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Insights Unlocked
The mindset shift that turns UX research into a strategic business advantage
00:40:20
Paul Humphrey of Next shares his UX research strategy for scaling insights, earning stakeholder buy-in, and using AI in UX research responsibly.
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- [00:02]
Nathan Isaacs
Welcome back to Insights Unlocked. In this episode we're joined by Paul Humphrey, Head of UX Research Practice at next, to explore how UX research can evolve from a reactive support function into a strategic driver of business decisions. Paul shares practical lessons on proving the value of research, earning stakeholder trust, and using AI to scale Insights without losing the human perspective. Enjoy the show.
- [00:28]
Podcast Host / UserTesting 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 and joining us today as host is Amrit Batru, a principal Customer Experience consultant here at UserTesting. Welcome back to the show, Amrit.
- [01:03]
Amrit Batru
Hi everyone.
- [01:05]
Nathan Isaacs
And our guest today is Paul Humphrey. Paul is the head of UX Research Practice at next, where he spent the last several years building and scaling the UX Research function from the ground up, turning it from a reactive support service into a strategic driver of product and e commerce decisions. NEXT is also a past User Testing Illumi Award winner which recognizes organizations that use human insights to deliver world class cx, UX marketing and product innovations. Welcome to the show, Paul.
- [01:38]
Paul Humphrey
Thank you for having me.
- [01:40]
Amrit Batru
Let's jump in, Paul. We've obviously known each other for a few years now, so first off, I've always been really fascinated. Obviously I spoke to you before you were at Next, et cetera as well. And your path into UX research has always been really cool and interesting to me. So tell me a bit more about that. How did you go from where you are to where you are today and then leading the UX research practice in Tamway?
- [02:06]
Paul Humphrey
For sure. It's such a funny story. I started off as a business analyst for a company called bgl. We dealt with insurance, mainly car insurance. I worked with a guy called Mark Campbell. He's a UI developer. Fantastic chap. We're working on a project together and he got me thinking about UX from a perspective of how design works and flows. Being a business analyst, I didn't really know much about UX at the time, but I really enjoyed working with Mark and he had a role coming up on his team and I applied for it and went through an interview and he turned me down. Basically he said, no, I don't think you're. I don't think you're fit for this role. However, I know there's a UX research role coming up and I think you'd be great fit for that one. So I applied for it at BGL and I was lucky enough to get into it. So yeah, from then on it's, it's very much been a roller coaster. I think it's been almost eight, nine years. I've been in UX research now. Finishing up a few years at BGL and then coming over to Next and becoming a lead has been brilliant, but it's been a journey and it continues. Yeah.
- [03:23]
Amrit Batru
And to where you are now. What are the differences between what your day to day looked like eight years ago when you first came into the practice to your day to day at Next?
- [03:35]
Paul Humphrey
No, it's funny, isn't it? You look back eight years ago when I think I joined, well, I really got into UX and it's very much. I was trying to understand how it all worked. How does, how does research fit into the process, working much closer with designers rather than developers and things. And I think my day to day back then was very much trying to understand, you know, what does it mean to be a user using these products, how does research work, how does it kind of how do I upskill to understand people in a kind of way that might help and might fit a product that we're using or a website that we use. So I guess back then you could say I was very much a novice, very much beginner learning the trade. Up to now I think my role has very much progressed on from going through running lots of studies myself and doing a lot of analysis up to kind of this point now where we're at, we talk to a lot more of the kind of trade owners, we run a lot more tests, we try to understand business metrics and stuff to align to UX to what the business needs, which feels a lot more strategic I guess rather than kind of those day to day studies. It's now a lot more kind of what's the bigger picture?
