Much of the conversation around AI in UX involves how it will shape and change researchers' work. Today's guest, Jess Holbrook, who leads UX research for Microsoft AI, has been thinking a lot about how this technology can be improved with design and UX best practices. Jess has spent over a decade working on the UX of AI at companies like Meta and Google. He's also helped develop foundational principles for the ethical use of LLMs. Jess joins Erin and Ben to reframe the AI conversation, focusing ...
Apr 09, 2025•49 min•Ep. 164
In this episode, Erin and Ben chat with Jay Vidyarthi, designer, author, and founder at Still Ape. Jay is a leading thinker around designing mindful product experiences. He's also published a new book, RECLAIM YOUR MIND , which examines the balance of technology use and mindfulness in our everyday lives. Jay shares his journey to working in the mindful technology space, how we can shift our frame from "user" to "life" experience design, and the benefits companies see when their products consider...
Mar 26, 2025•49 min•Ep. 163
Many research activities are completed by non-researchers, but whose work is benefited from user insights. Generally, these folks—designers, PMs, developers, among others—are called "PwDR" or "people who do research." In addition to their own work, many UX researchers and operations specialists are focusing on educating and empowering this group. When stakeholders and colleagues are better informed on the hows and whys of user research, more of it gets done, more insights are integrated, and cus...
Mar 12, 2025•49 min•Ep. 162
This episode is all about learning from customers...early and often. Our guest, Michael Margolis, UX Research Partner at GV (formerly Google Ventures), has made a career of helping teams do this successfully. He joins to share his Bullseye Customer Method, which is the result of his experience (it's also the subject of his latest book, "Learn More Faster," which is available for free ). Michael breaks down the Bullseye Customer Method, including best practices for recruitment, question design, a...
Feb 26, 2025•51 min•Ep. 161
In 2022, the UX community experienced a series of convulsions: layoffs, reorgs, and reduced budgets. A common thread throughout was accountability: user researchers faced frequent questions about their direct impact on and importance for the business. "Doing" UX research and "being" a design thinker was no longer enough. Today's guest believes these questions present opportunities for UX researchers. Brett Krajewski, VP Research and Growth at Accelerant Research, joins Erin and Carol to share st...
Feb 12, 2025•44 min•Ep. 160
Creating strong stakeholder relationships is important for UX researchers at any company. Doing this at "enterprise" companies—large organizations with many products and an international footprint—can feel daunting. Our guest, Judy Xu, has successfully navigated the scale of enterprises like Hubspot, Meta, and Salesforce, where they work as a Senior Researcher. They join Erin to take us inside the enterprise, unpacking how research "happens" and what this has taught them about building cross-fun...
Jan 29, 2025•34 min•Ep. 159
Erin and Carol are joined by Emily Wurgler, Global Director of Experience Design at McDonald's, whose journey has had many moments of evolution and iteration. She started as an academic researcher in sociology, transitioned to innovation research at growth stage companies, and ultimately to her leading enterprise research and design teams. Emily talks about the unique value researchers bring to design leadership, how she's had to adapt her approach, and explains how product experiences are itera...
Jan 15, 2025•44 min•Ep. 158
Few companies are most closely associated with UX design right now than Figma, which not only helps designers get their work done, but serves as a bridge for others to get more involved in the process. Erin and Carol are joined by Andrew Hogan, Figma's Head of Insights, to explore the nature of collaboration today and how the structure of that collaboration can impact our ability to effect UX change. Andrew shares some of his team's own research on design collaboration, from how it's changed , w...
Jan 02, 2025•41 min•Ep. 157
Change is an important and inevitable part of developing as a user experience professional. But what does change look like when it happens at the organizational level? That is the focus of this episode, featuring Graham Gardner, VP of UX Design Research Operations at U.S. Bank. He joins Erin and Carol to talk about change management, which is the practice and process of evolving and adapting a company's approach to something. Graham takes us inside his strategy for this, including how team struc...
Dec 18, 2024•36 min•Ep. 156
The consulting firm IDEO helped pioneer "design thinking" as a way to create products that better solve customer wants and needs, creating fans. Over 30 years later, the interplay between design and research has never been more important. Will Notini joins to dig into that interplay—how research is at the heart of design and vice versa. In particular, he thinks the best companies are using design research principles to explore new opportunities, both what they create and how those experiences fu...
