The Presentable Podcast focuses on how we design and build the products that are shaping our digital future. We'll track the tools, trends, and methods being used by teams from the biggest companies and latest startups. In each episode, Jeff will bring over two decades of experience as a designer, developer, entrepreneur, and investor as he chats with guests about how design is changing the world. Hosted by Jeff Veen.
123: Finale
A look back at the topics, trends, and guests that defined the Presentable in this final episode of the podcast.
12/31/2021 • 11 minutes, 12 seconds
122: How Writing a Book Can Help Your Career
Special guests Katel LeDû and Lisa Maria Marquis join the program. They’re the authors of the new book, “You Should Write a Book” and we discuss the process of sharing what you know and the power of a public persona.
12/22/2021 • 42 minutes, 28 seconds
121: What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?
Special guest and long-time friend Ryan Carver joins the program. He’s the former CTO of Typekit and creator of the photo layout app Series. We talk about the line between designer and developer, when it’s important, and when it’s definitely not.
11/30/2021 • 36 minutes, 47 seconds
120: Designing for Life and Death Situations
Special guest and design strategist Katie Swindler joins the program to discuss her new book, “Life & Death Design.” We explore how the products we design can more effectively empower people during acutely stressful situations.
11/19/2021 • 47 minutes, 9 seconds
119: Should You Go to Design School?
Special guest Mike Essl joins the program. He’s the dean of the Cooper Union School of Art in New York, and we discuss the role and importance of formal education in the design world today.
11/8/2021 • 47 minutes, 10 seconds
118: The Path to Product Management
Special guest Emily Tate joins the program. She’s managing director of Mind the Product, and we discuss how product management has kept pace with the rapidly changing way we all work.
10/14/2021 • 48 minutes, 46 seconds
117: Crafting Conversations with Things
Special guests Diana Deibel and Rebecca Evanhoe join the show. They are the co-authors of the recent book, “[Conversations with Things](https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/conversations-with-things/)” and we discuss how to design machines so they better understand everyone.
9/30/2021 • 49 minutes, 25 seconds
116: Cultivating the Practice of Effective Feedback
Special guest Erin Casali joins the program. She’s a leadership coach and senior director of product design at Xero. We discuss feedback: giving it, getting it, and using it to thrive in your career as a designer.
9/15/2021 • 41 minutes, 45 seconds
115: Designing Better Surveys
Special guest and forms specialist Caroline Jarrett joins the program to discuss her new book “[Surveys That Work: A Practical Guide for Designing and Running Better Surveys]
(https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/surveys-that-work/).”
8/31/2021 • 47 minutes, 4 seconds
114: Is Neurodiversity a Design Superpower?
Special guest and Etsy’s head of product design Christina Goldschmidt joins the program to discuss how embracing representation in neurodiversity across our teams can lead to better designed products.
8/17/2021 • 35 minutes, 24 seconds
113: How Designers Can Thrive in the No-Code Movement
Special guest and Chief Creative Technologist at Argo Design Jared Ficklin joins the program. We discuss the interesting trend of "no code" software design, and how it might offer a pathway to understanding in an AI-driven world.
7/31/2021 • 45 minutes, 14 seconds
112: Transforming the User Experience of Government
Special guest Genevieve Gaudet joins the program. She’s the Director of Design for Nava, a firm focused on service design for public sector projects. We discuss the power of design to transform the way people experience their government.
7/19/2021 • 41 minutes, 23 seconds
111: Designing Conversations With Computers
Special guest and digital experience futurist Preston So joins the program. He's the author of the new book, "Voice Content and Usability” and we discuss the challenges of designing how we talk to machines.
6/30/2021 • 41 minutes, 21 seconds
110: How to Get Unstuck
Special guest Julia Whitney joins the program. She's an executive coach with years of experience as a design leader, and we discuss how to avoid getting stuck and thrive both with your craft and in your career.
6/17/2021 • 42 minutes, 49 seconds
109: Asking Your Heroes for Help
Dallas Texas-based designer and illustrator John Mata joins the program to discuss the fear, uncertainty, and doubt inherent in all creative work, and strategies designers can use in their careers to transcend them.
5/28/2021 • 33 minutes, 8 seconds
108: Designing With People, Not at Them
Special guest Kelly Ann McKercher joins the program. They’re the author of the book “Beyond Sticky Notes” and we to discuss how to cultivate a mindset focused on co-design to make products and services more equitable.
