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Insights Unlocked
Design for AI or disappear with UserTesting's Mike Mace
00:20:17
Learn how conversational AI is transforming user experience design and why companies must rethink UX strategies now to stay competitive.
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- [00:02]
Nathan Isaacs
Welcome back to Insights Unlocked. In this episode, I'm joined by Mike Mace, executive business strategist at User Testing, to talk about how AI, especially conversational interfaces, is already shaking up the way we design digital experiences. Mike shares why this shift isn't years away, it's happening now, and what that means for UX teams, product leaders and marketers alike. Enjoy the show.
- [00:28]
Podcast Host/Announcer
Welcome to Insights Unlocked, an original podcast from User Testing where we bring you candid conversations and stories with the thinkers, doers and builders behind some of the most successful digital products and experiences in the world, from concept to execution.
- [00:48]
Nathan Isaacs
Welcome to the Insights Unlocked podcast. I'm Nathan Isaacs, principal Content marketing manager at UserTesting and our guest today is Mike Mace, an executive business strategist at UserTesting. He's a longtime tech industry veteran and one of the areas he works on at User Testing is helping companies build effective AI products. Welcome to the show, Mike.
- [01:09]
Mike Mace
Hey, thanks very much. I'm really glad to be here.
- [01:12]
Nathan Isaacs
Mike. I kind of talked about things that you work on, but can you give us more background about you and the kind of things you're doing here at User Testing?
- [01:22]
Mike Mace
Sure. Well, I'm, I'm a tech industry guy for my whole career. Started off as a developer, not a successful developer, not a really skilled developer, but that was how I got in. Out of that I ended up at Apple for 10 years in a variety of marketing and kind of business and product roles. After that, did some startup stuff. I was at Palm for about six years, so the handheld organizer guys and did some consulting. And then I've been with User testing for about 10 years. And my role at UT is to work with our customers on the big challenges that they're facing in terms of what's really changing the rules for them. So we're doing a lot of stuff, for instance, on democratization of research and stuff like that, but one of the topics that comes up constantly in conversations with customers has been AI. And not just like what is AI or what do you think of it? But specifically how's it changing the rules for us? And we've been having a lot of really interesting back and forth conversations with customers about that.
- [02:28]
Nathan Isaacs
Yeah, one of the things I've, you know, I've, I've been here maybe five years and, and I've seen over the years that you have, you have these executive level conversations with customers and, and just others out there in the industry. I'm just wondering, you know, from those conversations you're having, you know, what are, what are companies thinking about as we look into 2026, we're coming on to it. What are the conversations people are having about AI beyond, you know, the next, you know, image generation tool or whatever it might be?
- [03:01]
Mike Mace
Yeah, and there is a lot of that, like, what's the latest thing and what do you think of it? And that sort of stuff. And that's, that's actually. We tend to get sucked into focusing either on what's the newest product, which is fun because it's fun to play with and get the idea of the possibilities, or it'll be the very long term, you know, the stuff that the pundits are talking about the most. Like today, it would be agentic AI, you know, having AI do behaviors for you on, on your behalf. And that's all useful, but from my perspective, we're actually losing sight of the most impactful part of AI, which is how just what we've got in AI today, not what's going to be here in 18 months or whatever, but what it actually does today. And how does that change the rules of success for most companies? And that's the thing we've been honing in on these conversations is like, let's talk about what's happening right now and what it means to you. In a lot of cases, companies have been distracted from that. So for me, I want 2026 to be more about not what's going to happen in three years, but what's going on right now and what do we need to do about it? The.
- [04:10]
Nathan Isaacs
And what do they need to do about it? You know, it's. I think there's a lot of conversations about how I need to add AI into my sort of product portfolio. But I think what you're also saying here is we have to think about how we roll AI into our overall company as new employees, as whatever it might be. So can you, can you expand on that?