Dec 11, 2024•40 min•Ep. 155
The craft of UX research is at an all-time high. How research leaders structure, staff, and scale their teams is more important than ever. Erin and Carol are joined by Brad Orego, Head of Research at Webflow, to talk all about the ways we can build better research teams. Brad shares their three-step process for creating a research practice that's ready to deliver for the business, including the questions you must ask stakeholders. Using examples from Webflow, Brad also talks about tactical consi...
Dec 04, 2024•45 min•Ep. 154
In our Season 3 finale, Erin and Carol are joined by Caroline Morchio, Head of UX at Dashlane, a credential management platform. Their conversation explores UX research best practices at a security-minded organization like Dashlane, highlighting other what teams can bring to their own work. Caroline shares the ways she structures the UX team to support the product landscape at Dashlane, their processes for empowering colleagues to contribute to research, and why she prefers a "decentralized" mod...
Jul 23, 2024•34 min•Ep. 153
Erin and Carol are joined by Jo Widawski, founder and CEO of Maze, to discuss the major findings from their "Future of User Research" report, which unearthed three trends animating researchers, PMs, and founders alike: 1) the demand for research is growing, 2) research democratization empowers stronger decision making, and 3) new technology—like generative AI—allows teams to scale their research. Erin, Carol, and Jo unpack each of these trends, flagging what they mean for both the work of resear...
Jul 09, 2024•43 min•Ep. 152
Erin is joined by Auzita Irani, a research manager at AirBnB to discuss being a more efficient user experience researcher. In today's work world, resources—time, budget, headcount—always seem to be in limited supply. How can we balance these things along with other important elements of our research practices? Auzita has been thinking about "doing more with less" for a long time and shares practical strategies. After discussing the challenges facing today's UX researcher, the conversation shifts...
Jun 25, 2024•55 min•Ep. 151
It's our 150th episode! To celebrate, we brought together three thought leaders for a discussion about UX research's future. Erin and Carol are joined by Judd Antin, Dave Hora, and Christiana Lackner, who bring over 40 years of combined experience in UX research, both as practitioners and leaders. This wide-ranging conversation combines our guests' reflections on the trends that brought UX to its current moment with an analysis of what the future holds—and how we can prepare ourselves (and our t...
Jun 11, 2024•51 min•Ep. 150
In this episode, Erin and Carol sit down with Tyler Wanlass, lead product designer at CommandBar, to explore practical strategies for conducting user research without a dedicated research team. They dig into techniques that designers and product managers can use to gather valuable insights efficiently, especially in resource-constrained environments. Tyler's approach is scrappy, flexible, and creative. Tyler shares some of the tools that create his research toolkit, including efficient note-taki...
Jun 04, 2024•51 min•Ep. 149
In this episode, Erin and Carol tackle one form of research impact growing in importance and necessity: revenue. Their guest is Claudia Natasia, co-founder and CEO of Riley AI. Before starting Riley, Claudia grew product teams at early-stage companies and worked in the financial industry. These experiences showed her the importance of linking user research outputs to the bottom line of a business. During their conversation, Claudia breaks down what revenue typically looks like for a company and ...
May 14, 2024•51 min•Ep. 148
Erin and Carol explore the complexities of healthcare research with Nadyne Richmond, a healthcare design advisor with a background in big tech who pivoted to healthcare research a decade ago to tackle the pressing issues she saw in the system. Nadyne underscores the nuances of conducting user experience (UX) research within healthcare settings, unpacking the intersections of patients' lives, their health, financial well-being, and spiritual factors that can come with many diagnoses. She emphasiz...
Apr 30, 2024•47 min•Ep. 147
Erin and special co-host Ben Wiedmaier are joined by Julian Della Mattia of the180 for a deep dive into being UX team-of-one. Julian has been the first user researcher at a number of companies and shares his top to-dos, milestones, and things to consider before accepting such a role. The episode digs into the ways a solo UXR can start making an impact, but in a strategic, sustainable way. Julian identifies questions to ask stakeholder teams, processes to consider standing up, and the tools to co...
Apr 16, 2024•49 min•Ep. 146
In this episode, Erin chats with Victoria Sakal, Head of Growth at Wonder, all about desk (or secondary) research—think web searches, checking internal resource libraries (like repositories), or interviewing colleagues. Desk research is a critical step when starting a new project. Victoria shares her framework for thinking about the differences between primary and secondary research, suggesting that instead of distinct categories, they exist on a continuum. She argues that primary research is sh...
