Industry experts discussing design and product strategy. Hear from leaders how they are solving the right problems and building products and features that matter most.
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Aurelius Podcast - Episode 70 highlights with Jessica Nelson Kohel: - How UX Research fits into both large and small company product organizations - The role of Product Manager, its evolution and common misunderstandings - Importance of “the art” of product management like communication style, culture, context and relevance - Product strategy and the critical inclusion of UX research - Measuring the success of your product strategy
Aurelius Podcast - Episode 69 highlights with Teresa Cain: - Evolution of the Product Management role over the years - Tips for collaboration between UX Research and Product Management - Vital role of UX research in product strategy - Stakeholder engagement in the prioritization and delivery of and UX Research - How to solve problems in 2 hours
Aurelius Podcast - Episode 68 highlights with Jon Fukuda: - The ROI of UX, Research and DesignOps - Triple forces of change: Economics, Technology and Culture - Mitigating business risk through UX - Future outlook of the UX, Research and Product industry
Aurelius Podcast - Episode 67 highlights with Janna Bastow: - Using UX research to inform product roadmaps - Stories about how to avoid major code and product rollbacks by simply conducting good UX research - Using customer needs to truly innovate and avoid building a better competitive copycat product - How to avoid building a Frankenstein product
Aurelius Podcast - Episode 66 highlights with Audrey Crane: - Defining Shadow Design and its potential impact on your organization - Audrey and her team's research study on Shadow Design - Shadow IT and it's correlation to Shadow Design - Risks and implications of Shadow Design in the product development process - How to uncover if Shadow Design is happening at your company
Aurelius Podcast - Episode 65 highlights with Ruby Pryor: - Defining the ROI of UX and UX Research - The case for building confidence in speaking about UX Research in terms of dollars - Understanding how certain recommendations you make impact the fundamental business model of where you work - Business models, understanding them and how UX Research work fits into them - Examples of how to determine and communicate the ROI of UX research - How to calculate the ROI of UX and research
Aurelius Podcast - Episode 64 highlights with Ryan Glasgow: - The story of Sprig and the gap Ryan identified in user research and market research tools - Problems and challenges with typical surveys for product research - Effectiveness and application of in-context survey research - AI in UX research and the true value a human brings as a researcher - Concerns and tips for using AI in customer research analysis - A founders perspective on customer research and the power of in-context research
Aurelius Podcast - Episode 63 highlights with Darren Hood: - UX Maturity: what UX maturity looks like at the organization and individual level - How UX maturity level impacts the planning and effectiveness of UX work - Tips for assessing your personal, team and organizational UX maturity - The impact of UX maturity on leadership and the hiring process - Challenges and the state of UX maturity as an industry in 2023 - Darren's steps for assessing and improving your own UX maturity
Aurelius Podcast - Episode 62 highlights with Jesse James Garrett: - Discussing The Elements of User Experience and its impact - Defining and communicating the value proposition of design - What being a design executive and design leader actually looks like - Steps for success in a design leadership role - The importance relationship building in design leadership
Aurelius Podcast - Episode 61 highlights with Debbie Levitt: - Differences and similarities between CX and UX - How the UX industry has shifted and where it's going - Tips for opening conversations with cross functional teams about UX Research - How to handle conversations where people mislabel terms in UX - How does UX fit into the Agile process
Aurelius Podcast - Episode 60 highlights with Cheryl Platz: - What is AI, Machine Learning and how will it impact UX Research - What AI is currently good at and how it really works - Surprising ways you're probably already using AI for UX Research today - Ethical considerations in the application of AI for UX Research - The impact of AI on the current UX job market - The future of UX Research and AI
Aurelius Podcast - Episode 59 highlights with Joe Natoli: - The importance of getting personal to influence decisions - Getting buy in for UX Research from stakeholders and other teams - Soft skills for making a bigger impact with research and insights - How new UX Researchers can bridge the gap in the disconnect between the learning environment and real world situations at big companies