- [04:51]
Amrit Batru
Nice. And I think it's an interesting path that especially the next that you've taken to get that more strategic touch point. I mean a lot of the customers I speak to, a lot of the prospects I speak to and just generally within the industry having that left shift is what I speak about from tactical research into having more strategic conversations. Having that impact at that senior exec level has been really difficult for individuals and teams. Tell me a bit about how things have changed, how you've driven change within Next from. I mean we started speaking about four or five years ago trying to noodle away with user testing. What's changed in that period of time,
- [05:40]
Paul Humphrey
I think going back to when I started. So I started, I joined next as a senior. We had a team of three researchers. Fantastic, really good team. Um, I think the research process back then was very, took quite long amount, a long time to get over the line and get insights back. And it felt like at the time we didn't have too many requests coming in, almost like we weren't known too well around, around the department. Those are the two researchers left to pursue other, other avenues, which left myself. And so I decided how can I a, for my own sanity of being a sole researcher, how can I get help, how can I get people internally to help me if we're not going to backfill position and then also how can I increase people's knowledge in the department of what we do? So I think a decision made quite early for me was something I did back at BGL was how do we upskill designers in a way that they can start really looking at really basic studies. Right. I wouldn't be expecting them to go out and do a full exploratory piece and, and fill in, fill in teams in terms of what they can find. But what I would start, what I wanted to get out of them was for them to be able to run tests on their own designs. Right? This was kind of what we, I was doing earlier, early doors at Next. But for me that's the stuff that a designer should be able to do. I think that's a real basic thing. So we went through a process of you guys came in and we did a bit of a workshop and we taught, I think there was 13 designers at the time, taught them how user testing works, got them to run some of their own basic tests and from there I continued to coach and mentor some of them throughout to get to the point whereby we have a process now whereby they plan, they build and they run their own studies and then we go through the analysis together. So it's all very, very much led by them, but with an oversight of overseeing of myself. But what that allowed was me to get some time back. You know, it allowed me to kind of stop looking at just the day to day stuff, but now start looking at probably some bigger bits like how do I branch out and look at the product owners or the trade owners as we call them at Next, what are they looking at, what's their goals for the year, where are they heading, what's the kind of need that they want and what are they not seeing from insights that they aren't getting where we can potentially plug that gap. Right. So I'd say in the last few years that's really what's taken off in our team is we're seeing more of those conversations happen. We've realigned our UX team as a growth squad to align and help these business units out so that we can have those discussions, run those kind of more strategic pieces, look at their goals for the next six months, eight months or a couple of seasons ahead and then help them with getting those insights. A lot more strategic, which is great place to be.
- [08:40]
Amrit Batru
And that strategic piece is really interesting to me. You've mentioned what the product owners, I can't remember what you call them there.
- [08:54]
Paul Humphrey
Try down the trade owners.
- [08:55]
Amrit Batru
Trade owners, what they thinking about, what they cared about. I speak a lot about the communications gap that we have internally. From the language that we use as US research and design and language that is used in other parts of the business. It's a lot more business focused, essentially. Tell me a bit about how you managed to start closing those gaps and how you started being able to have those richer conversations.
- [09:26]
Paul Humphrey
I think it's, initially it was, I think you have to be a bit boisterous as a researcher. I think there's, there's a tendency sometimes to potentially be a bit, you know, this is our research, we're going to keep hold of it. We don't want to really share it too much, but we'll give you the insights. But I think there's a bit more of, maybe boisterous isn't the right word, but you putting yourself out there in the department to learn what's, how does the, how does the team work, how does the wider space work, how does E commerce work as a, as a, as a, as a machine? Right. And that's understanding, I guess that language of the business. You know, I can hand over insights saying six people did this and this is, this is what we should change. That's great from a low perspective, but that's not going to have any impact. The higher up the stakeholder chain you go. Right. So the only way to understand what really matters to those kind of stakeholders, have those conversations. Right? Put yourself some time in with these people, understand who they are, what their goals are for the year, understand what their key metric is. Like, what are you trying to shift for the next six months, what's your goal, what's helping you move forward and then from there you can take that away and align that into your studies. So, okay, I know that this person is now trying to increase conversion rate at this point or they're seeing a drop off in this area and has been for the last two or three months. That gives me a really great key to kind of start analyzing that area and go how do we work our studies to improve that goal? Yes, we're still going to be user focused and yes of course we need to understand it from a customer perspective. We know designing for the customer is going to improve conversion in a good way. But the main thing here is that you're going to relate everything that you do, all that good stuff back to the business products as well back to the business metric that you, this person really needs to hurt or move. Right. So I think that's key. I think getting in front of these people and just having a conversation with them. I mean, I mean you, when you guys came down we went when had a bacon sandwich, right? Two quid, my favorite.
