Product teams move fast – often keeping their heads down, chasing goals, and, unfortunately, overlooking customers’ emotional needs, which is essential to creating positive user experiences.

In this episode of Product Marketing Life host, Mark Assini, is joined by design expert Bryan Zmijewski, President and Owner of ZURB, to unpack how companies lose touch with users and provide proven tactics to close the disconnect – enabling you to get that bit closer to your customers.

We’re all human, which means when we look for products or services, we tend to favor those brands that understand our genuine needs. 

Using design-thinking principles like empathy can help you better understand your customers' needs, wants, and pain points, so you can craft positive user experiences, offer products they love, and achieve sustainable success.


‎Product Marketing Life: Emotional intelligence in product development: Why design thinking is the key to success | Bryan Zmijewski, President and Owner of ZURB on Apple Podcasts
‎Show Product Marketing Life, Ep Emotional intelligence in product development: Why design thinking is the key to success | Bryan Zmijewski, President and Owner of ZURB - Oct 13, 2023

A bit about the speaker

From selling toy concepts to advising CEOs, Bryan Zmijewski has always explored the intersection of design and business. This unconventional career path gives him rare insights into building great customer experiences.

While at Stanford, his passion for human-centered design was ignited. Now as a design transformation leader, Bryan studies creative routines and helps organizations become design-driven. 

He's advised over 1,000 executives on leading with empathy and believes that companies who listen to their customers, not just their business needs, will win big. Bryan’s currently distilling his approach in a new book on creative decision-making, is a competitive runner, and, at his core, Bryan’s an explorer – of design, business, and pushing human capabilities further

Key takeaways

  • Why adopting design thinking principles can create positive customer experiences.
  • How losing touch with your users creates a disconnect between the product and customer needs.
  • Why you need to facilitate an open dialogue between sales and product.
  • How negative feedback presents invaluable opportunities for improvement. 
  • Why diverse opinions – united behind customer insights – produce better outcomes than isolated decisions by one specialized team.

Get involved

Keen to join the conversation?

Why not take a look at our Slack channel? Not to boast, but our Slack community's the biggest gathering of product marketing enthusiasts on the planet (okay, that was a bit of a boast).

We discuss everything from sales engagement to messaging strategies, and there’s a constant flow of templates, resources, and even the odd "roast." And it's completely free to join!

Don't miss a beat – you can catch all of your favorite product marketing episodes right here: Product Marketing Life.