Apr 01, 2024•40 min•Ep. 145
In this episode, Carol and Erin dive into all things research sample sizes with Lauren Stern. No matter your experience with user research, you'll need to recruit folks, making this an evergreen topic. Lauren has coached both new-to-research and junior UXRs on this critical topic and she shares some of her best advice. Lauren shares importance considerations and nuances around different types of studies and even analysis approaches. She also unpacks her approach for international samples, the im...
Mar 25, 2024•47 min•Ep. 144
Carol and Erin welcome George Whitfield, an expert in applying AI to the analysis of qualitative data. George discusses the intricate challenges of leveraging language models to interpret expansive open-ended data (like interview transcripts), emphasizing the importance of context and not just keyword or topic identification. They'll dig into the crucial role of human oversight in AI, what preliminary analysis might look like using AI, how to check and refine the work of an AI assistant without ...
Mar 18, 2024•41 min•Ep. 143
In this episode Carol and Erin are joined by Ruby Pryor, founder of Rex, a consulting firm specializing in UX research and strategic design. They explore the world of measuring the impact of UX research. with Pryor introducing a four-level impact assessment framework. Ruby shares a four-level assessment framework and the conversation moves to prioritization, making "strategic" decisions, and increasing your research influence. This episode also gets into what it means to demonstrate the "busines...
Mar 04, 2024•48 min•Ep. 142
In this episode of Awkward Silences, Carol and Erin dive into the world of conference networking and planning with Bryan Dosono, a staff UX research lead at eBay known for his extensive experience curating and organizing conference programs. Bryan share insights on how to prepare for conferences such as using apps to schedule meetings and emphasizing networking over solely focusing on content. He also discusses strategic scheduling to align conference participation with career goals and offers a...
Feb 21, 2024•41 min•Ep. 141
The decision to leave academia can be difficult. Often, it involves giving up a stable career path and a lifetime commitment to a particular field of study. But as Joe Stubenrauch explains, the move also offers researchers the opportunity to pursue new career paths, improve work-life balance and geographic flexibility, and reinvent their lives. And he should know: Formerly a professor of history, he walked away from tenure to join a big tech company as a UX Researcher at AWS. In this episode, Jo...
Nov 30, 2023•47 min•Ep. 140
How often do you think about content design? The answer, most likely, is: “not enough”. The work of a Content Designer involves fitting the right words in the right places, understanding the nuances of things log in vs. sign in, and knowing the right words to use to engage customers. Content Design is an important part of the user experience—and the ROI is high. Like, “millions of $s saved through content-testing” high. Erica Jorgensen is a Staff Content Designer at Chewy.com and the author of S...
Nov 08, 2023•44 min•Ep. 139
“I realized that design is about helping people make sense of the world. And I looked at the world differently then… treating everything like a design problem that's solvable [...] [Design leaders today] don't use the power that we have to engage people, to activate people, to help them believe in something bigger than themselves.” Maria Guidice, author of Changemakers: How Leaders Can Design Change in an Insanely Complex World, joins Erin May and Carol Guest in this episode of Awkward Silences....
Oct 18, 2023•43 min•Ep. 138
What company isn’t “customer obsessed”? Well, a lot, as it turns out. That’s not for lack of caring—but building a customer-centric culture is easier said than done. And how you do this depends on whether you’re starting from square one or trying to change a company’s culture from the inside. According to Prayag Narula, CEO and Co-Founder of Marvin, changing a culture towards customer centricity requires starting from the bottom-up. Building something new? Leaders should be obsessing over custom...
Sep 27, 2023•41 min•Ep. 137
AI is a big part of Notion's strategy for the future of knowledge work, and they're exploring ways to use AI to make people's lives easier. Linus Lee , a Research Engineer at Notion, spends his time researching and learning about AI—how users interact with it, the challenges of building trustworthy AI systems, and its - potential to help people work more effectively. In this episode of Awkward Silences, he sits down with Erin and Carol to discuss Notion’s approach to designing interfaces for Gen...
Sep 19, 2023•45 min•Ep. 136
“I think people really connect when you are just genuine and not transactional. I think it's much more easy to get to those kind of opportunities because they just feel genuine.” According to Andrea Amorós , Associate Principal Research at ADP, giving research a seat at the big table is all about building meaningful connections with the people you’re presenting to. Andrea joins the Awkward Silences podcast to provide insight into how she learned to make research meaningful for stakeholders at hi...
Aug 30, 2023•45 min•Ep. 135