5/14/2021 • 41 minutes, 25 seconds
107: Teaching Machines to Tell Stories
Special guest JoEllen Kames joins the program. She’s head of design at Narrative Science, and we discuss how to use storytelling to make the world’s rapidly growing data more accessible and empowering.
4/30/2021 • 31 minutes, 37 seconds
106: Systems, Outcomes, and a Generational Shift in Design
Special guest Sheryl Cababa. She’s the Vice President of Strategy for Seattle-based agency Substantial, and we’re going to talk about how a systems-thinking approach focused on outcomes can benefit the work designers do, and the influence they have.
4/16/2021 • 42 minutes, 48 seconds
105: There's No Command-Z in Life
Special guest and renowned calligrapher Aoi Yamaguchi joins the program to discuss how she balances the discipline of ancient tradition with the inventiveness of modern art.
3/31/2021 • 34 minutes, 10 seconds
104: The Wonder and Rigor of the Creative Process
Special guest Natalie Nixon joins the program. She’s a creativity strategist and the author of the book “[The Creativity Leap](https://www.figure8thinking.com/books/)”. We discuss how to cultivate curiosity, improv, and intuition in our work and in our collaboration with others.
3/15/2021 • 39 minutes, 7 seconds
103: The Subtlety and Depth of Sound Design
Google's Head of Sound Design Conor O’Sullivan joins the program to discuss how both sounds and silence affect the user experience of products we use every day.
2/26/2021 • 41 minutes
102: Measuring the Carbon Footprint of Our Web Designs
Special guest Tom Greenwood joins the show, He's the author of the new book “[Sustainable Web Design](https://abookapart.com/products/sustainable-web-design),” and we discuss how tiny changes in how we code can have a dramatic impact on our carbon footprint.
2/17/2021 • 44 minutes, 1 second
101: A Progressive View of the Web
Special guest and long-time web standards advocate Aaron Gustafson joins the program. He's the author of the seminal book [Adaptive Web Design](https://adaptivewebdesign.info), and we discuss the challenges and opportunities made available with today's Progressive Web Apps.
1/31/2021 • 45 minutes, 14 seconds
100: How to Be of Service
Special guest Trent Walton joins the show. He's the founder of Austin, Texas-based design agency Paravel. We discuss how to develop strong, long-term relationships with clients.
1/19/2021 • 38 minutes, 10 seconds
99: Crafting an Agency Career
Special guest Maria D’Amato joins the show. She's the Head of Experience Design at the Austin-based design agency GSD&M. We’re going to talk about crafting a career in the agency world.
12/18/2020 • 38 minutes, 10 seconds
98: Multimodal Design, or How to Get Everything to Play Well Together
Special guest Cheryl Platz joins the program. She’s the author of the new book, “Design Beyond Devices.” We discuss all the different ways we communicate with machines, how they respond, and how we as designers can be more intentional about all of it.
11/30/2020 • 50 minutes, 55 seconds
97: The Remarkable Resilience of Design in Detroit
Special guest Olga Stella joins the program. She’s the Executive Director of Design Core Detroit, and we discuss the role of design in the life of cities.
11/13/2020 • 36 minutes, 47 seconds
96: The Employee-Owned Design Agency
Special guest Andy Budd returns to the program. He's one of the founders of UK-based design agency Clearleft, and we discuss the firm's recent shift to being employee-owned.
10/30/2020 • 56 minutes, 45 seconds
95: What Does Representation in Design Really Look Like?
Special guest Annie Jean-Baptiste joins the show. She’s Google's Head of Product Inclusion and the author of the book, “Building for Everyone.” We discuss how designing products through the lens of representation is not just an ethical choice, but a strong business case as well.
10/16/2020 • 44 minutes, 39 seconds
94: The Creative Importance of Side Projects
Special guest Elliot Jay Stocks joins the program. He’s a designer, publisher, and musician and we talk about side projects, staying focused, and how to find value in all aspects of our work.
8/31/2020 • 47 minutes, 33 seconds
93: Designing for Cognitive Bias
This week on the program is special guest David Dylan Thomas. He’s a content strategist and author of the forthcoming book, “[Design For Cognitive Bias](https://abookapart.com/products/design-for-cognitive-bias).” We discuss how unconscious decisions shape our actions, and how to acknowledge them when we design.
