Awkward Silences #192, "Slowing Things Down to Speed Up Research" · User Interviews · July 2026

A conversation with Erin May about what happens to research and ResearchOps when AI compresses product timelines. I argue that scale and rigor aren't opposed, and that most teams reach for new tooling before revisiting what they were trying to accomplish in the first place. We get into trust as the capital you spend with legal, product, and design partners when you want to change something big, why automating work concentrates human attention instead of removing it, and where knowledge management goes next. Closes with listener questions on governance, buy-in, compressed timelines, AI guardrails, and breaking into the field.