- [11:32]
Amrit Batru
How many rashers of bacon do you want? And it was like, say it was like 1 50, 1 pound 50 or 2 pound and what's up?
- [11:40]
Paul Humphrey
Yeah, precisely. But yeah, go out and go out, grab coffee with them, go and figure out what it is that they need. I'm sure they'd probably. These guys are super busy. They're not going to come to you. You got to go and make yourself known, go and put half an hour in, come out, grab a coffee. What are you working on? How can I help? I think that's the conversation that you need to get started.
- [12:01]
Amrit Batru
So you've, you've managed to get designers thinking about research and testing. That's bought you the capacity to things from a different perspective and start having conversations with different leaders. So you've literally enacted that change transformation process from a UX research perspective internally, what does having a seat at the table and as we sit here In July, in 2026, what does having a seat at the table with the next now look like for you?
- [12:39]
Paul Humphrey
Yeah, I think for me whenever I hear this kind of, this phrase I think a lot of people think that table is like I'm talking to the CEO or I'm at board level or you know, I'm the highest level I can be. For me it's what's the most important table for me to do my job well that's going to move to market, move the business forward. And at next especially that table for me is with the senior trade owners with the heads of departments. Right. So we have heads of international, we have heads of to platform which is next certain third party business heads of UK etc For me, it's having. Being able to have the conversations with those people so that they can see the impact of what they do. Right. Getting them bought into what you're doing and is absolutely key. And the only way you can do that is by showing them the impact that the work you're doing is impacting their metrics and their lines that they're really fussed about. Right. So I think that's. That's what a seated table for me looks like at next is, is being able to be in those conversations that the heads of department are having. Not so much at the, you know, C suite, below that level, but definitely at the level whereby I know I can have a conversation with the head of International and be like, look, I know that your goal this year has been to do this and the impact that we're having is helping out on these teams and these are the metrics that we're seeing move the needle for you.
- [14:03]
Amrit Batru
And one of the things that we've spoken about previously is you've told me about how rather than you having to actively go and knock on their door and take them for coffees or bacon rolls, et cetera, they're now going to you and asking you for it.
- [14:19]
Paul Humphrey
Absolutely, yeah. And that's. I think that was one of the biggest shifts when we realized something was going right, is understanding that, you know, people were starting to come back to the team and ask us for work, rather than us having to be reactive in terms of, something's happening, something's wrong, what can we do? Or be pulled in really late into a project to look at something which still happens, of course, but more so these days we are being pulled in more towards the start of projects or, you know, in those initial conversations, when there's a problem to look at, we're brought in earlier, which is fantastic. You know, as much time as we can get to help out can really is obviously good. But, yeah, being able to have see those people come to us and see that we're actually adding value is brilliant.
- [15:10]
Amrit Batru
Yeah. Adding value is also a key part of all of that. And there's one example that we've spoken about quite a lot again as well. Walk us through that example. How did you show the value and impact of user research within Next? And this project kind of got the ball rolling for you quite early on.
- [15:36]
Paul Humphrey
It did, yeah. It was fantastic piece of work, to be fair. I worked with the designer at the time who was aligned to our contact center, who was working on a new. I think essentially we were working on A new internal system to update contact center systems. And he was working on some designs and there was a few things that we weren't too sure about or how to design it this way and that way. So we came up with a number of tests that we thought, you know, we know that your key metric here is to reduce training times or is reduce cool handling times, et cetera. So this design has to align to those things. So we did a number of tests based on Dan's designs. Dan was the designer. Sorry. To ensure that we're getting, we're heading in the right direction. So does this redesign of this page align to those needs of the business? And also is it aligning to need of the customer, the contact center customer? Can they understand the page? They understand how it's been redesigned. Right. You know, through all those, those different tests and stuff, we had a fantastic impact which we, which was measurable throughout the whole project. I think we reduced, you know, cool. I think training time was down 90%. I believe out the back of this, at the back of the work that, that we did and I think it. Obviously there's an overall cost saving to that as well. So a fantastic piece of work, internal system piece, but brilliant to be able to put that metric on it and say this is what we've done and we can attribute that to you.
