Insights on Product Development

The UXDX 2026 Speaker Lineup Is Here (January Edition)

We've been locking in speakers for UXDX 2026, and honestly? This lineup might be our strongest yet. We're bringing together people who are actually building and shipping products at scale. Great speakers from Booking.com, N26, monday.com, Dashlane, and Netlify who are dealing with the same messy realities you are. UXDX EMEA 2026 Romain Berthomé runs product at Booking.com, where he manages 80+ people spread across continents. His talk, "Scaling Impact: Building High-Performing Product Teams A

Design is Not Dead - But the Narrative Might Be

The question is not whether design still matters. It is whether the story we tell about design has started to work against us. Berlin, Boom Cycles, and the Same Old Questions Pamela opens with warmth for UXDX being in Berlin, then goes straight into the state of the industry. She has lived through enough cycles to recognize the rhythm. A surge of enthusiasm. A hiring boom. Then the crash. Then the soul searching. And the soul searching always sounds familiar. Why are we still misunderstood?

Transforming Enterprise AI with Scalable LLM Deployments

"When you use ChatGPT day to day, are you really using one model, or is there an agent behind it?" He does not ask for an answer in the room. He wants the question to stick because the rest of his talk is about what happens when enterprises stop treating generative AI like a demo and start treating it like production software with real users, real data, and real consequences. Mahmoud is a Lead AI Engineer at Mastercard, working in the unglamorous, high-impact zone where models meet reality: de

From Output to Outcome: Driving Cultural Change in Product Teams

"Agile’s original purpose was not cultural enlightenment. It was building better software. Working software over documentation. Faster, more reliable delivery." And that is exactly why Jay thinks we are stuck. Because most teams have become proficient at shipping. They did not necessarily get good at delivering value. Jay threads two quotes through his talk to reset the room’s focus. The first, via Marty Cagan, is the reminder that the best companies do not just deliver software. They deliver

The UX Scorecard: Transforming Research into Measurable Impact Across the Org

“The most expensive usability test that you’ll ever do is the one that you actually don’t do.” When Experience Quality Becomes a Release Gate DocuSign is a big organisation with a broad product surface area. That is exactly why Amit Sathe and Marina Lin decided that “research insights” were not enough. If teams cannot measure experience quality in a consistent way, then usability becomes subjective, usefulness becomes a debate, and satisfaction becomes an afterthought that shows up in support

From Cross-Functional to Cross-Purposes: Why Collaboration Falls Apart Over Time

Two years ago, Mihaela Draghici stood on the UXDX stage in Dublin and told a hopeful story. Her teams at Volkswagen Digital Solutions had taken deliberate action to break down the silos between product teams and the business departments they serve. Cross-functional teams were finally being brought into conversations about vision, strategy, and outcomes, not just handed a plan and told to deliver it. A Talk About People, Not Tools Mihaela starts with a disclaimer that gets a laugh and a little

The Real Impact of Mergers & Acquisitions on Your Product Team

Tasha Melchior walks on stage with the kind of calm you only get after you have lived it enough times that you stop counting. Seven acquisitions. One major merger. A company story that keeps rewriting itself, while the product team is still expected to ship, keep customers happy, and somehow feel “aligned.” The Board Game Version of M&A Is the Fun Part Tasha introduces herself as VP of Product at Everway, and she makes a point of sharing her non-traditional path. She was a history teacher bef

Framework for Balancing Short-Term Wins with Long-Term Product Goals

Strategy Is the Easy Part, Execution Is the Test Michelle opens with a familiar scene. You build a product strategy. You map it to outcomes. You create a roadmap. You line up a cross-functional team. Then reality hits. The strategy that looked crisp in a deck turns foggy once trade-offs, capacity, and competing priorities show up. For Michelle, strategy is not the poster on the wall. It is the path from mission to measurable outcomes. It is shaped by data, a clear understanding of users, and a

Who Moved My Roadmap? Navigating the Unpredictable Future of UX and Product in the Era of AI

Donal O’Mahony has heard the phrase “once in a lifetime shift” so many times that it has lost its meaning. The dot com crash. Flash is dying overnight. A multi-billion-dollar acquisition that rewired a company’s culture. Now, generative AI is arriving with enough speed and noise to make even seasoned leaders feel like their roadmap has been stolen in broad daylight. Donal steps on stage as Vice President of Experience at Contentful, ending the conference with a deliberately optimistic note. Con

Building Customer Intuition Across the Product Lifecycle

“Customer intuition is the ability to understand and anticipate customer needs, pain points, and behaviours throughout the product lifecycle.” When a new Chief Product Officer arrived at DocuSign, the research team got a request that sounded both important and slightly impossible: build stronger customer intuition across the organisation. Marine Palamutyan and Morgan Davis were honest about the first reaction. They did not know what “customer intuition” meant either. How do you build intuition

From Research to Reinvention: Prayag Narula on Startups, Setbacks & AI Innovation

The uncomfortable pivots, the moments you get “dumped” by your own company, and the stubborn grit it takes to get to the end of a day when nothing is working. Prayag’s story begins where many product stories end: in research, not as a supporting function but as an identity. He came to the US to study research at Berkeley, taught design research there, and expected to take the academic path all the way to a PhD and professorship. He even joked that part of his dad still expects him to finish. Bu

The Superpowers and Shadows of A/B Testing: Balancing Data-Driven Success with Bold Innovation

“There’s power in the making. You can control the conversation and bridge the communication gap by making.” A B testing feels like a cheat code when it works. You get clarity. You get confidence. You get a neat little chart that says the decision is “obvious.” Ryan Leffel, Head of Design at Priceline, came to Berlin to talk about why that same superpower can quietly trap teams in over-optimisation, fear of risk, and a slow drift away from bold product thinking. Ryan borrowed the line from Mark

Data Science at The New York Times

“Optimising for the right thing is a good idea. Optimising for the wrong thing is a bad idea.” Chris Wiggins began with an image that felt nostalgic and slightly brutal. The original New York Times experience was a newspaper, a “dead tree” spread across a kitchen table. Readers navigated by memory and layout. Digital changed that. On 22/01/1996, the Times launched its website, and the product became a set of experiences across desktop, mobile, apps, audio, and a bundle that includes Cooking, G

The Holistic Product Journey: Redefining Design’s Role in Cross-Functional Teams

“There’s power in the making. You can control the conversation and bridge the communication gap by making.” The Problem Is Not Talent, It’s Being Stuck Christina Goldschmidt is redefining design’s Role at Warner Music Group, framing “being stuck” as the real enemy of product teams. Not lack of effort, not lack of smart people, but the absence of customer driven vision and insight-driven strategy that teams can actually use. She referenced the work of Marty Cagan and the Silicon Valley Product

Building World-Class Product Teams that Deliver Innovation and Impact in the Age of AI

“The magic doesn’t happen from the smartest person in the room. It happens when cross-functional teams make great music together.” The Myth of the Solo Hero Jeff Chow (Chief Product & Technology Officer at Miro) walks onto the stage and immediately does what great product leaders do: he lowers the temperature. He isn’t interested in yet another debate about whether AI is amazing or terrifying. He’s interested in the thing that decides whether any technology wave actually creates value: the wa