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The UX research reckoning is here | Judd Antin (Airbnb, Meta)

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth1h 15m
Hosted byLenny Rachitsky

Judd Antin has spent 15 years leading research and design teams at companies like Yahoo, Meta, and Airbnb. His direct reports have gone on to lead user research at Figma, Notion, Slack, Robinhood, Duolingo, AllTrails, and more. In our conversation, we unpack the transformation that the user-research field is experiencing. Specifically:

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Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-ux-research-reckoning-is-here
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Where to find Judd Antin:

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Where to find Lenny:

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In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Judd’s background
(04:16) Critiques and responses to Judd’s post “The UX Research Reckoning Is Here”
(07:33) The state of user research
(08:53) Macro, middle-range, and micro research
(14:05) What teams get wrong when it comes to research
(15:46) The importance of integrating research from the beginning
(17:30) Traits of great researchers
(19:53) Advice for evaluating user researchers
(21:10) Balancing business and product focus
(23:55) User-centered performance
(26:42) The role of intuition in product development
(30:15) Checking your gut instincts
(32:54) Common tropes about PMs, from researchers
(41:02) A/B testing vs. user research
(43:15) Hindsight bias and narrative fallacy
(44:55) Making recommendations based on research
(47:26) Advice for teams on how to leverage researchers
(51:18) How product managers can be better partners to user researchers
(56:53) The ideal ratio of researchers in a company
(59:43) Empowering user researchers to drive impact
(01:03:39) The limitations of NPS as a metric
(01:06:48) The risks of dogfooding
(01:08:51) Lightning round
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Referenced:

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