Discussion Points: 

• What’s your origin story—from your early life and education to becoming a design leader today? 2:09 

• You’re currently working in the insurance sector. Do you think this niche is receiving the attention and recognition it truly deserves? 7:22 

• Is this a double-edged challenge, serving end users while also enabling enterprise users to confidently make data-driven decisions? 10:43 

• Rapid fire round 13:00 

• What does it take to design AI solutions for healthcare in emergency situations, and what is your approach to it? 17:03 

• What advice would you give to your younger self or to the youth who want to follow in your footsteps? Anything they should watch out for? 29:01 

Show notes:  
 

• In healthcare UX, you’re not designing for delight or engagement metrics — you’re designing for responsibility. Every decision has a real human impact, and that changes how seriously you approach the work. 

• When systems influence life-critical decisions, trust isn’t built through visuals alone. It comes from clarity, transparency, and helping users understand why a decision was made. 

• AI should never replace human accountability in healthcare. Its real value is in supporting faster, more informed decisions while keeping humans firmly in control. 

• Speed in healthcare UX isn’t about moving fast for efficiency’s sake. It’s about reducing friction at moments where delays can affect outcomes and, sometimes, lives. 

• Deep domain understanding is non-negotiable in complex systems. Without it, even the most beautiful interface can fail the people who depend on it. 

• Ethical design becomes unavoidable when your work impacts real people. In healthcare, you don’t get the luxury of treating ethics as a secondary consideration. 

Feras’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/feras-ak-dezine-theuxguy/ 

With a background spanning experiential design, marketing, and product design, he shares a grounded perspective on building systems that balance structure, creativity, and real business impact. 

Discussion Points 
 
~How did your journey into creative leadership begin? (1:39) 
~Do your past experiences in marketing and creative projects influence the work you do today? (4:28) 
~Why is understanding the business and domain critical for enterprise-level UX and product design? (6:26) 
~Rapid fire round (9:35) 
~Do UX designers often take on business analyst responsibilities, from understanding requirements to envisioning how solutions will be executed? (20:14) 
~How is AI changing your role today, and where do you see it taking the future of design? (27:42) 
~What advice would you give your younger self 10–15 years ago? (34:13) 

Show Notes 
 
~Design isn’t just about visuals—it’s about understanding people and what makes them engage. 
~The real through line in my work has always been human connection, whether it’s the user or the client. 
~Strong systems thinking and organization naturally translate into great product design. 
~You don’t need to be the subject matter expert, but you need to understand how the business works. 
~Good design comes from working closely with experts and understanding what actually works in the real world. 
~Design systems aren’t about control; they’re about creating structures that allow things to grow. 
~UX isn’t just about solving the problem given; it’s about understanding what the real problem is. 

Michael’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/creationmod/ 

• What led you to start Farewell and your journey into web design? 2:23 

• What kind of clients or brands do you typically work with, and what excites you most about these projects? 5:05 

• What challenges did you face while building and scaling your studio? 6:09 

• Do designers naturally become good managers as teams grow? 8:21 

• Rapid fire round 9:41 

• How do you see AI influencing design and creativity? 16:25 

• What advice would you give to aspiring creative founders? 24:38 

Show notes -  

• Embrace the chaos instead of running away from it. That has been our motto, and it reflects in everything we do. 

• Original ideas will always win. AI is just reusing what's out there, pulling from a database of original ideas, so keep creating. 

• Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Be flexible with the things you're doing and be ready to change direction. 

• Fail forward is one of our core values here at the agency. Don't be afraid to make mistakes; they are part of the journey. 

• If you're jumping into the creative space right now, buckle up because it's fun, it's chaotic, it's rewarding, you'll laugh, and you'll cry. But there's no better field to be a part of. 

• Being a tool agnostic is key right now. If another tool comes around that serves our clients better, we will switch to that without hesitation. 

 
Kevin’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinstanleywatkins/ 

Company’s Website: https://www.heyfarewell.com/  

Discussion points - 

• How is the creative industry in LA, the epicenter of international creativity with Hollywood and major game studios, faring amid co-branding, collaborations, and bustling activity? 2:06
• When discussing your experience in LA, could you share your journey? Did you start your career there, and how did you transition into becoming the creative professional you are today? 3:38
• In the realm of UX and CX, including customer experience, how crucial is effective storytelling? 15:57
• Rapid fire round 22:15
• Could you talk about your experiences with AR during the early days of the technology? 35:03
• What is the future trajectory of AI and machine learning in the context of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), also known as ACD, and how do you envision its impact on our current direction? 44:46
• On the education side, can you talk to us about the courses you teach? 50:58
• What advice would you offer to aspiring designers looking to follow your path? What key do's and don'ts would you suggest? 55:54

Show notes - 

• I look at my past and how I've reached my current position. It has always been about seizing the moment, recognizing opportunities, and confidently stepping forward without fear.
• As a creative director, I enjoy involving my teams in that story, fostering their passion and excitement for the product.
• If you fast forward now, in terms of the use of AI, consider how that experience can evolve to create a much more immersive interaction. It brings order to the chaos and helps people delve deeper into interactive experiences.
• The best and the easiest way that has always worked with storytelling is to get into the mindset and put yourself in the shoes of the people who would be in the story.
• We executed some projects, such as the Barbie Dream Closet where people could see themselves wearing Barbie clothes. One significant project was during New York Fashion Week, where we utilized our product, the webcam social shopper.
• The more time I spent on various studies and working on UI/UX to understand how people interact with it, I quickly realized that I don't believe it will fully evolve until mixed reality becomes feasible. Mixed reality is where there are no inhibitions, like wearing glasses that seamlessly blend our realities.
• I use AI daily as an integral part of my work routine. It provides advice, writing tips, ideation, and data analysis support, enabling me to enhance my productivity and creativity. What's truly wonderful is that it demands our input, making it a collaborative tool for unleashing innovation.
• Understanding UI/UX as a crucial part of our future interactions, and how we engage with it, will impact society and shape our world. As everything evolves, from user experience to customer experience, comprehensive understanding implies greater societal progress.

Links -

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hansforsman/ 

Portfolio/ website: https://hansforsman.com/ 

Introduction

Steve Cleff is a gifted artist eager to develop innovative solutions for end users. From financial futures and workplace connections to breast cancer, he manages cross-functional teams to create elegant and innovative digital solutions that raise the bar. The Senior Director of UX at Comfy, Steve is an accomplished designer and artist whose works have appeared as the posters for several films including Neil Gaiman's Dream Dangerously.

Discussion Points

• How was your journey? What led you to this moment when you become the Senior Director of Design? 01:49
• I was intrigued to learn that you have a condition called Synesthesia, how does it impact your life as a designer? 07:57
• So talking about colleagues, the communication between colleagues, I think this is one of the core topics that you are quite interested in, you spoke at the conferences about it. So would you like to elaborate on that topic? 14:46
• Rapid Fire 23:34
• Communication overload is becoming a critical challenge for office productivity. How do you think your new app, Workplace Connect, resolves this issue and improves on the existing technology? 27:44
• You have worked with Breastcancer.org and have received acclaim for the experience that was designed. What should a designer keep in mind while designing such purposeful solutions? 31:42
• Being a designer, what is the advice that you would want to give to someone who’s just starting out in the field of UX & UI design? 37:32

Show Notes

• User experience is something I can do forever, people will always need to interact with software. 05:21
• I just hired the best in the world, so that I can apprentice with them. 06:18
• I'll tell people when I'm training them when they're new to the industry, that you'll spend five minutes figuring out the answer to 55 and convincing everybody that you're right. 18:56
• If you're thinking about the goals from a production perspective or a development perspective, you're thinking about the goals from the product’s KPI perspective, it will make the process go faster. 21:14
• They said, if I'd had this site, I think I would have gotten different treatment than I got. And that's, in many ways, what it's all about just trying to improve someone's life. And, you know, the people who did have that website, after that, hopefully, had a higher level of comfort and confidence of what they needed to do. 34:33
• If you organize some things, it doesn't need to be complex or expensive. To try and help people, you just need to guide them a little bit. And it will make a huge impact. 35:53
• There's nothing more humbling than the first time you put something that you've designed. Especially even if you're completely well-versed in user experience heuristics, you put that design in front of someone. Within a couple of minutes, you are humbled and you are enlightened, and you are improved as a designer. 44:13
• It's sometimes hard for people to win when they go to a company that's not regularly doing usability testing, it's hard for them to get buy-in until you get that first test. Once you do, you can demonstrate this is actually a faster process.  45:58

Contact

LinkedIn:   https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevecleff/

Twitter:    https://twitter.com/cleff

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/fluidbeauty/

Company:   https://comfyapp.com/

Email:     artByCleff@gmail.com

Portfolio:  https://stevecleff.com/

Facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/fluidbeauty

YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/user/fluidbeauty

#design  #experience #productdesign #collaboration #workplace  #humancentereddesign #uxpodcast

Discussion points - 

• What influenced your career choice, and how did you become the professional you are today? 1:50
• Can you outline the connections and distinctions between your shift from architecture to UX design, along with the transferable insights between these domains? 2:51
• What key distinction do you see between designing for Enterprise UX and designing for the typical user experience of consumer products? 6:15
• Please share your insights regarding the return on investment (ROI) of Enterprise UX. 8:23
• Rapid fire round 9:30
• How do you ensure diversity and inclusion within your design team to promote diverse design thinkers and innovative digital experiences? 16:32
• Could you share your experience with ADPList and the mentoring you've provided in general? What common themes do you often address in these contexts? 28:54
• For internal mentorship and nurturing talent towards management roles, how do you ensure continuous growth and opportunities within your team? 31:24
• How can interested individuals best reach out to you or your company regarding the positions you're currently hiring for? 35:15

Show notes - 

• Employed at an architecture firm, I discovered it wasn't my passion, gaining insights into the business. I found myself drawn to graphic design, and that's what initiated my career journey.
• What's truly advantageous in UX is its digital nature; you can create a wireframe or design concept, observing and editing it in real time—an experience not easily replicated in architecture.
• When designing for B2C or consumer contexts, it's about 95-100% focused on the user. In contrast, with enterprise design, you're navigating a balance and juggling various requirements while striving to create a robust product.
• Many of our clients primarily measure their return on investment through product sales and the leads they generate, including lead qualification. Additionally, we're observing a shift towards more people-centric communication and experiences in our approach. At times, it's challenging to directly quantify these aspects with a traditional return on investment framework.
• What I've found to be effective is having a project manager and representatives from different areas like tech, design, UX, and data analytics. We involve everyone right from the start, and although the project manager leads, each of us voices our team's perspective on what we believe should be done.
• You need to regroup; having a single person dictating won't work. Firstly, nobody would want to collaborate with that team or individual. Secondly, the outcome would be a product tailored solely for that person, lacking input from others.
• I think mentorship plays a vital role; I've gained valuable insights from my team, and we've learned collectively. It contributes to our professional growth, work-life balance, and personal development beyond the workplace.

Links- 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonellechandler  

Company website: https://qualifiedigital.com/ 

Personal website: https://www.jonellechandler.com/

Introduction

Florentin Hortopan is not a conventional design leader. Converting diverse skills to achieve success in digital design, he has redefined design strategies for cross-brand platforms, including Airbnb, GoPro, and Apple. Developing the human experience from component design to CMS design, Florentin is the Assistant Director of UX at Critical Mass. And to our surprise, he is an equally competent rhinoceros master and teacher.

Discussion Points

• How has the journey been, as you're not from the US originally? 01:38
• How difficult was it to maintain the inspiration during all that? How your creative juices are maintained while you are going through the hoops and loops of the bureaucracy, If I have to call it that? 07:14
• Rapid fire round questions 13:57
• There's something that was written by you and I quote, “conforming to rules, and being polite is a bad idea. For a designer, you need to be wrong and weird.” Can you please elaborate on this? 20:39 How difficult is it to ensure that the innovation keeps happening, without alienating the existing brand of users you possess? 24:54
• What is the one piece of advice that you think you missed at the beginning of your career that you would like to give to anybody who's starting out now? 31:33

Show Notes

• In specific contexts, in specific companies and design studios around Silicon Valley, you find agency folks are being really embedded into high-level processes and design and design tasks. 06:24
• It's not about being hired necessarily by a company, it's how much value you can give to the work that you're doing to the company, to the people. It's a different take on your individual contribution to society at large.  10:42
• The main value that design can give to any product, any community, or any society is when it changes your perspective on things, it gives you a different perception of reality, and it improves your life somehow. 21:27
• In the definition, at least the old definition of design, that is this idea that you project things, you do something that is in the future, you essentially tell the story of the future. 22:57
• The main strategy here is to provide solutions that are really relevant to the user in terms of UX, you obviously try to be systemic, you try to be strategic. So UX and design need to evolve into strategy and more like a, you know, kind of a global service design practice. 25:12
• I think we sometimes don't feel like we need to innovate because we are protective of our ideas.  29:00
• The first thing to do is to immerse yourself into different challenging situations beforehand and then decide what it is. And obviously, another thing is to not consider your design practice as your career path in the future as one. You have to be open about changing every time needed and try different things on your skin. 34:11
• There is a very simple path for a lot of designers to get into school, you know, you get graduated from whatever interest in college, you get a job in design, you stay in that job for a very long time, or at least you think you're very good at it. But I think that will always, you know, prevent you from experiencing the best. 33:47

Contact

LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/florentinhortopan/ Twitter - twitter.com/panopano Company website - criticalmass.com/ Portfolio/ website - florentin.us Medium - medium.com/@panopano #airbnb #siliconvalley #userexperience #uxbanter #userexperiencejourney #designpodcast

~ How different is the workload you're managing now, and what are the key differences compared to the early years of UX? 4:44

~ Does your life experience—military discipline, moving across the country—reflect in the way you approach design? 8:00

~ How can applying AI to large-scale research repositories help identify and bridge user knowledge gaps more effectively than traditional personas? 13:57

~ What is advanced UX, and how does it differ from traditional UX methods? 16:39

~ What advice do you have for senior UX professionals who are at a crossroads—either learning AI or moving into management? 26:38

Show notes:  ~ Excellent design tries to address that knowledge gap by embedding what you know about the product into the design.

