Rethinking UX with the many “Many Wizards of Oz” approach with Sam Howard
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What is the Many Wizards of Oz methodology?
Welcome back to the Insights Unlocked podcast. In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Sam Howard, head of UX at Curio, to explore how AI is transforming UX research and design. Sam introduces his Many Wizards of Oz methodology, a new approach to testing dynamic AI-driven experiences, and shares insights on blending innovation with user-centered design. If you're passionate about creating products users truly love, this episode is for you. Enjoy the show. Welcome to Insights Unlocked, an original podcast from User Testing, where we bring you candid conversations and stories with the thinkers, doers, and builders behind some of the most successful digital products and experiences in the world, from concept to execution.
Welcome to the Insights Unlocked podcast. I'm Nathan Isaacs, Senior Manager for Content Production and User Testing. And joining us today as host is User Testing's Blair Frazier, a staff product designer here at User Testing and based in our Edinburgh offices. Welcome, Blair. Hey, everyone. Nice to be here. And our guest today is Dr. Sam Howard, head of UX at Curio, which is an AI-driven, personal, up-to-date news companion anchored in trusted sources. He's a veteran researcher with stops at The Zone Group, John Lewis & Partners, and UserFi. Welcome to the show, Sam. Thank you very much for having me. Great to be here. Sam, thank you for joining us today. So, you know, as we get started, I, of course, would just love for you to tell us a little bit more about You. your journey into the world of UX research and design, and as well as a little bit more about Curio and the sort of work that you're doing there.
Yeah, so my journey into the field, I guess, goes back as far as school, really. I studied psychology when I was in sixth form at school and really just bought into this entire concept of understanding and digging into why we do the things that we do. And I studied psychology at university from there and managed to take a particular module called the psychology of digital technology. And it was just exactly what I wanted to do. As soon as I started digging into that as a kind of territory of psychology, before I even knew about human computer interaction or anything like that, I just saw that this was something I could really, really get stuck into. So from there, worked out how to go about doing that and ended up doing a PhD at the same university, the University of Nottingham. And PhDs are very, very niche in particular. So I did a PhD looking at the impact of new digital technologies on medical devices. Did that for kind of four years. Loved doing the research, but found the process of doing it in academia quite slow.
So I realized that I wanted to kind of move into a much more kind of fast paced environment where I could really, really, you know, see how this kind of research works. impacts and influences the products that we actually are using on an everyday basis. So I decided to start my own research consultancy first and work with some great clients, but realized doing that that there's only so much impact you can have doing it as a consultant. And I really wanted to go a step even further and be really kind of on the ground working with the teams and being an embedded consultant. resource within a product and UX function basically. So that's how I ended up at the companies that I've been at most recently in terms of John Lewis DAZN and now Curio. And Curio is a really small company, but it's a really exciting time to be there. And as a company, we're really on a mission to try and fix the way that the world consumes information, if I had to kind of describe it at a really high level.
Sounds like an exciting team to be a part of. Maybe you could speak to, like, how do you think your experiences from school... through to university or PhD has shaped your approach to leading research at Curio? I think that when I first started, I was obviously coming at it from a very research method, rigorous academic approach to things, because that's really what psychology as a discipline teaches you.
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