Episode
Michele Hansen - Standing up for User Research in the Age of AI (with Michele Hansen, Founder @ Geocodio & Author “Deploy Empathy“)
- Podcast
- One Knight in Product
- Published
- Dec 30, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 3418
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Summary
In this episode, I'm joined by the returning Michele Hansen, co-founder and CEO of Geocodio and author of Deploy Empathy, now out with a second edition. Michele brings deep experience as a former product manager turned founder, and has spent over a decade helping teams understand customers through rigorous, human-centred research. We explore what customer research looks like in an AI-accelerated world: where AI genuinely helps, where it falls short, and why talking to real people remains irreplaceable. Along the way, we dig into interviewing craft, curiosity, synthetic users, and some enduring myths that still undermine product discovery. Episode highlights: We cover a lot, including: Why customer interviews still matter in the age of AI - why large language models can accelerate research workflows but cannot replace the insight, judgement, and transformation that comes from engaging directly with customers. AI as a research intern, not a strategist - AI performs well in certain tasks - transcription, tagging, and basic analysis - but prioritisation, interpretation, and strategy must remain human responsibilities. The neuroscience of listening and curiosity - both interviewees and interviewers experience genuine pleasure when curiosity is satisfied, reframing interviews as a mutually rewarding process rather than a chore. What AI misses in real customer conversations - considering the "spiky", unexpected insights that emerge in interviews - and why these often get lost when teams rely too heavily on automated summaries. Synthetic users, digital twins, and their limits - breaking down different types of simulated users, where they can be useful, and why they depend on high-quality human research to be credible at all. The problem with the "faster horses" myth - dismantl…