~ Personas are far too vague. They don't describe anything that will affect your design.

~ I didn’t like the whole management track. I’m an individual contributor, and I do hands-on work because that’s where I add the most value.

~ Observations are far better than interviews. People often say one thing and do another.

~ If 100 people are doing the same thing 100 different ways, it means nobody knows how to do it right. Let’s design to guide them to the best practice.

Links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larrymarine/ https://lsadigital.com

Links: www.linkedin.com/in/jonas-broms/ www.odduse.com

April Starr, the Director of Experience Research at Motorola Solutions, is creating an impact on public safety with her insight-driven designs. A faculty at the Illinois Institute of Technology's Institute of Design, April has developed cancerworksheets.com to help cancer patients deal with their medical conditions. An altruist at heart, April is a problem-solver who loves to take complex challenges to come up with exciting and efficient design solutions.

Discussion Points

1.  How did you become a designer, and what were the choices that you made? 01:25
2. What does the role of a day-to-day researcher look like? 04:45
3.  Rapid fire questions 12:54
4. About the website that you created about the cancer care cards: how do those worksheets come to be? And what was the thought behind creating that website? 18:04
5. Do you want to give any suggestions to those starting off in the UX industry or something that you wish you knew before you started your journey as a UX professional? 23:56
6. So you also said that you are still looking for people to hire? 26:07

Show Notes

1. I didn't really realize that I loved problem-solving until I got into design. 02:05
2. In the beginning, I just loved really hard problems. And then I think that's sort of evolved over time to systemic problems that really impact society in some way. 02:49
3. We work on great problems trying to utilize AI to help support our users, we always believe in keeping humans in the loop. 07:06
4. We always want to assist people so that we can help them make the best decisions in those really critical moments in these really tough incidents that they work in. And help them with mental health as well. 07:22
5. I had time to reflect on our experience, um, I was just really angry and frustrated with the healthcare system, for many reasons. As I reflected on our experience, you know, I looked back and I was like, what a messed up experience. It occurred to me that we didn't get the right information at the beginning of the experience. 19:19
6. I thought, Hey, you don't know how you're gonna get there. But you know what, you want to go, you want to get rid of cancer. And you know, generally kind of the steps that you're going to need to get there, you're, there's a treatment plan, there's going to be some milestones of diagnostic tests. 20:35
7. Find a place where the people are supportive, and they're people that are going to inspire you, you know, find a place where the content itself is going to be something that is exciting for you. 25:03
8. We have a number of people, and a number of positions open on both the research team and the UX design team. On the UX design side, we're looking for UX designers and UI visual design. And so, you know, we have positions open globally. 26:10

Contact

• LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprilstarr/
• Portfolio:  https://about.me/aprilstarr
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aprilstarr/ 

#userexperience #uxdesign #uxresearch #userexperiencejourney #uxbseason2 #uxbanter #uiux

Discussion Points 

• What inspired you to become a designer? How has the journey been so far? 2:13
• What are the challenges generally faced when designing for healthcare? 14:59
• Rapid fire round 20:43
• What is the current theme in academia about artificial intelligence and design? 27:35
• How is the field of product design and user experience evolving? How are you addressing the common confusion surrounding the definitions of product design and user experience design?  34:11
• You coach up-and-coming designers, what sort of coaching do you provide? 40:06

Show notes 

• I've always been a tech geek, as a young kid, when I was 10-ish, I ran something called a BBS. It was like a pre-internet server, people could call in through the phone.  
• A lot of the things I designed for are things that at least in theory should help people. 
• I'm taking a pretty optimistic approach to AI, for even the newest version. 
• The first version of Excel was called Lotus 123, when that first came out, a lot of accountants were very scared. But I think what happened is, instead of there being fewer accountants, there was way more accounting. 
• With chat GPT we're going to do more UX, and we are going to do more research. 
• I want to solve problems and just tell some AI “Hey, AI, fix all the padding”, shoot! it fixes it. That's what we want to focus on. 
• What they mistakenly believe is people want the cow, not the milk, right? But people want the milk. So, we just have to remember that and I think we're going to be fine, I'm optimistic (with reference to AI).
• We have to figure out a way to simulate and practice because I find that what's really missing in UX education is practice. Universities do theory, they're really good at theory like physical theory, and chemistry but design is a practice. 
• Getting a junior person started up in their career is super rewarding. So, we're gonna be doing more of that in the future.

Links -

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carmen-branje-phd-5179358/

Website: http://www.carmenbranje.com/

Email: Cbranje@gmail.com 

Discussion point - 

• How has the journey been so far? What are the things that you have experienced and how has the path been for you? 1:23
• How did you get into this field? 4:09
• What is the difference between human behavior economics and human behavior psychology? 5:35
• Rapid fire round 12:07
• What is the difference while you're designing for social impact versus when you're designing for profit? 19:40
• Can you elaborate on the terms - equity-centered design and community-centered design? 24:34
• At Exergy, what kinds of projects are generally undertaken? What is the clientele? 28:16
• What would be your advice to young professionals starting their careers in design? 30:28

Show notes - 

• I always like to say that even as a product manager, I was actually a UX designer. Because even as a product manager, my main focus was always making sure that we are crafting experiences that are intuitive, simple, accessible, and delightful. 
• I was always passionate about understanding humans and how they think and why they make the decisions that they do. 
• I think empathy is a really big thing in UX and human-centered design. And I think it's one of our core values. 
• Designer needs to have this ability to sometimes forget about themselves, and what the solution is, just listen to the user's needs and let the solution come naturally.
• When you're designing for social impact, the designer is far removed from the lived experience of the user. 
• When you're designing for social impact, you need to go above and beyond. You need to actually close that gap between the designer and the user, which means really bringing the user to the design process.
• I think that idea of inclusivity, and equity is way more important when you're talking about designing for social impact. 
• I see a disconnect between the tech world and the social impact world. And, what we're trying to do at Exergy is bridge those two worlds. 
• I don't think that AI will be able to understand humans in the way we understand humans. 
• If I could give people advice, focus on the human aspects of user experience.

Links - 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anabelcampos/ 

Company website: https://www.exygy.com/ 

Medium: https://medium.com/@anabelcampos 

On this episode of UX Banter, we chat with Neal Foard who is the Chief Marketing Officer at Within Inc. He is an eloquent storyteller, a TED Talk Speaker, a creative thinker, and a strategic marketer. Discussion Points:

• What makes a good brand? 1:26
• What has been your key learning while working with big names like Toyota, Sony, HSBC, Heineken, etc.? 5:10
• Rapid Fire Segment. 13:44
• What is some advice that you’d like to give someone who’s just starting out in the industry? 27:02
• What is your success mantra? 31:59

Show notes:

• “The most important thing for a brand is authenticity, that is they have to conduct themselves in the world in a way that people will be satisfied with.” - Neal Foard 1:38
• It isn't enough to simply create a public persona, because it's quite easy for people to discover how false that might be. 2:17
• The focus should not so much be on the marketing and brand messaging, it's really about what the brand is from an experience standpoint. 2:36
• When the people that represent the brand are enthusiastic about it, when they believe in it, or they believe in the leadership, that gets reflected out into the world. 3:18
• In marketing it's not really the cleverness of the message, it's the sincerity of it. 8:53
• You can work, you can find work. And when you can, it can be well-paid work. But unless you are working for someone you admire, I don't know that you're ever going to really learn what you need to learn. 27:21
• Life advice from Neal: Our accents are simply the result of us imitating the people that we learn from. We've adopted their manner of speech. And we do that with everything. We mimic their body language, we mimic their gestures, and we mimic their postures. But most of all, we mimic their behavior without realizing that's an accent and to work for a great person, to find someone you admire. Maybe take a little less money to work for something you admire. The dividend will be paid back to you not in money, but in becoming a great person like them. 28:59

Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neal-foard-3727403/

• How did you start your journey in UX design? 1:27
• How does team culture differ in freelancing, agencies, startups, and larger teams, and how does it impact the design process? 3:45
• How do you perceive the pressure and mental health challenges that designers often face in their roles? 8:36
• Rapid fire round 18:13
• Could you tell us more about your experience with teaching and mentoring in your career? 23:22
• How can people reach out to you for one-on-one design sessions and mentorship in UX design? 27:26
• Do you think it's easy to go out and network, and do you participate in any networking activities in your area? 28:53
• What advice would you give your younger self entering UX 10 years ago, and what tips do you have for new professionals today? 34:08

Show notes -

• Working at an agency provides more variety of clients, challenges your comfort zone, and pushes you to take on more responsibilities compared to freelancing or working at a larger organization.
• Establishing good relationships with product managers and developers is important to collaborate on projects and set constraints effectively.
• Learning to say no and establish boundaries is important for mental health when working on multiple projects simultaneously.
• Creating design sprints that are separate but aligned with development sprints helps provide clarity on timelines and capacity.
• Teaching and mentoring allow you to be the kind of support you wish you had when starting out and help you remember the basics of UX design.
• The pandemic has allowed an experiment of teaching based on user experience design, creating an opportunity for virtual one-on-one connections and supporting individuals
• Running podcasts is a fun way to connect with other designers and blow off steam by discussing movies and pop culture from a design perspective.

Links - Christopher’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/uxchrism/ Company’s Website: www.onetrust.com Podcasts: www.youtube.com/@whathefux https://popcornandplotholes.transistor.fm/ 

• Could you share with us the journey that led you to become the accomplished designer and professional you are today? 1:32
• How do you foresee the future of privacy evolving over the next 25 years amidst advancing AI technologies? 3:24
• How will the convergence of AI, quantum computing, and service design shape the future? 5:42
• How do you think privacy will evolve over the next 25 years? 7:16
• Do you think we're moving towards a future where technology takes precedence over human priorities? 11:18
• Rapid fire round 13:13
• What does educational learning mean to you, and how do you see it impacting professionals across different cities? 17:45 Show notes -
• Every deployment, every feature we deploy, you have to really be sure that it's going to produce the right result that you're looking for.
• My objective personally is to make sure the user is served by the tool rather than the user serving the tool
• If you're not open and willing to change or to adopt new technologies, it's going to be a real tough road for you.
• Always have the growth mindset, always be open in conversation. If you're not growing, you're dying. The future is bright, tech access is everywhere. There's still a billion people on the planet yet to come online.
• Learning how to learn is critical because you don't have all the answers, and that's the reason you're there.

Links - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamspaulding/ Company website: http://wicketsoft.com Personal website: https://spauldi.com/ 

Show notes - ~B2B has really, really complex systems. And it's a really interesting space if you're into problem-solving. ~ Enterprise UX is often the most neglected side of design because people think that users are getting paid to use the software, so functionality takes priority over experience. ~ Being in the enterprise space, it's less obvious, but the challenges are always complex, and solving them is immensely rewarding. ~ I think the most important skill for junior UX designers is storytelling. It's what gets your stakeholders on board and helps them understand your work. ~ In enterprise, the interfaces may not be as sexy as Netflix, but if you're excited by solving complex problems, you'll never be bored. ~ When you're working on mission-critical applications, the impact is significant—it's not just about making something look good; it’s about making sure it works for the people who rely on it.

Links: 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-nicole-king/ Website: www.sap.com 

Discussion Points

~ How did your design journey begin, and what were the turning points that shaped your career?  ~ How do you see AI impacting design careers today, especially for junior designers entering the field? ~ Rapid fire round  ~ Can you walk us through your stakeholder management framework and why stakeholder buy-in is critical in enterprise UX?  ~ How do you adapt your design approach across diverse industries like banking, manufacturing, and energy?  ~ What’s one key piece of advice you’d give to someone just starting out? 

