UserTesting at Mind the Product: our product team's top takeaways
Recently, members of our product team embarked on a day of learning and networking as Mind the Product kicked off its fifth year of events in San Francisco. We asked a few of our Product Managers to share their favorite speaker, talk, or learning from the event. Here's what they had to say.
From left to right: Leigh Villalovos, Sr. Product Manager, Krystal Kavney, Product Manager, Kilimanjaro Robbs, Sr. Product Manager, Cynthia Louie, Sr. Product Manager
Leigh Villalovos, Sr. Product Manager
Tricia Wang’s talk on who owns the voice of the customer resonated with me as the movement of democratizing research has become a relevant and timely topic both inside and outside of UserTesting. With the right balance of storytelling, humor, and advice, Tricia was able to effectively share how internal stakeholders including Product, Research, and Marketing should prevent “me-centered” design and instead focus on customer-centered design.
Krystal Kavney, Product Manager
Michael Sippey, VP Product at Medium reminded us to maintain focus on prioritization and communication. His Grand Unified Theory of Work is simple: 1. Make a list of things to do. 2. Prioritize the list. 3. Do the things on the list, in order. 4. Constantly communicate about items 1–3. Our responsibility as product managers is to create clarity and focus while facilitating creativity from our team. Our goal is to let go of needing to be right and enlist our team and stakeholders to help solve our problems.
Kilimanjaro Robbs, Sr. Product Manager
Denise Jacobs, author of Banish Your Inner Critic kicked off the morning reminding PMs our inner critic is the biggest blocker of success and great ideas. By shifting our current mindset, increasing self-compassion, making good choices, reclaiming our brain, and thinking like a scientist will allow us to achieve a constant state of flow and banishing our inner critic. I can already see and feel the impact.
Cynthia Louie, Sr. Product Manager
Teresa Torres' stakeholder buy-in presentation was super relevant to how we work as PMs. Every stakeholder has different opinions as to what the most important problem to solve. But if we can all align around a specific outcome, then we as a team can identify the potential opportunities to solve the problem. In working together, we can crowd-source and unlock creative solutions. Bring stakeholders on a journey to stay aligned and find solutions as a team.
Want to learn more?
If you’d like to learn how UserTesting can help you understand your customers through on-demand human insight, contact us here.
Learn how companies like Yelp, Nest, Fitbit, and more are conducting innovative and creative research studies to better understand their customers.
With UserTesting’s on-demand platform, you uncover ‘the why’ behind customer interactions. In just a few hours, you can capture the critical human insights you need to confidently deliver what your customers want and expect.
