“Trust is non-deterministic. We've all had experiences where something's gone terribly wrong, but we still trust the company. I still fly with American Airlines all the time. I've had bad experiences, but fundamentally, I still trust them to get me to my destination.”
Insights Unlocked · User Experience · September 2026
UserTesting's CMO, on the day the company announced a new name, explaining why testing AI products is a different job from testing software. In SaaS the question was whether a user could complete the steps; with AI, he argues, the question is whether people still trust it after it gets something wrong.
Transcript
Johan, there's a line in the press release, or maybe it was on the new website that really kind of crystallizes this shift. And it says, in software, we ask whether people can use it. In AI, we ask whether people can trust it. Can you talk about that? And what changes when trust becomes the question?
Trust is something I think is top of mind with the headlines around AI. It feels like everybody's talking about that right now. When we think,
going back to what I was saying earlier about the heritage in SaaS and shift to the AI era, right? In SaaS, you had this notion of we have to see how the user can complete their journey with the least friction and get to the outcome that they want. And so it was all about usability, which is a really, in many ways, it's a very deterministic outcome. Was the user able to complete the journey successfully or not, right? With AI, it's a very different experience because most of the interactions with AI tend to be through a chatbot interface. So you just get effectively a bar where you type in and you use plain language and nobody has to learn how to do a thing. So you don't have to figure out what's the navigation. How do I buy an insurance policy? I have to figure out where to click to start. No, you just go, I want to buy an insurance policy and it starts talking to you. So the barrier of user experience and that deterministic need to say like, hey, could they follow the steps, that falls away. And what's interesting now is this notion, we read these headlines about, you know, LLM, LLM experience experiments gone awry, where they break out of their sandbox and people are nervous and worried. And so when you think about the question, do you trust it, trust is non-deterministic. We've all had experiences where something's gone terribly wrong, but we still trust the company. I still fly with American Airlines all the time. I've had bad experiences, but fundamentally, I still trust them to get me to my destination. And I still like them as a brand and as a business partner for me. And so I think the thing that changes is we go from deterministic outcomes that are a very path-oriented thing to how does it feel? Do you still trust, even if things haven't gone well, do you still fundamentally trust that this thing you're interacting with is working in your best interest, that you have control over it, that it is doing the things that you're asking it to do. And at the end of the day, leaving you feeling good about that interaction. And those non-deterministic outcomes, I think that's where this gets to be really interesting. And again, it's less about testing a very specific thing and it's more about determining things like relationship quality. And so I think that's where that's this fundamental shift. And I think, again, the audience that we're working with recognizes that too. And this community is making that journey change.
You've both spent a lot of time getting to this point. I mean, going back, really, even when you came aboard, Eric, two years ago and Johan, you knew that the company had to make some changes and evolve with where the markets were headed. But you spent a lot of time getting to this point. Now that we can finally talk about this publicly, we're making this big announcement today. What are you personally most excited to see happen next? What's going to make your 2026 really special?
That's a great question. I think for me, it's just all the interactions we're going to be able to have. I think that the new name, the new positioning, the new things we're doing, we are just increasingly, and I think we will see it turbocharging be even more. We're just having more and more really highly impactful meetings and dialogues and opportunities with our customers. And whether that's with the heads of product or heads of R ⁇ D or heads of marketing or the people that are doing the data training world for some of the best companies on earth. Those discussions, the impacts we're bringing, I think the new name is going to turbocharge our ability to go have those. And I'm excited because at the end of the day, what is so gratifying about what we do, and I know that the people we have in our business, our hundreds of team members, it's about delivering for these customers. And this new name is going to allow us and new brand and everything we're doing is allowing us to have a much bigger impact in the world at a really important time. So that's what for me gets me flying out of bed in the morning.
Johan?