- [04:35]
Mike Mace
Glad to. And you're right, that's what it is about is it's not AI as a feature, it's what transformations is AI driving. And so I'll talk about it. I'll try to keep it brief. If I get too preachy, feel free to reel me back in. But it's something I really feel strongly about and so I'm glad to have this opportunity to share it. So here's the scoop. One of the few advantages of being in the tech industry for a really long time is you can start to notice patterns. And so I've been around for a while. I've especially seen big technology transitions several Times when I started at Apple, it was all about the graphical interface and what that's going to do at the time. And what it was was it was a wonderful opportunity for new companies to get started. Like the little startup that I did. I didn't end up wildly rich, but it was really neat and I learned a ton. But it also, that transition to the graphical interface was an engine of destruction for most of the leading software companies at the time. You know, you and I do not use Lotus 1, 2, 3 today. We do not use WordPerfect, we do not use Debase and a bunch of other things because none of them survived the transition to that new usage paradig of graphical interface. This sort of big paradigm change has happened about every 10 years, something like that. It's, you know, some sooner, some later. It's not like it's exactly 10 years. But I'm getting that same vibe that I got from the graphical user interface way back when. Today when I look at AI, but it's not AI in general and it's not agentic and all that other stuff. It's specifically the conversational interface in generative AI, which means that we are now increasingly talking with our computers instead of giving them commands by clicking on buttons and menus and stuff like that. And I'm not saying the buttons and menus will completely go away, but more and more we are going to be reasoning with and partnering with our computers. And that's not, oh, five years is what's going to happen. That's happening right now. And just like the graphical Interface made Lotus 1, 2, 3 and a bunch of other stuff obsolete, the conversational interface makes our customer experiences on almost all of our software obsolete.
- [07:04]
We software companies are like the dinosaurs after the asteroid hit the Earth. And there's a latency period, you know, it hasn't killed us yet. But guys, the explosion, that tidal wave is coming and if you aren't out ahead of it, it will overwhelm you. And the time to prep is now, while you've still got some time to figure it out. And most of the companies that I talk to have not yet really tripped to that. They know they need to add AI as a feature, which is exactly like Lotus 1, 2, 3 trying to add menus to the existing Lotus 1, 2, 3 product. Sorry, nice idea. That's not it. How do you rethink the paradigm of interaction for your software, given that you're going to have conversations with your customers?
- [07:50]
Nathan Isaacs
You know, it reminds me we had a, an interview with Greg Noodleman earlier this year and he wrote a book called Designing UX for AI. And one of the, the sort of provocative things he says, like you, a UI may just go away the way we think of it. Right. We may not need a little orange button on a website screen anymore.
- [08:21]
Mike Mace
Yep.
- [08:22]
Nathan Isaacs
And we have to start, we have to start thinking in that sort of way to be prepared and start making steps and start educating our, our teams. You're. Would you, you know, what are your thoughts on that?
- [08:35]
Mike Mace
It's. I think it'll be a mix. There'll still be some things that's useful to have a slider. Like if I'm trying to create graphics, probably having a slider to adjust the colors is a really good way to do it, as opposed to saying, make that a little bluer. No, make that a little greener. You know, stuff like that. No, I can be more efficient with clicking and dragging something. However, you know, the image that you're creating may well start with an AI prompt saying, give me something like this. And then you're going to be adjusting it. And so how does that mixture work together? When is it appropriate to use speech and how does it. Not just when is it appropriate to use to command the computer, but like, how does the relationship change? When it can be more consultative? What is it, what's it like to have a back and forth, customized, personalized conversation with every customer to help them solve problems? And I think, you know, there are a lot of people scared of AI. I'm super excited about this because what a wonderful opportunity to design better experiences, you know, and there's so much work to do. Like, am I worried about my job going away? No. There's so much to do, guys. We should all be approaching it this way, like lots of work for us to do and it's going to be really exciting and fun in my opinion.
- [09:45]
Nathan Isaacs
I'm definitely worried about my job going away.
- [09:49]
Mike Mace
Sorry about that.
- [09:51]
Nathan Isaacs
But how do.
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How do companies sort of.