8/19/2020 • 47 minutes, 37 seconds
92: Mindfully Designing for Different Cultures
Special guest and author Senongo Akpem joins the show. We discuss his new book “[Cross-Cultural Design](https://abookapart.com/products/cross-cultural-design)” and how to grow in awareness when designing for multiple cultures.
7/30/2020 • 44 minutes, 42 seconds
91: How to Design Your Job
Special guest Bill Burnett joins the show. He's the Executive Director of the Design School at Stanford University and the author of "Design Your Work Life." We talk about applying our craft as designers to the problem of our own careers.
7/17/2020 • 52 minutes, 54 seconds
90: Changing Our Understanding of Emotion in Design
Special guest Aaron Walter joins the show. He's Vice President of Design Education at Invision and the author of "[Designing for Emotion](https://www.aarronwalter.com/book)." We discuss the power of inclusion in transforming the mechanics of design.
6/30/2020 • 44 minutes, 44 seconds
89: The Human Experience of Self-Driving Cars
Special guest Ryan Powell joins the program. He's the Head of User Experience for Waymo, the self-driving car company. We discuss what it’s like to design the experience of something that feels like science fiction.
6/16/2020 • 46 minutes, 43 seconds
88: Good Design Can Help Us Change
Special guest Dr. Amy Bucher joins the show. Her new book, “[Engaged: Designing for Behavior Change](https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/engaged-designing-for-behavior-change/ )” shows how psychology can be used as a design tool to help empower people to make positive changes in their lives.
5/27/2020 • 46 minutes, 17 seconds
87: How Design Makes the World
Special guest and best selling author Scott Berkun joins the show. His new book, “[How Design Makes the World](https://scottberkun.com/books/)” is just out and we discuss how we can learn to ask better questions of everything we buy, use and make.
5/12/2020 • 50 minutes, 32 seconds
86: Working Together When We're Apart
Special guest and good friend Lori McLeese joins the program. She's the Global Head of People for Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com — one of the world's largest fully distributed companies. We talk about what it takes to do great work together when we're apart.
4/30/2020 • 47 minutes
85: Good Design Is Well Written
Special guests Andy Welfle and Michael Metts join the program. They're the co-authors of the book “[Writing is Designing](https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/writing-is-designing/)” and we discuss how words are the core of good design, and what you can do to improve the quality of language in your work.
4/17/2020 • 39 minutes, 5 seconds
84: Ethical Design in an Age of Uncertainty
Special guest Cennydd Bowles joins the show. He’s a designer, futurist, and author of the book Future Ethics. We discuss what we can learn from the digital mistakes of the past to inform the designs of the future.
3/31/2020 • 45 minutes, 50 seconds
83: Discussing Disability-Led Design
Special guest Liz Jackson joins the show. She’s a design strategist and disability advocate who founded The Disabled List. We talk about perspectives in disability-led design and how empathy can often get in the way.
3/16/2020 • 40 minutes, 25 seconds
82: Why Do We Go to Design Conferences?
Special guest and event organizer Marc Thiele joins the show. He's the founder of the Beyond Tellerrand design conference, and we discuss the value of community gatherings, what we can learn at them, and how they're changing
2/28/2020 • 42 minutes, 29 seconds
81: Designing the Machines That Make Modern Music
Special guest Hannes Pasqualini joins the show. He’s the co-founder of Papernoise, a firm that specializes in the design of synthesizers. We discuss the process of finding a niche, building a reputation, and the art of music.
2/12/2020 • 39 minutes, 32 seconds
80: Presentable Live from the New Adventures Conference, Part 2
This is part two of a special episode of Presentable recorded live in front of an audience at the New Adventures conference in Nottingham, England. It is a roundtable conversation with the event's speakers: Liz Jackson, Laura Kalbag, Florence Okoye, Tatiana Mac
1/31/2020 • 32 minutes, 16 seconds
79: Presentable Live from the New Adventures Conference, Part 1
This is a special episode of Presentable recorded live in front of an audience at the New Adventures conference in Nottingham, England. It is a roundtable conversation with the event's speakers: Cennydd Bowles, Akil Benjamin, Natalie Kane.
1/29/2020 • 32 minutes, 35 seconds
78: Life, the Universe, and Everything
Special guest and long-time independent developer James Thomson joins the show. We talk through his experience working on PCalc, run-ins with Steve Jobs, and going solo for more than a couple decades.
1/14/2020 • 55 minutes, 36 seconds
77: How Likely Are You to Recommend This Podcast to a Friend?
