Insights Unlocked

Episode web page: https://bit.ly/4hyuZBr

Episode summary:

In this episode of Insights Unlocked, UserTesting’s Mike Mace talks with Julia Barham, product executive, longtime product leader and author of The Product Management Playbook, about what it takes to build products customers actually value—and how the role of product management is changing as AI accelerates the product development lifecycle.

Julia argues that great product managers are ultimately managers of value: connecting customer needs and business goals while developing enough fluency across design, data and technology to make better decisions. She shares why strong PMs don’t need to be experts in everything, but do need curiosity, judgment and the ability to synthesize insights and work effectively across functions.

The conversation explores why continuous discovery and experimentation are becoming even more important as AI makes it easier to build and ship quickly. Julia explains why teams should embrace “strong opinions, loosely held,” increase their learning velocity and resist the temptation to turn faster development into an excuse to ship everything in the backlog. Instead, teams need to validate ideas, learn quickly and stay focused on the customer experience.

Julia and Mike also discuss how AI could reshape the product manager’s role. As AI takes on more delivery and coordination work, Julia sees greater value shifting toward strategic thinking, discovery and human judgment. She also shares lessons from the cross-functional leaders she interviewed for her book—including why partners want PMs to bring them into the process early, provide business context and start with the problem rather than arriving with a predetermined solution.

You’ll learn

Why product management is increasingly about managing value, not simply managing features or backlogs

How PMs can build product sense across business, customers, design, data and technology without becoming experts in every discipline

Why continuous discovery and synthesis should happen throughout the product lifecycle

How “strong opinions, loosely held” can help teams experiment, learn and adapt faster

Why faster AI-powered development makes customer validation and product judgment more important, not less

Where product managers can focus their time as AI automates more delivery and coordination work

What design, data and engineering partners want from product managers

Why curiosity, influence and cross-functional collaboration remain essential product management skills

How product leaders can identify skill gaps and coach their teams to become stronger product thinkers

Resources and links

Listener offer: Use code UT20 when purchasing The Product Management Playbook directly from Rosenfeld Media for 20% off.

Julia Barham on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-barham/)

The Product Management Playbook from Rosenfeld Media (https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/product-management-playbook/)

Author interview with Rosenfeld Media (https://rosenfeldmedia.com/master-every-dimension-of-product-management-with-julia-barhams-new-book-the-product-management-playbook-create-ship-and-optimize-winning-products/ )

Progressive Insurance (https://www.progressive.com/)

Mike Mace on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemace/)

Learn more about Insights Unlocked: usertesting.com/podcast

Episode web page: https://bit.ly/4ddeZlN

Episode summary

In this episode of Insights Unlocked, Nathan Isaacs talks with media futurist and author Jack Myers about how leaders can embrace AI without outsourcing the distinctly human qualities that drive better decisions, stronger customer relationships, and meaningful experiences. Drawing from his book Your Third Brain, Jack explores how human intelligence and machine intelligence can work together to expand what people are capable of—not replace human thinking.

Jack argues that one of the biggest risks of AI isn’t simply that machines are getting smarter, but that people may begin outsourcing judgment, curiosity, creativity, memory, and discernment to them. He explains the concept of the “third brain”: an intelligence that emerges when human experience, intuition, values, empathy, and imagination combine with AI’s speed, scale, knowledge, and ability to recognize patterns.

The conversation also explores what the media industry’s decades of technological disruption can teach today’s product, marketing, UX, and CX leaders. Jack warns against gaining efficiency at the expense of the customer relationship, particularly as organizations increasingly turn to AI, synthetic research, and automated customer interactions.

Nathan and Jack discuss why real human feedback remains essential even as AI becomes better at predicting behavior. Synthetic customers can help explore possibilities and prepare better questions, Jack says, but real people provide the context, emotion, contradictions, and unexpected insights that can reveal whether an organization is solving the right problem in the first place.

Finally, they explore empathy as a practical leadership skill and how organizations can reinvest the time AI saves into listening, curiosity, creativity, and deeper human understanding. Jack encourages leaders to define the human outcome before choosing the technology—and to measure not only productivity, but also trust, well-being, and whether technology is strengthening or diminishing human capabilities.

You’ll learn

Why Jack believes AI should expand human intelligence rather than replace human thinking

What the “third brain” is and how human and machine intelligence can complement each other

Why outsourcing judgment, curiosity, creativity, and discernment to AI creates risks for organizations

What the media industry can teach leaders about protecting direct customer relationships

Why synthetic research can support—but shouldn’t replace—feedback from real people

How empathy and human context can lead to better decisions and customer experiences

How leaders can balance AI-enabled speed and efficiency with deeper human understanding

Why organizations should measure trust and human capabilities alongside productivity

Resources and links

Jack Myers’ website: http://www.jackmyers.com/

Jack Myers’ books, including Your Third Brain: https://jackmyersbooks.com/

Nathan Isaacs on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanisaacs/

Learn more about Insights Unlocked: https://www.usertesting.com/podcast

Episode web page: https://bit.ly/4hjhw0g

Episode summary

In this special episode of Insights Unlocked, host Nathan Isaacs sits down with CEO Eric Johnson and Chief Marketing Officer Johann Wrede to introduce Auros, the new parent brand for UserTesting, and explore why the company is expanding its focus as AI reshapes how products and experiences are built.

