Celtic Tiger', his advice on building individual resilience to overcome the challenges inherent in digitally immature organisations, and the need for us all to be mindful of not washing away years of hard-won UX expertise in the current goldrush for all things 'AI'.   Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.  Mike Green

Ian Mulvany is Chief Technology Officer at the British Medical Journal (BMJ). Join me for a fascinating conversation with a seasoned technology leader building innovative and empowering healthcare products.  "Technology as it is configured today....we are still at the foothills of understanding [how] this is going to drive our future economies... There are still hundreds of millions of people to come to the web and so when we think about healthcare, the future demand on healthcare is going to far outstrip the access to the number of doctors that are out there. So how do we equip people to work at what is sometimes called the 'top end of their licence', to be able to deliver that? I think digital has an immense role to play there. So I'm hugely excited about being in a place where the tools we build can help build that story." Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.  Mike Green    

This is the fifth in a series of bite-sized conversations with UX design and research leaders discussing a range of topics, recorded at the UXDX conference in New York in May 2023. In this episode Megan Mathews, UX Research Lead at Docusign, discusses the challenges of deploying realistic and usable personas across organisations as part of the design process. We also - inevitably - discuss AI, and she shares her views how researchers can consider leveraging tools like ChatGPT to simplify and supercharge their research practice.  Thanks for listening, and enjoy the episode.   Mike Green

This is the fourth in a series of bite-sized conversations with UX design and research leaders discussing a range of topics, recorded at the UXDX conference in New York in May 2023. In this episode author, speaker and Design Lead Kent Eisenhuth of Google shares his views on the importance of building diverse teams when designing and testing data visualisations, the potential for data 'sonification' to improve how we present users with data, and how AI might help designers make better choices for visualising data going forward.  Kent also talks about his experiences and the lessons learned from building a community of practice within Google.    His new book is available to purchase on Amazon: Drawing Product Ideas  Two links which might be of interest: Material Design Blog's Top Tips for Data Accessibility Material Design System's Data Visualization Guidelines   Thanks for listening, and enjoy the episode.   Mike Green

This is the third in a series of bite-sized conversations with UX design and research leaders discussing a range of topics, recorded live at the UXDX conference in New York in May 2023. In this episode Prayag Narula of Marvin shares his views on how a new generation of AI-based tooling can help us powerfully rethink, democratise and unlock the way product teams plan and conduct research with their users.    He also reflects on the role of AI more generally in the design space: where we are with it and where we may be going..... Thanks for listening, and enjoy the episode.   Mike Green This podcast is brought to you by Researchable UX.

Ian Pocock is MD of Research & Service Design at Transform. In this wide-ranging discussion, Ian shares his views on how product teams should always maintain a diverse outlook to avoid falling into the trap of (re)creating homogenous products; we chat about the importance of maintaining an endlessly user-centred mindset; and he shares his experiences of using Lego within workshops as a way to powerfully unlock organisational hierarchies and democratise the design process.  Finally, he plays my 3 card challenge to share his favourite UX tool, favourite technique and a trend he sees in the future.  Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.  Mike Green This podcast is brought to you by Researchable UX. My thanks again to our sponsor Oxford Insights.  And if you have a moment I'd love to hear your feedback on the podcast, to help me improve it. 

This is the second in a series of bite-sized conversations with UX design and research leaders discussing a range of topics, recorded live at the UXDX conference in New York in May 2023. In this episode Moshe Mikanovsky of Bain Public shares his thoughts on the importance of the right product management culture, and how product managers should go about choosing the tooling they use with their product teams.  He also reflects on the role of AI in the design space: where we are with it and where we may be going..... You can listen to Moshe's podcast here.    Thanks for listening, and enjoy the episode.   And thanks to our sponsor Oxford Insights. Mike Green This podcast is brought to you by Researchable UX.

This is the first in a series of bite-sized conversations with UX design and research leaders discussing a range of topics, recorded live at the UXDX conference in New York in May 2023. In this episode Alex Wilson of T Rowe Price shares his experiences of working with a team to create an in-house design system, and the lessons they learned along the way.  He also reflects on the role of AI in the design space: where we are with it and where we may be going.....   Thanks for listening, and enjoy the episode.   And thanks to our sponsor Oxford Insights. Mike Green This podcast is brought to you by Researchable UX.