- [10:00]
Test the ux of their AIs? How should they be thinking about that? How should we test the AI to make sure it's doing what we want it to do?
- [10:10]
Mike Mace
Yep, yep. And I've been doing some of that myself, kind of forcing myself to try it out with our platform. And a couple of thoughts. Number one, you still want to do regular usability tests, you know, give them a task and see if they can perform it. And it's kind of neat to watch on the video. Like for instance, we've done tests with ChatGPT saying, hey, use chatgpt to do this and that we're finding different patterns that different people use for how they engage with it. Some of them will say, oh, I need to do particular task here, a whole bunch of parameters and help me figure this out. Others will say, oh, I need to do this task. Guide me. Totally, totally different interface paradigm, interaction paradigm, just driven by different personalities of human beings. So watch, just watch how they interact on different tasks with the AI. Second thing is, you also need to change what you ask for and what you test for when you're testing a conversation. People, this is the single most important thing to remember out of what you and I are talking about today that I want the audience to remember. People react to a conversation with a computer the same way they react to a conversation with a human being. In other words, they will notice subconsciously small variations in word choice, complexity of language, tone of language structure, and other things like that. And they will form sweeping emotional judgments about the bot. And we will get them to tell us stuff like, the bot was friendly, the bot was disrespectful, the bot was pushy. Which are all motivations, like, how could a computer be disrespectful? But we read it into that because we're having a conversation, whether it's a written conversation or spoken one, gets even worse because then you got tone of voice and stuff like that. And so you have to test your conversational interface for personality, for credibility, and also for discoverability. One of the cool things about the graphical user interface is I can click on all the menus and see what the commands are that are available to me. How do you do that when it's just a typing prompt, it's just a box sitting there saying, type something very, very hard. And so it's really hard to discover new capabilities that these bots have. And so we need to take the responsibility for helping them figure it out. Is not acceptable to just throw something at them and expect them to figure it out. That's a great way to get 10% adoption, and that won't cut it.
- [12:40]
Nathan Isaacs
You. Well, one of the thoughts I was thinking about is the feedback I've received, you know, especially from my wife, is like, nathan, you have resting, mean face. So, you know.
- [12:55]
I haven't noticed that.
- [12:56]
Mike Mace
But now I'll be sensitive to it.
- [12:57]
Nathan Isaacs
Yeah, no, does. Does. Is there an such an equivalent with AI or, you know, like, yeah, you know, we, we've encountered people that don't have that sort of friendly tone. Like, they're just so neutral that we avoid those kind of people and they haven't done anything wrong. It's just the way they're, they're sort of made up.
- [13:19]
Mike Mace
Oh, it's really, it's really complicated. And you know, it's stuff like probably for different tasks, you want it to have a different personality. Like a support bot should not sound like a marketing bottle. Then there's the whole thing about how does your personality of your bot interact with the brand personality that the branding team has spent 50gazillion dollars developing? And let's play with. All right, this, this one works in the U.S. probably people outside the U.S. won't understand, but Jack in the Box Fast food, their corporate, their corporate spokesperson has a very snarky, sarcastic personality, which is the brand personality. They've spent millions and millions of dollars cultiv that. Would you want that personality to come across in your online interactions with customers? In some cases, yes. Like, hey, I'd like to go talk to Jack. In other cases though, say it's the company support line for people who said they got a bad piece of fast food. If it talks like Jack, you got serious problems there. And most developers are not used to thinking in terms of what's the brand personality of this company that's managed in a different department. They, a lot of cases they don't even know about it. We to bring that stuff together. So it's going to be a really, really interesting set of conversations that we've got to do.
- [14:42]
Nathan Isaacs
And I could keep going on. I just had this idea of there should be like Jack as a life coach, right?
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Mike Mace
Yeah.
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Nathan Isaacs
They should think of that as a separate app or something like that.
- [14:57]
Mike Mace
What a great way to build a relationship with your customers. Right?