Eric and Johann explain why the UserTesting name no longer captured the full scope of the company’s ambitions. While UserTesting and User Interviews will continue serving the research, UX, and insights communities, Auros reflects a broader mission: bringing human intelligence into the development, training, testing, and evaluation of AI. They also share the story behind the Auros name and why the company believes its network of more than 7.5 million people can play a larger role in an AI-enabled world.

You’ll learn:

Why UserTesting is becoming part of a new parent brand, Auros

What the Auros name represents and why the company chose a broader identity

Why UserTesting and User Interviews will remain important parts of the business

How AI is shifting the experience question from usability to trust

Why human judgment and expertise matter when training and evaluating AI

How a global network of more than 7.5 million people could support AI development

What the evolution means for UX researchers, designers, product teams, and other enterprise leaders

Why Eric and Johann see human intelligence as an essential part of building safer, more trustworthy AI

Resources & links:

Auros

Eric Johnson on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ebjohnson1/)

Johann Wrede on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/johannwrede/)

Nathan Isaacs on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanisaacs/)

Learn more about Insights Unlocked (https://www.usertesting.com/resources/podcast)

Episode web page: https://bit.ly/4AkBzTc

Episode summary:

In this episode of Insights Unlocked, host Jennifer Artabane talks with Ranjitha Kumar, UserTesting’s Chief Scientist, and Jason Giles, UserTesting’s Vice President of Customer Intelligence, about a question that becomes more important as AI makes it easier for anyone to create: How do you know whether what you’ve created is actually good?

Ranjitha and Jason explore the increasingly important role of human expertise, taste, craft, and judgment in an AI-powered workplace. They discuss why powerful AI tools can produce very different results depending on the expertise of the person using them, and why knowing how to interrogate, critique, and improve AI-generated work matters as much as knowing how to generate it.

The conversation also examines AI’s ability to quickly get teams from zero to 80%—and why the remaining 20% may become a critical source of differentiation. Ranjitha and Jason share how leaders can help the next generation develop judgment without using AI to bypass the experiences that build expertise, and why curiosity, critique, experimentation, and uniquely human perspectives will remain essential as AI reshapes how we work.

You’ll learn:

Why expertise matters even more when powerful AI tools are available to everyone

How taste differs from expertise—and why personal experience helps shape it

Why AI-generated output still requires human judgment, critique, and attention

How the final 20% of craft can differentiate experiences in a “sea of sameness”

How AI can be used to strengthen learning and critique instead of shortcutting them

Why the ability to evaluate and improve work may become as important as the ability to create it

Why curiosity and uniquely human experiences remain valuable skills in an AI-powered world

Resources and links

Ranjitha Kumar on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ranjithaskumar/)

Jason Giles on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaygiles/)

Jennifer Artabane on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jartabane/)

AI-related resources on UserTesting (https://www.usertesting.com/blog/ai-resources-human-insight)

Learn more about Insights Unlocked: https://www.usertesting.com/podcast

Episode web page: https://bit.ly/4ywaHhh

Episode summary

In this episode of Insights Unlocked, Mike Mace, Director of Solution Marketing at UserTesting, talks with veteran product leader, author, and executive coach Rich Mironov about what AI-powered development really means for product teams—and why dramatically faster coding doesn’t automatically translate into better products, happier customers, or more revenue.

Rich argues that as AI removes engineering constraints, the bigger challenge becomes deciding what is actually worth building. He explores the risks of “cognitive surrender,” where teams equate faster output with better outcomes, and explains why product management, UX research, customer discovery, business judgment, and taste become more important—not less—as organizations gain the ability to build at unprecedented speed. He also challenges the growing enthusiasm for synthetic users, warning that plausible AI-generated feedback can reinforce what teams already believe rather than uncover the unexpected insights that emerge from conversations with real customers.

The conversation also examines why “10x coding speed” won’t produce 10x revenue, how AI shifts bottlenecks from engineering toward customer adoption and go-to-market execution, and why product managers may need to become more “barbell shaped”—spending more time understanding meaningful customer problems at the front end and turning products into business results at the other. Rich also shares ideas from his book Money Stories, including why product teams need to communicate the financial value of their work in language executives understand.

You’ll learn

Why faster AI-assisted coding doesn’t necessarily create better products or more revenue

How “cognitive surrender” can cause teams to prioritize output over customer and business outcomes

Why human discovery, judgment, empathy, and taste become more valuable as building gets easier

The risks of replacing conversations with real customers with synthetic users

Why product waste is fundamentally different from engineering waste

How AI shifts product bottlenecks toward discovery, customer adoption, sales, and go-to-market execution

Why product managers may need to become more “barbell shaped” in an AI-driven environment

How “money stories” can help product teams connect their work to revenue and business impact

Resources and links

Rich on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/richmironov/)

Rich’s Product Bytes (https://www.mironov.com/) and Substack (https://richmironov.substack.com/)

The Art of Product Management (https://www.amazon.com/Art-Product-Management-Lessons-Innovator/dp/1439216061)

Money Stories: Communicating the Value of Product Work (https://www.amazon.com/Money-Stories-Communicating-Value-Product-ebook/dp/B0GJTS2CW6)

Our past interview with Rich on product waste and how to prevent it (https://www.usertesting.com/blog/how-prevent-product-waste)

Mike Mace on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemace/)

Nathan Isaacs on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanisaacs/)

Learn more about Insights Unlocked (https://www.usertesting.com/resources/podcast)