What is generative Artificial Intelligence (AI)? What aspects of generative AI are academics conducting cutting edge research currently investigating? How can UX researchers and designers apply lessons from this research in their own work? And should we learn to love or fear AI?   In the second episode from the CHI2023 Human Computer Interaction conference in Hamburg, I chat in-person with five attendees about the event, their own research, and what the future may hold for generative AI.  There isn’t possibly time to cover the vast range great talks and sessions at CHI2023, but I hope this will give you a flavour of what was on offer and what those who attended took away from the event.   Many thanks to my guests: Eva Wolfangel  Sophie Freeman Kiwi Dai Jake Rigby and Torben Volkmann   Thanks for listening, and enjoy the episode.   And thanks to our sponsor Oxford Insights.   Mike Green This podcast is brought to you by Researchable UX. If you'd like to help support the podcast, you can donate a very modest sum by buying me a virtual coffee. That would be hugely appreciated. Thank you!   

What is generative Artificial Intelligence (AI)? What aspects of generative AI are academics conducting cutting edge research currently investigating? How can UX researchers and designers apply lessons from this research in their own work? And should we learn to love or fear AI?   In the first of two episodes from the CHI2023 Human Computer Interaction conference in Hamburg, I chat in-person with five attendees about the event, their own research, and what the future may hold for generative AI.  There isn’t possibly time to cover the vast range great talks and sessions at CHI2023, but I hope this will give you a flavour of what was on offer and what those who attended took away from the event.   Many thanks to my guests: Elizabeth Churchill Anna Xyghou Kars Alfrink Kent Lyons and Rgee Gallega   Thanks for listening, and enjoy the episode.   And thanks to our sponsor Oxford Insights.   Mike Green This podcast is brought to you by Researchable UX. If you'd like to help support the podcast, you can donate a very modest sum by buying me a virtual coffee. That would be hugely appreciated. Thank you!   

Tina Ličková is a senior user researcher and strategist, and host of the UX Research Geeks podcast, where this conversation is also published.  She originally began her career in marketing and later found her calling in User Experience. She co-founded and managed a service design studio that helped corporations as well as startups, and she has also led multidisciplinary teams, enabling them to build insight-driven products.  This time, rather than just me asking the questions, Tina and I interview each other...about our own experiences in UX, about how and why we do what we do, about podcasting, and about the challenges of 'moving fast and breaking things' during digital transformation in organisations. Finally, she plays my 3 card challenge to share her favourite UX tool, favourite technique and a trend she sees in the future.  Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.  Mike Green This podcast is brought to you by Researchable UX. My thanks again to our sponsor Ribbon. If you'd like to learn more, visit their website or reach out to their Founder Axel Thomson directly.  If you have a moment, I'd love to hear your feedback on the podcast to help me improve it.  And finally, if you'd like to support the podcast in a very modest way yourself and help me continue to producing regular content of the kind you'd like to hear, buying me a virtual coffee would be hugely appreciated. Thank you!

Peter Kariuki is a software engineer and entrepreneur, and the co-founder of the start-up SafeMotos, a motorcycle ride-sharing solution in Rwanda. He believes that technology can transform people’s lives and help solve Africa’s most pressing problems.  In this episode, Peter and I talk about the context of digital design in Africa, how mobile phone coverage in Rwanda affected early design decisions within the SafeMotos app, and his belief in the importance of 'going out of your way' to user test your product in context - not just in a lab - to properly understand your users.   Finally, he plays my 3 card challenge to share his favourite UX tool, favourite technique and a trend he sees in the future.  Peter is one of the keynote speakers at the CHI23 conference: https://chi2023.acm.org/program/keynotes/ You can find out more about Peter here: https://peterkariuki.com/ Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.  Mike Green   This podcast is brought to you by Researchable UX. My thanks again to our sponsor Ribbon. If you'd like to learn more, visit their website or reach out to their Founder Axel Thomson directly.  If you have a moment, I'd love to hear your feedback on the podcast to help me improve it.  And finally, if you'd like to support the podcast in a very modest way yourself and help me continue to producing regular content of the kind you'd like to hear, buying me a virtual coffee would be hugely appreciated. Thank you!  

