Yael Gutman is a Senior Director of Product at ASCAP – the American Society of Composers and Publishers.
Yael has introduced data driven decision making into three organizations and has created user research
programs from the ground up.
Yael couples storytelling with data to socialize complex concepts, advocate for product and achieve organizational buy in.
Past Talks
17 June 2021
Many organizations assume they know what customers need up front. But how do you convince your organization to move towards an experimentation and iteration mindset at an individual, team and organization level?
In this session, our leaders will discuss the hard lessons and provide some insights into how they overcome these challenges to become successful leaders that build more user-focused products.
16 June 2021
Collecting and interpreting data to inform product decision making, requires you do so objectively without being influenced by your own emotions and biases. Researchers have to be aware of their internal drivers in order to neutralize them.
During this talk I will share a use case where our research and product team were so overconfident and opinionated in a specific area, we were not open to interpret and appropriately consider the vital information collected from the internal customer support team. The result - the commencement of a project which succeeded in achieving the defined success metrics but completely missed the mark in solving the challenges the internal team originally reported.
During this session I will focus on specific biases to look out for and will share practical strategies to avoid them.
Some of the strategies I will share:
- Research “mindfulness” - practicing self awareness so you are able to identify your internal drivers: regular self check ins before and during projects, writing down your preconceptions and beliefs as well as doing this practice as a team.
- Practicing humility by experiencing being wrong: the A/B test game show where the team “Bets” which A/B test variant will win
- Extending your access to varying points of views by including cross team participants in research think tanks and planning sessions.
5 October 2020
User research is the basis for user centered design that materialises into effective user experiences. There is clear evidence proving how critical user experience is to an organisation's bottom line and customer loyalty.
Despite this evidence user research is still NOT integrated into many organisations management policies and product life-cycle. In this talk Yael will review:
- The four main perceptions holding companies back from adopting user research.
- A four stage road-map for establishing a User Research culture in an organisation, and
- How to counteract the challenges blocking implementation
Embedding User Research Into The Organisation’s DNA - Roadmap To Success