The hype cycle has run its course. Shipping fast is not a virtue by itself. Nicki Sprinz, CEO of ustwo, put a cleaner frame on modern product work. Care first. Then build.

In health and wellness this is not a slogan. People need to stick with a product or it fails. Speed is easy now. Empathy is the hard part. Do research. Include people who are hard to reach. Design for those who are not fluent with screens. Work with domain experts. Slow down where it matters. You are not chasing growth, you are keeping a promise.

This mindset carries to social apps and games. The old rule was remove friction. Today, add the right friction. Help people log off. Help them sleep. Help them set limits. Engagement is not addiction. The goal is a product people return to on their terms, not a slot machine that burns them out.

On AI, be strict. Keep scope tight. Use it for drafts, planning, and grunt work. Keep design human so it does not all look the same. Make your use of AI clear to clients and users. Add safeguards, not theater. Think of AI as adaptive, aware of context, able to meet a person where they are. Use it to lift adherence and follow-through, not just output volume. Test that claim with real users, then keep testing...

When I started Keep Going, I wanted to talk to people building things with care. Not the VC-fueled wrecking balls chasing unicorn status, but the ones trying to solve real problems without leaving a crater behind. Nicki Sprinz, CEO of digital product studio ustwo, fits that bill.

In a startup world that still fetishizes disruption, Nicki is pushing a different message: stop disrupting, start caring. And it’s not just a tagline. It’s the operating philosophy of an international company working at the intersection of technology, wellness, and responsible design.

Here’s what I learned from our conversation.

Disruption had its moment. This is something else.

Remember “move fast and break things”? Nicki does. But when you’re building tools for health, behavior change, and everyday life, that mentality doesn’t cut it. “You don’t get to break things when patients are involved,” she told me. You slow down. You design with empathy. You build with rigor. Not everything should be frictionless. Sometimes the point is to add friction—the good kind that helps people pause, reflect, or make a better choice.

It’s not just about making apps that work. It’s about making apps that should exist.

You can have engagement without addiction.

We got into the difference between engagement and addiction. The former keeps people coming back because it’s meaningful. The latter keeps them trapped. At ustwo, they’re focused on emotional design. Think Monument Valley—the studio’s breakout game that felt like a meditative puzzle box—not the dopamine death loop of infinite scroll.

Design, Nicki says, can invite autonomy. Good design earns your attention. It doesn’t hijack it.

AI isn’t replacing us. It’s sitting next to us.

Nicki had a nuanced take on AI. Yes, it makes things faster. Yes, it can help with structure, drafting, and research. But it can also make everything look the same if you’re not careful. At ustwo, they’re experimenting with AI tools, but always with human context and judgment at the core. They’re designing “adaptive AI”—systems that respond to users in thoughtful, helpful ways. Not just content machines, but collaborative tools.

They even built Sproutiful, a project that used multimodal AI to help people track their nutrition and make small behavior changes. The idea was to nudge, not nag. And it worked.

Culture isn't a slide deck. It's who you fire.

One of the most powerful parts of our talk came when I asked Nicki about firing a client. She didn’t dodge. She told me about a time they walked away from a big project because the client’s behavior clashed with their values.

At ustwo, those values aren’t decoration. One of them—Be Human—means don’t shout, don’t bully, and treat people with respect. It’s written into their code of conduct. It guides their hiring, their projects, and their client relationships. And when someone violates that, they walk.

That kind of consistency is rare. It’s also what holds a company together when the money gets tight.

The AI future still needs apprentices

We talked about the hard stuff too. What happens when AI eats the entry-level jobs? How do you train the next generation when there’s no “junior” left? Nicki doesn’t have all the answers, but she’s thinking hard about it. “We still need people in the room together,” she said. “Even if AI is joining us in that room.”

The human element—mentorship, nuance, values—isn’t going away. At least not if companies like ustwo have anything to say about it.

So yeah, ustwo is a product studio. But it’s also something else: a test case for how to build tech in a way that doesn’t feel gross. That doesn’t chew people up. That doesn’t mistake velocity for vision.

Nicki didn’t flinch when I pushed. She gave honest answers about tradeoffs, mistakes, and hard decisions. She talked like a human being, not a CEO out of central casting. And that, more than anything, made me think she’s onto something.