Show Notes ~ Everything I learned so far has come full circle with AI—today I can scale my skills in ways I couldn’t before. ~ When you build a portfolio, make sure it carries your stamp—don’t try to be another designer in the market. ~ Resources are the same for juniors and seniors now; the difference lies in vision and the willingness to iterate. ~ In enterprise UX, you’re not just designing screens—you’re designing alliances. ~Time is money. To succeed, you must understand the customer’s business context, not just their users. ~ The three skills that will define careers in the next decade are creative problem-solving, analytical thinking, and lifelong learning. Ranjith’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/learneratlarge/ 

Introduction

Jessica Robison is the Product Design Leader at Tamr and is a pro at providing digital design solutions for data-driven enterprises. Her work in the retail and lifestyle sector nurtures her in-depth understanding of user preferences, thus making her a deft designer who is always ready for challenges. An advocate of civil rights and animal welfare, Jessica has raised the benchmark for domains like client management and data science.

Discussion Points

• Which domain do you really think actually gave you the most satisfaction creativity-wise? 07:56
• Rapid fire questions 13:59
• So what sort of extra learnings were required? What the challenges have been so far for you? And how did you overcome those? 20:45
• You are a mother of two beautiful children, and then how does it go that you balance your career with perfection, and then you have to make sure that everybody is in place and they're very young, right?               28:51
• But then how does that actually is to use you as a professional? Do you think that you look at things differently now than before? 31:28
• Any advice that you would like to give to a new person who is starting out in the field of design? 37:11

Show notes

• Because if you can anticipate where they're coming from, what they need, and what kind of visual cues they might need. That's really kind of where the sweet spot of UX is, right? Like, that's what makes a good UX designer. 07:18
• If you are really smart and scrappy about how you figure out what your tasks are, you know what people need. 9:45
• You have to know your user, but you also have to know that maybe the way the user is doing something isn't because that was what was given to them. And that's not necessarily the best way for them to do that. 22:01
•  I think that sometimes the challenge is that we capture too much, or not that we capture too much data, but we show too much data. 24:07
• I want the initial way someone interacts with data to be pretty basic, and then allow them to dive deeper if they want, rather than showing everything all at once. 25:05
• Making sure I connect with people is really important. Because, you know, I again, like I don't get to go to every happy hour. 32:47
• I understand that like, early in the morning, I'm better at administrative tasks, and later in the day, I'm better at creative tasks and just kind of understanding that and then making sure that my work follows suit my work day. 34:44
• The thought that you can just do a Bootcamp class and then get a senior designer role is pure advertising. 38:57

Contact

LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/jessica-robison-5622368/   Instagram instagram.com/jrdesign.co/  Company website: jrdesignstudio.co   Email jbrcreative@gmail.com  Portfolio/ website: jessblitzrobison.com/about 

#design #peoplemanagement #uxdesigner #uxproduct #designpodcast #uxbanter #userexperiencejourney 

Discussion points - 

• How did you start it in design? And, what made you choose this career? 1:29
• How do the recognition and accolades received by ZoCo design for being rated as the best place to work and appearing on prestigious lists like Columbus Business First, Fast 50, and the Inc. 5000, validate your agency's mission? How does one plan to build a business like this? 6:02
• Rapid fire round 10:33
• How did you navigate through the difficulties of being a young woman entrepreneur when you started out your career? What was your support system like? And, do you think the times have changed? 17:25
• You are focused a lot on your team and the cultural building that you do within ZoCo. Would you mind shedding some light on how you go about it? 20:19
• What advice would you give to someone who is starting a career in design? 25:31

Show notes

• I enjoyed making things, and iterating and experimenting, even as a young child. And so, when I got into this career, as a designer, I was focused mainly on digital design, creating software, and creating websites. 
• While our team feels very energized, to be recognized and to see the power and potential of their work, they are most motivated by the impact we make for our clients. 
• The vision is to bring more user-centricity to design and technology and product. That is still the case and still what we champion and what we fight for. 
• There's so much complexity in different parts of UX, which is fascinating. Because I think for those of us who want to learn about diverse industries and see different parts of the business, it's the best role to be able to get into that.
• I found the most value in my own learning and development by creating a community and finding other folks who are trying to solve similar problems to me.
• I learned early on at ZoCo, that cultivating a team and creating a path positive and very connected culture is probably the most central motivator for me and building my business more than anything else. 
• I hope people feel empowered today more than ever to build the career that they want and not feel like it has to fit into a box. 
• We apply a lot of UX principles and design thinking principles to how we operate the business. But the last piece related to building what you want is making sure you ask for what you want.
• Being verbal, candid, and transparent is important in building any career, whether you're an entrepreneur or an agency CEO like I am, or if you're just trying to be the best UX-er in the land.

Links -

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laceypicazo/

Company website: https://zocodesign.com/

Links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/santhoshrb/ www.uxahead.com/

With a background in philosophy and law, Paige’s journey into UX has been shaped by her deep curiosity about human behavior and communication. Over the years, she has blended strategic thinking with user empathy to design digital products that are both intuitive and impactful. Her leadership brings clarity to complexity, helping teams create smarter, human-centered solutions. Discussion Points ~ How did your journey evolve from studying philosophy and law to becoming a UX leader? 1:34 ~ How do you apply advocacy and negotiation skills from your legal background to UX practice? 3:19 ~ Rapid fire round 8:35 ~ How is your team navigating the rise of AI in tools and user experience design? 12:10 ~ How do you keep your team creatively inspired while experimenting with new tools and technologies? 19:50 ~ What advice do you have for young designers who are just beginning their careers in this field? 21:24

Show Notes ~ We do a little bit of advocacy every day, balancing technical feasibility, stakeholder needs, and usability while fighting for our users.

~ Data can tell us what happened in the past, but we must always leave space for the irrationality of human behavior.

~ Start slow, but start now. That’s our mantra at Fueled when integrating AI into design processes.

~ We put our foot down - at Fueled, we do not use synthetic users for research. Nothing replaces talking to real people.

~ Design is more than putting pixels together; it's about leaving space for the creative act, the magic that brings ideas to life.

~ Don’t be afraid of AI replacing you. Let it assist your creative act, not inhibit it.

Paige’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paigemaguire/

Discussion Points

~ Can you take us through your journey from studying digital design to leading creative roles at HBO and Eluvio, and what it was like working on household names like Game of Thrones and Westworld? 1:33 ~ Can you tell us about your current role at Eluvio and the direction you’re headed in your career? 12:00 ~ Rapid fire round 13:00 ~ How do you feel about the creative industry's emphasis on awards and recognition? 16:23 ~ How are you using AI in your day-to-day work right now? 35:09 ~ Can you tell us about your podcast? 35:44 ~ What advice would you give to aspiring designers who want to follow in your footsteps? 37:10 Show notes ~ Back then, nobody knew what a digital designer was. We were inventing the role while still trying to explain what the internet could even do. ~ I spent years dreaming of working at HBO. When the call finally came, it felt surreal, like a moment I had manifested years before. ~ Awards are great, but they depend a lot on access. If your company can't afford to submit, your work might never get seen. ~ AI isn’t just something happening to creatives. If we want to influence where it's going, we have to engage with it now, not later. ~ Tools and technologies are shifting so fast that by the time you plan a project, the platform you started with may already be outdated. ~ Sometimes the most powerful thing a creative can do is pause, to protect their imagination, recharge, and create from a place of clarity. Links: Cathy’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cathydavenportlee/ Cathy’s Podcast: https://podcast.thecreativeleadworkshop.com/ 

~ What is your leadership style and how do you empower your teams in today’s fast-evolving tech space? 3:50

~ Are you navigating the rapid changes in AI technology, and how often do you need to adapt your tools? 7:30

~ What inspired the creation of Socrates AI, especially coming from a UX background into FinTech? 9:25

~ Rapid Fire 15:02

~ How do you ensure the use of AI in your product is meaningful and not just trendy? 17:52

~ As a mentor and educator, what advice do you give to young designers and job seekers in tech? 24:24 Show notes  ~ Good leadership means removing roadblocks, not controlling outcomes. Give your team space, context, and trust—then get out of their way.

~ AI should solve real user pain, not just be sprinkled in for novelty. Ask: What becomes possible now that wasn’t before?

~ Design can drive adoption and understanding in even the driest industries—finance included. That’s where real impact lives.

~ If you're a junior designer, this is your moment. Learn AI now—because everyone is learning it together, and you can lead the charge.

~ Don’t aim to replace humans with AI. Use it to free them from the grind so they can focus on strategic, high-value work.

~ Hiring isn’t about who’s perfect today—it’s about who’s growing fastest. Coachability and curiosity beat static skills every time.

Derek's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bomanderek/

Link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruwan-f/  https://adplist.org/mentors/ruwan-fernando

Links - www.linkedin.com/in/waynepelletier/ www.resonantpixel.co

  Discussion points - 

• Walk us through your journey from architecture to marketing to UX and how each chapter shaped where you are today. 1:56 

• How do you use your marketing background in your day-to-day UX work? 10:19 

• Rapid fire round 13:43 

• Do you think defining product requirements should be part of a UX designer’s role, or should a business analyst handle that before the design process begins? 17:57 

• How is AI changing the way UX designers work, and what is your approach to using it responsibly? 21:16 

• How is your team at Nebo currently adopting AI tools, and what has the experience been like so far? 23:23 

• What advice would you give to someone trying to break into UX today when entry level jobs are harder to find than ever? 32:33 

Show notes -  

• Use your past experience as a superpower. Whether you were a nurse, a marketer or anything else, you can always find your differentiator in what you did before. 

• AI should do boring work for creative people, not creative things for boring people. Let it handle the grunt work, so you have more time and space for the creative stuff. 

• Think of AI as your eager intern. It wants to move fast, it has a few ideas for you, but you always need to adjust and modify its work because you are the expert, not it. 

• If you're trying to respond to human problems, try to stay away from AI. We, as humans helping other humans, must stay human no matter where efficiency takes us. 

• The traditional UX path doesn't really exist, and it doesn't need to. What makes you unique is your differentiator, and that is what stands out when everything else looks the same. 

• Get experience doing work with real people. Even if it never goes live, the interaction with a real human is what builds your portfolio and your instincts at the same time. 

  Taylor’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorgurian/ 

Company’s website: https://www.neboagency.com/  

Discussion Points - ~ What was your journey like from illustration and branding to becoming a UX leader? 1:47 ~ What is PropTech? 12:58 ~ How have cultural influences from India, Abu Dhabi, the UK, and Canada shaped your design approach? 13:45 ~ Rapid Fire Round 20:48 ~ How are you experimenting with AI tools, and what opportunities or challenges do you see for designers? 26:54 ~ What has your experience been like teaching UX at VanArts and mentoring the next generation of designers? 29:57 ~ What advice do you have for young designers who are just beginning their careers in this field? 35:34 Show notes - ~ A lot of cultural influences show up in my design without me consciously putting them in—it’s what I’ve grown up with and observed. ~ Illustration taught me storytelling, and that skill has been invaluable in UX. ~  Understanding cultural context, like payment methods, colors, or patterns, can make or break a user experience. ~ Exploring AI tools has been eye-opening, not to replace designers, but to see how they can support creativity. ~ Teaching reminds me that design fundamentals never go out of style. ~ Formal design education matters; it gives you a foundation to build a long-term career instead of realizing too late that you’re in the wrong field. ~ Living and working across different countries taught me that even simple design choices, like colors or payment methods, carry deep cultural meaning. Aysha’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aysha-samrin/ 

~ How did your journey into UX design begin? 2:15 

~Since sports are data-heavy, do you see a connection between that and digital design dashboards? 6:36

~ Do you think people from non-design backgrounds challenge or enrich your perspective in UX? 8:40

~ Rapid Fire Round 10:16

~ What unique challenges do you face when designing for enterprise software and compliance-heavy products? 15:25

~ How are you leveraging AI in your design process, and what opportunities or risks does it bring? 20:31

~ What inspired your book, Phony Confessions of a Designer, and how does humor play a role in your approach to design? 24:54

~ What advice do you have for young designers starting their careers today? 26:57 Show notes 

~ UX is all about creating alignment; it’s not about who has the best idea, but about what’s best for the end user.

~ Coaching soccer taught me leadership and teamwork—skills I bring into every design project.

~ Metrics bridge the gap between creativity and strategy; they tell us what’s working and where we need to improve.

~ AI can’t replace the UX process. If you put in garbage, garbage will come out.

~ Creativity was the missing piece in my career. Once I found design, tinkering with problems stopped feeling like work.

~ Enterprise UX isn’t just about usability; it’s about navigating red tape, earning stakeholder buy-in, and still keeping the user at the center.

