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PODCAST

Experiencing Data w/ Brian T. O’Neill

Brian T. O’Neill from Designing for Analytics

Does the value of your insights, analytics, or AI product sometimes feel invisible to buyers and users? Have impressive technology, but adoption and sales still are not where you want them to be? While it has never been easier to build analytics and AI products from a technology perspective, getting users to adopt them and buyers to buy often feels harder than it should. I’m Brian T. O’Neill, and on Experiencing Data — a Listen Notes top 2% global podcast — I help founders and B2B software product

technology management

All Episodes

43:08

190 - Why Discovering Valuable Analytics Use Cases...

Experiencing Data w/ Brian T. O’Neill ·

2026/03/17

I’ve seen this pattern repeatedly with teams building analytics and AI products: the issue usually isn’t the quality of the models or the sophistication of the data. The technology often works just fine. The real breakdown happens earlier—when teams begin with the data they already have and try to figure out what to build, instead of starting with the decisions their customers need to make.That approach often produces polished dashboards and compelling features that generate interest, but fail

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25:26

189 - The Invisible Intelligence Gap

Experiencing Data w/ Brian T. O’Neill ·

2026/03/05

I’ve worked with a lot of teams building analytics and insights products and decision-support systems. The pattern I keep seeing isn’t that the math is wrong or the ML / AI models are weak. Much of the time, the technology is fine.The challenge is that all that [not always artificial!] intelligence is not surfacing as value to your customer. Dashboards look impressive. AI features demo well. Pilots get strong reactions. And then… usage stalls. Sales cycles drag. Teams quietly revert to

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46:09

188 - Can’t Close the Sale? Why Your Product’s UX and...

Experiencing Data w/ Brian T. O’Neill ·

2026/02/17

I’m continuing my exploration of a hard truth many leaders of analytics software companies run into: deals don’t stall because the tech is weak. Instead, they stall because prospects can’t see the value soon enough or the risk of changing the status quo is too high. This is often a product problem, not a sales one, and obtaining Flow-of-Work Alignment (FOWA) may help you start closing more evals and deals. So what is FOWA? The idea is simple, but demanding: stop showcasing features and start

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20:39

187 - Can’t Close the Sale? The Invisible Reasons...

Experiencing Data w/ Brian T. O’Neill ·

2026/02/04

I’m digging into a frustrating reality many teams face: even technically superior analytics and AI products routinely lose deals—not because the KPIs or models aren’t good enough, but because buyers and users can’t clearly see how the product fits into their day-to-day work. Your demos and POCs may prove what’s possible, but long time-to-understanding, heavy thinking burden on the user, and required behavior or process changes introduce risk—and risk kills momentum. When value feels complicated,

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38:10

186 - Why Powerful AI & Analytics Products Feel...

Experiencing Data w/ Brian T. O’Neill ·

2026/01/20

I’m back! After about 7 years (or more) of bi-weekly publishing, I gave myself a break (to have the flu, in part), but now it’s back to business! In 2026, I’ll be focusing the podcast more on the commercial side of data products. This means more founders, CEOs, and product leader guests at small and mid-sized B2B software companies who are building technically impressive B2B analytics and AI products. With all the focus on AI, I want to focus on things that don’t change: what do value and outcomes

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41:09

185 - Driving Healthcare Impact by Aligning Teams...

Experiencing Data w/ Brian T. O’Neill ·

2025/12/23

Bill Saltmarsh joins me to discuss where a modern CDO gets the inspiration to “operate in the producty way” in his domain, which is healthcare. Now Vice President of Enterprise Data and Transformation and the Chief Data Officer at Children’s Mercy Kansas City, his early days as an analyst revealed a gap between what stakeholders asked for vs. the outcomes they sought. This convinced him that data teams need to pause, ask better questions, and prioritize meaningful outcomes over quickly churning out

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14:22

184 - Part III: Designing with the Flow of Work:...

Experiencing Data w/ Brian T. O’Neill ·

2025/12/09

In this final part of my three-episode series on accelerating sales and adoption in B2B analytics and AI products, I unpack a growing challenge in the age of generative AI: what to do when your product automates a major chunk of a user’s workflow only to reveal an entirely new problem right behind it.Building on Part I and Part II, I look at how AI often collapses the “front half” of a process, pushing the more complex, value-heavy work directly to users. This raises critical questions about

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35:07

183 - Part II: Designing with the Flow of Work:...

Experiencing Data w/ Brian T. O’Neill ·

2025/11/27

In this second part of my three-part series (catch Part I via episode 182), I dig deeper into the key idea that sales in commercial data products can be accelerated by designing for actual user workflows—vs. going wide with a “many-purpose” AI and analytics solution that “does more,” but is misaligned with how users’ most important work actually gets done.To explain this, I will explain the concept of user experience (UX) outcomes, and how building your solution to enable these outcomes may be a

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22:45

182 - Designing with the Flow of Work: Accelerating...

Experiencing Data w/ Brian T. O’Neill ·

2025/11/10

Building B2B analytics and AI tools that people will actually pay for and use is hard. The reality is, your product won’t deliver ROI if no one’s using it. That’s why first principles thinking says you have to solve the usage problem first.In this episode, I’ll explain why the key to user adoption is designing with the flow of work—building your solution around the natural workflows of your users to minimize the behavior changes you’re asking them to make. When users clearly see the value in your

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50:09

181- Lessons Learned Designing Orion, Gravity’s AI,...

