65% of homeowners have experienced anxiety related to their home. Adam Sigel wants to figure out how to get that number down. As the VP of Product at Hometap , a home equity startup, he talks to homeowners about their hopes and fears about their homes. We talked to Adam about his experience interviewing users and how he's become a more empathetic researcher. Highlights [2:21] Adam talks about his research at Hometap [4:32] Resist the urge to pitch [9:15] Let discovery conversations be open ended...
Apr 24, 2019•27 min•Ep. 14
Talking to customers is pretty powerful stuff. This week Erin & JH talked to Katelyn Bourgoin, 3x startup founder and growth geek, about how qualitative research can become your marketing team's competitive advantage. Learn more about the episode here https://bit.ly/2IHsbSu Highlights [3:30] Go into qualitative research with a goal of learning [7:18] Stop running away from the angry bear [13:41] Doing a switch interview to learn about the buyer's journey [16:46] How to do churn interviews [2...
Apr 18, 2019•37 min•Ep. 13
This week on the podcast, Erin and JH talk to Shipra Kayan. After 10 years of working in UX design and research at Upwork, she's launched her own consultancy. On the pod, she talked about getting your research started on the right foot, no matter what kind of research you're doing or how big your team is. Highlights [5:47] How do you decide between what to do long-term and short-term? [7:49] Do research your team is ready to listen to [17:16] Always plan on learning from your research [20:05] De...
Apr 11, 2019•31 min•Ep. 12
John Cutler is a man of many talents. He’s a product development champion , team whisperer , and now, podcast guest on Awkward Silences! Erin and JH talked to John about just-in-time research, promoting healthy team practices, and integrating research faster. Highlights [3:22] Start together, work together, finish together [7:50] Consistently integrate your ideas [9:02] Continuous design, rather than design then build [10:16] Create a backlog of learning goals [11:30] Integrate research faster [...
Mar 27, 2019•37 min•Ep. 11
In this special edition episode, we're talking about what we think about the podcast so far and where we hope to go. We want your feedback to help us decide what to do next! Let us know what you think here: https://bit.ly/2uoijV9
Mar 22, 2019•35 min•Ep. 10
Erin and JH talk to Sonya Badigian. As a researcher at a fully-remote company, Sonya is a big fan of remote research. She walks us through how remote research can be affordable, flexible, and fun. About Our Guest Sonya Badigian is Staff UX Researcher at Procore Technologies (previously UX and Content Specialist at Marketade). She has Masters in Human Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon. After graduating and taking a remote research job, she was surprised to learn how powerful remote resear...
Mar 13, 2019•30 min•Ep. 9
Pluralsight is built on continuous discovery and continuous delivery, which means they are constantly building and shipping code, while constantly digging in to how customers feel about their product. We talked to James Aylward about the framework that keeps his team moving while creating products that are all about the customer. Episode Highlights [1:45] James talks about how Pluralsight thinks about continuously delivering and discovering [4:10] Culture and values at Pluralsight [5:57] The dir...
Feb 27, 2019•31 min•Ep. 8
Try to think of each user as a new friend, and you want to learn about them. Don’t get nervous — relax! It’s just nice to create the sense that you’re having a conversation with someone. You’re listening to what they’re saying and flowing with what they say, not just reading a list of questions. JH and Erin talk to Laura Powell about making user testing easy and fun for users and for companies. She’s just wrapped up her 9th User Test Fest, this time in Austin, TX, and was excited to chat with us...
Feb 13, 2019•33 min•Ep. 7
Algorithms don’t always handle “edge cases” well, and the people who design them can have too broad a definition of edge case—stillbirths, miscarriages, and other life tragedies are actually relatively common. So how do the people who are responsible for building things, often many many people for any given human experience, design for the possibility of unexpected outcomes? That is to say, for real life? This week on the podcast, Erin and JH talked to Laura Klein about building products that co...
Jan 30, 2019•42 min•Ep. 6
If there’s anyone who can link stakeholders to the awesome power of user research, it’s Holly Hester-Reilly . Holly is a champion of research that is connected to every member of organizations; research that reaches across teams and unites companies towards a common product goal. Highlights [3:55] How research falls away from growing companies [7:12] Creating change even if you’re not at the top of the pyramid [9:15] Giving stakeholders options to help them make decisions [11:33] Creating snapsh...
Jan 16, 2019•30 min•Ep. 5
This week on the pod, Erin and JH talk to Maggie Crowley, Director of Product Management at Drift, about research as a product manager at a rapidly growing startup. They talk about how to do great research in a conversational way, how Drift's research practice is growing, and how Maggie thinks about research as a PM. Highlights [4:50] How do you establish the outcomes you’re looking for? [8:08] Since you use your own product, do you still need to test with outside users? [9:40] Using shared Slac...
Jan 02, 2019•31 min•Ep. 4
Some people think you have to choose between qual and quant research when you start your study. Not Cat Anderson. At AP Intego, she works with a fairly small and scrappy team (just like us!), but that doesn’t mean she’s not doing big things with her research. She lets qualitative and quantitative research flow into and inform each other, creating overall better research results. Episode Highlights [1:23] Cat walks us through how she found her way to a UX Writer position [6:01] The importance o...
Dec 12, 2018•29 min•Ep. 3
What do you do when your user research session doesn’t go according to plan? It happens all the time, in a lot of ways, for a lot of reasons. Fortunately we have Jaclyn Perrone, Design Director at thoughtbot , on the pod today to talk us through it all. She shares stories of times things didn’t go quite right, what to do when participants get stuck on the wrong things, and how to avoid (avoidable) mishaps. Episode Highlights [4:05] Things go wrong when you do things with other humans (like user ...
Dec 04, 2018•28 min•Ep. 2
Listen as JH and Erin wrestle with the biggest question there is: why are we here anyway? We'll dive into what we think the podcast should (and should not) be and pave the way for our first guest.
Nov 28, 2018•18 min•Ep. 1
What's this Awkward Silences podcast all about anyway? As a place to start, it's about embracing the awkward beauty of talking to people to learn and build better stuff. Get a sneak peek and meet our hosts, JH Forster and Erin May of User Interviews.
Nov 26, 2018•6 min