Good friend Erika Hall joins the show to talk about the second edition of Just Enough Research. We talk about the methods so many people get so badly wrong.
12/19/2019 • 48 minutes, 21 seconds
76: Craft Is a Journey
Weightshift founder and good friend Naz Hamid joins the show to discuss how designers evolve in their careers and what maturity of craft really looks like.
11/27/2019 • 53 minutes, 21 seconds
75: Shouldn't More Designers be CEOs?
Special guest Jeff Khan joins the show. He’s the CEO of Rise Science and we discuss the unique opportunities designers have as entrepreneurs, and how that can change the outcome for startups.
11/22/2019 • 44 minutes, 59 seconds
74: Can You Do Real Design on an iPad?
Special guest Harold Emsheimer joins the show. He’s the co-founder of design agency Overcommitted and joins us to talk about using the iPad as a tool for doing professional design work.
11/15/2019 • 46 minutes, 4 seconds
73: Alexa, Design a Voice App for Me
Special guest Michael Hood joins the show. He's the co-founder and head of product at VoiceFlow, and we discuss emerging best practices for designing voice user interfaces.
11/6/2019 • 41 minutes, 12 seconds
72: Changing the Power Dynamics of Design Critiques
Special guest and old friend Braden Kowitz joins the program. He's the co-founder of Range and former design partner at Google Ventures. We discuss the delicate art of the design critique and building trust within teams.
10/12/2019 • 42 minutes, 10 seconds
71: Creativity Still Needs to Pay the Rent
Special guest and old friend Bryan Mason joins the show. He's the Chief Business Officer of photo company VSCO and former co-founder of Typekit. We talk about the hard work of operationalizing creative talent.
9/30/2019 • 40 minutes, 46 seconds
70: Hacking Great Design From Startup to Megacorp
Special guest Sally Carson joins the program. She is head of product design for Duo Security, which is now part of Cisco. We discuss how to sneak good design into the journey from small startup team to large enterprise.
9/17/2019 • 46 minutes, 50 seconds
69: Slow Down. Take a Breath. Look Around. Design Something.
Special guest Jason Fried, the founder of Basecamp and 37 Signals, joins the program. We talk about approaching work more thoughtfully, thinking on longer horizons, and how to slow down and find inspiration around us.
8/27/2019 • 53 minutes, 37 seconds
68: How Design Ruined the Internet
Special guest and old friend Mike Monteiro returns to discuss his new book, “Ruined by Design.” We talk about whether the design industry needs a set of ethical standards and the ways in which they might be enforced.
7/29/2019 • 46 minutes, 34 seconds
67: The Art of Resilience
Special guest Lara Hogan joins the show. She’s a co-founder of Wherewithall Coaches and Trainers and author of the new book, Resilient Management. We discuss the qualities that help teams thrive and how you can contribute whether you’re a leader ... or aspire to be.
7/17/2019 • 49 minutes, 33 seconds
66: Apple After Jony Ive
Special guest Myke Hurley returns to the program. He’s the co-founder of the Relay FM podcast network and host of Connected, a podcast focusing on Apple. We discuss the company’s recent announcement that Chief Design Officer Sir Jony Ive is leaving to start a new design studio.
6/28/2019 • 46 minutes, 4 seconds
65: Fonts in iOS 13: Why They Matter
Former head of Adobe Fonts and good friend Matthew Rechs joins the program to sort through Apple's announcement at WWDC that fonts will be coming to iOS 13.
6/13/2019 • 50 minutes, 36 seconds
64: On Creativity and How to Get Unstuck
Creativity evangelist and author Denise Jacobs joins the show to discuss the difficulties designers face in the creative process and how to get unstuck.
5/31/2019 • 52 minutes, 35 seconds
63: Designing a Less Terrifying Home Buying Experience
Special guest Paul Smith, head of design for real estate startup Opendoor, joins the show to discuss managing rapidly growing teams and the challenges of designing a holistic experience for an incredibly stressful life event.
5/21/2019 • 44 minutes, 21 seconds
62: Design Systems Are for People
Special guest and design system expert Jina Anne. She’s spent 15 years designing for companies like Apple, Salesforce, and Amazon. Today, we discuss how the state of the art in design systems is being driven by a community of dedicated "hybrids."
