Episode
Pavel Samsonov - AI Can Build the Solution... You Still Have to Design the Problem
- Podcast
- One Knight in Product
- Published
- Jul 25, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 4143
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Summary
On this episode, I speak to Pavel Samsonov, Principal UX Designer at Justworks and author of The Product Picnic newsletter. Pavel has spent his career working across UX, service design and product management, including roles at Amazon and Bloomberg, helping organisations design better products by understanding the systems, processes and people behind them. We explore why great products start with better problem definition, how organisational silos undermine customer experience, why AI is making it easier to build the wrong things faster, and why genuine user understanding remains a uniquely human advantage. Episode Highlights Design for understanding, not simplicity - Complex B2B products don't need to hide complexity; they need to present it in a way that users can understand, navigate and act upon confidently. Customer journeys don't follow organisational charts - Teams optimise their own domains, but customers experience the whole service. The biggest opportunities often lie in fixing the gaps between teams rather than improving individual features. Problem design matters more than solution design - Before discussing features or interfaces, ask whether you're solving the right problem, why it exists, and whether it's important enough for customers to actually care. Actionable beats visible - Dashboards, analytics and metrics only create value when they help someone make a better decision. Data without action is little more than decoration. Optimising your work can create someone else's workload - Shipping work isn't the same as completing work. Teams should think about who consumes their outputs and whether they're genuinely fit for purpose. AI accelerates production, not learning - AI makes it dramatically faster to generate prototypes and features, but it doesn't…