Insights Unlocked
UserTesting
What does it take to create experiences customers love, craft campaigns that captivate, and drive measurable results?Insights Unlocked features candid conversations with the builders, creators, and innovators driving some of the world’s most impactful digital transformations. Tailored for marketing, product, UX and CX leaders, each episode delivers actionable insights to help you create customer-first strategies and stay ahead in today’s competitive landscape. Each episode is about 30 minutes long. From optimizing product launches to leveraging AI for smarter workflows, Insights Unlocked is your go-to resource for designing experiences that resonate, drive loyalty, and achieve business results. Guests include influential leaders like Brian Solis, April Dunford, Kate Towsey, Jacob Nielsen, Teresa Torres, and Judd Antin among others, offering their expertise in CX, UX, and innovation. The podcast also highlights strategies and success stories from leading brands such as Verizon, Signet Jewelers, Figma, Microsoft, Tesco Bank, and more.UserTesting leaders and industry experts join as guest hosts, alongside show producer Nathan Isaacs, award-winning journalist and Senior Manager of Content Production at UserTesting.Brought to you by UserTesting, the leader in human insights and proactive customer experience strategies, Insights Unlocked empowers CMOs and marketing teams to craft experiences that drive growth, loyalty, and impact.Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Show notes, curated clips and more at usertesting.com/podcast.
Episodes
Mentioned books
May 24, 2021 • 48min
How to become a great product manager with the Silicon Valley Product Group
Christian Idiodi has led or consulted on nearly 200 successful product launches for a range of companies from startups to big banks. So, you’d think he always wanted a career in product management, right? “Actually, I wanted to be a doctor,” said the partner at Silicon Valley Product Group, a global product consulting firm. “I wanted to solve hard problems like cancer or HIV. That was always what I had dreamed and aspired to be.”Idiodi joined the Human Insight Podcast to discuss what makes a great product manager, how companies and managers should invest in coaching their product managers, and how product managers work with teams to ensure customer satisfaction. In his conversation with Andy MacMillan, CEO at UserTesting, and Janelle Estes, Chief Insights Officer at UserTesting, Idiodi discusses:
His role today at SVPG
His new initiative, Innovate Africa
How the product world has evolved over the years
Best practices for developing and coaching product managers and leaders
Staying close to the customer
Balancing processes and innovation
May 17, 2021 • 43min
Reinventing how we work: a roundtable discussion with MURAL and UserTesting
As Jim Kalbach likes to say, work is not an office, it is what we accomplish together. As many companies are now planning if and when their employees return to offices, the questions of what work is and how we accomplish it are top of mind. This week’s Human Insight Podcast dives into the topic in a roundtable discussion with Mariano Suarez-Battan, co-founder and CEO at MURAL; Kalbach, Chief Evangelist at MURAL; Andy MacMillan, CEO at UserTesting, and Janelle Estes, Chief Insights Officer at UserTesting. In their conversation, they discuss:
Distributed collaboration
Digital Transformation
Diversity & Inclusion
May 10, 2021 • 46min
Building strong design teams that scale: a conversation with Susan Rice
How do you build a customer-focused design team that scales?Susan Rice has done it three times. She’s the Vice President of UX at Workiva, a global SaaS reporting compliance platform that enables the use of connected data and automation for reporting across finance, accounting, risk, and compliance.In her Human Insight Podcast interview with Janelle Estes, UserTesting’s Chief Insights Officer, Rice discusses:
Building a customer-focused team
Her favorite UX design KPI
UX design differences between B2B and B2C
Advice for those embarking on a design career
May 3, 2021 • 42min
Retail trends that will outlast the pandemic with Sean McKee
The pandemic has changed so much about retail, but some retail trends will outlast the pandemic, such as providing a personalized experience, says Sean McKee, the former Director of eCommerce and CX at UK footwear retailer, Schuh.In his Human Insight Podcast interview with Janelle Estes, UserTesting’s Chief Insights Officer, McKee discusses:
His 25-year career at Schuh from storeroom to boardroom
The biggest changes to retail and ecommerce over that time
Keeping a customer focus in a sea of ecommerce data points
“What retailers have to think about is the question of experience and what experience looks like because if doing things that were at the experiential end of the spectrum were important before COVID, they're even more important now,” McKee said. “Customers really need to have a compelling reason to visit your store because they've just had an education that tells them they can do other things. So, the experiential stuff is important.”