~ Humor helps us stay honest about our flaws as designers; sometimes laughing at our “confessions” makes us better at what we do.

Ryan’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-brink/ Ryan’s Website: https://brinkryan.com/ 

• What was your professional journey like and what shaped you as a design professional? 2:56
• Did you notice any cultural shifts when the smaller design studio you worked at was acquired by the larger organization? 5:57
• How do you think the cultural experiences from living in Iceland, Italy, and Sweden have influenced your approach to design and the work you do now?  8:57
• Rapid fire round 15:15
• What are the key challenges you face in managing your remote team in India while working in a B2B structure, and how do you address those challenges? 20:17
• As a design leader, what key qualities do you want your team to develop, and what measures are you taking to foster those qualities within your team? 26:03
• What advice would you give to young designers aspiring to follow in your footsteps? 27:13

Show notes:

• As creative professionals, it becomes our responsibility to stay foolish, stay curious, keep discovering things, and keep knowing what is new to come.
• Even though we have the repository, we always want to recheck the data with a smaller sample to validate what information we already have, because every year or so, a new product comes into the market, and people's perceptions might change.
• We have to design very quickly, working with certain knowledge and biases, but it’s crucial to constantly check: Am I still on the right track? Are there knowledge gaps that have come up?
• Expose yourself to a lot of things early on. Don’t just go for the first comfortable position. Test out what resonates with you, because being unhappy at work for 40 years won’t make good products—or you—happy.
• It’s not about having a sleek, beautiful portfolio for me—it’s about solving meaningful problems. Find what resonates with you, not what looks good on paper.
• Keep networking, engaging, listening to podcasts, and reading books. That’s the journey for any career, but especially for a designer. Links - Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/berglindhauksdottir/ Company’s Website - http://www.trustrace.com

• Can you share your individual journeys that led you to where you are today? 1:56
• What restrictions exist for AI in the EU and other regions, and do legal processes make it harder to implement? 8:36
• What are the biggest challenges you face when dealing with people who are hesitant to embrace technology? 13:12
• How similar was the experience of designing this application to your work on other applications, like banking? What similarities can you point out? 30:11
• Rapid Fire Round 35:22
• How do you think scientists can currently leverage AI tools and techniques in their research, and what potential do you see for the future? 45:39
• What advice would you give to new entrepreneurs looking to follow a similar model of creating innovative solutions with technology, and what challenges should they be aware of? 53:05

Show notes:

• From a core technology perspective, we figured out how to efficiently solve a common problem. Any formula, whether it’s toothpaste or a burger, is a combination of ingredients that undergo a process. - Aadit Patel
• The A I can do the hard stuff, you know, it can do the hard stuff like the constraints and thinking, and like all these high dimensions, it can be a great assistant for creativity. - Aadit Patel
• The way that we work together collaboratively with the machine learning engineers, there’s this whole validation process we do when we’re in that stage that first of all, are we actually solving a relevant problem that is important with that? - Macarena Zañartu
• Making people trust that way of working. It's like adapting. The way that they are interacting with this new interface is also a thing about processes, users are going to have to build things that they probably think are not going to work to let the system know what a better recommendation will be. - Macarena Zañartu
• The future of food needs to be not just nutritious but it needs to have some functionality that is, is helpful and backed up by potential claims. - Aadit Patel
• Don't fall in love with the thing that you're designing, like put it out there, test it iterate on it, and accept feedback, and don't wait until something is done in front of your eyes. - Macarena Zañartu

Links - Aadit Patel’s LinkedIn: - https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaditpatel/ Macarena Zañartu's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/macazeta/ Company website: https://www.notco.com/ 

• How has your journey been? What steps would you recommend for those who want to follow in your footsteps? 1:41
• Do you feel there is a difference in the design approach when working with heavily funded organizations compared to corporate giants like Amazon? 4:19
• As a kid, you probably dreamed of working with your nation's space agency (NASA). Do you feel that satisfaction was somewhat achieved? 6:00
• How do you define design leadership in your current studio or agency setup, and what processes do you implement to ensure your team's success? 7:12
• As a design leader, how do you juggle the diverse responsibilities that come your way? 8:38
• Rapid fire round 12:54
• Do you think there's a secret to building a sustainable team, tracking progress, and setting a North Star for leadership? 17:26
• On BlinkUX.com, there’s information about UX workshop ideas and how to conduct them. Can you tell us more about that? 19:07
• Any advice for young followers or those just starting out or looking into a studio practice? 22:46

Show notes:

• I remember very distinctly getting into the high school yearbook and getting my hands on digital publishing tools from Adobe, like PageMaker and Photoshop, and just loving that process.
• Our job was to untangle that knot—find commonalities through UX research around which stories were the most effective that NASA was telling—and ultimately consolidate those 3,000 websites into one.
• Understanding how to create great UX at the government level is a different challenge compared to working with tech clients that have had design embedded in their culture for a long time.
• If I could have next-level time management, that would be ideal. I feel like I’ve gotten better at it, but that would definitely be a superpower.
• Making sure your design activities are really set up for the end goal is crucial. You need to get people talking, have them take their guard down, and position the activities to help us read between the lines and understand the project's big ambitious goals.
• Throughout the course of a project, our clients take a journey in learning user-centered design. We often teach our clients how to run workshops and how to progress in a design project

Links: LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/benkshown/  Company’s Website: www.blinkux.com

Discussion points:

• With over 25 years in the industry, can you share your journey and some major momentum shifts you've witnessed during this time? 1:13
• Given your experience with mission-critical UX, from medical emergencies to identity management, do you think our reliance on these systems has put us in a vulnerable position? 7:37
• Considering your work on medical information systems, how do you integrate these systems with security and identity management? 12:39
• Rapid fire questions 17:46
• Having witnessed the tech evolution from the late seventies to now, what do you think the landscape will look like in 15 to 20 years? 22:23
• What career advice would you give to those starting out in the field?? 26:14

Show notes:

• When I started, a career in UX did not exist. The closest thing might have been something like human factors, which I didn't even know existed back then.
• You don't really notice good user interfaces, you only notice bad ones.
• It is the responsibility of UX people to prevent human error. We need to anticipate and prepare for it, even though we can't eliminate it completely.
• With regard to artificial intelligence, I feel scared a little bit when I think about it because it has the power to do things that will replace humans or make decisions that humans are used to making.
• What I work on is actually the identity management part. It's about making it easy for clinicians to access the systems they need quickly and efficiently.
• Thinking through what would happen in catastrophic situations and making sure you have a good contingency plan is part of the user experience.

Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-belge-634194/ Company’s Websites: www.imprivata.com  Matt’s Company Website: www.visionlogic.com

• Can you describe your journey leading teams across various organizations, navigating challenges, and driving innovation in product management? 1:21
• Do you find it challenging to ensure user advocacy and align product development with cross-functional team cultures, particularly in terms of securing your seat at the decision-making table? 2:58
• How has your experience living and working in different places along the West Coast, from California to Portland, shaped your perspective on professional and personal growth? 5:09
• Rapid Fire Round 10:26
• How essential do you believe technical knowledge or upgrading skills are for individual contributors when working with new AI-based or big data visualization libraries? 15:34
• Could you share some insights or common questions you encounter from your mentorship at ADP List? 20:41
• What advice would you like to share with those who are just starting out in their careers? 25:32

Show notes - 

• Shifting from a focus solely on design to understanding broader business goals and collaborating effectively across departments has been pivotal in my career growth.
• Technology and remote work have homogenized cultural differences, enabling global collaboration with teams seamlessly.
• Letting go of control and trusting team members to execute designs is a significant cultural shift for designers moving into leadership roles
• AI enhances efficiency but doesn't replace human creativity. Focus on user empathy and problem-solving skills remains crucial.
• Design is crucial in understanding what users want. It's about marrying solutions to real problems and ensuring users feel empowered and satisfied.
• Focus on learning and adapting. In 2024, staying updated with design systems and UI kits is essential, but honing problem-solving skills and user empathy is paramount.

Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachalbert/ Company website: https://www.cortex.io/ ADP List: https://adplist.org/mentors/zac-halbert

• Could you describe your journey in the field of UX? Starting at a time when UX wasn't even a term, how was life and the journey back then?  2:21
• How can one effectively communicate the value of UX to individuals or organizations that may not be familiar with it? What strategies have proven successful? 14:38
• How should one document and present their approach to selling UX on platforms such as their website? 18:22
• Rapid fire round 25:09
• What is one piece of advice you would give to someone who is just starting out in their career? 32:25
• Can you talk more about conversion optimization and its relation to UX? How do you balance creating urgency with maintaining user trust? 35:56

Show notes - ~ There are also things like cognitive load, and there's loads of psychological ways that you could help somebody have a good experience and make a purchase without resorting to manipulative techniques that ultimately just alienate them. ~ Understanding and working with human psychology, rather than against it, can create more positive experiences and outcomes. ~ Effective strategies can help people follow through on their intentions by making the decision process smoother and less fraught with immediate resistance. ~  It's important to consider the ethical implications of how we design experiences to support positive behavior without causing alienation. ~  By planning for future actions, like donating after a pay rise, we can bypass the immediate resistance from our survival instincts. ~ Creating opportunities for future commitments allows people to align their actions with their values without triggering loss aversion. ~  Our psychology at the point of action is often dominated by immediate concerns and instincts that can prevent us from acting on our longer-term intentions.

Links- Paul’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulboag/ Company website: https://boagworld.com/ Email: paul@boagworks.com Podcast: https://boagworld.com/show/

Discussion Points - 

• Can you share your journey and what led you to choose a career in UX design, ultimately reaching the position of UX Director at Elevated Third? 1:35
• How was the transition from living in Texas to moving to New York and working as a product designer there? 5:23
• Do you believe that experiencing the humane side of New York city contributed to your empathic approach to user experience design? 7:03
• What were the similarities and major differences you experienced during your transition from physical product design to software product design, and how do you find both roles? 10:36
• Do you believe having a variety of experiences in their career is crucial for designers aiming to become design leaders and make a bigger impact?  16:13
• Rapid fire round 18:12
• How does UX connect with marketing, considering that marketing revolves around business goals and financial outcomes? 26:53
• What are some leadership challenges that you think you learned the hard way? 32:18
• What is the advice you would give to green designers? 33:35

Show notes - 

• It was interaction design when I started; UX hadn't been defined. The people at IBM had backgrounds in human factors and engineering human interactions. I had been doing it for a long time. And so as we were stepping out, we were saying, "We do UX, user experience design." 
• Vulnerability is something that people are sometimes shy to show, but once you do, you can really connect with other people, including your clients and users, and bring that through the whole process.
• Comparing physical and digital product design reveals similarities and differences. Physical products offer tangible satisfaction and visibility, while digital products provide flexibility for adjustments like fixing typos. However, rectifying errors in shipped physical products can be more complex.
• Design thinking really helps when you have a brief. It's abstract, and you don't know exactly what they have in mind. With design thinking, you can tease out more information, explore it, and dissect it like a prism.
• Continually learning, evolving, and being open to keeping up with technology while relying on mentors to help with transitions are extremely important, even if the mentor is not in your field, as they have the background to guide you and apply proven learnings to your work, ushering you into those transitions.
• The type of work we do at Elevated Third involves working with B2B SaaS companies, where our focus is on creating websites that generate customers for them, rather than directly working on the SaaS product itself.
• A lot of the companies we work with are collaborating with branding agencies. These agencies bring us new brand elements for which we design new websites, reflecting the invigorated and youthful nature of the brand. However, their old products don't resemble this new brand in any way.
• We are really focused on website marketing, particularly for selling products, occasionally dipping into product design. However, we prioritize hiring designers with marketing backgrounds and individuals who are open to business objectives.
• I have continued to use mentors today, even though I might be the director of the organization, for accountability purposes. Luckily, my organization sees the value of mentors and brings in consultants and people for us to work with, even though we are on the leadership team.