4/30/2019 • 1 hour, 3 minutes, 18 seconds
61: The Dark Art of Designing for Print
Special guest and paper expert Matthew Scharf joins to the program to remind us all that print is wonderful and analog makes us feel good.
3/29/2019 • 41 minutes, 32 seconds
60: How to Tell if a Company Is Good at Design
Special guest Leah Buley, director of design education at Invision, joins the show. We talk about ways of measuring the maturity of an organization’s design practice, and how you might improve yours.
3/14/2019 • 46 minutes, 3 seconds
59: How to Price Design Services
Special guest and Superfriend.ly founder Dan Mall joins the show to talk about his book, “Pricing Design.” We tackle one of the hardest parts of being a designer: asking for money.
2/28/2019 • 45 minutes, 24 seconds
58: Designing Around Digital Privilege
Special guest Helen Joy joins the program. She’s a UX consultant focused on universal and inclusive design practices. We discuss what that means in the day-to-day work we do as designers, and how hard it can be to see through our digital privilege.
2/14/2019 • 55 minutes, 48 seconds
57: Using Design to Hack Government Bureaucracy
Andy Lewandowski, UX designer at the United States Digital Service joins the show to discuss the challenging redesign of the Veterans Affairs website.
1/29/2019 • 44 minutes, 7 seconds
56: How to Present Your Work
Special guest and founder of Mule Design, Mike Monteiro, joins the show. We discuss why presenting your work is such a crucial skill, and how so many designers get it wrong.
1/11/2019 • 56 minutes, 27 seconds
55: 10,000 Steps to Building a Great Product
Special guest Tim Roberts joins the show. As the first product person at Fitbit, he saw the company as it grew through it’s IPO and beyond. We talk about scaling teams and managing growth.
12/4/2018 • 44 minutes, 50 seconds
54: Don’t Design Alone: Cultivating Communities of Practice
Agile consultant and coach Emily Webber joins the program to discuss ways in which people can get better at their work by tapping into (or building) support networks around them.
11/16/2018 • 42 minutes, 51 seconds
53: Who is the Head of Product?
Special guest Martin Eriksson joins the program. He’s the co-founder of the Mind the Product conference and the co-author of the book Product Leadership. We discuss the role of Head of Product: who are these people, how did they get there, and what do they do?
10/31/2018 • 43 minutes, 33 seconds
52: The Helvetica of Banks
Special guest Hugo Cornejo joins the show. He’s the head of design for the London-based online bank Monzo. We discuss the user experience of people’s money and the importance of design in building trust.
10/24/2018 • 46 minutes, 45 seconds
51: An Oral History of Web Standards With Jeffrey Zeldman
Designer, author, speaker, publisher, podcaster and longtime friend Jeffrey Zeldman joins the show to reminisce on the origin of the Web Standards Project and it's legacy 20 years on.
9/13/2018 • 57 minutes, 31 seconds
50: Learning How to Listen
Special guest and Adaptive Path co-founder Indi Young joins the show. We discuss the origins of mental model research, and how it has become an ever-more powerful tool for building inclusive products.
8/28/2018 • 50 minutes, 58 seconds
49: Flexible Typesetting
Adobe's Head of Typography Tim Brown returns to the show to discuss his new book, ‘Flexible Typesetting,’ and how the implications of emerging font technologies are challenging what designers can (and should!) try to control in their layouts.
7/31/2018 • 42 minutes, 19 seconds
48: Designing a Less Distracting Future
Preëminent and prolific Apple pundit Jason Snell joins the show to discuss new features designed by Apple in iOS 12 responding to the backlash against Silicon Valley’s engagement-at-all-costs user experiences.
7/23/2018 • 47 minutes, 19 seconds
47: The Oral History of Information Architecture, with Lou Rosenfeld
My old friend Lou Rosenfeld joins the program. He co-authored the seminal book on Information Architecture in the '90s, and now runs Rosenfeld Media, publishers of some of the industry's best books on UX. We go deep into the history of the discipline, and how it's playing out in a new generation of designers today.
6/27/2018 • 50 minutes, 43 seconds
46: Design at Massive Scale
Authors Chris Risdon and Patrick Quattlebaum join the show to discuss their new book “[Orchestrating Experiences: Collaborative Design for Complexity](https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/orchestrating-experiences/)”. We dig into the challenges and opportunities that arise when managing design at massive scale.
5/19/2018 • 45 minutes, 34 seconds
45: How Does Design Get Made?