Apr 26, 2021 • 52min
Creating a framework for customer listening with Dan Storms from CookUnity
Dan Storms, CookUnity’s Chief Product Officer, said adding steps to their sign up process had a positive result on the business. It was a counterintuitive action from a design perspective. Usually, you want to eliminate steps. But listening to their best, most raving fans, yielded insights that a few added questions initially would result in an even better experience for customers. And it was great for CookUnity, too. They saw a 50% increase in conversions. The three-year-old startup is a direct-to-consumer meal delivery platform that allows its customers to choose a range of ready-to-eat meals from celebrity and up-and-coming chefs. It’s based in New York City, recently opened its second community kitchen in Los Angeles, and delivers to twenty-seven states.In his Human Insight podcast interview with Janelle Estes, UserTesting’s Chief Insights Officer, Storms goes on to discuss:
How they leveraged two bestsellers to create a framework for customer listening that they then applied to their product and market strategy
How to validate customer feedback with surveys
Insights on planning the NY Product Conference
Apr 19, 2021 • 47min
Speaking the language of execs: it's not about CX
Are you speaking the language of your executives? If you’ve been sending them a doc to explain your latest great idea, you’re not. Because they speak in the language of spreadsheets. In Episode 12 of the Human Insight #podcast, @Tamara Adlin discusses the importance of understanding your audience, especially when your audience are your executives. In this episode, you'll learn:
Her seminal book, The Essential Persona Lifecycle: Your Guide to Building and Using Personas
Her magic trick to achieving executive alignment
Startups and the Catch 22 of the MVP
Apr 12, 2021 • 47min
How video evokes empathy: insights from a former design lead at Hulu
When John S. Couch started at Hulu as Vice President of UX and Design in January 2016, one of the first things he wanted to do was produce a vision video. Design is a lot like the parable of the elephant and the blind men, said Couch, author of The Art of Creative Rebellion. In the story, the blind men have never come across an elephant before so each man feels and describes only one part of the elephant, like its trunk or tail—unable to describe the elephant in its entirety “They're all correct, but they're looking at it only through one slice,” Couch said. “And what I wanted to do was make a short film, which described the end result. What the whole elephant looked like.”“And there was an immediate mental shift,” Couch said. “From ‘We're not really sure’ to ‘Oh, that's the elephant.’”In Episode 11 of the Human Insight Podcast, Couch goes on to talk about his career path (such as exaggerating his skill sets to land a job at Wired to the evolution of his role now as a Mr. Wolf—consulting companies on their UX and design problems).
Apr 5, 2021 • 33min
Accelerating edtech: A conversation about supporting learners in a remote world with Raina Mehta
Edtech is booming. In this episode of the Human Insight podcast, we interview Raina Mehta who is vice president and head of product and UX at Kaplan. In her interview with Janelle Estes, UserTesting’s Chief Insights Officer, Raina shares how Kaplan is accelerating edtech and the challenges they–and all edtech–have to address to engage with today’s online learners.
Apr 2, 2021 • 2min
Season Two coming soon
In this season of the Human Insight podcast, Andy MacMillan and Janelle Estes will be talking with some incredible experts and thought leaders who believe in, value, and invest in human insight to get a holistic understanding of their customers.That includes Raina Mehta, head of Product and UX at Kaplan; John Couch, author of The Art of Creative Rebellion, and Dan Storms, Chief Product Officer at CookUnity, and many others. On the show, we’ll shed light on trends; explore how we can learn and get better, and elevate the work of leaders and experts pushing the boundaries of our industry.The Human Insight podcast is an original series from UserTesting. Follow us wherever you get your podcast. Talk with you soon.
Nov 30, 2020 • 39min
Innovation & UX in the public sector with MIT Media Lab and Harvard Kennedy School
Stephanie Nguyen, Research Scientist, MIT Media Lab and Nick Sinai, Senior Advisor, Insight Partners and Adjunct Faculty, Harvard Kennedy School join UserTesting CEO, Andy MacMillan, and Chief Insights Officer, Janelle Estes.