Links -

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mindyleague/  

Company website: https://www.elevatedthird.com/ 

Portfolio/ website: https://www.behance.net/mindyleague 

Discussion points - 

• How did you come into this profession, and what made you what you're doing today? 1:43
• Why did you name the company ‘Free Association’? 7:43
• How was your experience working with Google Maps & Apple Maps? 10:00
• What sort of work went into the smart city project of Toyota that you are associated with? Share with us your experience. 
• How do you differentiate between working for a bigger organization's prototyping, or North star vision versus any North Star development for any startup? 
• What importance should young entrepreneurs give to the UX for designing the North star? 18:41
• Rapid Fire Questions 20:32
• What role does psychology play in defining the initial product or prototype that you're working on?
• Intuition versus relevance, how does that play and fit into the bigger picture? 28:29
• How do you connect the entire narrative - lead designs to intuition to brand personality, and then product design? 30:49 
• What are your thoughts on generative AI? 33:33
• What do you think about the anti-AI voices? 36:54
• What advice would you give to somebody who is just starting their career? 38:58

Show notes

• I learned through making stuff. And it's always really been the way of just putting myself into new environments, new challenges, and trying to figure it out. 
• We started to learn what it was about design that we loved, and how to follow that path. And started to move up from doing websites and advertising, moving into branding, starting to get into UX, and that's when it started trending as a real thing. 
• Another part that's exciting about Toyota is they think of mobility, as movement as in moving hearts and minds. So that's always been a fun part of Toyota. 
• The Woven City is a living laboratory that they're building on the foothills of Mount Fuji to accelerate automated technologies and technologies connected to this idea of being a mobility company, by having people live work, and play in the city, they can have these different technologies out in a very connected way. 
• The kind of experience that we're trying to create, and understand that technology is really in service of people or are the people in service of technology? 
• Picking a horizon is important, as knowing what you're shooting for and how far out. The reason you do North Star vision is to set the idea or the concept for where you're trying to go for right the moonshot. 
• Society has to be ready for innovations for them to take off and for people to adopt them. Culturally, it has to make sense. 
• I try to understand a brand and a company through an archetype. There is a discipline called archetypal branding, which is used more in marketing and branding, I tend actually to bring it over into product design. 
• Believe in your ideas for a little bit, just give them oxygen and let them go. Even bad ideas, good ideas, whatever. Get it out there and see where they take you. 
• Generative AI is great at sketching business plans and giving you a roadmap to do things and telling you where to research. But I still think humans need to make sense of it, and humans need to put spirit into it. 
• Do stuff that brings value to the world and know that it'll come back X fold. 

Links -

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidlanda/ 

Company website: https://www.freeassociation.com/ 

Introduction

Andy Markov is the CEO of Within Inc. and a veteran UX executive leader with nearly 30 years of professional experience. Nurturing brands like Ferrari, Citibank, Sony, and L'oreal, Andy is an expert in information architecture and web business. A successful business strategist and angel investor, his heart lies in design thinking, and a lot of brands including NETGEAR and Mastercard have leveraged his insights on how to make their product more accessible, and more user-friendly.

Discussion Points

• Do you think that brands do impact one's career trajectory or where they're headed? 02:29
• One of the biggest products that Andy has worked on and you might have seen, is the PlayStation. So Andy, tell us more about it, It's such a popular product, what was the journey from a design point of view? 03:55
• How much the bigger companies have played a role in pushing for a good UX? 07:48
• Rapid fire. 11:08
•  If anybody is just starting out in their career, what your advice would be for them to watch out for? 15:33
•  What your advice would be about the design leadership side of things? 17:13

Show Notes

• UX comes in naturally as product building organization. So that's the pitch we give to our customers, we help customers go to market faster. 06:45
• The largest challenge of a design leader is to show the organization the ROI on design. 08:53
• The trend I see is his innovative businesses and innovative startups are starting to compete on design, right and design spoke broadly not just to say software design, hardware design, or industrial design, but a lot of level of thinking, coming up with ideas. 09:42
• Look out for great products, study those great products, see what you like about them and understand how the features are being built. 15:43
• Designers, in specific, need to understand what developers have to consider work very closely with developers create those partnerships with engineers, and leverage also the engineers or technology pieces because a lot of that innovation does come in from the engineering side. 15:54
• What is a phenomenal team, right? It's people you trust, people that have talents and people that understand the business, and people that understand the discipline. 17:30
• And products themselves tend to provide that opportunity, especially in great products when you're building something you're passionate about and want to keep on building. But I think in turn it becomes our job as leaders to get people excited about those products.  18:39
• The excitement is actually understanding your customer right and understanding what they need. 19:09

 Contact

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andymarkov/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/andymark

Company website: https://within-inc.com/

#productdesign #ux #businessleadership #softwaredeveloper #webdevelopment #teammanagement 

Daniel Buzzo is the professor of Interaction Design at CODE University, Berlin. Interestingly enough, Daniel makes art with machines. From writing books, blogs, films, filmography, photography, design research to sculpture art, he is a master of all with a dynamic personality. Discussion Points:

• What is the importance of interaction design in designing experiences for people using technology? 4:24
• You talk about different kinds of design like generative, participatory, critical, speculative. Can you share some real-life examples of such designs? 13:21
• Rapid fire segment 17:55
• How important is the understanding of Human Computer Interaction in designing product experiences? 24:07 
• Would you like to shine more light on research through design? 25:32
• Can you tell me about making art with machines? 29:15

Shownotes:

• The things that sustain our lives, about being with family, about communicating with other people about living our lives. A lot of it is supported by technology that we design.03:08
• And it is still the young designers, engineers, scientists, artists, visionaries, who will see new ways of putting these things together, and maybe conceive of new ways to apply technologies to different problems or all problems. 3:48
• We didn't get where we are today by design, we got here by stumbling and trying things out. And occasionally people would get lucky and everybody would say, Oh, they're a genius! 04:10
• People that are not within the field of interaction design, only see the surface, and they think everything exists on the surface. 05:20
• That's an interesting perspective to think about user experience. That it relates to something very, very human, rather than it being about the color of the icons. 09:18
• People will take what you think you've designed, and use it always in different ways and feel different things about it, no matter what you do. 12:00
• As digital designers, when we design things for people to solve a particular need or problem today, that noodle problem may change tomorrow, that people may change. 27:27
• Design is a generative process, which is why we ideate, we can analyze problems, we can work in participatory design with the people that would use the things that we might make.  27:50

Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-buzzo-751b99/

Website: https://buzzo.com/

Fergus Roche, Design Director at Valtech is our guest today. Fergus strives to lead change with user-centric design. He is a master of many domains helping organizations to research, innovate, and enable a digital transformation through user-centered design. An excellent problem solver and a critical thinker.

Discussion Points:

• How do you think user-centered design can bring about a change? What kind of problems can we solve with user-centered designing? - 3:19
• Can you tell us a bit about “Matrix leadership”? How is it useful in organizational UX? - 6:16
• What have been your key learnings while designing CX for the big names like Johnson & Johnson, Qatar Airways, BBC, Vodafone, Cisco, HP, Toyota etc. - 13:28
• Rapid fire segment - 20:00
• As you are a psychology graduate, how do you leverage the understanding of human psychology in user research? - 26:36
• Being a part of both larger setup and of smaller agency, when you're working or dealing directly with the clients and the problems. What is the difference between the two experiences? - 29:23

Show notes:

• It's really about testing our assumptions, like our design assumptions with real humans so that people can make better decisions. 3:45
• Not the technology, not the system, not the business, but the user and that really holds weight for me. 4:27
• The value of user-centered design is trying to understand what the risk is and what the opportunity is and what the uncertainty is. 5:17
• Matrix leadership is about finding that win-win in the relationships and the consensus that you're trying to build. 6:57
• The difficulty with transformation just comes down to a bunch of humans that work together, and they want to do things differently. 11:11
• Testing our assumptions and removing the risk is inherent in the design process. 3:48
• UX is just one discipline where you’re actually designing for a real experience that real humans are going to have with a product or service, there's so many different kinds of parts of an organization and disciplines that need to be involved with that, you really got to start looking at the total experience. 16:10
• How you measure success for somebody's when wireframing stuff out, during the design and build process versus, when an actual live product, is quite different. 17:01
• There's a space that we need to get to where we get beyond UX, we get beyond CX, and we actually start to get more holistically joined up around the total experience. 17:16
• My favorite holiday destination is somewhere where it's hot and I'm with family or friends or both. 20:15
• I'm gonna mention Uber. Okay? It is by far one of the best customer experience focused propositions of a business. 25:18
• We all get together, and get the best and learn from each other, while kind of simplifying our decision making, so that we can scale. 33:21

Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fergusroche/

Felix Lee is our very first guest on the UX Banter Podcast. Felix is the Co Founder at ADPList having a vision to inspire powerful conversations and collaborations among members of the design community.

Felix is an engineer, an ex-army man, a design lead and an entrepreneur who believes in constantly reinventing the way we experience the world.  Discussion Points:

• What’s the story behind starting ADPList? 1:38
• From joining the army to starting a successful startup, what has your journey been like? 5:00
• Have you had any mentors in your life? And how has their impact been in your career? 9:00
• Are there any happy surprises along the way? 12:30
• Rapid Fire Segment 17:29
• It's commendable that you have an inclusive team at ADPList with 60% female and 40% people of color. Any tips on building diversified teams at work? 29:17

Show Notes:

ADPList is on a mission to democratize mentorship, and to bring mentorship, access to the world, with over 6000 mentors from 90 different countries.

• Design is much more about understanding many different complexities, as compared to just trying to design an app or something.
• A lot of designers don't like working with data, but the best designers spend 70 to 80% of their time on data.
• I just want to do amazing things, I just want to be able to do some amazing work for the world.
• I only had one very focused goal that I wanted to be the best designer that I could be in these two years. 
• One of the surprises that came along my way was truly how fundamentally good the majority of human beings can be.
• ADP wouldn't be here today, without the earliest people who had believed in us and wanted to continue to help us and some of them, do it on a voluntary basis. 
• I think the fallacy of UX is that people tend to think that it solves a problem through good experience and usability.
• We have a lot of people who can do the work, but not a lot of people who can think and it's a rare commodity these days.

Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/felixleezd/ Website: https://adplist.org/

Discussion points - 

• What has your journey been like in the creative domains of design and innovation? 2:04
• What are your thoughts on the design sprints, planning, and how the work is managed? 7:17
• Rapid fire round 10:27
• What makes a product user-centered, or ego-centered in the narrative? What is the difference between the two? 19:16
• You are in the process of coming up with a solution that is going to help freelancers. What is it about? 23:39
• How can one join your program for freelancers? 28:04
• What advice would you like to give to somebody who's just starting as a freelancer and has a career in design? 34:42

Show notes- 

• The thing I always found most fascinating, fun, and engaging to do was talking to the business owners and asking them, why do you do what you do and why do customers choose your product or your service?
• It's always quite difficult to place user research in a project, especially on the agency side, when there is hourly billing. 
• The idea of adopting user-centered design is the exact opposite of ego-centered design. It's about being open and being okay with not knowing things for sure. Being willing to contribute ideas, but not claiming them as an absolute truth.
• What I liked about design sprints, it's that you have a very productized service. So it's a way of not only getting away from hourly billing, but having something where you can say, okay, you have a problem, and I have a solution for it. 
• I'm heading down that direction to build a three-month program in which I want to help freelancers create a unique offering, figuring out who they are, and what do you like to do. and what is the most valuable thing you can offer to a client, and wrapping that in a nice package.
• One of the challenges that agencies face is standardizing their services.
• If you find something you enjoy and you get good at it, you'll also find a way to make some money from it.
• I would highly recommend people get their own CRM to keep track of the people that they've met and spoken to, and not lose those people out of sight.

Links -

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/philipwallage/  

Website: https://www.philipwallage.com/ 

Show notes -

~ I’ve realized there’s a whole part of the world that does things differently. It’s not that it’s the wrong way; it’s just different, and it takes time to adapt and relearn. ~ In emerging markets, it’s not always about the quality of execution; it’s about being first to market, locking in your distribution, and eliminating competition early. ~ Founders often get so obsessed with their product that they skip validation, pouring time and money into something without knowing who will buy it or how to distribute it. ~ Having a mixed heritage and career across different regions has taught me to approach problems with multiple perspectives and adapt to unique ways of doing things. ~ Accounting taught me the value of structure, but I also realized that creativity within such rigid frameworks often leads to undesirable consequences. ~ Business is all about people. To create value, you need to deeply understand your customers—their behaviors, demographics, and what problems you’re solving for them. Links - www.linkedin.com/in/oliviercottin www.nylabank.com 

Discussion points - 

• What path did you follow to become the designer and creative professional you are today? 1:26
• Do your past experiences significantly influence your current role and approach? 3:37
• Do you believe that achieving a high level of discipline is crucial when self-learning to establish a career compared to pursuing formal education? 6:36
• Rapid fire round 7:49
• How do no-code and low-code platforms impact the user experience when compared to custom-built solutions, and what are your thoughts on their significance in UX design?11:13
• How do you and your team stay up-to-date with evolving technologies and trends to ensure you remain competitive in delivering products and services? 16:43
• Tell us about the podcasts you host. 23:48
• What advice would you give to individuals who are just starting their careers and aspire to reach the level of expertise you have achieved? 27:05

Show notes - 

• I started with development and later shifted to design to work on products I found enjoyable. It allowed me to influence their appearance, functionality, and perception, primarily focusing on design, with some development involvement. 
• I often advise people, even during user or stakeholder interviews, to ask 'why' multiple times. You might have heard of this technique, but it's essential to approach a question from various angles to uncover the true answer.
• Everything I've done up to today, including video editing, design, and development, has been self-taught. I haven't received a traditional education in these fields.
• You've always got to have that hunger and drive to educate yourself, to understand what you don't know and learn from it.
• I'm personally a fan of low-code and no-code solutions. I believe they are excellent for rapid development, iteration, and testing. However, there may come a point where a custom solution is necessary. Two of my favorite low-code and no-code platforms are Webflow and FlutterFlow, which allow you to build websites and applications.
• I believe that as creatives or agencies, we need to embrace AI tools rather than fear them and figure out how to incorporate them. In the future, it will be about orchestrating the synergy between these tools and technologies.
• In the Soapbox Business Show podcast, my co-host Mario and I interview various business professionals, mainly those who own or run their businesses. We firmly believe that regardless of their industry, these conversations offer valuable insights and information.
• There have been instances where I've found that what is taught in classrooms is outdated or no longer relevant. To stay ahead, it's essential to stay hungry, continue learning independently, and be hands-on. These factors combined will contribute to your success.