Aurelius Podcast - Episode 58 highlights with Ari Zelmanow: - Being a strategic researcher and what that means - Learning how businesses work to speak that language and connect UX research to what matters across the organization - UX Research Democratization and Ari's thoughts about it - The role of UX research, how it's evolving and thoughts about how UX and research can adapt be more valuable
Episode 57 highlights: - UX Research consent - GDPR and UX Research - How to gain proper consent with your participants of user research - What are the rights of potential participants of UX research - The ethics of informed consent
Show highlights: - An overview of Scott's new book, How Design Makes the World - Remote work for design, UX and product teams - How to create a workplace for UX professionals to get their best work done - How to explain the value of design to executives and stakeholders - What to do when your product managers, executives and engineers “just don't get” design - Builder culture, what it is and how to work within it to promote higher quality UX - Effects of industrialization on building products and how it translates to software management culture
Highlights from this episode: - The history and evolution of UX - How to present UX and design work - Empathy for stakeholders and customers/users - Using stakeholder expertise to improve your UX design and research - Being an orchestrator and not a hero UX pro
Show highlights: - How Mary got started on Tik Tok and began sharing UX knowledge there - Dark UX patterns, what they are and how to avoid them - Consent and interaction design to avoid building in dark design patterns - Examples from popular sites that use dark UX patterns
Show Highlights: - What it means to be human centered in your professional and personal life - Hmnty Cntrd, their mission and the work Vivianne and her team are doing - How Vivianne went from being a grief counselor and doing trauma studies to becoming a UX researcher - What does it really mean to be empathetic - The role of diversity, equity and inclusion in UX and research work - Tips for self care and improving yourself as a UX professional and person - Doing and beginning the personal work for doing your best professional work
Show highlights: - “Zoom” levels of research and what they mean - Figuring out when to do certain types of research and which methods to use - Ways to avoid wasting resources and repeating research - What’s the difference between UX Research and ResearchOps? - How to you know when you need a dedicated ResearchOps person
Show highlights: - Diversity, equity and inclusion in UX and tech culture - Ways to recognize how tools and systems are directly contributing to inequity in our society and work - Stories and examples of how our society created inequities and how to recognize the connections to the work we do - Tips for doing more equitable UX and design research - Working to identify your own thoughts, actions and behavior to help create a more just and equitable world for all
Show highlights: - Sense-making and user research synthesis - How to find hidden insights in the research data you collect - Avoiding product backlog rot by simply reacting to things you hear about from customers - Steps to take for a better UX research process - Doing UX, research and sense-making better with product management - Should UX researchers be doing design too? - How to get into (or better at) UX, research and design
Show highlights: - Social impact of UX and research work - Remote research tips, tricks and challenges - The future of UX research in a post-pandemic world - Can you prove the ROI of UX research? - Balancing the need for delivering a great story from the research and keeping good rigor in your study - How to deal with people who don’t believe the findings from your research
Episode highlights: - Design leadership and what it means to be a UX manager - Differences between being an individual contributor and manager/leader - Tips and tricks to being an awesome UX design/research leader - Strategies for providing feedback and criticism effectively - Common challenges for folks transitioning from team member to team leader
Show highlights: - Design ethics and ways to examine if your work is doing more harm than good - Inclusion in business and design - Things you can do to make your participants feel more comfortable and welcome - Using your position and influence to make positive ethical change in your company - Alba’s work at HmntyCntrd - Tips for making social change personally and professionally
Show highlights: - The difference between leadership and management in UX - Being a UX mentor and coach - Expectations and differences between junior, mid level and senior UX practitioners - What it takes to be a great UX professional - Myths about hiring and working with a junior UX person - Tips for job hunting, applications and interviewing - Things hiring managers are looking for in UX candidates - Career progression for UX designers and researchers
