The Optimal Path is a podcast about user research and product decision-making, brought to you by Maze.
The Optimal Path is a podcast about user research and product decision-making, brought to you by Maze.
The voices featured in this trailer are Ash Oliver, UX Research Advocate at Maze; Marcus Brandford, Figma; Roy Opata Olende, Zapier; Amy Lima, (formerly) Amp @ Amazon Music; and Benjamin Humphrey, Dovetail
New episodes drop every other week. Follow Maze and Ash Oliver on LinkedIn for updates, or visit maze.co/podcast and subscribe to be the first to know when we launch new episodes. See you soon!
Ash Oliver: Hey, I'm Ash Oliver, UX Research Advocate at Maze. Let me ask you something. As someone working in product today, how do you ensure that the decisions you make drive success?
Benjamin Humphreys: Exposure to customers drives a lot of understanding, which facilitates faster decision-making across the business and also builds empathy for customers, so the way that you differentiate is through building the right thing for the right person.
Ash Oliver: Whether it's a new product direction to explore or design solutions to test, a strategic research initiative, or features to prioritize, decisions are everywhere.
Amy Lima: Products are always better built in collaboration, not in a silo. You need different perspectives, different lived experiences from folks intersectionally to be able to weave that into the process.
Marcus Brandford: Research helps you get a better peek into what else is happening and what's going on in people's minds and helps you just make informed decisions.
Roy Opata Olende: Learning looks different depending on the stage of company that you are in. At each stage, there are ways in which that feedback doesn't just drift, but it's brought in and used to be able to make a change that's going to add more value.
Ash Oliver: So how can you make the most optimal decisions among so much rapid change and uncertainty?
Welcome to The Optimal Path, a podcast all about user research and product decision-making, brought to you by Maze.
If you work in product, you may be familiar with the optimal path, or the intended flow in which a user accomplishes their task or goal. But there are optimal paths to many of the decisions we make. From tactical and operational to strategic company decisions that impact how we work, why we build what we build, and how we deliver customer value.
In this podcast, you'll hear from Research and Design leaders, subject matter experts, and individual contributors, where they share the approaches, learnings, and stories behind the ways research informs stronger decision-making. You can subscribe to The Optimal Path wherever you get your podcasts or visit maze.co/podcast/ to learn more.