- [17:16]
Amrit Batru
So one of the challenges I hear from UX researchers and designers a lot of the time is when I try and have this conversation with them to see what to take ownership of that metric. They say that, but we've not had that impact. How do we know that it's purely research work that's had that impact on that final business metric? What's your advice to people from that kind of perspective? How did you get that sort of traction that you wanted?
- [17:47]
Paul Humphrey
I think in bigger projects it's tough, it's tough to attribute like what is, especially from a research perspective. How do you attribute qualitative research to the benefit that you've seen at the back of the project? Project, right. Huge project, huge change. I think some of it is like almost again before in taking that positive on yourselves. Imagine if we didn't do that work. The impact could be X. Right. And almost. I mean in the past when I've worked at bg, I've done risk assessments whereby if we don't do this work, this is potentially what could happen. I think I've. There's a situation where I've been in where by we had a couple of design changes and stakeholder wanted to Go with one way. And I said I didn't agree with it and just proactively went out and tested it. But at the back of that I could, I could come away and say, look, if we do go down this route, here's the cost in terms of development time, in terms of testing time, in terms of how long we're going to have it out, how long is it going to take. If we don't notice that this is a problem, then all the redevelopment and stuff on that and attribute that back to a cost and say, look, this is the time it's take, it would take us to do this. This is a cost effective. If we get it wrong, here's my evidence to say that it's going to be wrong. If we did it the other way, potentially that way, it feels like it's much right because we've tested it, because, because we've got some kind of feedback on it. We've understand through customer testing that actually this is the preferred route for me, that's the way that you can go. Look, we've just saved you X amount by doing it the right way. Right. So, and again, I think, I think in bigger projects go out there and just attribute your, your value to that. Whatever they make, ensure that it's known, ensure that when you, when you write your report and the findings come in of that, I think I'm 100% add in, by the way, this whole project made this amount of money and we were part of it.
- [19:43]
Amrit Batru
So in. And again, just to reiterate there, that you wouldn't have been able to do any of that if you hadn't gone and spoken to the people and understood what their needs, et cetera, were.
- [19:54]
Paul Humphrey
Absolutely, absolutely. That's the key thing, right, Is understanding, you know, what's the point of this project, like from, from your perspective, like, what do you need? What's the needle you're trying to move? And how can we help? How can user testing help? How can we get you customer insight that's going to get you to that core. Yeah.
- [20:13]
Amrit Batru
And that sort of mindset shift of being asked to do something tactically, go and get some customer feedback versus go and get some customer feedback and you responding with okay, I can do that. But, but why? That was a really important step, the change that you'd made there.
- [20:31]
Paul Humphrey
It was a big step and it took me years to learn.
- [20:33]
Podcast Host / UserTesting Announcer
Right.
- [20:33]
Paul Humphrey
I think looking back at my BJO days, early next days, it was very kind of. I love this because I'm talking to people. Right. And, and I think that's the pull of a researcher, is you want to. You, you're curious, you want to understand people, you want to help people, which is fantastic. But they get to a point whereby, you know, you need to be able to attribute that to the business value. Right. And, and for me, that. I think that switch happened probably, like, in our process, Amrit, when you guys came in is like, how do we start moving? How do we start improving this function? So we're not just doing the same thing every day. We're not just going out and getting customer insights because. Because that's what we enjoy doing. In fact, how are we adding more value? And that switch of, yes, I can do this job because I love it, how can I? What. What's the need for it? What you need? That's such a. Such a subtle shift, but it's just a single question. It's like, I can do this, of course, but why do you need it? What we're trying to achieve, what we're trying to change. Yeah.
- [21:37]
Amrit Batru
Did that change. Does that, did that change in approach, did that change in mentality and the impact of that, did that happen overnight?