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Nathan Isaacs
You know, you know, but the Jack in back, jack in the box snarkiness as a life coach, it would be hilarious. You people would just.
- [15:11]
Mike Mace
Anyway, well, and, and actually let me branch off of that for a second, Nathan, because I think it's a really, really good example. So some of the audience may be sitting here thinking, wow, that's really challenging for tech companies because they've got to rework their tech software. No, no, no. Any of us who go to market through online interactions.
- [15:32]
Lots of different industries, we are creating software. Our websites are software. The same stuff I just said about the interface applies to your go to market. For anybody who goes to market electronically. How does, how do you market? How do you sell? In an age when you're, when your corporate spokesperson and your corporate sales agent is a bot, how does that infinitely adjustable, infinitely customizable infinitely responsive bot that can have an ongoing conversation with every customer. You know, from one hand it is, that is the dream of every marketer and salesperson I've ever met. On the other hand, we've got to actually implement it and we need to get cracking now.
- [16:20]
Nathan Isaacs
And you were saying infinitely customizable, but I think also infinitely copyable. Right. I mean, and with the releases of AI, Right. I just received messages in my personal inbox from Google saying, hey, you want to try some vibe coding and just explain what you want and build an app today? Couldn't I, I could just create that app on my own, release it and you know, and let them try and track me down, right?
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Mike Mace
Yep.
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Nathan Isaacs
I mean it's just gonna be, it's gonna be a battle, it's gonna be really messy.
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How do. Any, any recommendations for folks in general? But also anything on our user testing website where they can come take a look and learn more. Anything like that.
- [17:12]
Mike Mace
So we've got a big white paper on effective AI that would be, it's intended to be long, but good reading for you. If you want to hear about issues like these and start thinking about them, that's number one. Number two, an activity for you to do is just start running some tests where you ask people to go to chat GPT because that's the leading one that most people have access to and do tasks that are related to your business, you know. So one that I did, just random because I wanted to see what would happen is I said, pretend you need to buy an new dishwasher, just go to chat GP GPT and look for a new dishwasher. And I just watched what they do, how did they respond, look for differences and other things like that. And I learned so much. So if you do this in stuff that's relevant to your business, you'll start getting all sorts of ideas on what you can do. And then once you get those ideas, then it's a matter of mocking up some stuff and just run people through it, seeing how they respond, start getting the ideas and thinking about it. It's, it's all exploring and thinking and figuring out how does this new paradig work. And there's no right answer. You do have some time, but what you don't want to do is sit around and wait 18 months when there's going to be some startup that's done this work and has figured out how to do this different environment. That's when it's too late. You got to start before it becomes urgent.
- [18:40]
Nathan Isaacs
We will include a lot of links to some of the things that we talked about in the show. Notes how do is anyone interested in connecting with you and following your thought leadership? What should they do?
- [18:53]
Mike Mace
They can connect with me on LinkedIn. So Michael Mace Glad to do that because I post some of the thoughts about this stuff, but also I don't mind doing this. If you got questions or you got thoughts, you're welcome to send me an email. I am Mike M I K esertesting.com I can't guarantee that I'll respond within, you know, two hours or something like that, but actually a big part of my job is having these conversations. And so if somebody has questions or if they have thoughts or if they think I'm stupid about some of this stuff or any any of those things, I'm learning off of those conversations. So I would actually welcome direct feedback.
- [19:30]
Nathan Isaacs
Yeah. If anyone wants to challenge any of these ideas or build on them, definitely we can have another episode about this topic as well too on the podcast. So that would be fun. All right, Mike, I appreciate your time today. Thank you very much.
- [19:46]
Mike Mace
Thank you. Take care.
- [19:49]
Podcast Host/Announcer
Want to keep the conversation going? You can find the show notes@usertesting.com podcast if you haven't already, don't forget to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast or Google Play, so you never miss an episode. And if you enjoyed today's show, please share it with a friend or leave us a rating in the comments. Review on Apple Podcasts. And until next time, this is Insights Unlocked, an original podcast from User Testing.