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Does the value of your insights, analytics, or automated intelligence product sometimes feel invisible to buyers and users? Does your product have impressive analytics and AI technology, but user adoption and sales still are not where you want them to be?
While it has never been easier to build data-driven products, why does it still seem so hard to build indispensable data products that users can't live without—and will gladly pay for?
I’m Brian T. O’Neill, and on Experiencing Data — a Listen Notes top 2% global podcast — I help founders and B2B software product leaders close the Invisible Intelligence Gap through solo episodes and interviews with leaders at the intersection of product management, UX design, analytics, and AI.
If you’re building analytics, BI, or automated intelligence (AI) products, this non-technical show will help you better connect your product to outcomes, value, and the human factors that still matter — even in the age of AI.
Subscribe today on all major platforms or browse the episode archive.
Get 1-Page Episode Summaries:
https://designingforanalytics.com/experiencing-data-podcast/
About the Host, Brian T. O'Neill:
https://designingforanalytics.com/bio/
Does the value of your insights, analytics, or automated intelligence product sometimes feel invisible to buyers and users? Does your product have impressive analytics and AI technology, but user adoption and sales still are not where you want them to be?
While it has never been easier to build data-driven products, why does it still seem so hard to build indispensable data products that users can't live without—and will gladly pay for?
I’m Brian T. O’Neill, and on Experiencing Data — a Listen Notes top 2% global podcast — I help founders and B2B software product leaders close the Invisible Intelligence Gap through solo episodes and interviews with leaders at the intersection of product management, UX design, analytics, and AI.
If you’re building analytics, BI, or automated intelligence (AI) products, this non-technical show will help you better connect your product to outcomes, value, and the human factors that still matter — even in the age of AI.
Subscribe today on all major platforms or browse the episode archive.
Get 1-Page Episode Summaries:
https://designingforanalytics.com/experiencing-data-podcast/
About the Host, Brian T. O'Neill:
https://designingforanalytics.com/bio/
Episodes

Wednesday Apr 15, 2026
192 – Product Usage Does Not = Value: Why “Adoption” Metrics Are Misleading You
Wednesday Apr 15, 2026
Wednesday Apr 15, 2026
I’ve seen this challenge again and again with teams building analytics and AI products: nobody can define what quality to the end user means or how to measure. The answer? “Adoption.” The problem is that “amount of usage” tells you nothing useful about your customer’s experience with your product beyond “it’s not zero.” So what should you be measuring instead so your buyers don’t quickly abandon once the end users get their hands on the keyboard (or agent!)?
The answer is to understand through qualitative measures what users’ experiences are like now, so you have an objective baseline from which to compare future product investment. When you can define their current experience’s quality, it’s much easier to imagine their better future, and you also now have a change you can measure. Measurable outcomes are the foundation of high-value, sticky B2B analytics and intelligence products—and when your end users’ lives are improved, the sales close, and the renewals aren’t questioned. So today, I jump into “how do you measure UX?” so you aren’t surprised when the sale doesn’t close or that renewal doesn’t come through unexpectedly.
Highlights / Skip to:
- Why I think product adoption (i.e. product usage analytics) are misleading as a means to define whether your solution is valuable to users (1:34)
- Getting a better baseline reading of user experience so you can improve their life and your sales/retention KPIs (4:56)
- How to measure, hypothesize, and observe if your product is working “well” (7:35)
- Discovering where your product is being appreciated (20:28)
- What about when AI is in the loop? (23:05)
- The risk of creating bigger messes with AI capabilities (28:20)
- How to gain useful insights from your customer exposure time (31:28)
- The quantitative metrics you can use to help measure UX outcomes (36:17)
- Why "ship it and see if it gets used" isn't a product strategy (40:52)
Links
- More Resources
- Get 1x1 Help from me if you know your product’s value is opaque, or the user experience is hindering your sales or adoption goals

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