Quotes from recent talks

"The only hopeful bits in 1984 are the moments when he’s out in the field or with another person; that’s what we’ve got."

"Even if the model is responsible for the behavior, there’s another piece of the puzzle: the context."

"Once you start changing components because you didn’t like them, and those changes live only in people’s heads, then the system starts to break down."

"Individually, we have very little power, but together we have a great deal of power."

"Product management is about being a business stakeholder and a steward of the business as well."

"We have to stop being reactive and take control of our destinies in this evolving AI-driven world."

"Vibe coding is coding when you cannot code — it’s coding on vibes."

"Building the backend made me so much better at the front end, understanding functionality on a deeper level."

"Everything else flows everywhere. It’s always going to be about humans at the end of the day, no matter the technology."

"The ultimate responsibility of design is not merely to shape experiences but to support the relationships through which people become who they are."

"I always said I'm not good with blank slates. I had to develop my own constraints after leaving structured work."

"Governance should have been slide one: these systems keep behaving in the world after release."

"Product teams think in questions, not methods—that’s why a question-first framework is powerful and needed."

"Once you've seen it, you can't unsee it."

"Describing yourself without the word design in your title forces you to focus on actual problems you solve."

"The map on the note card wasn’t calling anyone out. It was providing this shared point of reference."

"WCAG says the more contrast, the merrier, but bright white on black can actually cause ghost images for astigmatism."

"AI can help find proof that the problem you want to solve exists and is worth investing in."

"Without a social contract, life is nasty, brutish, and short, as Hobbes said."

"AI is fluent without standing; it never says this will not work, it never pushes back on the company."

"Nobody wants to do evals because it's hard work, but for UX people, it's interesting and fascinating."

"If you can describe your idea clearly enough that someone else could build it, you can have AI build it for you."

"Design is a radical act that democratizes power by consulting people and giving them control."

"Less handoff and more collaboration is becoming possible by bringing designers into the workflow with AI assistance."

"The confidence summary was added to remind us that the AI response is provisional and needs verification."

"You don’t have to build a game; maybe you want to build a toy for your cat or a lamp—it just has to be yours."

"The more that you can get context out of the backend and into a place you control, the easier it is to work with AI."

"Impeccable runs completely locally with no cloud component, giving you flexibility and control."

"We can make things that weren’t possible before just a few months ago; not just capabilities but the user experience itself."

"LinkedIn Learning is mostly training, but here you want help in the moment, answers to your questions."

"We’re focusing on observable behaviors and outcomes, not specific tools or time saved, to measure AI fluency."

"If you can’t beat them, join them—I got Cursor seats for my design team."

"We built the reporting assistant on WhatsApp because parts of their workflow were already happening informally on such channels."

"When tired becomes the norm, people get playful again because they stop being married to the tools and start being curious about what's next."

"If the best AI prototyping tools can’t understand our complex design system, no other tool can."

"We get these 75-page PRDs created by enthusiastic people, not PMs, and they’re unreadable. We call that fake holder input."

"Use AI to remove boring, menial tasks but preserve the manual, difficult hard work for yourself."

"Sometimes when you're lost, the thing to do is stop and stop repeating the story you've told yourself for years."

"I think maybe that’s the time has come for universal basic income, but never in history have I seen governments just pay everybody to be there."

"In impact work, you have to get on the field and understand the reality, not stay distant."

"We need to figure out how to assess design projects and designers better because employers need to make choices, but design resists simple scoring."

"Move thoughtfully and purposefully is better than move fast and break things, especially in large companies with millions of users."

"Be observant means to observe what’s being said, not just what people say."

"You’re in the right spot, and that’s the right instinct to be building."

"The dominant technocratic paradigm under managerialism may be incompatible with rural maternal health needs."

"Create islands of joy at work, because everybody in this world is yearning for happiness."

"I had to learn to speak contractor — shorter, simpler, in-viewport text without scrolling."

"Many healthcare constraints are assumptions that have never been tested or questioned."

"When you’re doing a survey, think about if it can be done in a way that is much more accessible."

"Let’s face it, sound smarter in general."

"Our library includes thousands of hours of videos created by over eleven hundred people."

