🔐 What does it take to build trust in a product users hope they never have to use? In this episode of They Said, host Lihong Hicken sits down with Ashish Malpani — Head of Product & Alliance Marketing at Corelight — a rare blend of cryptography patent holder, published novelist, and cybersecurity PMM. Ashish shares how he went from applications engineer → product management → product marketing, and why big-picture storytelling is the secret weapon in enterprise tech. They dive deep into the...
May 27, 2026•31 min
What if your dashboard is lying to you? 📊❌ In this episode of UX Stories, host Lihong Hicken sits down with Aaron Montana, Head of Experimentation & Product Analytics at LaunchDarkly, to explore the real intersection of engineering, A/B testing, and user research — and why the future of testing might include machines testing for machines. 🤖 Whether you're a product manager, engineer, or UX researcher, this conversation will challenge the way you think about features, data, and what it real...
May 21, 2026•20 min
What if your phone knew what you needed before you did? 🤯 In this episode of UX Stories, host Lihong Hicken sits down with Alina Hernandez Porrello, Director of UX Engineering at AgileEngine — the mind behind the groundbreaking Contextual Eruptive Forecasting Model (CIFM), built on Robert Rosen's anticipatory systems theory. Alina's framework doesn't just react to users — it anticipates them. No stereotypes, no generalizations. Just AI that adapts to you, uniquely. 🔥 What you'll learn: What th...
May 12, 2026•29 min
What separates great product leaders from the rest? According to Rana Mumtaz — veteran CPO who led product at GoDaddy and Spin, and now advises next-gen AI startups — it all comes down to one word: users. Not customers. Users. In this episode of UX Stories, host Lihong Hicken sits down with Rana to unpack how a "user-first" mindset drives real growth, why freemium models win, and what most AI-era founders are getting dangerously wrong. 🔔 Subscribe for more conversations with product and growth ...
May 05, 2026•30 min
What happens after you tap your card? Most people never think about it — until it breaks. 💳 In this episode of UX Stories, host Lihong Hicken sits down with Manish Upasani, Head of Product Management & Strategy at Utimaco, to uncover the hidden world of cryptography, hardware security modules, and the invisible trust layer powering the global digital economy. From a dramatic Black Friday payment meltdown to why "enough testing" doesn't exist in cybersecurity — this conversation is a fascina...
Apr 28, 2026•31 min
What happens to UX design when AI can adapt to every user individually? Jason Levine — Head of UX for Agentic AI at AWS and 14-year UX professor at the University of Washington — joins host Lihong Hicken to unpack how agentic AI is reshaping product design, user research, and the future of the UX career. Jason shares how AI enables truly personalized experiences at scale, why human intuition is still irreplaceable in research, and how he's building AI teaching tools for his own university classe...
Apr 22, 2026•33 min
What happens when a biochemist becomes a product design leader? Nate Patrick, Head of Product Design & Research at CAS, shares how his scientific background shapes how he builds tools for the world's most advanced chemical and biology discovery platform — and what the AI revolution really means for UX teams. 💡 In this episode: Why AI gives scientists (and designers) superpowers — not pink slips How CAS balances speed with rigorous user research The "vibe research vs. real research" debate W...
Apr 14, 2026•31 min
What happens when vibe coders skip user research? You build the wrong thing — fast. Dave Powell, Director of UX at QGenda, shares how his team does real usability work inside one of the most complex, HIPAA-restricted industries in the world. From Figma prototypes shown to hospital staff before a single line of code is written, to the moment a "warm" customer meeting turned ice cold — this is what serious enterprise UX actually looks like. 🎙️ Guest: Dave Powell, Director of User Experience @ QGe...
Apr 10, 2026•21 min
In this episode of UX Stories, host Lihong Hicken sits down with Apurva Garware, SVP and Head of Product at Invisible Technologies — the company behind 80% of the world's AI companies. From Microsoft Azure to Amazon to EdTech, Apurva shares how first principles of teaching humans apply directly to training AI models, why hybrid human-AI teams are inevitable, and how vibe coding is transforming the product building process. 🔥 What you'll learn: ✅ How training AI models mirrors teaching children ...
