Human Insight Podcast

In this episode, Andy and Janelle recap season six of the Human Insight Podcast.

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.

We’re currently planning Season 7. If you have an insight you want us to investigate, or a guest you recommend, please email us at podcast@usertesting.com. 

Follow our new show: Insights...

In this episode, we curated 13 clips from past episodes of the Human Insight Podcast to give you insights on being a better product leader. 

You will hear from C. Todd Lombardo, author of several books including Product Roadmaps Relaunched; Silicon Valley Product Group’s Christian Idiodi; Product School’s Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia, Harvard Business School’s Julia B. Austin, Radhika Dutt, author of Radical Product Thinking; Te...

What is Human Insight? What can you do with human insight? And how do you get started gathering human insight? 

Those are the big three questions the Center for Human Insight, presented by UserTesting, hopes to answer. 

“People tend to think of user tests as being something just tied to usability when in fact it's a way to get broad feedback on anything that you need to get reactions to or input on in real time,” said Michael Ma...

Customer onboarding is critical to the success of a business not just in activation, but in the long-term retention of those users.

Typically, we think of the example of when we sign up a new customer and then onboard them on our product or service. 

But onboarding is more than that. You’ll need to re-onboard a once-every-few-months user every time they log on. And you’ll need to successfully onboard a customer every time you release...

Welcome to our second annual roundup of book recommendations from guests on the Human Insight Podcast. 

It is a good mix of books, covering creativity, money, innovation and product development. There is even a children’s book recommendation, as well as one for a newsletter. 

And don’t forget, our own Janelle Estes and Andy MacMillan also wrote User Tested, which was published earlier this year. 

• Brave New Work by Aaron ...

Julia Austin is a strong advocate for feedback never stopping, whether she is pushing her students to get out and talk with customers or talking with business leaders. 

“I'll get this question, especially from founders early on, of ‘when do I stop talking to my customers and getting feedback and start building my product?,’” said Austin, Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School’s Rock Center for Entrepreneurship where she cur...

You have to understand how people work, and why, says Kaj van de Loo, UserTesting’s Chief Technology Officer, on this week’s episode of the Human Insight Podcast. 

“What do they actually want to do or need to do to reach their goals, vs. what are they doing as weird workarounds or because they are being told to do,” he said. “Look at the former, and support it. In our case, every product manager, designer, and engineer wants to unde...

Producer’s note: This week’s episode is a conversation Janelle had with futurist and author Brian Solis at The Human Insight Summit held last week in New Orleans. We hope you enjoy the conversation. 

Do you know how your customers experience your brand today? Do you know how they really feel? Do you know what they say when you're not around? You think you know your customers, but you really have no idea–until you talk to them!

B...

Amanda Renteria, the CEO of Code for America, joined the Human Insight Podcast to talk about using technology AND regularly talking with your audience to reimagine government to better serve communities. 

Amanda has worked in the financial sector, been a teacher in her hometown, and spent most of her career in the public sector, from serving as Chief of Operations at the California Department of Justice to being national political d...

The digital acceleration is changing everyone’s lives, especially for designers who are more and more in demand across companies, industries and geographies. 

The past decade has seen incredible changes to design, and who is a designer.

In fact, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics this year officially recognized the job of “web and digital interface designer,” says Andrew Hogan, who leads insights and analysis at Figma and was this wee...

Kausamby Manjita joins the Human Insight podcast this week to discuss her work bringing the complex technologies that Walmart, Alibaba and Amazon use to the rest of the retail world.

Kaus is CEO and co-founder of Mason, an all-in-one platform that helps entrepreneurs automate their online stores.

Currently, she said, about 98 of every 100 people who land on any online store (that is not big tech) usually drop of...

In this bonus episode celebrating International Podcast Day 2022, 12 past guests on the show share their tips and advice for convincing others to invest in customer feedback.

In order of appearance are: 

Ep. 48: Wesley Faulkner
Ep. 46: Patrick Quattlebaum
Ep. 17: Christian Idiodi
Ep. 47: Karthik Suresh
Ep. 20: April Dunford
Ep. 45: Radhika Dutt
Ep. 41: Bobbie Wood
Ep. 40: C. Todd Lombar...

"When you're thinking about measuring a community, usually what you measure is what you effect," said Wesley Faulkner, Senior Community Manager at Amazon’s AWS. "So, if you're not measuring the success of the people who are in the community, if that's not part of the measurements, then you're really not going to be tracking that. Thus, you may lose sight of what makes your community good."

This week on the Human Insight Podcast, Karthik Suresh joins Andy and Janelle to discuss just what goes into making a successful product launch.

Suresh is co-founder and CPO/CTO of Ignition, a collaborative hub for product teams to plan, execute, and measure the GTM side of launching a product.

In their conversation, they discuss:

• What are some ways to ensure you successfully launch?
•  Whether that changes  base...

We all have special moments. There are signature moments, critical moments, key moments, moments that matter, moments of truth and so forth.

For this week's episode of the Human Insight Podcast, we talk with Patrick Quattlebaum, Co-founder and CEO of Harmonic Design and author of Orchestrating Experiences. 

Quattlebaum believes moments are a powerful concept worth exploring. 

"What I have been f...

We talked with Radhika Dutt in this week’s episode of the Human Insight Podcast. Radhika is an engineer, entrepreneur and product leader who has participated in four acquisitions, two of which were companies she founded. She has built products in industries including broadcasting, media, advertising technology, government, consumer, robotics, and wine. She is currently Advisor on Product Thinking for the Monetary Authority of Singa...

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 week's insight
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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 an...

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 produc...