"Research is democratized: if you’re not democratizing, you probably don’t even realize everyone in your company is talking to users in different ways."

"Simplicity can be a differentiator, as shown by Tally, which gained traction as a free, easy form builder."

"Rollout is more successful when management can clearly answer what's in it for the researcher and be honest about trade-offs."

"AI should be a force multiplier handling repetitive tasks, not a replacement for human judgment."

"Human oversight is crucial because no single metric like date alone can determine if research is outdated or still relevant."

"Researchers can become thought leaders by coaching and mentoring others on empathy and research."

"For many of our tech clients, there’s a demand not just to use AI but to transparently show how and why, to respond to internal scrutiny."

"AI tells you what you want to hear, which is dangerous if you’re making product decisions based on synthetic feedback."

"We entirely stopped using Figma at Survicate and are all working on these AI-powered prototypes."

"Partner with data scientists to pick and adjust statistical tests because quantitative ethnography requires new assumptions."

"The first rule of book update club is you never talk about book update club."

"Researchers have a responsibility to tell stories that remain intact long after we’ve left the organization."

"No more than five key insights — any more and teams start going off in different directions."

"Without solid infrastructure, AI-driven research can be garbage in, garbage out."

"Within five minutes and two seconds, they just dove right in and started collaborating."

"Growth PMs think this way because it’s the only kind of thinking the system we’re working within can operationalize."

"Having one-on-calls with people is one of my favorite parts of conducting research, and it felt like this was being taken away from me just for the sake of saving business resources."

"Whenever possible, you should be breaking down your work into specific research projects or topics."

"You are the expert in understanding the lived experiences of your users. It’s ongoing work helping those around you develop a shared understanding."

"Holistic sensemaking matters."

"Research should start with the idea that everyone in the organization becomes an expert in who our users are."

"We created monsters by stitching together many disjointed research tools that don’t scale well."

"We love to see questions around AI and even asking if participants want to join AI studies specifically."

"Customer voice lives in minds, not in artifacts. We want people to truly hear how customers think and what they value."

"Asking for help and engaging is actually a sign of growing confidence among teams."

"Agentic systems don’t just respond; they decide which tools to use, analyze results, think between tool calls, and can do multiple things simultaneously."

"This is the most pro-design and pro-customer approach because none of your insights have to leave the workflow anymore."

"We must design who is in the loop and who is in the lead. The responsibility can’t be handed over to AI."

"Designers and product managers often want more control, and custom AI gives them that in research tasks."

"Stop Wasting Research is really about thinking about research at scale and providing a big menu of different directions to try."

"Real estate is like the Wild West. It’s very mature but also very unstructured and full of freedom."

"Meisner taught actors to respond truthfully in the moment, prioritizing presence over preconceived ideas."

"SVG is like bizarro HTML—you can style, animate, and make it interactive all within one language-based file."

"This moment is an explore moment. Focus on breadth skills and learning new adjacent capabilities rather than just depth in one area."

"We have too many privacy lawyers and not enough consumer lawyers, which clouds enforcement priorities."

"The universe will absolutely provide if it’s the right thing for you."

"Designing for human motivation makes experiences more likely to thrive long term."

"Organizations rarely know their error rates, which limits their ability to improve user experience or data accuracy."

"My law professor outlined the modern legal process as UX: listening, researching, co-creating solutions with clients."

"Humans need to override and dominate AI because machines have no context or experience."

"The right answer is, it depends. And for the sake of our tools we’re forced to make edits not knowing what nuance we lose."

"The democratization spectrum ranges from everyone accessing feedback to a free-for-all, but I don’t advocate for a free-for-all."

"Don’t be afraid to not know something. Let assistive technology users teach you."

"We were reinventing the wheel every time we entered a new market, which was incredibly slow and inefficient."

"We didn’t want to develop yet another model but rather a customizable approach to support diverse clients with innovation portfolio management."

"Service design has a critical role in mapping human and agent interactions in an AI and automation world."

"Transformation isn’t just about prototypes; it’s about designing governance."

"Making the invisible visible makes things move forward and create alignments."

"Managing towards outputs means someone has decided what the solution is going to be and told you to make that thing."