Links - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zacharyrnewton/ Company website: https://www.createape.com/ Portfolio/ website: https://zacharynewton.me/ Podcasts: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/story-archives https://soapbox.house/ 

Discussion points - 

• Could you share the journey that led you to become a design extraordinaire and educator? 2:08
• Did the self-taught learning journey, including discipline and reliance on online resources, ever lead to self-doubt or uncertainty about your ability to succeed as a designer?  4:11
• Apart from talent, what key factors do you consider pivotal in shaping you into the accomplished designer you are today? 5:18
• When facing intermediaries like managers or client representatives who filter design feedback, how do these challenges influence your design attitude and motivation? 6:59
• Transitioning from solo work to collaborating with teams on multiple projects, what key differences have you observed in your design approach and overall experience? 9:48
• Rapid fire round 11:19
• Shifting from a designer to mentor and course creator, how challenging was it to adapt your focus, develop a curriculum, and bridge design approach gaps? 20:03
• With Figma introducing new features like variables, multilingual support, data sets, and AI capabilities, what's your perspective on these changes? 22:59
• Regarding generative AI tools in the creative industry, do you see them as a threat or a benefit? Will they reshape your design approach, or have a more positive impact? 25:47
• Could the integration of advanced features like generative AI in tools like Figma result in a steeper learning curve for designers and the need for specialized professionals in prototyping and interactivity? 29:04
• What advice would you give to aspiring designers who admire portfolios like yours and dream of becoming accomplished designers themselves? 30:31

Show notes -

• I didn't attend any school to learn design, and during that time, there weren't any online platforms available for learning either. The only source I had was YouTube. I absorbed all the videos that people had recorded and posted. This was also a period when the design was undergoing significant evolution.
• I don't closely follow design trends, as they change constantly. Instead, I focus on maintaining consistency through practice and frequent iterations. I don't settle with just one design; I keep iterating until I'm truly satisfied.
• I gather various inputs to determine what will work well visually and experientially. While some might believe visuals alone suffice for a product, the experience also plays a significant role.
• When working alone, your decisions rely solely on your own judgment and experience. However, collaborating with a team introduces new perspectives and surprising possibilities that you might not have considered on your own.
• Teaching is something I aspire to do beyond this industry, given my personal journey through challenges. Recently, I've observed individuals enthusiastically taking online courses in various fields, including UX. However, there remains a significant gap in teaching the art of crafting quality designs. This gap is what I aim to address through my mentorship.
• Figma's recent foray into AI is quite intriguing, particularly the demo they showcased. There have been concerns that AI might take over jobs, but as seen in the demo, these tools aren't actually performing design tasks.
• As a designer, you are understanding how engineering functions is essential, as your role extends beyond creating a design. Designing is just the beginning; you're involved in the entire process, from building the design to development, leading to a sense of satisfaction once the product is complete.
• When starting your career, gather references from established professionals, especially those focused on consistent enterprise and real product design, rather than chasing trends that are ever-changing.

Links - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/praveen-n-964560151/  

Company website: https://www.galaxyweblinks.com/ 

Portfolio/ website: https://www.behance.net/pravinrj27 

Discussion points - 

• With your various roles and being a family man, how do you manage such a diverse set of responsibilities effectively? 1:52
• How did you begin your career and how did you arrive at your current position? 3:14
• How has your experience of bridging the cultural context between Europe and North America influenced your approach to user experience design and product development? 6:23
• What's the connection between art and UX design, given your background transition, and how does problem-solving and design thinking fit into this relationship? 9:16
• Rapid fire round 12:07
• Why do you believe networking is crucial for designers, and why is it important to ensure that conversations within your network remain relevant and valuable? 18:08
• Do you think remote work for designers is less productive than office work, and how does it impact creativity, considering your company's remote setup? 19:46
• Could you provide more details about the online courses you teach and the subjects you cover in your courses? 24:03
• What advice would you give to those entering the design field about navigating their career journey over the next decade or so? 26:58

Show notes -

• Balancing life and work is often easier said than done and it greatly depends on your personal circumstances. For instance, having small children can make it more challenging.
• As far as I remember, I knew I wanted to be an artist. I recall as a child, I would look at other people's works and try to replicate them. I always knew I was going to be an artist.
• When I came to Canada, it was the biggest surprise for me. I was expecting advanced technologies, and while they do exist here, their implementation is not as intense as it is in Europe.
• I would always advise every designer to go big with your ideas. There is no such thing as a bad idea, especially in the ideation phase. Every idea, even if initially considered not suitable, could lead to another idea that inspires better solutions.
• Collaborating with other people is in my blood; it's something I feel is the most effective way to achieve incredible things by drawing inspiration from one another and creating something together.
• A lot in terms of creativity depends on how ideas are bounced off each other. The facilitator of the conversation plays a crucial role, whether it's in a digital environment or a physical meeting room. They set the foundation for productive and creative discussions.
• I teach three courses. One is called "Visualizations," which covers the fundamentals of visual design. The other one is "Information Design," focusing on data collection, interpretation, visualization, and drawing conclusions from it. The third one is "Physical Interfaces," which is particularly intriguing as it involves blending the digital and physical worlds.
• When I observe my students and the industry, people often kill ideas too quickly before exploring their potential variations. Being brave is crucial; it's the key to success. Be bold with your ideas, think of the impossible, and then consider how to make it a reality.

Links -

LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/jarekkucharczyk/ 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jarek_designer/ 

Company website: https://www.diffagency.com/ 

Portfolio/ website: http://www.jarekdesigner.com/ 

• Can you share your journey of becoming a designer with us? What inspires you the most about UX & UI designing? 1:26
• Coming from a technical background of computer sciences, how do you leverage your technical skills in product designing? What technical skills should people who are not from a technical background learn? 3:51
• Can you tell us about any specific technical skill that you would recommend that the non-technical people in the design community should ideally learn or know about? 4:55
• Since you’ve worked with some of the best brands covering a wide range of domains, what have been your key learnings from those projects? 7:34
• Rapid Fire Segment : 12:19
• Since you speak about having deep compassion for users you are designing for, can you tell us some practical ways of developing empathy or connecting with the users? 21:05
• Can you tell us about your minimal content approach? How do you strike a balance between designing simple and minimal interfaces yet providing all the necessary information to the users? 23:01
• What is some advice that you’d like to give someone who’s just starting out in the industry? 25:09

Show notes:

• As a UX UI designer, you are actually seeing the problem as a kind of opportunity to solve and create a better experience for the people who's going to be using that solution. 02:54
• In terms of feasibility, talking in their language is helping me to create a bridge between the stakeholders and the development team and to create the best design that can be possible for all people to be happy at the end. 4:36
• You don’t need a development background at all, to be one of the best UX UI designers. 5:06
• If you want to be a master of something, I believe, the focus should be on that all the time. 5:20
• In order to be a very good designer, you have to use your time from a design perspective, rather than coding. 6:30
• You have to think carefully from a user perspective, because you are technically the first user at hand. You need to think if the design looks good and works well for you. You also have to do your research carefully with the competence of user research and market research. 21:47
• You have to define the main problem in order to come up with the optimum solution, the problem that you want to solve might not be the priority, it is good to solve all the problems, but it is best to solve the main problem first. 22:21
• If you are thinking the same thing that you did 10 years ago, you haven't lived it yet. Because you're changing, everything's changing, your ideas are changing too. 25:43
• If you're starting your career as a UX designer, the first thing to keep in mind is to know the principles of UX, second is to know the industry, and third is to maintain a portfolio. 26:10

Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alpturgut/ Website: https://www.alpturgut.com/

Adp List: https://www.adplist.org/mentors/alp-turgut

• Can you walk us through your career journey and share some insights? 1:29
• How do you go about educating others on the benefits of a design system? 5:05
• How do you recommend implementing a design system? Is an independent code base, a Figma file, or a tool that hosts the design system the best approach? 8:11
• Rapid fire round 13:58
• Can you share your journey from your early experiences and childhood to your current role at Sparkbox, and how these experiences have shaped your career? 18:09
• How do you convince engineering teams to invest in design systems, given that many see it as just a design responsibility? 24:29

Show notes

• I quickly fell in love with design and user experience. I kind of left that role and jumped out on my own to explore that opportunity a little bit more.
• We spend a lot of time with them thinking about education, helping everybody inside the organization understand what a system is, why it's important, and what it means for them.
• We've done some interesting studies to show, just from an efficiency standpoint, how much of an impact a system can have when it's built well and is being used. The numbers are quite staggering.
• I think of design systems not as a product, but as a program that has to exist inside an organization. When they're done well, they really become the way we build digital interfaces.
• Two-thirds of the effort is in writing really good documentation and training people to understand that's where they go to get the answers they need.
• I've got so many insights from people who are out there in the trenches doing this work on a daily basis. If you have questions or ideas on how this work can be done, or if you just need a community of people who can help support you through difficult times, that's really what this is becoming.

Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bencallahan/  Company’s Website: https://sparkbox.com/  Personal Website: https://bencallahan.com/ The Question: https://bencallahan.com/the-question -

• Can you share your journey and how you got to where you are today? 1:39
• When did you move to California? 16:10
• Do you feel that your overall experiences have contributed significantly to your journey? 22:13
• Rapid fire questions 24:17
• At IBM, you've mentioned working with IBM India and traveling frequently. What are the main focuses of your initiatives there? 31:20

Show notes:

• The path to a better place was not to come barreling in and say, ‘I have all the answers'.
• I needed to work with women to empower them to realize they can and need to be the future they want to be a part of.
• It’s so unhealthy and cruel to think that because you had a bad experience, everyone else should go through it too.
• True innovation happens when you stop trying to control every aspect and embrace the unknown.
• The most impactful designs come from listening deeply and creating with empathy at the core.
• Leadership is about making space for others to shine, not just being the brightest in the room.
• The future of design is in diversity—not just of gender or background, but diversity of thought and experience.

Links: LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stacey-seronick/ Company website: www.ibm.com

• Can you share your creative background and the key experiences that have shaped you into the design leader you are today? 1:27
• Did you feel any pressure as a designer at The Omni Group to adopt tools like OmniGraffle when they were gaining traction in the design community, especially considering the presence of motion graphics in your work? 6:09
• How have your life experiences, diverse travels, work across different domains, and the creative influences from your childhood impacted your approach to user experience design? 9:19
• Rapid Fire Round 11:24
• How do you navigate the challenges between adhering to UX principles driven by data while seeking creatively satisfying outputs in a field? 16:07
• Does active engagement and cross-functional communication among UX, developers, and business analysts significantly impact product ownership and success from start to finish? 21:34
• If you have to give young designers coming into the industry any advice what would that be? 27:50 Show notes - 
• Before the iPhone, software was designed to be very capable for many users. However, with the iPhone's introduction, there was a shift toward a user experience focused on excelling in one or two key aspects within a software experience.
• Traveling across Europe and Asia exposed me to diverse cultures, fostering an inherent empathy that influences my approach to solving user experience problems. It taught me the importance of simplicity, ease of use, and catering to diverse needs.
• We need to take small incremental steps forward in our craft, whether it's in Figma, the way we approach design problems, or a wide variety of other aspects. Every day, we can strive to push ourselves forward, continuously improving and owning our craft.
• The more designers acquire technical knowledge and language, the more likely they are to bring truly creative ideas to the world and users. 
• The one thing I've learned in nearly 20 years in this industry is that software development is a massive collaboration. It doesn't rely on one or two individuals but rather a team of people coming together to build a product. The more you collaborate, engage in open conversations, and show vulnerability within your team, the better the product will be.
• Two pieces of advice: Get up to speed with technical documentation - focus on iOS and Android documentation, familiarize yourself with Apple's Human Interface Guidelines and Android's Material Design Guidelines, and expose yourself to popular web frameworks. Secondly, remember the visual aspect of our job - we need to consider and follow design principles. Links - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/graysongwest/ Company website: https://michiganlabs.com/

