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One Knight in ProductAuthor: One Knight in Product
Im your host, Jason Knight, and One Knight in Product is your chance to go deep into the wonderful world of product management, product marketing, startups, leadership, diversity & inclusion and much more! My goal with One Knight in Product has always been to bring real chat to the over-idealised world of product management and mix thought leader interviews with day-to-day practitioners from around the world. I want to ask hard, but fair, questions and bring some personality and good, old-fashioned dry British humour to building products. Subscribe to and share the best product podcast! No others come close Language: en Genres: Business, Technology Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it Trailer: |
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Hugo Alves - Let's Get Real About Synthetic Users (with Hugo Alves, Co-founder @ Synthetic Users)
Episode 265
Saturday, 21 February, 2026
On this episode, I speak to Hugo Alves, co-founder of Synthetic Users, about one of the most controversial topics in modern product development: using generative AI to simulate users for research and decision-making. Hugo has a background in clinical psychology and product, and has spent the past three years building a platform that generates synthetic qualitative interviews to help teams reduce risk and make better decisions. Episode highlights: What Synthetic Users actually is - generating in-depth qualitative interviews with AI-powered "synthetic" participants to help teams reduce risk and accelerate discovery Most companies don't do enough, or any, research in the first place, and they need as many tools in their locker to help with the ultimate goal: making great products. The pragmatist's view of AI - why Hugo doesn't care whether LLMs are "conscious", only whether they produce useful outputs The agentic "swarm" approach - using specialised sub-agents (planners, interviewers, critics) instead of one giant prompt to improve quality and reduce drift B2B vs B2C - why synthetic research works well in B2B contexts, and the harder (future) problem of modelling organisational dynamics Bias, sycophancy and realism - the technical concerns around LLMs and how to validate responses with pilots and human comparison studies How to use synthetic research in practice - filtering ideas, informing human interviews, and treating it as an accelerant rather than a replacement "It shouldn't exist" - the moral argument against synthetic users, reacting to UX thought leaders and their objections, and why some of those objections aren't really about evidence ... and much more. Contact Hugo LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hugomanuelalves/ Website: https://www.syntheticusers.com/ Twitter/"X": https://twitter.com/Ugo_alves
