Question 1

What are the key takeaways from Judd Antin's episode on Lenny's Podcast?

Accepted Answer

1. Beware of user-centered performance -- research done to check a box rather than to genuinely learn is the most common and damaging pattern in product teams. 2. Adopt a falsification mindset: the best research seeks to prove you wrong, not validate what you already believe. 3. Micro-level usability research can drive massive business value in 48 hours -- it's not scut work, and the stereotype that research is slow comes from bloated middle-range studies. 4. The most impactful researchers are integrated into the product process from beginning to end, not called in as a service function at the last minute. 5. Replace NPS with simple customer satisfaction metrics -- survey science shows CSAT is more precise, more predictive, and less gameable than Net Promoter Score.

Question 2

What does Judd Antin say about user-research and product-development?

Accepted Answer

"User-centered performance refers to customer obsession or user-centered practice that is symbolic rather than focused on learning. It's work we do to signal to each other how customer obsessed we are, not because we want to make a different decision. Every time a PM comes to a researcher at the end of a product process and says, 'Can you just run a quick user study just to validate our assumptions,' that's user-centered performance. It's too late to matter." - Judd Antin "One of my big mantras was, 'We don't validate, we falsify. We are looking to be wrong.' That is the mindset you should use when you're approaching insights and research. 'I want to be wrong. I want you to do research that shows we were off base in the following ways. Tell me exactly how and why in a way that allows me to fix it quickly.'" - Judd Antin "The best researchers have five tools. Formative or generative user experience research. Evaluative, so more like usability testing. A basic rigorous survey design. Applied statistics. And then the fifth tool may now be prompt engineering, which is somewhere between querying your own data, understanding it very well, and interacting with generative AI." - Judd Antin

Question 3

What are Judd Antin's views on user-research, product-development, cognitive-bias?

Accepted Answer

Judd Antin: "User-centered performance refers to customer obsession or user-centered practice that is symbolic rather than focused on learning. It's work we do to signal to each other how customer obsessed we are, not because we want to make a different decision. Every time a PM comes to a researcher at the end of a product process and says, 'Can you just run a quick user study just to validate our assumptions,' that's user-centered performance. It's too late to matter." Judd Antin: "One of my big mantras was, 'We don't validate, we falsify. We are looking to be wrong.' That is the mindset you should use when you're approaching insights and research. 'I want to be wrong. I want you to do research that shows we were off base in the following ways. Tell me exactly how and why in a way that allows me to fix it quickly.'"

Judd Antin

The UX Research reckoning is here | Judd Antin (Airbnb, Meta)

TRANSCRIPT

Judd Antin

The UX Research reckoning is here | Judd Antin (Airbnb, Meta)

Judd Antin

The UX Research reckoning is here | Judd Antin (Airbnb, Meta)

TRANSCRIPT

Judd Antin

The UX Research reckoning is here | Judd Antin (Airbnb, Meta)