This week we're revisiting one of Awkward Silences' most memorable episodes. This episode welcomed Ruby Pryor, founder of Rex, a consulting firm specializing in UX research and strategic design. This episode gets into what it means to demonstrate the "business value" of one's work, specifically how researchers can and should quantify their impact in terms that are tangible to the company. Ruby shared ways to score early wins, build momentum, and overcome communication frictions to find shared va...
May 12, 2026•48 min•Ep. 202
Erin May sits down with Sam Ladner, Senior Principal Researcher of Strategy at Workday, to explore the evolving role of AI in qualitative research. Sam brings a refreshingly balanced perspective on where AI can genuinely help researchers and where it fundamentally cannot replace human insight. Sam explains how AI has transformed labor-intensive tasks like transcription and closed coding, freeing researchers to focus on the deeper work of sense-making and understanding outliers. She emphasizes th...
Apr 28, 2026•49 min•Ep. 203
This week we're revisiting one of Awkward Silences' most memorable episodes. This episode welcomed George Whitfield, an expert in applying AI to the analysis of qualitative data. George discussed the intricate challenges of leveraging language models to interpret expansive open-ended data (like interview transcripts), and emphasized the importance of context and not just keyword or topic identification. Episode Highlights 03:48 - Innovating consumer insights using AI 12:21 - Importance of human ...
Apr 14, 2026•41 min•Ep. 200
Erin May sits down with Aneta Kmiecik, founder of Be Your Own Design Team, to tackle one of the biggest questions facing designers today: how to position AI skills in portfolios and resumes. With 15 years in creative industries and a community of 200,000 followers, Aneta brings unique insights into navigating career strategy during this AI transformation. Aneta reveals her Past Present Future framework for career positioning and explains why most companies aren't explicitly requiring AI skills y...
Mar 31, 2026•43 min•Ep. 201
Ben Wiedmaier sits down with user research consultant Nikki Anderson to explore how researchers can stay relevant when budgets are tight and stakeholders are stressed. Nikki runs Drop in Research where she helps teams conduct research, facilitate better meetings, and build research practices from the ground up. She shares how companies are increasingly coming to her with validation requests rather than discovery work, driven by pressure to ship fast and hit numbers. The conversation reveals prac...
Mar 17, 2026•52 min•Ep. 199
Ben talks with Kristen DeLap, fractional COO at Econify, to explore how UX'ers can build influence without formal authority. Kristen brings a unique perspective, having evolved from interior design to leading product teams at Herman Miller and now working as an operations executive. She shares practical strategies for understanding decision-making processes, translating design work into business impact, and creating the conditions where teams do their best work. They also cover essential skills ...
Mar 03, 2026•40 min•Ep. 198
Erin and Ben chat with Laura Klein, Principal Experience Specialist at Nielsen Norman Group, about the practical realities of AI in user research. Laura teaches a class on AI for researchers and brings a refreshingly balanced perspective to cut through the hype. She explains why those "five simple prompts that will change your life" are mostly nonsense and shares where AI actually works well versus where researchers need to proceed with extreme caution. Laura also shares her green, yellow, and r...
Feb 17, 2026•48 min•Ep. 197
Ben sits down with Basel Fakhoury, CEO and Co-founder of User Interviews, and Baran Erkel, Chief Strategy Officer at UserTesting, for a conversation about the research industry's evolution. With AI reshaping customer behaviors and business decisions, both executives emphasize how the need for customer insights has never been greater, even as budget pressures mount across organizations. Basek and Baran share frameworks for executive decision making, explore how AI tools are moving beyond simply r...
Feb 03, 2026•41 min•Ep. 196
Ben Wiedmaier sits with Karl Randay, Experience Director at 383, to explore how designers can stay relevant in an increasingly automated world. Karl shares insights from working with major brands like Hilton and Jaguar on digital innovation projects that blend strategy, research, and rapid prototyping. They also talk about the "beige-ification" of design, where templated systems and AI tools risk creating homogeneous experiences across brands. Karl explains how his team uses AI as a research cop...
Jan 20, 2026•51 min•Ep. 195
Ben is joined by Maria Rosala from Nielsen Norman Group and John Whalen from Brilliant Experience to wrap up 2025 and make some predictions for 2026. Maria and John share practical insights on everything from AI moderation tools to synthetic users, offering a balanced view of where these technologies excel and where human researchers remain irreplaceable. Maria and John also dig into the democratization of research across product teams, the importance of governance and strategy when implementing...
