The Design Psychologist | Psychology for UX, Product, Service, Instructional, Interior, and Game Designers

Disruptive by Design: Uncovering Game-Changing Insights (with Larry Marine)

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Jul 7, 2025

Larry Marine, a veteran UX researcher and cognitive scientist, shares his expertise on disruptive research in design. He discusses how insights can fundamentally reshape products and markets. Marine emphasizes critical research steps that teams often overlook, which can radically alter design outcomes. He explores the evolution of personas versus knowledge profiles, advocating for a deeper understanding of user behavior. Practical advice and methodologies are provided to align UX strategies with user needs and cognitive science principles.

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ANECDOTE

ProFlowers Disruption Story

ProFlowers revolutionized online flower sales by organizing by occasion, not flower type.
This design led to a conversion rate of 26%, sustained for 20 years, and changed the industry.

INSIGHT

Uncovering True User Problems

Observing entire user processes reveals unmet problems, not just surface complaints.
Users often describe solutions, not problems, requiring reverse engineering to discover the real issues.

INSIGHT

Design Bridges Knowledge Gaps

Designing products to bridge user knowledge gaps leads to intuitive, effective experiences.
Users act based on what they know, so design must account for what they need to learn.

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Ever wonder how certain products feel inevitable the moment they appear—rearranging entire markets overnight? In this episode of The Design Psychologist, Thomas sits down with UX pioneer Larry Marine to unpack the mechanics of truly disruptive research—the kind that yields insights so fundamental they can’t be unseen.

Most teams unknowingly skip a handful of critical research steps, blinding themselves to the knowledge that changes everything. Larry shows us how treating users, tasks, and entire processes as flows of knowledge reframes both what you look for and what you ultimately build. Along the way we probe why familiar tools like personas sometimes help—and sometimes hurt—and how principles from cognitive science give sharper edges to every question we ask.

🔍 You’ll learn

What makes research “disruptive.” Why some methods surface game-changing insights while standard approaches miss them.
The critical steps most teams skip. How a small shift early on can rewrite both your findings and your final design.
Knowledge-centric mapping. Viewing users and processes through the lens of knowledge—revealing needs that action-based models overlook.
Where personas really belong. When they clarify design decisions and when they get in the way.
Cognitive science in practice. Concrete ways to align products with how people actually think and behave.
A self-audit toolkit. Practical prompts to evaluate (and radically improve) your current research workflow.

Whether you’re launching a start-up or steering a mature product team, this conversation arms you with a sharper lens and actionable tools to uncover deeper, more market-shaking insights—before someone else does.

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