Discussion points -

• What inspired you to choose a career in design, and how do you see the intersection of engineering and design in your professional journey? 1:26
• Engineering & Design - How do these two worlds meet in your opinion? 4:52
• How did your background in different cultures and countries impact you as a professional? 8:35
• Rapid fire round 18:43
• What are your thoughts on the widespread adoption of the new vision pro and its potential impact on culture and society? How will designers and individuals cope with its addictive nature and the influence of the reward economy? 31:19
• With the convergence of various technologies like AI techniques, voice interfaces, and advancements in AI, what role do you think it will play in the field of 3D design? 34:11
• What advice would you give to young professionals who are just starting out in this field? What actions should they take, and what should they avoid? What's the mantra for success in their career? 39:04

Show notes - 

• Throughout my life, I've always been eager to build things. And it was kind of a divide between an artistic form of building things and engineering problem-solving. 
• As a generalist, I was never able to really focus on one thing, I always wanted to learn more and more in terms of what I like, to broaden my horizons, and learn multiple skills in order to adapt and combine them. 
• We were applying research and best practices to make the games more addictive , which was a great problem-solving approach from a business perspective. It allowed us to sell more games, and indeed, we achieved that. However, I also had moments of reflection where I questioned the social and cultural implications that might arise from this. It led me to reconsider the ethics of what I was doing.
• There's nothing that a human being can create, be it problem-solving, or a machine, anything that doesn't have a little touch of artistry to it. 
• When you build a website, it's not exactly like painting, you have to consider the limitations of technology, you have to consider how users will perceive it, and how they will interact with it. So there's a lot of best practices, a lot of rules that go into that.
• Throughout my career, I've encountered this situation numerous times: while trying to solve a human problem, I get interrupted by a business problem that I haven't quite cracked. These two issues are not exactly the same thing.
• There is inertia toward having more visual interfaces, and I believe the Vision Pro is a symptom of that. It will undoubtedly steer things further in that direction in the coming years.
• I believe a technology like (AI/VR) will always have a little bit of an osmosis effect, influencing the development of anything related to 3D, due to the heightened awareness that customers will have.
• Designers should be more selfish, particularly when considering their portfolios. The nature of a designer is iterative, focusing on solving problems and creating better experiences for humans, which is great. However, in our current system, designers also need to consider how their work will look in their portfolio in the long term.
• A while back, I switched from Dribbble to Behance. And I'm much happier in the way that I can showcase my portfolio. 

Links - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theartist/  Twitter:https://twitter.com/sergesfeed  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brunosthings/  Company’s website:https://brunoserge.com/  Portfolio/website: https://www.behance.net/brunoserge

Tim Rosenberg is the Senior Product Designer | TEKsystems at Meta. Tim believes that with collaboration and vision, extraordinary things can be accomplished. He is a creative designer, technical developer, and also a mentor for the creative community. His specialties include, Product Design, UX&UI Design, Frontend Development, HTML5, CSS3, and SASS.

Discussion Points:

• As a designer at FAANG / MAANG corporation - what's the view like from the top? 1:10
• From the UX product designer point of view, how are the things kept so that they are seamless? 3:28
• From the UX point of view, do you think that a future like this is the direction that the industry is heading in? 6:06
• Do you think the current UX skill set can be incorporated to build and design everything for the metaverse? 8:49
• What is your take on AR and VR? 10:26
•  How long do you think that AR and VR will take to become a household reality? 13:05
• What are your metrics of designing products that bring the light to the users? 26:33
• What are the things that you wish that somebody would have told you, when you were starting out? 33:30

Show notes:

• One of the biggest things that I've learned about working on a product, like the Facebook app, is that there are no more edge cases. You can't just think like, oh, well, we're gonna ignore this, because, it's such a small percentage, that percentage, even if it's small, it could be like a millions of people at scale. 2:04
• One of the most important things and the hardest things is prioritization in UX design. 4:13
• To reduce cognitive load, you must know what's the most important thing? Sometimes these executives just say everything's important. But if everything's important, then really, nothing's important. 5:37
• I think VR is the future of how we interact and experience. But, I also think that it's going to be a bridge to help facilitate real life in person engagement as well. 7:39
• AR will be more like a real world imitation. And then VR will be like, almost like a separate world immersion. 11:23
• When you build empathy with the users, you'll find a lot more product success, because you're not building features for the sake of being flashy or for getting more advertisement and ROI. You're building features for empathy. 27:30
• This is the feeling that I get whenever I think about blockchain. Blockchain is an amazing solution. But I don't think that we have yet run into the problem that it could solve. - Dushyant 28:36
• I have three buckets of advice. So the first bucket is on craft. The second bucket is on building a portfolio. And then the third is identifying opportunities. 33:55
• Being part of communities like on LinkedIn or ADPList, when you build relationships with people, then when there is an opportunity, oftentimes you'll learn about it before there's even a job post. 39:58
• Don't reinvent the wheel. This statement is true on so many levels that if you are a designer, if you can just go through the Google Design guidelines, the material design application out there, if you can just read the human guidelines created by Apple, that will help you. - Dushyant 41:01

Links: Tim Rosenberg Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-rosenberg/

Adp List: https://adplist.org/mentors/tim-rosenberg

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCguyETGxbtYT-gR6j4lA-qA

Jawid Elyacy is a Senior Product Designer at Deloitte and has worked with some of the world’s most beloved brands such as Cisco, Mercedes-Benz, Bank of America and many more. He has over 10 years of experience in domains like automotive, IT, enterprise, web, banking, etc., as a UX designer.

Discussion Points:

• What is your story of becoming a creative professional? 1:08
• You have worked with TCS, Cognizant, U.S. Bank even now as a UX architect lead at Albertsons Companies, what have been your key learnings, what did you learn as a designer? 4:59
• How was your experience in the telecom industry? 8:39
• Where do you get your creative inspiration from? 22:54

Show notes:

• Nowadays, UX has morphed into something more, it is about being a hybrid designer now. So you're not just someone who just did interaction design or wireframes, or, you know, user journeys, things like that. You're more of somebody who does kind of the whole package for the end-to-end user experience. 4:20
• Once you identify a problem, maybe a user issue or something like that, then you build upon that. You kind of use that as a requirement and then build a project around that. 9:21
• From a UX standpoint, you should always speak up and champion the cause of UX. If you feel like a particular flow or something is lacking from a UX standpoint or didn't take into account the customer's behavior, then it's going to be a bad experience for them. At such moments, you have to really speak up and let them know the UX inefficiencies 11:02
• If you don't follow your inclinations then the end product might suffer.12:10
• User advocacy is a part of the job, if we are not doing it, then we are actually missing out on what we are hired to do. - Dushyant  12:33
• Design is not an easy to learn field, because it's not like engineering or civil engineering where you can read a book and become proficient at it, you follow ABCD, it's a very learned field, you kind of learn from experience. 23:30
• Design is a double-edged sword; you gain it from experience. 24:07
• Design is all about the approach in the early stage to get it right. And then later, the actual design is easy, it is like creating it in whatever tool you use. The research part and  the user discovery phase is the really important critical part followed by deciding on the buttons and colors etc. 24:47
• It's okay to make mistakes, because you will make mistakes when you are designing something. Jawid 26:49

Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jawid-elyacy-10355b1/

Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/jelyacy?lang=ca 

Website/Portfolio: http://www.jawidelyacy.com/about-me.html

~ I can help people grow, but I can’t teach them passion. That has to come from within.

~ New York allows you to be part of different cultures while still being yourself—that’s what I love about it.

~ We’re still trying to insert AI into our old workflow, but the real shift will come when AI helps shape the workflow itself.

~ The most important part of creative leadership is making sure everyone feels like they own the work—it’s everybody’s puppy.

~ Some of the most rewarding moments aren’t about awards, they’re about seeing your work in the places that once inspired you.

Hernan’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hernanibanez/

Introduction

Kevin Tuskey is an award-winning product designer with over 15 years of experience in creating clean and elegant user interfaces. Strategic thinking and problem-solving come naturally to him, making him one of the most promising design leaders in the world. Meet Kevin Tuskey, the Director of Design at SingleStone.

Discussion Points

• What were those decisions to come into design? And how was your journey? 03:08
• I see that there are a lot of changes that are happening, but how much do you think that energy goes into explaining to people what it is? 08:31
• Rapid fire questions 17:31
• How would you describe your leadership style? 27:02
• Design, management, and problem-solving are interconnected. How do you employ the best-suited methods for solving the problem and navigating the challenges that come with it? 29:38
• What is your advice to people who are just starting out? 44:17

Show Notes

• The world defines UX differently based on who you're talking to. 07:11
• If you think about what UX is, it is the letter U and the letter X. The letter X is not the first letter of the word experience. 09:22
• As the leader of the design team, I'd like to have them kind of grow as fast as possible and expose them to opportunities and not pigeonhole them. 28:51
• Creativity has two parts.  It's like throwing a spear into the woods. The first step is to get you started with the spear into the woods. And the second step is to go find the sphere. 37:55
• Some people think that's most of the work, most of the rare work by the way, but there's a whole lot of other work to deliver the vision that someone has explained. I think sometimes the people who emphasize one over the other are overlooking the importance of the other part. 38:16
• So many of these foundational UI elements are really hard, by the way, very hard to make both beautiful and accessible and simple to build. Many of the frameworks that are household names, at least if you're a developer, are not terrifically accessible, there's a lot of blue. 41:23
• We just call Sugar . And you can if you want to try it out, and we just listen to the origin story of how it actually works. 41:50
• And we're looking for contributors because there are so many UI components that you kind of need in a sophisticated design system. We would love to have collaborators help us build those components. 43:14
• Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. 46:24

Contact

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevintuskey/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevintuskey

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kctuskey/

Company website: https://www.singlestoneconsulting.com/blog/author/ktuskey

Email : hello@kevintuskey.com

Portfolio/ website: https://www.kevintuskey.com/

#uiux #creativity #userexperience #uxdesign #uxresearch #userexperiencejourney #podcastfordevelopers #teammanagement #leadership #uxbseason2

Introduction

Shannon Kelly is a famous UX Designer known to marry business needs, marketing targets, and user-focused goals together. Drawing inspiration from a number of data-driven approaches like analytics and conversion rate optimization, she has helped brands like Fathom, New way and UMC see new horizons of success. A committed volunteer for UXPA Cleveland Board and a consultant for Usborne Books and More, Shannon Kelly is the UX Digital Strategist at Overdrive.

Discussion Points

• How is the journey that you've been on as a professional web designer to being a digital strategist? 01:07
• What is your experience like engaging with the conference from the inside? 03:48
• How has that inspired your work? Or change your career as a UX professional, while knowing that there is a lot of suffering in the world? 08:38
• Rapid Fire. 13:04
• You have won quite a few awards in your lifetime, how much inspiration that you get out of these recognitions? 32:02
• What advice would you give to somebody just starting out in the journey of UX, and what should they do to stand out from the crowd and be hired? 34:43

Show Notes

• Hey, do you want to learn about conversion rate optimization? And I was like, sure, like, what's this? And they're like, oh, yeah, you can use data to justify your design decisions, and also, how you learn to make recommendations and stuff like that.  02:18
• The one thing that kind of helped me as a catalyst, from a designer to a UX professional is that gap where I  learn how to use this data to not only help my clients but also make better recommendations for their users. 03:15
• People say you shouldn't be a unicorn, but I'm a fan of being a unicorn because you get to know how things work throughout the whole process. 21:38
• If we're at the table in the forefront, if we're planning, strategizing, and organizing things, we can make the process easier for everybody in the company. 24:07
• It could be a really great thing if more companies had better, more mature UX practices in their companies. 23:47
• The most important skill that you can have, as a UX person, in this industry is critical thinking. Don't take anything at face value, really think things through and be methodical, and always ask why why why why, whether it's why is this project coming to us? 35:23
• Being a great team player on a good UX team, means you recognize how other people work and their styles and how they take feedback and how they receive feedback, and how they're giving it to you. 38:02
• You just need to have patience and resilience. I think that's the hardest thing. I think a lot of people quit because they just can't handle the fact that people still don't get what UX is. 38:51

Contact

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannonmkelly

Company website: https://shannonkellyux.com/

Portfolio/ website: https://shannonkellyux.com/about/

Email: me@shannonkellyux.com

#designjob #datadrivendesign #designmentor #uxworkflow  #userexperience #uxdesign #uxresearch #webdesignonline #userexperiencejourney

Discussion points - 

• Can you guide us on your amazing journey, and where it started? And how did you get where you are right now? 1:22
• What made you decide that this is the career path you wanted to take?
• Let's talk about your Emmy nomination. How did that come to be? When did you learn that you were nominated in that category? How did it feel? 7:56
• Which one of those dissecting websites is your favorite or which channel do you follow? 13:47
• Which project do you think that you worked on, which was way too exciting that you couldn't keep calm? 13:47
• Rapid Fire 20:56
• Do you think that the tech that you have designed there is inside of the universe of Marvel?  When you design those sorts of UIs, what kind of briefs do you guys get? 18:05
• How do you utilize AI tools and incorporate augmented reality (AR) in sequence programming for Marvel's visual effects to enhance the overall visual storytelling in their cinematic universe? How are you connecting the dots? 27:39
• How do you make sure that the narrative remains consistent about tech throughout the movie? 32:21
• How does one think about sci-fi? 34:59
• How did the time-travel visualization in Avengers come to be? Can you share that story? 36:21
• Any advice that you would like to give to people who are starting out and want to make a name in this domain?  41:36

Show notes- 

• Originally, I wanted to make cartoons, I grew up watching 90s Nickelodeon. And that to me was the pinnacle of what I wanted to do. 
• So the nomination was for our title sequence for Wanda Vision. And I think that category is an outstanding main title design. This was a personal one for me, because Wanda Vision was kind of our first project that we had done during the pandemic, beginning to end pitched, finalized, and worked on everything remotely at home. 
• Every project has to just be the next project, right? Every project can't be the biggest thing we've ever done in the world, or else that pressure is just going to crush you. 
• Spider-man is my favorite superhero in the world. He's the greatest no questions asked. We had the opportunity in Captain America Civil War to design a Spider-Man spider signal at the end of the movie. It's like a five-second shot. In the grand scheme of this like two and a half hour movie, it's like a nothing shot. But to me, that was one of the most exciting things in the world. 

