UX Stories Podcast

If you want to understand your customers more deeply and unlock growth that doesn't rely on guesswork, this series is for you. Founders, operators, and product leaders tune in to learn how real conversations shape better products, better decisions, and better outcomes.In each episode of UX Stories Podcast, you'll explore how fast-growing teams uncover meaningful insights using smarter feedback loops and authentic user conversations. Inspired by the approach behind TheySaid, this show digs into why traditional surveys fall short and how modern teams gather richer, more actionable signals that drive real business impact.

UX Stories Podcast is a business podcast hosted by Lihong Hicken, with 30 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Lihong Hicken hosts UX Stories Podcast, a business show with 30 episodes published.

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  UX Stories Podcast

  60 Mins of Brutal Product Truth: 11 Leaders on AI, User Testing & Why NPS Is Killing Your Product

  Jul 1, 202653 min

  What happens when you stop asking users what they want — and start watching what they actually do? This supercut brings together 11 of the sharpest product and UX leaders from the UX Stories podcast for 60 minutes of unfiltered takes on building in the age of AI, vibe coding, and a generation of builders who've never done a usability test. From "NPS is the worst thing to happen to product" to an AWS leader declaring every user deserves a VIP AI experience — this is the product conversation the industry needs. ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Aaron Montana (LaunchDarkly) — 57 trillion data points & the psychology of building wrong 2:21 Abhishek Vyas (Auditoria) — Is agentic AI enterprise-ready? The rise of AI committees 6:55 Alex Pyatigorskiy (Vama) — The "Torture Room" that C-suite executives fought to get into 9:43 Alina Hernando Paleno (Agile Engine) — Predicting user needs before they arise: the CIFM framework 14:13 Apurva Garware (Invisible Technologies) — Teaching AI like teaching children + the future of hybrid teams 16:60 Arvind Duhan (DispatchTrack) — Are vibe coders treating customers as guinea pigs? 25:10 Dan Breyre (Sofar Ocean) — The 14-pound equipment lesson that changed everything 28:14 Fy Knight (Recidiviz) — "The money always follows when you listen to users" 31:07 Fy Knight (Recidiviz) — Henry Ford's real lesson: skateboard → scooter → car 35:12 Jason Levine (AWS) — The trumpet thrown over a fence & knowing your real user 37:12 Jason Levine (AWS) — AI that adapts to YOU: the end of one-size-fits-all UX 40:46 Jason Levine (AWS) — The trumpet story: your buyer ≠ your user 42:17 Jason Moore (Planful) — The UX myth that's killing designers' careers 44:40 Jason Moore (Planful) — Why the smallest research team is a leadership failure 47:28 Manish Upasani (Utimaco) — Trust as invisible UX: when encryption just works 48:59 Mazen Letayf (Alkami Technology) — "NPS is the worst thing to happen to product in 20 years" 🎙️ ABOUT UX STORIES Hosted by Lihong Hicken, co-founder of TheySaid (built by the original UserTesting.com team). Every episode explores the gap between how fast we build and how slowly we listen. 👉 Try AI-moderated user testing free: https://theysaid.io #ProductManagement #UXDesign #UserTesting #AIProduct #VibeCoding #ProductStrategy #UserResearch #SaaS #StartupAdvice #DesignThinking

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  UX Stories Podcast

  From $500 Flights to $50K Art: What UX Research Teaches Us About High-Stakes Buying | UX Stories

  Jun 30, 202615 min

  What does usability testing have to do with booking a cruise, buying fine art, or fixing healthcare? Everything. In this episode of UX Stories, host Lihong Hicken sits down with a product leader who's worked across travel, e-commerce, and healthcare to unpack how user research actually works in the real world — including a brutal A/B test failure at TripAdvisor and a surprisingly warm (then ice-cold) enterprise rollout at Prudential. Whether you're a UX designer, PM, or vibe coder shipping fast and skipping feedback — this one's for you. 🕐 Timestamps 0:00 – Intro: Vibe user testing & the speed of building 0:19 – High-stakes buying: $500 flights vs. $50K fine art 1:09 – Trust factors & the psychology of luxury purchases 1:51 – How cruise users behave like art collectors 2:31 – The TripAdvisor filter redesign that crashed and burned 4:27 – Why personalization is the future of e-commerce 6:10 – AI agents, image search, and the new shopping behaviors 7:01 – Healthcare UX: the most broken space in need of fixing 8:00 – How to recruit users when HIPAA ties your hands 8:47 – The power of listening: CX as your research partner 10:27 – Showing users a Figma prototype already in development 11:10 – The vibe coder problem: building fast, skipping research 12:32 – The future: designers absorbing coding AND research 13:29 – A/B testing, wrong turns, and when failing fast works 14:24 – Prudential case study: never assume a warm reception 15:53 – Usability toolkit: Maze, Pendo, Google Forms & more ⏱️ Final thoughts & TheySaid.io 🔗 Try vibe user testing at the speed you code → theysaid.io 📌 Subscribe for more UX research conversations with product leaders shaping the future of user experience. UXResearch #ProductManagement #UserTesting #VibeUserTesting #UXDesign #DesignThinking #Healthcare #Ecommerce #UXStories

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  UX Stories Podcast

  The End of High-Fidelity Design? How AI Is Merging Designer, PM & Dev Into One Role

  Jun 2, 202626 minS0

  🎙️ UX Stories | Episode with Mike Mancuso, Head of Product Design at Veoci Is the traditional design process dead? Mike Mancuso has 20 years of design leadership experience — from building design systems for 10M+ users at Wiley to leading public safety UX at BlueLine GRIT. In this episode, he breaks down how AI tools like Claude Code are completely transforming the way his team designs, and why he hasn't touched a high-fidelity design in 6 months. 💡 What you'll learn: • Why "seeing is still believing" — and where AI falls short in design • How Veoci is replacing a $1,000 UI kit with AI-generated design systems • The Figma + MCP Server...

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  UX Stories Podcast

  From Engineer to Storyteller: Building Trust in Cybersecurity Products

  May 26, 202631 minS0

  🔐 What does it take to build trust in a product users hope they never have to use? In this episode of They Said, host Lihong Hicken sits down with Ashish Malpani — Head of Product & Alliance Marketing at Corelight — a rare blend of cryptography patent holder, published novelist, and cybersecurity PMM. Ashish shares how he went from applications engineer → product management → product marketing, and why big-picture storytelling is the secret weapon in enterprise tech. They dive deep into the future of AI-powered user feedback, the challenge of building B2B products users actually trust, and why getting candid customer truth is harder than...

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  UX Stories Podcast

  A/B Testing Secrets from LaunchDarkly | Why Data Can't Replace Human Curiosity

  May 20, 202620 minS0

  What if your dashboard is lying to you? 📊❌ In this episode of UX Stories, host Lihong Hicken sits down with Aaron Montana, Head of Experimentation & Product Analytics at LaunchDarkly, to explore the real intersection of engineering, A/B testing, and user research — and why the future of testing might include machines testing for machines. 🤖 Whether you're a product manager, engineer, or UX researcher, this conversation will challenge the way you think about features, data, and what it really means to understand your users. 🕐 TIMESTAMPS 00:00 – Welcome & Introduction 01:20 – What a dashboard can never fully explain 💡 02:05 – The role of human curiosity in experimentation 03:05 – What is LaunchDarkly and...

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