UXCam

Could this be why your user interviews aren’t giving you real answers? In our live session, we asked product management coach Tim Herbig a question we hear from product teams all the time: “How do we balance quantitative metrics with qualitative insights to actually measure progress?” Tim’s answer hits a major challenge we see often: teams doing constant user interviews, yet still struggling to make confident decisions. Split testing gives you an objective signal, but if we’re only sitting next to customers asking, “What feature should we build?”, we’re not collecting valid data or making real progress. The real work is identifying the core question we need answered, and choosing the data source best equipped to get us to informed conviction. Watch the full session on our events page or YouTube for more on real progress, strategy, OKRs, and discovery.

If you work in product and have ever struggled with strategy, OKRs, or just figuring out what “real progress” looks like, there is a good chance you already know who Tim Herbig is. Judging by how many people signed up, we are all wrestling with similar challenges. That is exactly why this session resonated. Tim has this ability to take big, abstract concepts like product strategy, discovery, OKRs, and differentiation and boil them down into plain language that just clicks. If you missed the live session, here is what we learned and what you can start applying right away.

Product folks: the one and only Tim Herbig will be in the house next week for a special FREE live workshop, created to help you make real progress with your strategy, OKRs and discovery. Register now!

Ever feel like your team is doing everything right but still not making real progress? You’ve got your OKRs in place. Discovery rituals are running. Roadmaps are neat and updated. But when you look at outcomes, something’s missing. That’s what product management coach and author Tim Herbig calls “Alibi Progress”, when the process looks great but impact is nowhere to be found. In our next UXCam LinkedIn Live, Tim will show you how to connect product strategy, OKRs, and discovery so they actually work together and drive results you can measure. Here’s what you’ll learn: • How to diagnose what’s blocking progress (and why frameworks alone don’t fix it) • The Progress Wheel to align strategy, OKRs, and discovery • Real examples from teams who’ve made the shift from busywork to impact It’s an interactive format, not another slide deck. Tim will work live in Miro and tackle real challenges from the audience. Plus, five participants will receive a free copy of Real Progress. Save your spot here: https://lnkd.in/eQU_v3pv

What does an AI Product Manager at Zendesk, say the best AI tool is for PMs? Patrycja Walencik, AI Product Manager at Zendesk has an answer: there isn’t one. Q: What AI tools are you using right now to stay ahead? At Zendesk, she works closely with data scientists and has access to a dedicated LLM proxy and platform. But she doesn’t rely on a single favorite tool. Instead, she follows the market, compares what other products are doing, and chooses the right solution for her customers. Sometimes that solution involves AI. Sometimes it doesn’t. Q: How do you stay inspired? She takes a mix-and-match approach: conferences, networking, podcasts, books, and LinkedIn. The challenge is avoiding overwhelm. With AI dominating every headline, she focuses on just two newsletters and makes time to talk with good people. Q: Any favorite newsletters? Lenny's Newsletter tops her list, along with the Polish product community that keeps her connected to what’s happening in her market. Her perspective is a reminder that product management is not about chasing tools. It is about solving problems in the right way. What do you think: should product managers always start with AI, or is it better to decide case by case?

What does a Chief Product and Technology Officer want you to do to understand you customers better, including how to effectively use AI. For Simone Basso, Chief Product and Technology Officer at WeRoad, understanding customers is about more than data and dashboards. It's about observing how people actually behave when they are making one of the most emotional and complex purchases of their year, their vacation. Q: How does WeRoad use AI today? We use a wide range of AI tools across the company, from marketing to product. Our teams experiment with creative and automation platforms such as Midjourney, and we have built an in-house AI stack that powers semantic search to help travelers find experiences in a more natural, intuitive way. Q: What have you learned from watching how people interact with your product? Our business is complex. From the moment someone lands on our website to the moment they book a trip, it is often a three-month journey. There is a lot of discovery, comparing, and saving options. Since travel is a deeply emotional purchase, it is essential to see how people browse, where they click, and what they do not understand. You cannot see that only from funnels and dashboards. Q: What role should humans still play as product analytics and AI tools evolve? Ideally, a tool could analyze behavior and tell me exactly where the anomalies are, the three things that need attention. That would be incredible. But for now, every tool is still far from that. Until then, it is up to humans to connect the dots, understand the context, and make sense of the story behind the numbers. Q: Where do you find product inspiration? Podcasts and YouTube. One of my favorites is Lenny Rachitsky (Lenny's podcast), which is always top of mind. Simone’s perspective is a reminder that great product leadership means blending data, observation, and empathy. Real insight comes from watching what people do, not just reading what the numbers say.

Why Prodotto Colletive’s founder says intentionality Is the product skill we’re all overlooking. Francesca Cortesi has spent her career building products, teams, and now a community. The former CPO of Hemnet and current Founder and CPO of Prodotto Collective believes the skill that defines great product leaders today isn’t speed or trend-tracking. It’s intentionality. Q: Where should product managers focus their attention right now? That’s the million-dollar question. For Francesca, the answer starts with slowing down and asking questions before moving. “Don’t follow trends or let FOMO drive your choices. Think about what’s good for you,” she says. Instead of thinking now, next, later, she encourages people to reflect on what you know, what you don’t know, and what you want to know. That shift, she explains, helps product leaders focus on what truly matters instead of chasing everything at once. Q: You spoke about slowing down and keeping some thinking human, even with AI. How do you practice that? Francesca shares an example from her own life. Living in Sweden as an Italian who works primarily in English, she started using AI to translate her Swedish writing. Within weeks, she noticed she was losing her sense of the language. “I stopped doing that,” she says. “Now I write in Swedish first and use AI only to fix the grammar. That way I still learn.” Her point is simple: if we hand over all the thinking to machines, we lose the very skills that make us who we are. Q: You also mentioned ‘observe before react.’ Why is that important right now? With so much information coming at us (podcasts, newsletters, gurus) Francesca believes product people need to pause and ask: Is this helping me? She’s even stopped saving every link or resource she comes across because it only created anxiety. “You’ll never be on top of everything,” she says. “The real skill is choosing the ideas that are important to you.” Q: You post often on LinkedIn. Do you use AI to help write your content? “No AI in my posts,” she laughs. “LinkedIn is where I have real conversations. I don’t want a machine to do that for me.” She does use AI lightly to check grammar since English isn’t her native language, but sometimes she leaves the small mistakes. “Nobody dies if there’s an extra S. It’s more human that way.” Francesca’s words are a grounding reminder: in an era that glorifies speed and automation, slowing down, observing, and acting with intention might just be the real competitive edge.

What does a HelloFresh AI Product Manager Say Humans Still Do Best? Five years ago, AI was just beginning to find its place inside product teams. Today, Ebrahim Kargar leads AI and machine learning initiatives at HelloFresh, and the way he works has completely transformed. Q: What has changed most in how you structure your workday since AI entered the picture? Ebrahim describes his work in short, focused bursts of deep effort followed by time to rest and reflect. When an idea hits, he prototypes and tests it fast, sometimes within hours, to get early signals. If it works, he doubles down. If not, he moves on quickly. The rhythm of intensity and reflection keeps his work both effective and fulfilling. Q: What skills matter most for product managers right now? In an age where AI can write a PRD or generate a prototype in minutes, Ebrahim says the differentiators are human: - Product sense: knowing what truly matters to customers. - Critical judgment: deciding which ideas are worth pursuing. - Creative execution: going beyond what an LLM can predict to build something original. For him, AI has changed the game, but it has not replaced the essentials. The best product managers use these tools to scale their thinking, not surrender it. What about you, do you think AI makes product management easier or harder?