Slow Down to Speed Up: How AI changed what research can do for a small team

About the Talk

Florie Salnot, Product Design Team Lead at nebenan.de, made the case that the most valuable thing a designer can do is frame the right problem, not race to execute. That argument only gets sharper as AI accelerates how fast teams can build: speed is cheap, aiming at the wrong target is expensive.

Drawing on two real examples from nebenan, a community trust platform, she showed how deeper user research shifted the team's priorities and stopped them from chasing the wrong solution.

Key threads from the talk:

• ●Problem framing over execution speed: why the framing of the problem, not the velocity of the build, is where small teams win or lose.
• ●Research that changes direction: two concrete cases where talking to users moved the roadmap, and what would have happened if the team had just shipped.
• ●AI for understanding, not just output: how a small team can use AI to deepen user understanding and decision-making, rather than only to produce more, faster.
• ●Research inside fast-moving orgs: how to keep research influential when the pressure is to move quickly.