Better Decisions, Faster: Predicting User & Agent Behavior Before You Ship
Speed is up. Confidence in product decisions isn't. Most teams commit time and resources before they know what will actually work, running the same loop of ship, wait, learn, repeat. That loop is breaking as build cycles collapse and live experimentation gets harder to run reliably.
Why? A/B testing requires live traffic. User research takes weeks. Analytics tells you what happened, not why. By the time you know, you've already shipped the next thing. The traditional model assumes you have time to be wrong. Modern product cycles don't.
This session reframes the core problem: a product decision is a commitment of time and resources made under uncertainty. The question is not how to move faster. It is how to be right more often before you commit.
Tom Charman will show what changes when you move behavioral insight before release. Instead of waiting for post-launch signal, you can simulate how real users move through your product, step by step, and see exactly where they hesitate, misinterpret, or drop off. We'll walk through a concrete onboarding scenario and compare the traditional ship-and-measure approach against pre-launch behavioral simulation side by side.
You'll leave with a lightweight pre-launch simulation framework you can use immediately: define a user, define a task, walk through their behavior step by step. It won't replace your research or analytics stack, but it will give you directional signal before you ship, when changing course is still cheap.
The future of product development is not just building faster. It's being right more often.
Key Takeaways
Why ship → learn is breaking in modern fast-cycle product development
How to identify friction and drop-off points before a single user sees the product
A practical pre-launch simulation framework you can use on your next idea today
How behavioral simulation fits alongside (not replaces) user research and analytics
Speaker Bio
Tom Charman builds systems that predict what humans will do before they do it. He previously modeled radicalization and terrorist threats for the UK government, advised the UN on AI, and advised the EU Parliament on GDPR. He is an exited founder now building his fourth venture, Blok, replacing guesswork with behavioral prediction.
Special Thanks to our Generous Sponsor
Blok: Predict how users and agents behave inside your product before you ship. Replace guesswork with behavioral simulation.
Attendance is first-come, first-served. Doors close at capacity. Arrive early to secure your spot.