Is there a way to enable a digital avatar to ask a user research questions in an exploratory or qualitative manner? One that elicits useful research insight that can be transcribed and analyzed in real time? If users are wary of the 'uncanny valley' of interacting with an avatar will they engage with it? And how smart can these things ultimately get? Rob Symes is CEO at Fortell.ai. In this episode he shares with me his digital career path as a serial entrepreneur and his founder journey so far with Fortell. We discuss the opportunities and risks posed by AI in trying to understand real human user motivation and needs, the resistance he's faced from some corners of the user research community, and the power of actually going out and 'sitting in the customer's shoes', despite all the benefits that remote research can bring.  Finally, he plays my 3 card challenge to share his favourite UX tool, favourite technique and a trend he sees in the future.  Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.  Mike Green   This podcast is brought to you by Researchable UX. My thanks again to our sponsor Ribbon. If you'd like to learn more, visit their website or reach out to their Founder Axel Thomson directly.  If you have a moment, I'd love to hear your feedback on the podcast to help me improve it.  And finally, if you'd like to support the podcast in a very modest way yourself and help me continue to producing regular content of the kind you'd like to hear, buying me a virtual coffee would be hugely appreciated. Thank you!

Axel Thomson is the CEO and Founder of Ribbon, a platform for rapid, continuous UX research that lets organisations do user interviews and in-product surveys in real time with customers, as they are actually using that organisation's website or apps. In this episode, Axel and I chat about his career pivot from product manager to digital start-up founder, and how the challenges he faced as a product manager recruiting the right users to research with at pace and at scale led to the genesis of Ribbon.  We discuss his views on the future of user research, the lessons he's learned as a founder, and the importance of resisting the urge to fill awkward silence when interviewing users... Finally, he plays my 3 card challenge to share his favourite UX tool, favourite technique and a trend he sees in the future.  Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.    Mike Green   This podcast is brought to you by Researchable UX. My thanks again to our sponsor Ribbon. If you'd like to learn more, visit their website or reach out to Axel directly.  If you have a moment, I'd love to hear your feedback on the podcast to help me improve it.  And finally, if you'd like to support the podcast in a very modest way yourself and help me continue to produce more of the kind of content you'd like to hear, buying me a virtual coffee would be hugely appreciated. Thank you!          

What's the best way to run an A/B test? How can you increase your customer conversion rate through UX research? What is funnel performance analysis?  "If you listen to your users they will tell you what they want and then you have to be creative in.....the experience that generates value for them. This is what customer centricity is in my view - generating value so that users are willing to continue their engagement with you and continue their interaction. So qualitative analytics and UX research is what makes CRO effective..." Ihor Sokol is Co-Founder of Conversion Rate Store, a Ukraine-based Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) agency. Ihor is a CRO/UXO pro who has been in the CRO/UXO field for almost a decade. He co-founded a performance-based CRO agency ConversionRate.Store, leading CRO projects for companies like Microsoft, Comodo, Ukrainian International Airlines, and Depositphotos. He is a regular speaker at marketing conferences, and a lecturer of UX, quant analytics, and A/B testing at CRO Academy.   In this episode, Ihor and I discuss the CRO and UX research strategies he and his team use to drive up customer conversion rates for their clients, the challenge of finding the right CRO experts to work with him and his team, and the ways to convince sometimes sceptical clients of the value of CRO.    Finally, he plays my 3 card challenge to share his favourite UX tool, favourite technique and a trend he sees in the future.  Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.  Mike Green This podcast is brought to you by Researchable UX. If you'd like to help support the podcast, you can donate a very modest sum by buying me a virtual coffee. That would be hugely appreciated. Thank you!   