Show highlights: - Komal’s research on international women’s mobility challenges - Tips for doing research across multiple countries and cultures - Culture differences and considerations when doing research in other countries - How language can make so much of a difference in research - Small but impactful steps you can take to do better UX research
- Psychology and UX Design - How behavioral economics applies to UX design - Common behavior patterns we can design for - Design ethics and moral implications in UX design and research - How do you decide your design, product or service is ethical or not? - Examples of non-ethical design and marketing patterns - Considerations to take for designing a more ethical product or service - What UX designers and researchers need to know about psychology and behavioral economics
- Sharing design decisions effectively - What is a design decision? - Who’s responsible for design decisions? - Similarities between cultural differences and different team role differences in tech - Getting stakeholder approval and agreement on your work - Preparing for a design review meeting
- Quantitative vs Qualitative Research - Starting a new UX research team and practice - How to sell UX research to your company - Pitfalls to avoid when starting a UX research practice at your company
- DesignOps 2.0 at Paypal - Shifting the focus from scaling designers to scaling design itself - Comparing DesignOps and DevOps - Changing the responsibilities of UX designers so a small team can focus on the work that matters - Scaling design without hiring more designers - Tools and processes to for successful DesignOps
- The critical things you can learn about business to make you a better UX designer or researcher - How important is UX in the success of building new products - The business of consulting versus the business of products or software - How to stand out as a UX person in the world of generic resumes and cover letters
- Dana’s stories about usability testing on ballot design prototypes - Overcoming stakeholder objections for doing user research - Challenges of local and federal elections in the United States - Ballot design and voter experience - Doing research for civic design and overcoming very complex roadblocks - How to get deep domain expertise in a regulated industry as a designer - Why our common approach to software design isn’t enough for civic design problems
- The differences and similarities between UX and product management - How planning a heist is just like building digital products - Who owns the responsibility of “knowing your customers” - Using both quantitative and qualitative research to improve your designs and products
- DesignOps and ResearchOps at a large enterprise like Best Buy - Fred’s story of how he got introduced to and a job working in DesignOps - A day in the life of a job in DesignOps - The part an insights repository plays in DesignOps and ResearchOps at a large company - Dealing with the unsexy parts of UX, Research and Designops
Episode 36 highlights with Natalie Hanson - Differences between in house and external UX teams and the unique challenges of each - Tips for collaborating with others on your user research work - How to encourage non-designers and non-researchers to collaborate on user research and insights - Tips for working with stakeholders who believe they already know what needs to be designed - Effectively communicating user research insights to inspire action from executives, developers and more
Episode 35 highlights with Rob Walling: - How Rob started and/or acquired multiple SaaS apps over the years and some product and design lessons he’s learned from that experience - Rob’s background as a software engineer and what made him decide to become an entrepreneur - The story of founding Drip and how Rob and how the team made some pretty big changes in the product - Finding the confidence to help you figure out how, and when, to make big product decisions - Minimum Path to Awesome and how to successfully launch new features in your product
Episode 34 highlights with Jason Voiovich: - Jason’s background in marketing and consumerism as well as what led him to become an author on the topics - The pitfalls of focusing too much on analytics and quantitative data to understand your customers - Why empathy is a key to the future of our work and society - Jason’s research about empathy - The connection between empathy and burnout… and what you can do about it - Doing less to get better results in UX, research and marketing - What does it mean to be scientific versus “scientism”?
Episode 33 highlights with Kate Towsey: - Kate’s background and how she got into user research and ResearchOps - What it was like to “research the researchers” - The global ResearchOps community and how it all began - Research repositories and libraries - Leading research operations at Atlassian - How and why the ResearchOps community grew to what it is now - Kate’s definition for #WhatisResearchOps?
