Jason Giles
VP of Product Design, UserTesting
- Episode
- 91
- Design Leader
- Jason Giles
- Role
- VP of Product Design, UserTesting
- Runtime
- 10:38
- Date Posted
- 1.22.24
- AI
- Leadership
Jason Giles grew up professionally at Microsoft, spending about 15 years there on products including Office 365 and Xbox, then moved to California to lead design teams at DirecTV and Ticketmaster. Four years before this conversation he joined UserTesting, where he manages roughly 30 product designers, writers and researchers inside the product organization. The company's mission, removing the friction from businesses getting feedback directly from their customers, lines up with what he cares about. Like most of us, he keeps running into products and services that don't feel like anyone considered the human using them.
Traditionally, he says, only trained researchers talked to customers. They built rigorous methods for removing bias and synthesizing what matters, but they were a small and often quiet voice inside the company. Now that the tools make it easy, he sees an opportunity for the people actually making experience decisions, designers and product managers, to get that feedback directly, as long as there are guardrails and some training so teams get the right kind of feedback. On AI, he calls the moment the wild west. At UserTesting it's saving time on repetitive work like summarizing tests and suggesting test plans. For his team, it's a mindset shift like the move from the encyclopedia to the internet: asking what could be automated or augmented, and learning the ground rules of avoiding biased results, recovering when things go wrong and keeping users in control.
He also talks about moving to Scotland, digital-nomad style. He underestimated how lonely it can be to leave a strong network behind and is now deliberately getting involved locally. Leading teams outside the US also showed him how differently employees and companies relate to each other, a humbling reminder that he'd been in a West Coast bubble. His advice for new researchers and designers: don't panic. He cites a post by Jakob Nielsen estimating about 1,000 UX professionals in 1993, around 3 million in 2023 and a predicted 10 million by 2035. Downturns come and go, and disruption like AI is where the opportunities are, so lean into it.
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View AllJason Giles is VP of Product Design at UserTesting, where he leads about 30 product designers, writers and researchers. He spent about 15 years at Microsoft on products including Office 365 and Xbox, then led design teams at DirecTV and Ticketmaster. He was a guest on Fuego UX's Design Leader Insights podcast.
Yes, with guardrails. Jason Giles argues the people making experience decisions, designers and product managers, should hear from customers directly, not only through trained researchers. Some training and the right setup help teams get useful, less biased feedback.
At UserTesting, AI saves time on repetitive research tasks like summarizing tests and suggesting test plans. Jason Giles calls the wider moment the wild west of AI in UX, and has his team learn the ground rules: avoid biased results, plan for recovery when AI gets it wrong, and keep users in control.
Users don't yet know which AI tools are valid or safe to rely on. Jason Giles sees building that trust as a major job for UX teams: designing so results aren't biased, errors are recoverable and people still feel in control.
Jason Giles thinks so. He points to a Jakob Nielsen estimate of about 1,000 UX professionals in 1993, around 3 million in 2023 and a predicted 10 million by 2035. His advice to new designers and researchers: don't panic about downturns, and lean into disruption like AI, because that's where opportunities appear.