Alex Race is Head of Digital Customer Platforms at APM Terminals, part of Maersk group.  Imagine that 3 months into a new role as Head of UX and Design within one of the world’s largest transportation and logistics companies your organisation gets attacked by international cyberterrorism. At a stroke, this takes out most of the company's IT infrastructure. The responsibility of rebuilding your digital customer channels in the aftermath falls to you. What do you do? Where do you even start?  This was the extraordinary personal and professional challenge that faced Alex Race in 2017. In this episode, recorded after we met at UXDX 2022 in Dublin, he talks to me about the immediate after-effects of that cyberattack and how the organisation had to rebuild its digital capability pretty much from scratch. He also reflects on the unique career opportunities this presented him, allowing him to redirect their digital product strategy towards putting the user experience at the heart of everything they build. Finally, he plays my 3 card challenge to share his favourite UX tool, favourite technique and a trend he sees (or would like to see) in the future.  Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.  Mike Green This podcast is brought to you by Researchable UX. If you'd like to help support the podcast, you can donate a very modest sum by buying me a virtual coffee. That would be hugely appreciated. Thank you!   

In the second episode recorded in-person at UXDX 2022 in Dublin, I chat in depth with six conference attendees from a broad spectrum of organisations to get them to reflect on the event, and hear more about why they came and what they will take away from it. We also discuss the challenges and opportunities they face in their own companies, and consider what in their view the future holds for User Experience as a discipline.  Within this short episode there isn’t time to cover all the great talks and sessions at UXDX 2022, but it will give you a flavour of what was on offer and what those who attended took away from the event. Many thanks to my guests: Vanessa Sauer from Booking.com Mike Brown from Reed Duaa Gettani from Square Noah Levin from Figma AJ King from Ocado Ashley May from Trainline Thanks for listening, and enjoy the episode.   Mike Green This podcast is brought to you by Researchable UX. If you'd like to help support the podcast, you can donate a very modest sum by buying me a virtual coffee. That would be hugely appreciated. Thank you!   

Mihaela Dragici is Associate Director at Volkswagen Digital Solutions.  In this episode of Understanding Users, recorded in person at UXDX 2022 in Dublin, Mihaela and I discuss her work in an industry having to rapidly adapt to new challenges, and attempting to do that in an agile and digitally product-centric way.   She reflects on why conferences like UXDX provide such a great opportunity to hear, exchange and learn from other organisations embarking on similar digital journeys, and we ruminate on the practical difficulties of conducting insightful user research in multiple languages across a large organisation with a global customer base... Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.  Mike Green This podcast is brought to you by Researchable UX. If you'd like to help support the podcast, you can donate a very modest sum by buying me a virtual coffee. That would be hugely appreciated. Thank you!   

"I always say [to my clients] let's research together. I've never seen impactful research done in a silo or in a vacuum...So I say let's face it together. I have multiple strategies to get stakeholders involved. The closer they get to that direct research process I have found, the more value everyone gets and the minute you get them into the process and that lightbulb goes off: 'Okay, why in the heck are we not talking to people? Why are we not already doing this as a regular part of our product DNA?', then the next time you want to do a study it's so much easier..."   Varun Murugesan is Cofounder and Head of Research at Apple and Banana and the author of Fruitful, a nifty new and growing online UX research library and toolkit of resources for researchers and UX teams.    In this episode of Understanding Users, Varun discusses the important role quantitative research can play in product design. He shares his views on the potential pitfalls of UX bootcamps and he takes me through the birth of Fruitful, aimed at digital teams wanting to do better, faster and more effective research with their users.  **There are 30 discount codes available to listeners of this podcast for the full suite of online Fruitful research guides and handbooks. Simply enter the discount code I mention in the intro to this episode to get 20% off when checking out! That's 20% off access to Fruitful for the first 30 people to redeem the code** He also plays my 3 card challenge to share his favourite UX tool, favoured technique and a trend he sees in the future.  Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.   Mike Green This podcast is brought to you by Researchable UX. If you'd like to help support the podcast, you can donate a very modest sum by buying me a virtual coffee. That would be hugely appreciated. Thank you!     