- [21:46]
Paul Humphrey
No, no, not at all. I think, I think you kind of. For me, it was. Who do I know who's kind of on board already with you? Ux. So all the designers, my UX team at next, the. The. The head of UX and said, like, they, they get it, like, fantastic. Do those outside of next, who, who are the guys who I'm starting to influence, who I've been talking to recently, who have been showing a bit of what we do, who are the ones who are asking me questions about it and understanding and knowing, wanting to get a bit more from it, because I think they're the allies that you get onside to be able to go, okay, yes, I can do this, but you know, what's. What's the impact of it? Like, what do you try. What are you trying to move? And I think, I think once you do that, it opens you up so much more to not just like a single metric, but to business acumen as well, like to higher, Higher need. You start understanding really the depth of how the department works, how it all fits together, how one sort of change could really be intact in something else somewhere else. Right. And it also opens you up to more people in the business as well, people I've never met, never spoke to, probably wouldn't if I was still doing it the old way, which ultimately becomes a benefit, because when you end up on the start of a project and, and you're in the middle of a room and you don't know who anyone is. It's way better to be able to go, ah, I know these guys because we've had these chats before and we've talked about this. So yeah, it's, it's, it's a good position to be. It does take time, but I think just get out there and go for it. Like, figure out who, who's that one person who you've been talking to recently who's shown interest and then go out there and just say, ask that question.
- [23:38]
Amrit Batru
I love that. So first off, that could be the most loaded, biased question that's ever been asked on podcast series. So I apologize for that swing for you, but I do love the fact of it's not that easy hit to just go into. It is a case of finding the start of the sticky tape and if you can't find it the first time, you've got to keep on trying to get there.
- [24:06]
Paul Humphrey
Absolutely. That resilience thing, isn't it? Of. Some people might not have time, some people might not understand what you do, some people might want to care what you do, which is, which is fine, but you know, just keep plugging. I think I remember when I started at next, the head of UX kind of told me, I want you to be that busy bee who's always around and always kind of asking and always kind of probing and stuff. And I think that just for me, gave me that ability to just go and probe and say, go and poke somebody. I don't know who. Who do you. Who are you? What do you do? How can I help? I. That kind of thing.
- [24:41]
Amrit Batru
So, yeah, I love that, I love that. Shifting gears a bit. I don't know if you've heard, but there's this thing that seems to be coming out in the technology world called AI.
- [24:55]
Paul Humphrey
Never heard of it, never heard of it, never heard of it.
- [25:02]
Amrit Batru
So obviously it's, it's all. We're almost flooded by it from every single angle right now. No matter what you look at, where you read, what you're doing, whether it's in your past life or your professional life, it's everywhere. As NEXT is growing, how are you seeing the implementation of AI being utilized there from a research perspective? And yeah, let's take that part of the crisis force. How do you.
- [25:36]
Paul Humphrey
Yeah, so I think NEXT kind of remit on AI is go, go, upskill. Go learn it. Go, go, go. Use it. Right. It's not. AI is taking over this is definitely a kind of, we're keeping a human element, but we know this tool and this technology is here, so why wouldn't we go and try and learn and take advantage of it? So from a research perspective, it's been, I'd say definitely over the last year or so is, you know, what, what do these tool, what can this tool give us? What can it do to help improve areas? What can it do to help research? What can it do to help UX in general? And I think as researchers, again curious folk. So just diving into AI head first, we use Gemini and trying to understand, you know, what those areas whereby this tool could really. And it started off quite slow and I think there's a lot of kind of we're quite reserved or I was quite reserved with AI. I didn't really lean on it too much because I didn't want to, I think because I didn't know how to
- [26:51]
Amrit Batru
prompt
- [26:54]
Paul Humphrey
a lot of what I was getting back was kind of hallucination. A lot of it was kind of like garbage. I didn't really understand like how it's getting to the point of where it was. And I think what I've learned over time and use and trial and error and I've been on a few courses now is actually, you know, this tool is super powerful if used correctly. You know, I'm using it at the moment to not only improve process in terms of, in terms of speed, but keeping that accuracy is super, super important. And I've just come out the back of a course now which is, which is kind of telling me how to use AI and in customer analysis appropriately and properly with the right framework, how to prompt properly, how to really use it to ensure that you're not, you're not just expectant of it to work, but that you still have your say in the process. I think again, that's really important. But we're definitely seeing benefit. I think we're obviously, I mean, you know, amrit. But for anyone listening, I'm the sole researcher at Next and I work with a contractor, a guy called Brad, who's great. But the size of Next is massive. Right? The online side of Next is huge. You know, we have international websites, we have third party websites, we have the UK where we have the app that we have. So we have so much work coming in is how do we, how can we use this tool to really support us with that? And what we're seeing is the benefit of using it to really speed up some of those processes has been absolutely fantastic. Still doing the still doing analysis with it, but being able to oversee it and ensure that we understand what data is that's going in is absolutely crucial. But yeah, it's here. It's here and we're using it as much as we can in terms of. From a research perspective to help us.