Jan 06, 2026•56 min•Ep. 194
Erin May sits down with Kate Towsey, founder of Cha Cha Club and author of Research That Scales, for Research Ops Appreciation Week. Kate shares insights from producing an audio documentary series on the future of research ops, including her fascinating experience co-creating content with AI. She reveals how research ops teams are increasingly surviving layoffs while research teams are cut, explaining that ops professionals focus on unblocking systems and delivering measurable business value rat...
Dec 22, 2025•55 min•Ep. 193
Ben talks with Lyndsi Lee, UX Manager at Turnitin, about moving beyond traditional metrics like NPS and CSAT to measure user experiences more effectively. The conversation centers on outcome-based assessment, a framework that breaks user experiences into atomic outcomes. Rather than asking broad satisfaction questions, this approach focuses on specific user goals like "users can complete repetitive tasks without friction." Lyndsi explains how teams can identify these outcomes through existing re...
Dec 09, 2025•47 min•Ep. 192
Ben is joined by Shalin Pei, Head of Design and Research and Natalie Golub, Head of UXR , both from Coinbase's Base product. Base is part of the crypto space, functioning as a network that offers secure and low cost ways to build decentralized apps, essentially helping create what they call the new internet. The conversation reveals how their small but mighty teams operate in one of the fastest moving industries. Shalin and Natalie share how they've weaved internal stakeholders with customers, p...
Nov 25, 2025•53 min•Ep. 191
Erin is joined by Samira Jain, Serena Hillman, and Jackie Ianni from Microsoft Azure Data to discuss how they built the Swift Research Lab over the past two years. The team shares their systematic five-step approach for creating research programs that result in stakeholder satisfaction while delivering insights every 1.5 weeks. The Azure Data team also break down their method for fostering relationships, building infrastructure and templates, measuring success, and continuously iterating. The di...
Nov 11, 2025•37 min•Ep. 190
Ben sits down with Jake Burghardt from Integrating Research to discuss his new book Stop Wasting Research and how organizations can maximize the product impact of their customer insights. Jake breaks down the critical problem of research waste, where valuable insights from studies get left behind instead of informing future decisions and planning cycles. Jake introduces his framework of three root causes driving research waste: preparation, motivation, and integration. He emphasizes practical so...
Oct 28, 2025•50 min•Ep. 189
The popularity of AI moderation tools, increased attention on "big" data sets (and streams), and the ongoing uncertainty in the research job market have (understandably) led some to wonder about the future of qualitative research. Our guest today, however, is bullish, and explains why. Nancy Baum leads the qualitative research practice at C+R Research. She has nearly 20 years' experience in the field, exposing her to many ebbs and flows. Nancy believes that qualitative practitioners are vital to...
Oct 23, 2025•50 min•Ep. 188
In just ten years, ResearchOps has transformed from an obscure Silicon Valley speciality into a vibrant global profession. Despite economic headwinds, ResearchOps roles are emerging across industries far beyond tech, and the field is evolving at breathtaking speed. But where have we come from, and where are we going? In this five-part audio documentary, we’re exploring the past, present, and future of ResearchOps—and it’s exciting, fascinating, and, at times, pretty mindblowing stuff! Each episo...
Oct 14, 2025•54 min•Ep. 187
In just ten years, ResearchOps has transformed from an obscure Silicon Valley speciality into a vibrant global profession. Despite economic headwinds, ResearchOps roles are emerging across industries far beyond tech, and the field is evolving at breathtaking speed. But where have we come from, and where are we going? In this five-part audio documentary, we’re exploring the past, present, and future of ResearchOps—and it’s exciting, fascinating, and, at times, pretty mindblowing stuff! Each episo...
Sep 30, 2025•49 min•Ep. 185
In just ten years, ResearchOps has transformed from an obscure Silicon Valley speciality into a vibrant global profession. Despite economic headwinds, ResearchOps roles are emerging across industries far beyond tech, and the field is evolving at breathtaking speed. But where have we come from, and where are we going? In this five-part audio documentary, we’re exploring the past, present, and future of ResearchOps—and it’s exciting, fascinating, and, at times, pretty mindblowing stuff! Each episo...
Sep 16, 2025•46 min•Ep. 176
Erin May sits down with Larry Becker and Gavin Lew of Bold Insight to explore how researchers can prototype AI experiences that don't exist yet. They're joined by Katie Johnson, Global Head of Research for Panasonic Well. All share their methods for testing everything from voice interfaces for blind users to family wellness bots using low fidelity simulation techniques. ⭐️ Larry, Katie, and Gavin are presenting their work at EPIC 2025 in Helsinki ⭐️ The conversation reveals how AI research requi...