Special guest Josh Brewer, CEO and co-founder of Abstract, joins the show to discuss how we make design — from mockups to prototypes to production and through collaboration, process, and everything in between.
5/7/2018 • 44 minutes, 57 seconds
44: How Not to Screw Up Your Brand
Special guest Jason Santa Maria returns to the program in his new role as Design Director of Slate. We talk about a recent redesign and rebranding he did, and how to manage change both internally and with your users.
4/27/2018 • 47 minutes, 34 seconds
43: Google AMP vs the Web
Special guest Andrew Betts of the W3C Technical Advisory Group joins the show to discuss Google AMP: how it works, whether we should use it, and if it's a threat to the open web and to society overall?
4/6/2018 • 42 minutes, 58 seconds
42: Can We Design Better Meetings?
Kevin Hoffman joins the show to discuss his new book: Meeting Design. We talk about applying the design process to the meetings we have every day, how to evaluate them, improve them, and mercifully kill them when they need to go.
3/30/2018 • 51 minutes, 42 seconds
41: What to Do With a Seat at the Table
Special guest Kate Aronowitz joins the show. She is a design partner at Google Ventures and was previously in design leadership positions at Facebook, Welathfont, and eBay. We discuss the opportunities and responsibilities of designers as they advance in their careers, gain more influence, and achieve that fabled seat at the table.
3/14/2018 • 52 minutes, 55 seconds
40: Driving UX Research at Uber
Special guest Molly Stevens, Director of UX Research for Uber, joins the show. We talk about what it’s like to manage research with a distributed team for a company that does business in countries around the world.
2/28/2018 • 44 minutes, 11 seconds
39: The Challenge of Starting a Design Career
Special guest Kristy Tillman, Director of Communication Design at Slack, joins the show to talk about what it's like to start a design career today, mentorship vs. sponsorship, and whether you should kickstart your portfolio with free work.
2/21/2018 • 45 minutes, 43 seconds
38: Design vs Capitalism
My good friend Erika Hall returns to the show. She’s a founder and principal at Mule Design, and author of the forthcoming book "Conversational Design." We talk about the role of designers as critical voices in the ethical decisions companies make and the morality of venture capital in sustainable business.
1/31/2018 • 1 hour, 8 minutes, 3 seconds
37: Do Diverse Teams Really Make Better Products?
This week, Carissa Romero joins the show. She’s a parter at Paradigm, a consulting firm focused on helping companies become more diverse and inclusive. We discuss the research that shows how teams with more diverse members create better products.
1/16/2018 • 40 minutes, 55 seconds
36: User Research as an Agent of Corporate Change
This week, Google Design Director Jens Riegelsberger joins the show to discuss how user research can fundamentally help organizations make better decisions — and not just about the design of their products.
12/22/2017 • 43 minutes, 9 seconds
35: Promoting Yourself as a Designer (And the History of Dribbble)
My old friend Dan Cederholm joins the show. His work at Simplebits was profoundly influential in the early web, but he may be best known as the cofounder of Dribbble. We talk about this history of that community as well as what it’s like to build a reputation as a designer today.
11/28/2017 • 51 minutes, 47 seconds
34: What User Research Can Learn From Growth Hacking
My old friend Hiten Shah joins the program. He’s the founder of numerous successful startups and mentor to many others. We discuss growth hacking, how it differs from formal user research, and how to make products people love as quickly as we can.
11/16/2017 • 40 minutes, 47 seconds
33: The Temptations of Designing with Animation
Web animation expert Rachel Naybors joins the show to talk about her new book, Animation at Work. We discuss how to use movement on the Web appropriately through an understanding human perception and cognition.
11/2/2017 • 34 minutes, 42 seconds
32: Designing the Space You Work In
Special guest Sarah B. Nelson, Program Architect at IBM Studios, joins the show to discuss how to hack your office to enable better design work to happen.
10/11/2017 • 46 minutes, 37 seconds
31: Designed in California
Justin McGuirk, Chief Curator at the London Design Museum joins the show to talk about their current exhibit, "California: Designing Freedom." We trace how the last 60 years of west coast history influence the design of the products we use today.
9/26/2017 • 39 minutes, 26 seconds
30: Accessibility is Social Justice
This week on the show, we talk to Laura Kalbag about her new book, Accessibility for Everyone. We discuss how digital products have an increasing mandate to be broadly usable by everyone in society, and what we can do to achieve better accessibility in our designs.