Experiencing Data w/ Brian T. O’Neill ·

2025/10/28

On today's Promoted Episode of Experiencing Data, I’m talking with Lucas Thelosen, CEO of Gravity and creator of Orion, an AI analyst transforming how data teams work. Lucas was head of PS for Looker, and eventually became Head of Product for Google’s Data and AI Cloud prior to starting his own data product company. We dig into how his team built Orion, the challenge of keeping AI accurate and trustworthy when doing analytical work, and how they’re thinking about the balance of human control with

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45:25

180- From Data Professional to Data Product Manager:...

Experiencing Data w/ Brian T. O’Neill ·

2025/10/14

In this episode, I’m exploring the mindset shift data professionals need to make when moving into analytics and AI data product management. From how to ask the right questions to designing for meaningful adoption, I share four key ways to think more like a product manager, and less like a deliverables machine, so your data products earn applause instead of a shoulder shrug. Highlights/ Skip to: Why shift to analytics and AI data product management (00:34) From accuracy to impact and redefining

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51:01

179 - Foundational UX principles for data and AI...

Experiencing Data w/ Brian T. O’Neill ·

2025/09/30

Content coming soon.

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50:10

178 - Designing Human-Friendly AI Tech in a World...

Experiencing Data w/ Brian T. O’Neill ·

2025/09/16

In this episode, I sat down with tech humanist Kate O’Neill to explore how organizations can balance human-centered design in a time when everyone is racing to find ways to leverage AI in their businesses. Kate introduced her “Now–Next Continuum,” a framework that distinguishes digital transformation (catching up) from true innovation (looking ahead). We dug into real-world challenges and tensions of moving fast vs. creating impact with AI, how ethics fits into decision making, and the role of data

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49:20

177 - Designing Effective Commercial AI Data Products...

Experiencing Data w/ Brian T. O’Neill ·

2025/09/03

In this episode, I talk with Ilya Preston, co-founder and CEO of PAXAFE, a logistics orchestration and decision intelligence platform for temperature-controlled supply chains (aka “cold chain”). Ilya explains how PAXAFE helps companies shipping sensitive products, like pharmaceuticals, vaccines, food, and produce, by delivering end-to-end visibility and actionable insights powered by analytics and AI that reduce product loss, improve efficiency, and support smarter real-time decisions.Ilya shares

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29:52

176 - (Part 2) The MIRRR UX Framework for Designing...

Experiencing Data w/ Brian T. O’Neill ·

2025/08/19

This is part two of the framework; if you missed part one, head to episode 175 and start there so you're all caught up. In this episode of Experiencing Data, I continue my deep dive into the MIRRR UX Framework for designing trustworthy agentic AI applications. Building on Part 1’s “Monitor” and “Interrupt,” I unpack the three R’s: Redirect, Rerun, and Rollback—and share practical strategies for data product managers and leaders tasked with creating AI systems people will actually trust and use. I

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28:51

175 - The MIRRR UX Framework for Designing...

Experiencing Data w/ Brian T. O’Neill ·

2025/08/06

In this episode of Experiencing Data, I introduce part 1 of my new MIRRR UX framework for designing trustworthy agentic AI applications—you know, the kind that might actually get used and have the opportunity to create the desired business value everyone seeks! One of the biggest challenges with both traditional analytics, ML, and now, LLM-driven AI agents, is getting end users and stakeholders to trust and utilize these data products—especially if we’re asking humans in the loop to make changes to

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47:50

Why AI Adoption Moves at the Speed of User Trust...

Experiencing Data w/ Brian T. O’Neill ·

2025/07/23

In this episode of Experiencing Data, I chat with Irina Malkova who is the VP of AI Engineering and VP of Data and Analytics for Tech and Product at Salesforce. Irina shares how her teams are reinventing internal analytics, combining classic product data work with cutting-edge AI engineering—and her recent post on LinkedIn titled “AI adoption moves at the speed of user trust,” having a strong design-centered perspective, inspires today’s episode. (I even quoted her on this in a couple recent product

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43:49

173 - Pendo’s CEO on Monetizing an Analytics SAAS...

Experiencing Data w/ Brian T. O’Neill ·

2025/07/08

Todd Olson joins me to talk about making analytics worth paying for and relevant in the age of AI. The CEO of Pendo, an analytics SAAS company, Todd shares how the company evolved to support a wider audience by simplifying dashboards, removing user roadblocks, and leveraging AI to both generate and explain insights. We also talked about the roles of product management at Pendo. Todd views AI product management as a natural evolution for adaptable teams and explains how he thinks about hiring product

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44:24

172 - Building AI Assistants, Not Autopilots: What...

Experiencing Data w/ Brian T. O’Neill ·

2025/06/24

Show notes will be available soon.

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50:04

Who Can Succeed in a Data or AI Product Management Role?

Experiencing Data w/ Brian T. O’Neill ·

2025/06/10

Today, I’m responding to a listener's question about what it takes to succeed as a data or AI product manager, especially if you’re coming from roles like design/BI/data visualization, data science/engineering, or traditional software product management. This reader correctly observed that most of my content “seems more targeted at senior leadership” — and had asked if I could address this more IC-oriented topic on the show. I’ll break down why technical chops alone aren’t enough, and how

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