Apr 08, 2026•26 min
In this episode of UX Stories, host Lihong Hicken sits down with Naveen Mohan, Product Manager and Head of Monetization at Otter.ai, to unpack the art and science of pricing in the age of vibe coding. 🚀 Naveen shares how his data science background at Carnegie Mellon shaped his product instincts, reveals a pricing experiment that looked like an early win but turned into a 20% revenue loss 😬, and breaks down why "clear, easy, and feels fair" might be the golden rule of pricing. They also debate...
Apr 02, 2026•30 min
Mike Bal, Head of Product at David's Bridal, joins Lihong Hicken on UX Stories to talk about building digital experiences for one of the most emotional customer bases on the planet — brides. From merging deep legacy retail expertise with modern product thinking, to why he believes formal usability testing isn't always necessary, Mike shares how his lean team ships fast, gathers scrappy feedback, and keeps the customer experience at the center of everything. 🔑 Key topics: * How a self-confessed ...
Mar 22, 2026•27 min
🔥 Mazen Letayf, Head of Product at Alkami Technology, delivers a masterclass on why vibe coding is creating a tsunami of low-value software — and what builders should do instead. With experience leading product at Capital One, Cox Automotive, and Credit Acceptance, Mazen makes a compelling case: the real bottleneck isn't code speed — it's deeply understanding your customer. He shares how his team went from 1% to 5% conversion by obsessing over the full customer journey, why most features go unu...
Mar 21, 2026•37 min
Jonathan Abon, a seasoned CPO and engineer with 30 years in AI/neural networking, joins Lihong Hicken to discuss the real challenges facing B2B software companies in the age of vibe coding. They explore why speed without direction is dangerous, how to balance rapid prototyping with proper user feedback, and Jonathan's "Usability Index Scoring" framework for measuring user experience in near real-time. Jonathan shares his process for turning around underperforming product portfolios and why he st...
Mar 19, 2026•29 min
Jodi O'Prandy, VP of Product at 1stDibs, joins host Lihong Hicken on UX Stories to break down what luxury e-commerce and travel booking have in common — and where they diverge. They discuss how trust factors differ between a $500 flight and a $50,000 piece of fine art, the TripAdvisor filter redesign that failed because it skipped user testing, why hyper-personalization is the future of e-commerce, and what tools like Sprig are doing for modern product teams. 🔑 Topics covered: Trust signals in ...
Mar 13, 2026•22 min
Dan Breyre has built products at Amazon, Apple, and JW Player during the internet's biggest shifts. Now as Head of Product at Sofar Ocean, he's applying big tech wisdom to ocean intelligence—helping scientists and governments make better decisions about our planet's most critical, least understood data set. In this episode of UX Stories, we dig into: • The fundamental truth about users Dan learned at Amazon that he still uses today • Why "vibe coding" doesn't mean you should skip user testing • ...
Mar 13, 2026•27 min
AI has made product development 10x faster—but user research is stuck in the past. How do modern builders ship products users love when traditional testing can't keep pace? In this episode of US Stories, Lihong Hicken (former UserTesting executive who scaled the company from zero to IPO) sits down with Arvind Duhan, Chief Product Officer at DispatchTrack, for an honest conversation about the speed mismatch between "vibe coding" and user feedback. 🎯 KEY TAKEAWAYS: • Why the software development ...
Mar 13, 2026•37 min
Steven Lamb, Product Leader at Addepar, reveals the hidden tension in modern product development: we can build 10x faster with AI, but user testing is still stuck in the past. In this episode of UX Stories, we explore how wealth tech companies balance rapid innovation with zero margin for error when managing trillions of dollars. Key Topics: • Why "vibe coding" is outpacing traditional user testing methods • The reality of B2B user testing: 3-day turnarounds vs 24-hour expectations • Synthetic u...
Mar 13, 2026•30 min
In this episode of UX Stories, host Lihong Hicken sits down with Abhishek Vyas, Director of Product Management at Auditoria.AI, to explore how AI is transforming enterprise product development. 🎯 Key Topics Covered: • The current state of agentic AI in enterprise environments • How AI committees are shaping enterprise AI adoption • Vibe coding vs. traditional product development workflows • The role of user testing in the age of rapid AI-powered development • B2B vs. B2C product validation stra...