9/7/2017 • 43 minutes, 19 seconds
29: Designing with Artificial Intelligence: The Dinosaur on a Surfboard
Special guest Josh Clark joins the show to talk about the implications of artificial intelligence on design and how designers can start to understand and influence the capabilities and limitations of these incredibly complex systems.
8/25/2017 • 40 minutes, 47 seconds
28: Everything You Know About Web Design Changed Last March
This week we discuss CSS Grid Layout with Jen Simmons, Designer Advocate at the Mozilla Foundation. We also cover how web standards are made, how that's different from the past, and how to keep up with it all.
8/8/2017 • 52 minutes, 21 seconds
27: Designing Hardware is Insanely Difficult
Hardware designer Matt Webb joins the show to discuss why it’s so difficult to design great physical products, how our expectations have changed so much, and why he loves wearing his Snapchat Spectacles to cricket matches.
7/14/2017 • 51 minutes, 5 seconds
26: How to Give Good Feedback
Former VP of Design at Twitter Mike Davidson joins the show to talk about giving good design feedback, running design review meetings, and the new Twitter redesign.
6/30/2017 • 51 minutes, 22 seconds
25: The Tenuous Resilience of the Open Web
This week my long-time friend Jeremy Keith joins the program. He’s one of the co-founders of the agency Clear Left, and a frequent author and speaker on what he calls the true nature of the Web. We talk about his new book, Resilient Web Design, and get into the history of technology, how we make decisions about what to use, and how our industry seems to make the same mistakes over and over again.
6/8/2017 • 49 minutes, 20 seconds
24: More Empathy Might Be Making Things Worse
User research expert Farrah Bostic joins the show to talk about empathy. That term is in the news a lot lately, and we go deep on its importance in design, how to grow it among product teams, and — very frankly — how it’s frequently misused.
5/12/2017 • 44 minutes
23: How to Get Hired, with Jared Spool
This week, the legendary and outspoken Jared Spool joins the show. We discuss why most companies are terrible at hiring for design jobs, and what designers can do to take control of their careers and attract meaningful work.
5/2/2017 • 1 hour
22: Jessica Hische Is Good at Freelancing
This week, one of the best letterers and illustrators in the industry, Jessica Hische, joins the show. We discuss the thrills and anxieties of making a living as a freelancer.
4/14/2017 • 53 minutes, 6 seconds
21: How We’ll Design for Virtual Reality
Game designer Shahid Ahmad joins the show to talk VR. We discuss the design fundamentals of both virtual and augmented reality and look ahead to what the future may bring.
3/29/2017 • 47 minutes, 19 seconds
20: Design Sprints: How to Get Your Boss to Draw in Just 5 Days
Special guest Jake Knapp joins the show to talk about how sprints are changing how we do design. He's a Design Partner at Google Ventures and author of bestselling book "Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days."
3/16/2017 • 45 minutes, 58 seconds
19: Design Ethics and the Race to the Bottom of the Brain Stem
This week's special guest is Tristan Harris, former Design Ethicist at Google and the founder of the Time Well Spent movement. We talk about ethics in design, and how even our best intentions in serving users can often make use of manipulative patterns.
3/1/2017 • 45 minutes, 13 seconds
18: So What Is It Exactly That Product Managers Do?
This week's special guest is Laura Klein, author of the new book, "Build Better Products." We discuss the evolving role of Product Managers, and how they intersect, overlap, and compliment what User Experience Designers do.
2/15/2017 • 46 minutes, 26 seconds
17: My Dishwasher Really Needs Bluetooth
This week, Relay FM co-founder Myke Hurley joins the show to talk about the design of everyday things, the impact of companies like Apple and Slack on how we build things, and why it's so hard to rebrand a business.
2/3/2017 • 54 minutes, 23 seconds
16: Design at Google Is Like Baseball in Europe
Former Global Head of UX at Google Irene Au joins the show to talk about the remarkable change that's happened in design over last 10 years at the search engine giant.
1/20/2017 • 42 minutes, 30 seconds
15: The Voice of Slack
This week's special guest is Anna Pickard, the Creative Director of Voice and Tone at Slack. We talk about how writing and language that is clear, concise, and human can be the bedrock of a great user experience.
1/6/2017 • 51 minutes, 38 seconds
14: The Next Billion Users
This week's special guest is Rachel Ilan Simpson. She’s part of the design team for the Chrome browser at Google and has been working on features to help support the next billion new internet users coming online in emerging markets. We talk about what it takes to design for people who’ve never used a desktop computer and only know the online world through a phone connected to a 2g network.