- [28:49]
Amrit Batru
Nice. I've got a slide that kind of speaks to that, that I'll share with you directly. I'll share it on my LinkedIn as well. For anyone that wants to look in terms of. Yeah, you've got this always on type element where you can get that feedback and you've got to oversee it, but you can let it do a lot of it. And it's essentially opening up that space for innovation within research and product delivery, which I find quite cool. What are you most excited about when it comes to the doors that AI can unlock for you?
- [29:28]
Paul Humphrey
Such a good question.
- [29:31]
Amrit Batru
I have them. Sometimes I have some good ones.
- [29:33]
Paul Humphrey
Sometimes I'm excited that it may help England rugby win another World cup in some way. I just, just imagine all the data and all the evidence that it can collect and, and the usage of it in some phenomenal way. I think it's going to take. I'm probably deviating from research here, but it's going to take sport to a whole different level. Right. Like as a data analyst, as a researcher, like getting into sport research and going, you know, we know all this about our players, but let's use AI to take it to a deeper level. I think that is quite an interesting place to be. I think from, from, from my perspective as a researcher, I think the excitement comes in knowing I can build tools now that can plug gaps that we've had for years. Right. Something I'm working on at the moment, which I've shared with you before. Amra is just a really traditional customer journey map, but building it out so it's visual building out so that we can try and feed data into it so that it's up to date and live and that anyone can come onto it and click on it and have a look and you can see the latest update of the journey. And not just. Not just a page and a static data data layer, but actual fed in from different data points around. Around the company. Never would have been able to do that without AI. Don't. I don't have a developer background, but I think the ability to be able to do something like this for me and fill those additional gaps, I think it's phenomenal. Yeah. I think the benefits. Benefits of it for me, I'm really starting to realize now. Way before I wasn't, but much more, much more recently, I'm definitely seeing it.
- [31:32]
Amrit Batru
Yeah, I'm so glad you didn't use the terminology of vibe coding,
- [31:38]
Paul Humphrey
but yeah, I probably, probably did vibe code half of it, to be fair.
- [31:43]
Amrit Batru
I get it. It's just one of the. That piece of terminology that I just really can't.
- [31:51]
Paul Humphrey
Yeah, yeah. I mean it is worrying. I mean there's definitely, there's definitely stuff as a lead that you've got to be aware of that's happening in, in the space. I mean I follow, I follow a lady on LinkedIn and anyone who's listening to this, go and give her a follow because she's made Caitlin Sullivan. She's. I think she used to be the head of research at Spotify, but she did, she did a course that had just come out and she worked on. She's worked on AI for the last couple of years and course is phenomenal. Go have a look. It's on Maven customers. AI with customer analysis is phenomenal. But some of the stuff she posts in terms of just keep on LinkedIn around. Not just things to be aware of. Like once you posted, I think was it last week, maybe the week before, around AI poisoning, a new term coming up around people going on to things like Reddit and writing a fake product review which AI will then scan and use to promote to somebody who said give me a, give me a thought on this product and then finding it and pushing it through as a. As an actual kind of product. I think something that I don't see much of not and I don't mean it next. I mean generally is I think some people miss that validation layer in. When using AI and especially as researchers. That's the absolute key thing is to go back and validate your source, validate the work that's coming back. I think we need to go and just especially like this AI poisoning thing, go and go and check that source, like who wrote that post? Where's it come from? Is it valid? Is it not? Right? So I think that's absolutely key for anyone in research using AI is building that validation layer. Still know your data, know what's going with. Make sure it's clean, make sure you know where everything's coming from.
- [33:51]
Amrit Batru
Yeah, no, that's awesome. I think, yeah, we're seeing it all over. We're seeing it where people are just great stuff you see in the emails that you receive from different places, as you see it in marketing campaigns, et cetera. There's a lot of AI swap, but there. And this AI poisoning and. Not heard that terminology before, but. But yeah, it's another example of just how people are using. And maybe the wrong ways.