Sep 12, 2025•55 min•Ep. 175
In just 10 years, ResearchOps has transformed from an obscure Silicon Valley speciality into a vibrant global profession. Despite economic headwinds, ResearchOps roles are emerging across industries far beyond tech, and the field is evolving at breathtaking speed. But where has it come from, and where is it going? In this five-part audio documentary series, Kate Towsey of Cha Cha Club explores the past, present, and, most important of all, the future of ResearchOps. Each episode features the voi...
Sep 02, 2025•51 min•Ep. 174
In just 10 years, ResearchOps has transformed from an obscure Silicon Valley speciality into a vibrant global profession. Despite economic headwinds, ResearchOps roles are emerging across industries far beyond tech, and the field is evolving at breathtaking speed. But where has it come from, and where is it going? In this five-part audio documentary series, Kate Towsey of Cha Cha Club explores the past, present, and, most important of all, the future of ResearchOps. Each episode features the voi...
Aug 19, 2025•44 min•Ep. 173
Welcome to our final Summer Throwback. We're revisiting some of our favorite conversations and insights. We're closing with a topic that technology like AI—and shrinking attention space—is affecting: reporting results. Our guest, Caitria O'Neill, had a sense that stakeholders weren't really engaging with her results (or their implications) as she'd like them to. During her time on teams at Meta, AirBnB, and Google, she'd iterated and evolved how she packaged, presented, and stored research reado...
Aug 07, 2025•47 min•Ep. 172
Welcome to Summer Throwbacks, where we revisit some of our favorite episodes. This week's guest is Kate Towsey, who helped spotlight the relevance, urgency, and importance of Research Operations (ReOps) to business. This conversation is from her time leading ReOps at Atlassian. She breaks down the rationale for ReOps and the steps folks can take to start a practice of their own. These days, Kate's investing in Cha Cha Club , a space for ResearchOps pros to connect and learn. Stay tuned for an ex...
Jul 24, 2025•44 min•Ep. 171
Welcome to Summer Throwbacks, where we revisit some of Awkward Silences' most memorable episodes. This week, Andrea Amoros, a Senior Principal Researcher at Ingram Micro talks strategic research (which is different from a research strategy). Andrea shares her definition of strategic research, its value for a company, and showcasing that value for stakeholders and partners. Strategic Research Resources What is a UX Research Strategy? Creating ROI from User Research Strategic vs Tactical Research ...
Jul 10, 2025•45 min•Ep. 170
Welcome to Summer Throwbacks, were we revisit some of Awkward Silences' most memorable episodes. This week, Eniola Abioye, UX Researcher at Meta, discusses what it takes to break into the user research industry. Her advice on creating application materials, searching for roles, and preparing for the interview process offer evergreen insight for any job seeker. UX Career Resources Free on-demand course with Eniola: User Research 101 The Ultimate UX Research Job Board Getting started with freelanc...
Jun 26, 2025•52 min•Ep. 169
Welcome to Summer Throwbacks, where we revisit some of Awkward Silences' most memorable episodes. This week features Amy Chess (then at Amazon) unpacking arguably the most important research skill: asking questions. She shares what makes a "good" question, how questions should connect to insights and impact, and how you can improve your question-creation ability. Research Question Resources A Guide to User Research Questions 70+ User Testing Question Examples Writing Better User Interview Questi...
Jun 12, 2025•40 min•Ep. 168
Welcome to Summer Throwbacks, where we revisit some of Awkward Silences' most memorable episodes. This week brings back an evergreen conversation with Product Talk's Teresa Torres on continuous discovery methods. Since this episode first aired, more companies have brought non-researchers (such as Product Managers, Designers, and Developers) into the process. Continuous Discovery is a practical, repeatable, and accessible way to expose your team to the value of user insights and design research m...
May 29, 2025•42 min•Ep. 167
Welcome to Summer Throwbacks, where we revisit some of Awkward Silences' most memorable episodes. This week features a conversation with Erika Hall on the misuses of surveys. They're overused, often shoddily designed, and can get in the way of a better approach for the question (which might include not doing research at all). This topic has only grown in importance as development and decision cycles shorten, putting pressure on researchers to get insights to stakeholders faster. Erika also recen...
May 15, 2025•44 min•Ep. 166
Embedded research teams—where UXRs are dedicated to a single product area—are popular. The proximity to design, product, and engineering stakeholders increases subject-matter expertise and user insight integration. But how can those working in this structure balance deep diving product-specific work with longer-term strategic opportunities? Hannah Ghidey, Senior Research Manager at Etsy has successfully navigated this balance, finding big, strategy-setting questions while maintaining product-spe...
Apr 23, 2025•35 min•Ep. 165