12/8/2016 • 45 minutes, 32 seconds
13: So You Want To Be a Design Leader
On this week’s program, I’m joined by my friend Andy Budd, one of the founders of British design agency Clearleft. Recently, he organized a conference called Leading Design, we talk about that and discuss what it takes to be a leader in design driven companies, and what it’s like in companies that aren’t.
11/23/2016 • 50 minutes, 34 seconds
12: Our Tools Give Us Superpowers
This week's special guest is my friend Naz Hamid, founder of the design agency Weightshift. We discuss the tools we use to do design: how have they changed over the years, what are we using today, and where do we think they’re going in the future.
11/11/2016 • 52 minutes, 15 seconds
11: The Election Isn't Rigged, It's Just Poorly Designed
This week on the program, my friend Dana Chisnell is here for a very timely conversation on how the design of ballots affects voter trust in elections. She just finished a 2-year tour with the US Digital Service and has more than a decade of experience in civic design.
10/28/2016 • 58 minutes, 12 seconds
10: Variable Fonts in CSS are Crazy Awesome
This week's special guest is my friend Tim Brown, Head of Typography at Adobe. We discuss the recent announcement of Variable Fonts and what that means for type on the web, the complexity of CSS, and the future of responsive web design.
10/12/2016 • 46 minutes, 21 seconds
9: Designing for the App Store, with John Gruber
This week we talk to preeminent Apple blogger John Gruber about his experiences designing and developing iOS app Vesper, the challenges of App Store pricing, and how feature prioritization is as much a business decision as it is a design issue.
9/29/2016 • 46 minutes, 48 seconds
8: Why Do Good Teams Design Bad Things?
This week's special guest is my old friend Peter Merholz, one of my co-founders at Adaptive Path and author of the new book, "Org Design for Design Orgs." We talk about how companies can better organize design teams, and trace the history of how — after two decades — design became an overnight success in technology.
9/15/2016 • 57 minutes, 35 seconds
7: Why Don't Style Guides Ever Work?
This week's special guest is Stanely Wood, design director at Spotify. We talk about how to scale design as companies grow, what it takes to create consistent experiences, and how style guides never work except when they do.
8/23/2016 • 48 minutes, 25 seconds
6: It Takes a Village to Build a Website
Special guest Deepa Subramaniam, Director of Product for the Hillary Clinton campaign, joins the show to talk about what it's like to manage a web team for an 18-month long sprint while the whole world watches.
8/5/2016 • 50 minutes, 43 seconds
5: The Color Show
Special guest Craig Hockenberry, bigwig at the IconFactory and creator of Twitterrific, joins the show. We go deep on color management, how the new Apple hardware changes things, and what it all means for web and app designers.
7/21/2016 • 57 minutes, 54 seconds
4: You've Got to Learn to Talk Numbers
This week, I'm joined by my good friend Margaret Gould Stewart, Vice President of Product Design at Facebook. We talk about what her title actually means, what it takes to be a design leader, and how to think about a career in design these days.
7/7/2016 • 36 minutes, 10 seconds
3: The Typography Show
Special guest and old friend Jason Santa Maria joins the show to talk typography. We discuss what typefaces the cool kids are using, dig into licensing and subscription pricing, and geek out over web fonts and browser hacks.
6/21/2016 • 53 minutes, 43 seconds
2: App Fan Art
Special guest Richard Ziade, co-founder of Postlight, joins the show to talk about the phenomenon of independent designers crafting their own takes on popular (and frustrating) products. We also dig into Google AMP and the debacle at Nest.
6/8/2016 • 50 minutes, 56 seconds
1: Catastrophizing the End of the GUI
Special guest Chris Messina joins the inaugural episode of the show to discuss both the hype and beauty of conversational UIs, messaging apps, and chatbots. Will this herald the end of interface design as we know it? (Spoiler: nope.)
5/25/2016 • 45 minutes, 31 seconds
0: We Have Time to Play Pictionary
Erika Hall joins the podcast and we discuss the findings from Google's Project Aristotle. What makes a team perform it's best? What qualities do successful teams share? It's probably not what you think. (This is a sort of prototype we recorded a number of weeks ago, but it's a great conversation, so we're adding it as a sort of bonus episode. Enjoy!)
