This Week’s Updates

Enabling the Team

Demand Mix, Shaping, And AI As (Dys)function Multiplier by John Cutler
Orgs spend a lot of time talking about dependencies, intake, predictability, “discovery,” capacity, and so on. But far less time talking about the harder questions around the mix of demand teams are dealing with, and how they are actively involved in shaping that demand.

Positional Leadership: The Emperor's New Clothes Of Management by Joost Minnaar
Teams work better when authority comes from competence and trust, not just title or rank. Clear roles, psychological safety, and decision-making closer to the work help people speak up sooner, reduce distortion as information moves upward, and keep leadership grounded in reality. 

Product Direction

Product Management On The AI Exponential by Cat Wu
Product teams can move faster when they replace long planning cycles with short experiments, demos, and evals that make ideas tangible early. As models keep improving, teams need simpler implementations, faster feedback loops, and the habit of revisiting what is already built as new capabilities change what good looks like.

5 Ways Product Discovery Breaks Down by Itamar Gilad
Product discovery breaks down when teams fast-track “must-have” features and use plans as a substitute for clear outcomes. Stronger goals, better evidence, and fewer roadmap assumptions help teams validate ideas properly and focus on business and user results instead of just shipping. 

Continuous Research

Deprivation Studies: Take The Product Away To Reveal What Users Truly Need by Jakob Nielsen
Standard usability testing can show where users struggle, but deprivation studies reveal what they would actually miss if a product or feature disappeared. Watching the workarounds people create helps teams separate real value from habit, clutter, and lock-in, making it easier to cut bloat and protect the parts that truly matter.

A Practical Guide To Structuring ResearchOps Through Organizational Change by Carolyn Morgan
ResearchOps works best when its structure fits the organisation around it, rather than following a fixed model. Choose clear ownership, consistent standards, and the right mix of centralised and embedded support to help research scale through change without losing quality.

Continuous Design

Agentic UX: 7 Principles For Designing Systems With Agents by Alexandra Vasquez
Agentic systems work better when teams fix messy workflows, capture the right context, and keep automation inside familiar product patterns instead of bolting on separate AI surfaces.

Field Study: Prototypes Over Mockups by Édouard Wautier
Teams can make better design decisions when they test behaviour in real, runnable prototypes instead of debating static mockups. Working in code with shared components helps expose edge cases earlier, tighten feedback loops, and reduce the gap between what gets explored and what actually ships.

Continuous Development

Comprehension Debt - The Hidden Cost Of AI-Generated Code by Addy Osmani
AI-generated code creates hidden risk when teams can merge changes faster than they can truly understand them. Strong testing still matters, but teams also need clear intent, meaningful review, and enough system knowledge to judge whether the code is actually right, not just syntactically correct.

Engineering Managers Are Going To Hate Openclaw by Anton Zaides
Proactive AI agents can create real value, but they also raise the risk of teams shipping automation before they have thought through reliability, guardrails, or the blast radius of mistakes. Engineering leaders need to get involved early so hype does not turn into agent features that act too confidently and create more damage than value.

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Shoutout To Our Partners In Berlin!

UXDX EMEA 2026 Happens Next Week.
Don’t Miss Our Partners:

UXDX EMEA 2026 kicks off next week in Berlin, supported by partners helping teams research, design, test, and build better products: Optimal, UXIA, Baymard Institute, TestingTime, Leadium, and AccessiBe.

• Speak to one of Baymard Institute’s reps to get an exclusive UXDX discount on any Baymard plan subscription. Head to their booth at UXDX EMEA or book a meeting using this link: https://calendly.com/julie-baymard/30min?month=2026-05

• Outside of the event, UXIA is also running a UX Innovation Session. You can find out more here: https://www.uxia.app/ux-innovation-session

A huge thank you to all our sponsors and partners for helping make UXDX EMEA possible!

UXDX San Francisco 2026

Use ‘NEWSLETTERSF26’ at checkout to get 10% off the price!

FREE COMMUNITY EVENTS 

Video Of The Week

From Output to Outcome:
Driving Cultural Change in Product Teams

This week, we’re highlighting an insightful UXDX EMEA 2025 session focused on one of the hardest shifts in product management: moving from output to outcomes. Jay shares how Eneco successfully tackled this challenge by transforming their culture alongside their KPIs.

The session explored what it really takes to build a customer-focused culture across product, design, and engineering. Jay openly discussed the breakthroughs and lessons learned while implementing frameworks like ‘Opportunity Solution Trees’ to keep teams aligned on user value. If you’re trying to move your organization away from feature-factory thinking and toward true customer centricity, this talk is a must-watch:

Want to go into how careers and leadership are shifting as AI compresses the ladder? My ebook Managing Your Career In The Age Of AI explores how to build judgment, relationships, and influence in a world that keeps trying to automate the surface of the work.