"The biggest [takeaway from the event for me] without question is around accessibility....Obviously we're used to the term 'accessibility'...in terms of...the technical standards..., things like screen readers [they] might need to use. But actually, it can be all kinds of things. It can be an empathy for someone's mental health. It could be someone with RSI, and actually starting to understand what good design for everyone actually means. And that seems to be a big challenge for businesses at the moment." Andrew Machin is Founder and Director of Lion+Mason.  This is the third and final episode of a three part mini-series covering Lion+Mason's UX Seminar at the Leeds Digital Festival 2022 entitled: 'How User Experience Design can successfully solve the digital challenges of today'.  In this episode I chat with Andrew about the genesis of Lion+Mason as a digital product and service design agency, his reflections on the event they hosted at the LDF22 and his thoughts more broadly on the direction and current state of user experience and product design disciplines. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.  Mike Green This podcast is brought to you by Researchable UX. If you'd like to help support the podcast, you can donate a very modest sum by buying me a virtual coffee. That would be hugely appreciated. Thank you!   

"I love the fact that it's very much a peer-to-peer conference, that people are really transparent about sharing their learnings, their thoughts, and their experiences.... Everyone's incredibly friendly and open and really willing to engage and talk. It's a really nice place to 'temperature-check' what's going on [amongst] people who are delivering public sector services: what's on their mind, what are they thinking about..." Reflections from an attendee at SD in Gov 2022.   In the third and final part of this mini-series covering the Service Design in Government conference held in Edinburgh in September 2022, I chat with some of the attendees to hear more about why they came, what they enjoyed and what they will take away from the sessions they attended and people they met.  These conversations are with experienced UX practitioners and newbies alike, and even if you didn’t attend the event, I hope you’ll find something useful here to consider in your own work. Within this short episode there isn’t time to cover all the fantastic talks and workshops, but it should give you a flavour of what was on offer and what those who attended took away from the event. Many thanks to my guests: Amanda Payne  Jasmine Kendall Tass Smith Soh-Yon Park Claudia Hopkins Tom Morgan Sadaf Uddin   Hannah Whiteley And thanks as well to Sarah Hill for editing this episode.  Thanks for listening, and enjoy the episode.   Mike Green This podcast is brought to you by Researchable UX. If you'd like to help support the podcast, you can donate a very modest sum by buying me a virtual coffee. That would be hugely appreciated. Thank you!   

"There's so much hard work we need to do just to keep on ploughing through the To-Do list of digital, like making more [public] services that work in better ways [and] fixing the data that sits underneath - we sometimes talk about 'fixing the plumbing' ....And that's essentially the plan for government for the next few years...But what I wanted to do is look further ahead, because I think... there's actually some more exciting things about how we take the the business models of the Internet era about how we relate to each other... in [a] social media way more horizontally than vertically; things like using platform approaches to think about the accessibility of government data and services to a wider community if we're interested in economic growth..."  Paul Maltby, Chief Digital Officer at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Welcome to the second of this three-part mini-series, where I'm talking with the three inspiring keynote speakers at the in-person Service Design in Government (SD in Gov) conference held in Edinburgh in Scotland in September 2022. I asked them to share their reflections on the conference, the challenges facing anyone involved in designing services in the public sector, and what they wanted attendees to take from their keynote addresses:  Rebecca Kemp, Design Director at Future Foundry, speaks about her session entitled "User-centred design in public services - what now and what next?" Shabira Papain, CEO of Democracy Club, shares her thoughts on the importance of inclusive design in public services in "Inclusive design: luxury or must have?" Paul Maltby, Chief Digital Officer at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, reflects on his keynote entitled "Towards the next decade of digital public service reform"   My thanks to all my guests and to Sarah Hill for editing this episode.    Coming soon is the third and final part of this mini-series, where I'll be talking with attendees and other speakers at the event to get their insights and diverse reflections.  Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.  Mike Green This podcast is brought to you by Researchable UX.