Mar 13, 2026•31 min
AI has made building products 10x faster—but are we forgetting our customers in the process? In this episode, I sit down with Alex Pyatigorskiy, Head of Product at Vama and former Chief Digital Business Officer at Disney, to tackle the biggest challenge facing product teams today: how to maintain customer-centricity when vibe coding has replaced traditional product development. 🎯 KEY TOPICS: • Why founders are abandoning pre-launch user research (and why that's risky) • The "torture room" that ...
Mar 13, 2026•30 min
Your product roadmap is moving faster than your customers can keep up. That gap is silently killing adoption, retention, and expansion revenue. Watch this episode to learn how to validate what matters before you ship. Most B2B SaaS teams don’t have a product problem—they have a feedback speed problem. In this episode of UX Stories, Lihong Hicken sits down with Fy Knight (Head of Product at Recidiviz) to break down what it really means to build products that are personal, empowering, and effortle...
Mar 13, 2026•22 min
B2B SaaS teams are shipping faster—but adoption and trust aren’t keeping up. That gap silently drains pipeline efficiency, retention, and expansion. Watch this episode to learn the strategic approach UX leaders use to scale with confidence. Speed is not the same as progress. Jason Moore (Head of User Experience at Planful) breaks down what’s changing in UX leadership as AI accelerates building, design, and decision-making across product orgs. You’ll hear why “tool obsession” is a career trap, ho...
Mar 13, 2026•28 min
Your product is shipping faster than your customers can keep up. That gap is quietly killing adoption, retention, and expansion revenue. Watch this episode to learn the strategic fix top product leaders use to scale growth. Building faster isn’t the same as building better. In this episode of UX Stories, Sam Ho (ex-Head of Product at Tuning, VP Product at Sendoso, Director of Product at Glassdoor) breaks down why “vibe coding” is creating a dangerous illusion of progress for B2B SaaS teams. We u...
Mar 13, 2026•24 min
Shipping faster shouldn’t mean shipping the wrong roadmap When product intent is unclear, growth stalls and churn spikes Watch to learn how top teams align speed with real customer value AI is accelerating product teams—but it’s also accelerating bad decisions. In this episode of UX Stories, Lihong Hicken sits down with Jason Kirby (Global Head of Product Engineering at Magic Memories) to unpack why “build fast” isn’t the same as “build right,” how competing stakeholder intent quietly sabotages ...
Mar 13, 2026•28 min
Standing out in an AI-dominated search world is killing your pipeline. If your message sounds generic or invisible in LLM results, you’re leaving revenue on the table. Watch this episode to learn how a 3x SaaS CMO uses AI strategically to grow, not water down, your brand. Most SaaS marketing teams are using AI to move faster—but also to sound the same. In this episode, three-time SaaS CMO Ashley Deibert breaks down how she used AI to overhaul LLM search performance, re-architect brand positionin...
Mar 13, 2026•21 min
Scaling revenue as a B2B SaaS leader while staying truly trusted is harder than ever. When buyers doubt your credibility, deals stall, churn rises, and growth gets capped. Watch this episode to learn a practical trust-first strategy you can apply across your go-to-market. Trust is still the most powerful growth asset your company has. In this episode, Lisa Swanson—CEO and President of the Better Business Bureau of Central New England—shares how a 100+ year-old institution is evolving in 2025 whi...
Mar 13, 2026•16 min
Your B2B SaaS forecasts still feel more like a guess than a system. That uncertainty hides churn risk, weak deals, and stalled revenue growth. Watch this episode to learn how a CEO uses AI to turn messy ops into predictable revenue. AI is evolving faster than most SaaS leadership teams can realistically adapt to. In this episode, Naushad Parpia—CEO and founder of Plative and Earth Side Farms—shares exactly how he’s weaving AI into the fabric of his business, from sentiment-scoring client calls t...
Mar 13, 2026•15 min
AI is evolving faster than SaaS companies can adapt. Every missed step compounds into stalled growth and operational waste. Watch this episode to learn the strategic AI roadmap tech leaders must adopt now. AI adoption isn’t the challenge—misaligned AI adoption is. In this episode, Microsoft MVP Chris Hinch explains why most SaaS leaders are deploying AI backwards, how “FOMO-driven adoption” is destroying ROI, and the practical steps executives can take to finally make AI a growth driver instead ...
Mar 13, 2026•20 min