• The reason why, these studios come to us is that we have that real-world experience building, and designing this technology that works and means something. 
• I think AR definitely has the potential to change the way we interact with the world. It could go positive, it could go negative, I think it depends on how people utilize it. 
• It's a really cool feeling to know that some of the stuff that we're doing can make its way into the real world. 
• In filmmaking, it's about getting the story across as quickly as possible to the audience. 
• We are always trying to see how the technology that we design is not just a pretty thing to look at but influences the story and helps forward the narrative in some way. 
• What you see in the final movie, we had done really rough tests and diagrams, essentially napkin sketches of this stuff. And that gets handed off to digital domain guys who put it into the beautiful look you see in the film. 
• The people that we look for, bring that extra layer to their designs.
• Only show the work that you want to be doing. If you don't want to do something, then, it might hurt to put all that experience to the side. But focus on building a portfolio of work that you want to be doing and show that work. 

Links -

Dough’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dougappleton/ 

Dough’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/Dougasaurus

Company website: https://www.experienceperception.com/

#uxbanter #designpodcast #marvelanimationmagic 

• What inspired your journey in the design industry across multiple countries, and how did your professional path shape you into the expert you are today? 1:59
• What differences do you notice working in finance for a startup versus an enterprise? Any distinct challenges or opportunities in each?  2:57
• Rapid fire round 10:12
• As a design leader, how do you balance diversity, inclusivity, and functionality in your team? 23:21
• How do you shape the future of a startup when your passionate team is targeting a user base with a short attention span or limited understanding of the situation's gravity? What strategies ensure success in such a challenging scenario? 26:57
• You host the Spanish-language podcast ‘Entre Diseñoras’ . What common themes do you see in your episodes, and how do they shape the show’s focus? 29:56
• For young professionals starting their careers in various regions, what advice would you give them for building a brighter future in the industry?  34:11
• Could you share more about your role as a mentor and the impact it has on your professional journey? 36:26 Show notes - 

• When you begin your career as a designer, you initially focus on the craft of design. However, in certain corporations, it evolves into managing stakeholders and dealing with the aspects behind the design itself. It's truly fascinating to observe this shift.
• In big companies, you have more resources, but in startups—where I am currently—I enjoy the ease of shipping things quickly. Unlike larger organizations, where processes and legacy systems can make innovation challenging, startups allow for rapid development and implementation.
• In the crypto space, diversity is not widespread. When building my team to bring crypto to everyone, I emphasized the importance of diversity, especially with the underrepresentation of women in the sector. To appeal to a broader audience, it's crucial to have varied perspectives on the team.
• I'm extremely cautious about team additions. I'd rather take my time hiring than rush and have to let someone go. It's crucial for me to bring in individuals who bring something unique to the team without disrupting our existing dynamic.
• My friend Deanna and I, come together to interview guests from various fields, dedicating each episode to a year of experience in front of us. Our mission is to amplify the voices of those often overlooked, individuals doing remarkable work who may not always have the spotlight. In a podcast landscape dominated by familiar voices, we aim to introduce fresh perspectives and showcase the diversity of impactful contributions.
• If you're a designer, there are two essential aspects to consider. Firstly, you have to care about people and understand their behaviors. Secondly, you cannot forget about the craft.
• I believe it's a failure on our part as designers when we apply for roles by emphasizing our past achievements. Instead, the focus should be on showcasing our capabilities and what we can bring to the company. What do you see as the next step in this approach?

Links - Silvia’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/silviahdez Company’s website: https://www.ledn.io Silvia’s Podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/entredisenoras/ 

• Could you share insights into your journey in the design field, including your educational background, involvement in design academies, and the path that led to your current role as a design leader? 3:00
• How do your childhood, parental background, educational journey, and personal influences shape your UX design work, particularly for startups and various ecosystems? 8:24
• Rapid Fire Round 11:46
• You have experience working with both enterprises and startups. What is your preference between these two environments, and why? 17:32
• How critical is implementing a design system for startups, and do you believe it's essential to establish it early in the process? 23:38
• What advice would you offer to the younger generation aspiring to become successful design leaders, based on your journey and experiences? 39:00

Show notes:

• I love learning. My favorite thing is following something that seems interesting, and taking the time to explore the path until most, if not all, of my questions are answered.
• I believe the most significant aspect, which I've found true for other designers and UX professionals, is the level of self-reliance. Relying on your curiosity, work ethic, and resourcefulness paves a path for personal growth and improvement in life.
• The larger the organization, the longer the timelines, allowing for more in-depth research. In startups, decisions are made quickly, and research is conducted on the fly.
• There's going to be some sort of interim UI. So, your first job is just trying to make things a little more consistent, eliminating illogical patterns. You aim to bring in something that feels simple, still in the language of the existing UI, creating a cohesive end-to-end experience that aligns with the brand after thoughtful consideration.
• In terms of the design system, I believe it's critical for several reasons. Firstly, having a UI built from components that you and the development team maintain and update aligns with your goals. If this isn't the focus, and you're just patching bits of UI without a cohesive system, it could potentially slow you down in the long run. 
• The business case for accessibility lies in not excluding a portion of your market by disallowing certain individuals from accessing your app. Additionally, it contributes to creating a better overall user experience. 
• When it comes to applications, game design, or social media content creation and consumption, I believe younger designers should take the lead. Their understanding of the basic physical relationship to devices provides an advantage that might be challenging for those who don't already possess it.

Links - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/vernelindner/ Company’s LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/joinroost/ Company website - https://joinroost.com/

Discussion Points -

• What are the key moments in your career, and where are you right now? How has the journey been for you? 2:38
• Let's talk about the entrepreneurial parts of product design, and how you see it with the current scenarios. 2:56
• Can you elaborate on the significance of conversational interfaces or conversational UI? 4:27
• One of the clients that you worked for one of the companies that you've been associated with was Ferrari. So can you tell us anything about your experience working with a brand, which is globally renowned for luxury? 5:28
• Given the evolving dynamics of the industry, where machine learning and AI have become omnipresent, how do you plan to leverage ML recommendation engines to drive business growth in the context of product design for e-commerce sites? 7:25
• To what extent do you believe design systems have become crucial in establishing or scaling up design operations within agencies, departments, and the industry as a whole? 9:07
• Rapid fire round 13:36
• How can design systems be enhanced to become a global language and effectively contribute to addressing significant societal issues? 19:00
• Do you believe designers can initiate an open-source project that establishes a universally accepted design system, starting from scratch and aiming to create a globally embraced standard? 22:28
• What advice would you like to give to anybody who is starting as a product professional in the industry? 24:25

Show notes - 

• I started my career early working in e-commerce, but I was more interested in the data side of things. 
• Because designers sit closer to customers and users, they have that advantage in understanding and anticipating those so-called customer needs.
• You see a lot of attempts in terms of coming up with interfaces that simulate that type of simplicity that exists in a conversation. Just think of breathing, think of the silence and moments, those are very difficult things to translate in terms of technology.
• In terms of personalization, it's not just you know, about providing data to customers, it's about providing data too. 
• I was astonished to know that Ferrari allows for that deeper customization, they do white gloves kind of customization where your car is taken out of the assembly line and then goes through an authentic, white glove type of step by step customization and obviously, it’s super expensive. 
• Most of the brands that I have worked with don't realize what design systems are all about, what are the new components that you're going to build? What are the new experiences that you're going to build? Because if you're going to scale within two or three years, so will the interfaces.
• It always astonishes me that we're not at that point yet, where there are no more universal canons and universal standards for design.
• That's a very interesting idea, for example, if I invite designers to contribute, it would allow us to devise a universal design system that caters to various ethnic groups and geographies.
• Looking into the discipline of design with a strong sociological input, research is vital. Know your users, and know who you are making the particular application for. It's the most important.

Links - 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiagolimaestrada/ 

Company website:https://www.kenvue.com/ 

Portfolio/ website: https://www.estradaportfolio.com/new-page

Discussion Points:

• Being a self-taught designer, what inspires you about designing? And, any tips for the people who are learning to design on their own? 1:09
• Netflix is one of the most popular entertainment platforms in the world, how to create such products with immersive and inclusive user experiences? 1:52
• As a Lead product designer at Netflix, and even having worked with the world’s leading brands. What have been your key learnings as a designer there? 3:36
• How was your journey? How did you get into this industry in the first place? 7:37
• What is Growth Design? Why is it important and what are the skills needed to be successful in Growth Design. 27:00
• What is some advice that you’d like to give someone who’s just starting out in the industry? 33:13

Show notes:

• It all comes down to solving user problems and developing effective-efficient solutions at the end of the day. 1:45
• When you have so many consumers like at Netflix, it's not a good idea to just flip the switch and roll everything out at once. What if there are some problems? What if you want to tweak something or do something else, and you'd rather do it in phases, which I believe keeps everything safe. 3:19
• Every company moves a little differently. However, they follow the same product design principles and aim at conversions. You have to think about how mature are those design agencies, their design team, how big that design team and all these little things matter to help you really well to craft each individual team. 5:54
• Every time someone works for a different brand or organization, they have to absorb not only the new user base but also the culture of the company or organization that you're working for and what kind of steps they're bringing in. - Dushyant 6:17
• Before you take the job, make sure that you have done some research on their culture and that there is some synergy between your values and principles and the company’s. Make sure you want to work in that industry and you've done as much research as you can to discover what it's like to work there. 7:00
• Entrepreneurial advice: You really have to have a better understanding of what your investing looks like. Because it may take time for your idea to actually take off. So if you don't have enough runway, then you won't be able to stay afloat long enough to maybe have the industry understand your idea and support your idea. 10:37
• For anybody who is looking to work with bigger companies and organizations, it's a stepwise process, if you can't just crack it with your placement directly, I think the best way would be to just get the relevant experience and make sure that you keep making connections, you keep meeting people, and go to these events.12:30
• Learn from people's successes. But don't judge yourself based on their successes. Maybe that’s not the path for you, so find an alternative path. Keep getting experience, keep pushing and one day you’ll be where you want to be.12:58
• Growth design is essentially the intersection of business and design. A lot of the work I do at Netflix is focused on the design, but also heavily focused on the business impact. Only being focused on one aspect of the design, be it UX or UI is not enough, we should think about the success of this feature overall, business metrics, and what's the business impact of that. That happens when you are data-driven and as a growth designer, I am using the data, I know where the business wants to go plus design, along with user research and user experience which is a more holistic approach. 27:09
• Career advice from Fonz: Be patient with yourself and have fun. Invest in yourself. Invest in yourself, like you're the product. All the time that you put into bringing all the pieces together in your portfolio and what you think you're going to do when you get this amazing job at Meta. Make sure you put that same time into yourself so that you are on the right path. Make sure you take time to do self-assessments, make sure you take time to really think about what you're passionate about, and what success looks like for you. And try to build a little plan for yourself. It may change that's fine. It's not about following the plan. Exactly. It's about just having some form of structure and being able to build on things and over time you'll get to wherever you want to go. 33:24
• Remember that you are a designer and you will get better as time goes by. But you have to take that first step. 34:30
• Take your time if you fall. Get back up, get up, and keep pushing. If you fall again, just get back up and keep getting back up, no matter what happens, because it's so worth it. 35:16 

Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fonzmorris/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fonzmoney/?hl=en Twitter: https://twitter.com/youngfonz?lang=en