- [34:22]
Paul Humphrey
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [34:25]
Amrit Batru
Quite interesting. I had a quick one for you. When going back to the sports analogy that. That you took, I think it's really powerful in that kind of space. But when it comes to sort of UX and the power of the human, essentially within all of this, the example I've been giving is Formula one, and I know you're a Formula one fan as well, within those regulations, a specific set of regulations that people can't go without with, from a car design perspective, there must be the perfect solution within that.
- [35:04]
Paul Humphrey
Yeah.
- [35:05]
Amrit Batru
And I technically should be able to give you that perfect solution, but because you could put queries into different models in different ways and even the same model and in the same way and get different results from it, that's some of that AI slop that we see coming through.
- [35:25]
Podcast Host / UserTesting Announcer
Mm.
- [35:25]
Amrit Batru
The thing that binds it all together is the driver.
- [35:29]
Paul Humphrey
Absolutely. Yeah.
- [35:31]
Amrit Batru
They're giving his feedback or hard feedback.
- [35:33]
Paul Humphrey
Yeah.
- [35:34]
Amrit Batru
What's working and what's not working. And that's why we see 22 identical cars in Formula 1. Because the human element has had its stamp. Driving the best versus will not do so well just now.
- [35:51]
Paul Humphrey
Absolutely. That driver is the key component. Right. You could have every car the same, but there's still key skills that the driver has that's going to make that car the best, get the best out of it. Right, yeah.
- [36:07]
Amrit Batru
And that driver, on our instances, the end user is the customer, which I find a really good way of thinking about it. Looking at everything that we've covered today, from reactive research to AI growing in your role, what's the one shift in mindset or approach that you think will matter most for UX research teams over the next few years,
- [36:35]
Paul Humphrey
Purely on my own, is being open to. Being open to change. I think with AI, it's. I think change is inevitable. I don't think traditional ways of working in user research are gonna. Are gonna remain. I think. I think there still will be researchers running research, doing their own, but I think the expectation of speed and accuracy is gonna just go through the roof. And I think that means leaning into this technology and learning it, and learning it in ways that are still, you know, as researchers that align to our kind of best practices, aligned to ways of work that we still need to ensure that, you know, we're still the neutral role in all of this. We're trying to show the side of the user that isn't biased in any way. And we know AI has biases as it's being built, so how do we work around that? But I think that's the key thing is be open to change, be open to go and try some stuff with it. Go and create a hundred page long synthetic output of some user interviews or survey and go and have a play. Right. Whilst it's still in this, this stage where people can play and really understand the depth of it. Go out and try prompting, try different prompts, try and see what happens, try what works, what doesn't work. Try and build something. What's the pain point you've had for a long, long time that you've never been able to do anything with that this technology is probably going to open you up to. I think that's key and I think, I think the researchers who jump on and really are adaptable and will take on this kind of, this new tech, they're probably going to be the ones who will take research into the next stage, so to speak.
- [38:44]
Amrit Batru
Yeah. So say so we are saying there's be curious.
- [38:47]
Paul Humphrey
Absolutely. I think as we all should be as researchers, as UXs, be curious.
- [38:53]
Amrit Batru
Yeah, absolutely. Great note to finish up on there. Paul. Thank you so much for being on the show.
- [39:01]
Paul Humphrey
I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. It's been great fun. Amra, it's always good to speak to you. So yeah, thanks for having me.
- [39:09]
Amrit Batru
I always love our conversations and I'm sure we'll catch up and have a beer soon enough.
- [39:15]
Paul Humphrey
Absolutely.
- [39:17]
Amrit Batru
How does someone learn more about yourself and your thought leadership to type stuff and there's things that you're doing it next. Where's the best place to get in touch with you?
- [39:26]
Paul Humphrey
I'm on LinkedIn. It's probably the best place. I try to post every now and then when some. When I have something interesting to say. But please reach out if you have any questions about the courses I've been on. Any of the kind of work I'm doing that I can talk about from my perspective, not so much from next. You know my LinkedIn messages are always open so feel free to reach out and have a chat.
- [39:52]
Podcast Host / UserTesting 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 and review on Apple Podcasts. And until next time, this is Insights Unlocked, an original podcast from User Testing.