Oct 12, 2021 · 33m · we-live-to-build
She Thought Her Product Was Obvious - Then Watched 10 Strangers Struggle
0:00 / 0:00
▶ Watch on YouTube →
gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of the 'We Live to Build' podcast, Playbook UX co-founder Lindsay Allard joins host Sean Weisbrot to explain how product teams can conduct unbiased user research, overcome founder blindness, and turn qualitative feedback into actionable roadmaps.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Sean holds 30.4% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Sean as informed peer 3.6 Guest teaching 4.1 Guest disagreement 0.9 Sean pushing back 0.8
speaking balance: gold is Sean, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 16:58 Lindsay reframes Canny upvoting boards
Lindsay immediately challenges Sean's proposed feature upvoting pipeline, pointing out that upvoting provides superficial popularity without revealing the user's underlying motivation.
Hardest push from Sean ▶ 7:03 Sean challenges open-ended question biasSean refuses to assume that open-ended prompts automatically remove bias, pressing Lindsay on whether interviewers must apply additional debiasing techniques.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 30:03 Lindsay clarifies startup priorities over UI shadowsLindsay educates Sean on startup research prioritization, explaining that obsessing over minor shadow inconsistencies is a founder distraction compared to identifying workflow blockers.
Sean holds their own ▶ 10:26 Sean details cross-cultural interview barriersSean demonstrates deep practical domain knowledge by contrasting Western interview dynamics with educational and cultural reluctance to question authority in Asia.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Sean as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Sean pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| We Live to Build Show Bumper | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Sean opens the interview by welcoming Lindsay and explaining that his own company is preparing to start UX research. Lindsay introduces her background transitioning from sales and marketing to product management and founding Playbook UX. | |
| Defining Hypotheses and Evolving User Personas | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Sean inquires about how personas are developed and handed off between product and marketing. Lindsay explains that early startups must start with hypotheses rather than rigid personas and iterate continuously. | |
| Debiasing User Interview Questions | 5 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Sean questions whether open-ended prompts are sufficient to eliminate bias, and later offers firsthand observations about cross-cultural communication norms in China. Lindsay outlines subtle ways questions can remain leading and how to prime users for critical feedback. | |
| Managing and Synthesizing Qualitative Research Data | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Sean draws an analogy to machine learning data cleaning to ask how qualitative user research is processed. Lindsay describes the practical process of transcribing, codifying, tagging themes, and assembling video highlight reels. | |
| Prioritizing Feedback and Building a Research Repository | 4 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Sean presses on how a product manager knows whether to act on an issue raised by only one tester out of ten. Lindsay explains the trade-offs between quick cosmetic fixes, high-effort feature requests, and storing feedback in a research repository. | |
| Pairing Community Upvoting with Qualitative Discovery | 5 | 5 | 2 | 1 | Sean proposes using ProdPad and Canny upvoting to prioritize backlogged user suggestions. Lindsay points out the major pitfall of public upvoting boards lacking qualitative context, recommending follow-up interviews with power users and churned accounts. | |
| Incentivizing and Compensating Test Participants | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Sean asks whether SaaS product discounts are effective incentives for testing compared to direct cash. Lindsay contrasts B2C consumer rewards with B2B dynamics, where employees often lack purchasing authority and prefer time savings or direct compensation. | |
| Evaluating Experienced Versus Inexperienced Testers | 4 | 5 | 1 | 0 | Sean shares his natural habit of auditing websites for minor glitches and broken links. Lindsay explains the 'curse of knowledge' for founders and why first-time testers are essential to uncover unintuitive product flows. | |
| The High ROI of Incremental Usability Fixes | 4 | 6 | 2 | 2 | Sean describes team friction over visual inconsistencies like button shadows. Lindsay constructively reframes this, noting that early-stage users care far more about onboarding friction and usability blockers than micro-visual styling. | |
| Normalizing the Discomfort of Critical Feedback | 2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Sean gives Lindsay the floor to add any missed topics. Lindsay encourages founders to overcome the emotional fear of seeing users struggle with their product and normalize regular testing. |
Statements from this episode (14)
PlaybookUX pivoted its target customer from PMs to UX researchers
“When we first started out at Playbook UX, we thought our hypothesis was we were going to sell to product managers, but then we really started interviewing UX researchers saying a lot of them using our platform. And we're like, oh no, no, no. These are the peop…”
Asking users if they like a product invites polite false positives
“You're not like, hey, here's a product. Do you like it? Because then when you ask that question, it leads people to say, yeah, okay. They don't want to hurt your feelings, right? They don't want to say, no, I hate it. So you want to understand, like, is this a…”
Founders should have detached third parties conduct user interviews
“I always recommend if, you know, maybe have someone who isn't involved, If it's your baby, you're like, oh my gosh, like, I really want them to like this. So having someone who's a little bit detached is always good”
Allard: Open-ended questions alone do not remove user interview bias
“You could ask an open-ended question that's like, you know, what do you like about this product? All right, that's leading, right? Because you're already leading them to say that they like something about the product. They might not like anything about it. So …”
Repeated specific questions unlock deeper usability test feedback
“If you just ask, like spend a few minutes on this website, people are gonna be like, okay, it looks good. You know, Keep asking in different ways, and then you'll get people to kind of open up and say more and give like really interesting feedback that way.”
Explicitly priming shy users unlocks critical, unfiltered feedback
“If people are kind of on the more shy end or they just don't feel comfortable giving like negative feedback, you can write things like, Hey, it's okay. We want to hear what you have to say, your unfiltered thoughts, your unfiltered opinions. This is how we're …”
Video clips of struggling users persuade stakeholders to fix UX
“I think clips are really, really important. So if you make little clips of participants struggling to find something that has so much impact. You can share that with stakeholders. You can share that with the development team and say, Hey, look, this is not eas…”
Feature upvoting lacks context and requires qualitative validation
“One of the challenges I do feel like with the upvoting is that you sometimes don't understand the why. Someone might get some user feedback. Oh, you know, I would love this feature, but what, why, why do you want it? What about it do you like? What value is it…”
Product discounts fail as incentives for B2B user research participants
“If you're a company that's like a B to B software, and you're like, oh, you get like one month free, and they're a person who has no control of the billing, they don't, it really is irrelevant to them, and that their company is going to get a month free on the…”
Companies split between preferring naive and experienced product testers
“Some companies don't want people who are like doing it all the time. They want person who's not trained, you know, knows exactly how to give tests and give feedback perfectly. But some companies want those people who are like really trained because they know w…”
Founders mistakenly assume their products are obvious to outside users
“As a founder and also as a product manager, you are so ingrained in your products and that's all you see. So you think that everything's obvious to everyone else.”
Usability feedback usually requires small tweaks rather than major overhauls
“I've realized it's always the little stuff, and that's the best part about this type of feedback. It's just, I need a header here, or a label needs to be a little bit more clear, or I need to learn more button here because people just wanted to know a little b…”
Users care about broken workflows, not minor UI styling inconsistencies
“The user does not most of the time really care, to be honest. Like we've put it in front of so many people and they're like, oh yeah, I didn't really notice that. But they do notice when they can't figure out, when they got frustrated.”
Founders resist user feedback due to fear of negative reactions
“One thing I always see is a lot of startups resistant to getting user feedback, customer feedback, even though people preach it all the time, like get user feedback, put it in front of users. And I think it's always been, you know, oh, that's, why don't they w…”