Episode 32 highlights with Gregg Bernstein: - How Gregg and his team are doing user research at Vox Media - Doing user research for broad audiences and industries - Using smaller research projects to lead to larger more strategic research - How to most effectively share your user research findings with stakeholders and your team - Thoughts on UX research repositories and libraries - Tools and tips for setting up your ResearchOps and process for taking in, conducting and sharing user research at your company - Making user research more strategic to influence company focus and direction - Avoiding the pitfalls of overthinking in the user research process
Episode 31 highlights with Hana Nagel: - How the President of the United States did “user research” and what you can learn from that in your work as a UX designer, researcher and product maker - Doing user research...about user research, so that you can see much more success with your organization adopting a more user centered mindset - Focusing on the outcomes of research to create a greater impact with user research at your company - Learning the behavior of your teams and company in order to sell user research internally - How to empower other teams to do user research themselves in order to scale user research at your company - How to turn user research and findings into action and recommendations - Giving your team and company confidence in doing the right things
Episode 30 highlights with Dave Malouf: - What is ResearchOps and DesignOps? - Challenges of operationalizing research and design in growing organizations and how to overcome them - Dave’s tips and insights in how to grow design and research in your company more efficiently - Who owns “ResearchOps” and what does that person(s) do? - How to determine when you should be thinking about DesignOps and ResearchOps
Episode 29 highlights with Jorge Arango: - The similarities between physical architecture and UX design - Tips we can apply from the process of architecture to digital design - How to think about physical spaces to inform the digital information spaces you create - Feedback loops in digital information spaces - How the rate of change in physical buildings vs. digital spaces has changed our expectations as a culture - The ways language greatly impact our expectations and design of digital spaces - Design ethics in digital places where civic discourse happens and how we as designers can be more mindful in creating them
Episode 28 highlights with Jim Kalbach: - What is the difference between user experience, customer experience and marketing - Jim’s background in UX design and how that helped him transition to his role now in customer experience and product education - Remembering that the “grass is never greener” and no organization is perfect in order to have a longer term impact where you work - What is the true secret to becoming a kick ass design leader - The long term effects of even the smallest UX and user research decisions - Experience mapping principles and tips from Jim’s book - Building empathy and understanding for your stakeholders and business to be a more successful designer
Listen to Episode 27 for highlights with Brianna Sylver including: - The difference between user research and market research -Using both market research and user research to build a better design strategy - Why market research may not be what you think it is - How and when you should think about doing user research more like a market researcher - Project mindset vs. product mindset - Tactical vs. strategic UX design
- How Jeffrey and the team at An Event Apart design the experience of the conference - The dangers in the seduction of building “cool” stuff as opposed to the things people need - What’s the difference between junior designers and senior designers? - Design ethics, mindfulness and inclusiveness in UX design and product management - How the web and design has changed since 1995
- Product management at Intercom - Choosing the right problems to solve for your customers - What user research looks like at Intercom - How Michelle and the product team at Intercom chooses which projects to work on - Where does UX design start and Product Management end?
Episode 24 Highlights: - What is creativity? - The concept of “flow” and its role in identifying and harnessing your creativity - Denise’s story of her very own zone of genius and how you can find yours - Dangers of burnout, how you got there, how to dig yourself out and also how to avoid it - Different types of motivation and what they have to do with your work - How making custom earrings helps Denise be a better writer and speaker - Using HALT to take care of yourself and foster your inner creativity
Episode 23 Highlights with Lindsey Redinger: - What is ResearchOps and how do you operationalize user research? - Making research accessible to everyone in the organization - How InVision documents and stores user research insights - Lindsey’s trick for helping all of InVision build empathy with their customers - Getting new employees at InVision up to speed with who their customers are as part of their new hire onboarding - How to get started in your ResearchOps practice or operationalizing user research and your company - Keeping individual projects aligned to broader company goals - How Lindsey and InVision uses the Jobs To Be Done framework to keep user research focused https://blog.aureliuslab.com/lindsey-redinger-user-research-and-research-ops-podcast
Episode 22 highlights: - Peter’s new book “Planning for Everything” and what led him to decide to write a book about planning - What we can learn from the U.S. Marines about planning better design and research projects - Peter’s framework of S.T.A.R.F.I.N.D.E.R and how to use it for better planning of your ux, design and research projects - How Agile development process can help...and hinder your design and software project planning - Are you OVER-planning? How to determine if you are and if so work at getting better at improvising - Tips for convincing your stakeholders to do (or do more) user research - Systems thinking and how it applies to UX design and product management - Ways to be more self-aware in the design, features and decisions we make in our work as UX designers, researchers and product managers more here: https://blog.aureliuslab.com/peter-morville-interview-on-ux-user-research-and-design-planning
Episode 21 Highlights: - Lou’s background, the beginning of the internet and how UX/IA all started - The stories behind Lou meeting Tim Berners Lee and Larry Page - How Lou started Rosenfeld Media, the UX book publishing company - The story of the blind men and the elephant and how it applies to building a great user experience - DesignOps, ResearchOps and how Lou began major conferences around those topics - Lou’s advice for those of us working in large organizations doing UX design
- The technology stack that we built Aurelius with and how it’s evolved over time - Understanding common development terms to better communicate design ideas - An inside look at how Joseph and Zack make decisions about the product and the company - Behind the scenes views and opinions on making technology upgrades and feature prioritizations - How we build Aurelius like Wyatt Earp
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