"My takeout from today is that you really need to listen to your users and do your research, and do regular research and get testing.... Because it's been quite obvious and apparent to me today that if that doesn't happen and you *think* you know your audience and you *think* you know the product that your users need, big mistakes can happen...": A comment from one event attendee. This is the second of a three part mini-series of episodes about the recent Lion+Mason event at the Leeds Digital Festival 2022: 'How User Experience Design can successfully solve the digital challenges of today'.  In this short episode we hear from a variety of attendees as they they reflect on what they learned from the sessions on the day and what relevant, practical tips they plan to take away to use in their own roles and organisations. My thanks to all the attendees who agreed to share their thoughts, and to Milly Martin and Whitney Otchere from Lion+Mason for doing the recordings for me.  Coming soon is the third and final part of the series, where I'll be talking with some of the Lion+Mason team about their plans for future events at next year's Leeds Digital Festival in 2023.   Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.  Mike Green This podcast is brought to you by Researchable UX.        

Understanding Users is at the Leeds Digital Festival 2022! Returning for its 7th year, the festival is an open, collaborative celebration of digital culture in all its forms and hosts a two-week line-up of world class tech content in September to showcase the city’s dynamic and growing digital sector. In this short episode I'm talking to the speakers at an event entitled: 'How User Experience Design can successfully solve the digital challenges of today', taking place on 26 September. This free event is jointly hosted by local digital design agency Lion+Mason and Leeds Building Society, with leading specialists and peers discussing some of the key digital challenges facing businesses. I chat with the speakers about what they will be covering in their talks and what relevant, practical tips they hope attendees can take away to use in their own organisations. The speakers are: Andy Curry, UX Director at Lion+Mason Kelly Moran, Head of UX at Leeds Building Society  Imran Afzal, UX Design Leader at Co-op Paul Cook, Principal Consultant at Lion+Mason If you wish to attend, you can register here.    Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.  Mike Green This podcast is brought to you by Researchable UX.

Sophie Dennis is the conference programme chair of the SD in Gov (Service Design in Government) conference, held in Edinburgh, Scotland in September 2022.  The conference is aimed at participants who manage, design or develop central and local government services, health and education services, emergency sector services, civic technologies and others including Government employees, consultants and design agencies. In this episode Sophie and I chat about this year's conference, returning in-person again after running remotely in 2021 due to the pandemic. We discuss the inspiring keynote speakers, and the varied programme of engaging live sessions, interactive group sessions, and speaker Q&A - plus an all-important hallway track where attendees can meet and share experiences with fellow practitioners. This is the first of three episodes featuring SD in Gov 2022. Join me again soon for Part Two when I'll be in-person at the conference, chatting to attendees and capturing their thoughts and reflections on what they've learned and how that can benefit them in their roles. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.  Mike Green This podcast is brought to you by Researchable UX.    

I'm really excited to share this - it's something I've been wanting to do for ages! In this episode of Understanding Users, I speak with four friends and fellow freelance digital folks, and who I've had the great privilege of working with.  We reflect as a group on an (unnamed) large-scale UK government digital transformation project that we all worked on: what we did, how (and why) we did it, the challenges we faced and what we learned along the way.  To what extent is an organisation ready to hear - and then act upon - problematic and challenging feedback from users of its services? How do you change long-established and deep-rooted processes within an organisation? Why are collaborative design workshops so powerful to the UX process? What can happen if you don't fully bring senior stakeholders with you on the journey? And why is the UK government's GDS assessment process so important in guiding teams to build digital services the right way? My wonderful, highly experienced guests are: Laura Cusack - Delivery Manager Jon Sykes - Service Designer and UX Strategist Ben Watson - Interaction Designer Louisa Harper - Content Designer  Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.  Mike Green This podcast is brought to you by Researchable UX. If you'd like to help support the podcast, you can donate a very modest sum by buying me a virtual coffee. That would be hugely appreciated. Thank you!     

Steve Bromley is a games user researcher.  In this episode of Understanding Users, Steve talks of the fascinating and ‘unique production environment’’ of video games, along with varying UX maturity levels within the games industry, and the implications both of these have on how games user research is planned and carried out. He discusses the importance of being able to conduct both generative and evaluative research during games development and the challenge, familiar to many UX teams, of ensuring that user insights are properly acknowledged and taken onboard by product teams in their product roadmaps.   Finally, he plays my 3 card challenge to share his favourite UX tool, favourite technique and a trend he sees (or would like to see) in the future.  Read more about this work here and here. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.  Mike Green This podcast is brought to you by Researchable UX.