Judd Antin: evaluation

Transcript context

…Such a good point. And you have this actual term that you call user-centered performance, where it's the performance of being user-centered. Can you talk about that and then just what advice you'd give to PMs that, hearing this, are like, "Yes, I love everything you're saying," and then not realizing maybe they're too far in that extreme? User-centered performance is a term I made up, because it's fun to make up terms. And it refers to customer obsession or a user-centered practice that is symbolic rather than focused on learning. So it's hugely common, I would argue. It's work we do to signal to each other how customer obsessed we are, not because we want to make a different decision. And if your listeners are like, "I don't do that." I'm like, "Think about it for a second." Because this is extremely common. It shows up in explicit ways and implicit ways. So explicitly, I would say every time a PM comes to a researcher at the end of a product process and says, "Can you just run a quick user study just to validate our assumptions?" That's user-centered performance. It's too late to matter. That PM is not interested in being wrong at all. It's too late in the game for that. We got to ship it. What they want is to check the box. So any check the box style research is a wild example of user-centered performance. I would argue every researcher has probably had to do executive listening sessions because a lot of PMs, founders, product people, but designers, too, they want to get close to the customer. And so, like, "Can I do some focus groups? I want to be there. I want to ask them questions." This is 97% performance. It's well-intentioned, but it isn't focused on learning. It isn't going to drive better outcomes or more impact. And then there's all these implicit ways that people engage in that kind of user performance, too. A lot of it comes down to cognitive biases, confirmation bias, ego. One of my big mantras was, "We don't validate, we falsify. We are looking to be wrong." That is the mindset you should use when you're approaching insights and research. "I want to be wrong. I want you to do research that shows we were off base in the following ways. Tell me exactly how and why in a way that allows me to fix it quickly." But many PMs, many designers are not in that place. They do not want to be wrong. They're looking to validate. And that's user-centered performance. Oh, man. I think a lot of people are hearing this and feeling exposed.…

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