UX Podcast

S03E11 (#339). Karen Hawkins, accessible design practice lead at Level access and chair of the W3C ARRM group joins us to discuss accessibility and design systems. Design systems can really help improve accessibility, but in reality design teams often don’t know their exact responsibilities, leading to accessibility gaps in implementation.

S03E10 (#338). About 15 years ago Katrina Alcorn suffered from burnout while managing a team of designers and raising a family. Drawing from her own experience, Katrina highlights during our conversation the importance of autonomy, connection, as well as purpose in the workplace.

S03E09 (#337). Cal Thompson, VP of Product Design and Research at Headspace, joins us to talk about the evolution of Headspace from a pure mindfulness app to a comprehensive mental health platform, including health coaches and therapists.

S03E08 (#336). Inspired by feedback from his booked UX for beginners, Joel Marsh has written UX for business. A comprehensive guide for designers navigating real-world challenges. We talk to him about his own journey from design principles to practical business applications.

S03E07 (#335). Lou Downe, author of Good Services and former director of design for the UK government joins us in this episode. We sat down with Lou and asked—Where is service design going wrong, and are we even doing service design?

S03E06 (#334). Aarathi Krishnan is an international aid expert, specialising in humanitarian futures and strategic foresight. In a world where the sets of rules that have governed us as humanity are rapidly changing, how will we know if the solutions that we are designing now are going to be fit for purpose?

S03E05 (#333). A linkshow. James and Per discuss two articles they've stumbled on. This time we feature articles about things that slow down your website’s experience and why you can’t do anything about it plus the concept of “failing early” but not in a “failing fast” startup way.

S03E04 (#332). Two years on from when Sheryl Cababa released Closing The Loop, her book about systems thinking for designers, we hear Sheryls reflections and insights about what she’s learnt during that time and we grapple with the challenge of applying system thinking as designers “out of the box”.

S03E03 (#331). Your destiny isn’t tied to a role. You were a person before your role. Leadership expert and strategist Christina Joy Whittaker talks to us about the murky middle, a phenomenon rooted in misalignment and purpose and quite distinct from imposter syndrome which is rooted in confidence.

S03E02 (#330). Oobah Butler, journalist and filmmaker known for his prankster antics, joined us to discuss his work, including “The Great Amazon Heist” and “The Shed at Dulwich”. Oobah highlights the relative ease of manipulating algorithms, such as TripAdvisor and Amazon, to boost fake products’ rankings.

S03E01 (#329). In the first episode of Season Three, James Royal-Lawson and Per Axbom discuss the concept of dark mode, its benefits, and its implications for UX design, user experience and accessibility. We delve into the European accessibility directive, and the En 301 549 European standard which includes a section on user preferences, requiring user...

This is an update to let you know that we are delaying the start of season 3 as Per is soon to have a heart operation. We’re aiming now to start Season 3 in the new year, once Per has recovered.

This is an update to let you know that we have reached the end of Season 2, a sensible 10-month season this time rather than more than 10 years! It's time for us to take a short break before we kick off Season 3 on August 9th.

S02E18 (#328). Over ten years have passed since the first edition of Steve Portigal’s legendary book Interviewing Users was released. Together with Steve, we reflect on how user research has evolved during the past decade, and how the importance of user research in order to understand people and their needs is still crucial.

S02E17 (#327). A linkshow. James and Per discuss two articles they’ve stumbled on. This time we feature articles about how certain features of e-commerce sites have to go, and how a design mistake impacted civic engagement in Iceland.

S02E16 (#326). Nathan Shedroff, author of A Whole New Strategy, talks to us about how we as designers can have strategic impact. Through an expanded understanding of the context you are working within, and building both situational and operational awareness, we can bridge the gap between design and business.

S02E15 (#325). Ellen Lupton, designer, educator and author, helps us stock up our toolbox of design principles and methods, starting off with storytelling in visual design, and the “rule of three” before we move on to linear and non-linear experiences. Will we follow the rule of three and have a third topic?

S02E14 (#324). A slightly different episode to usual. Eva-Lotta Lamm joins us to hold a visual thinking sketching workshop – Eva-Lotta, James and Per have fun going through three sketching exercises set by Eva-Lotta that can help you with your creativity, team-building, visual thinking and much more.

S02E13 (#323).  We are in the age of design-driven change. Maria Giudice joins us to talk about being changemakers – How we can design change in a complex world. We start by looking at the history of change management and how we are now firmly in the age of design-driven change and that requires change...

S02E12 (#322).  Asking the right question and wanting to get a good response. How do we handle that as researchers? Meena Kothandaraman joins us to talk about our curiosity as researchers, the different lenses of inquiry we can apply from exploratory to validation. We talk as well about being curious and the skill of getting...

S02E11 (#321).  How do we know when to trust a system? Carol Smith leads the Trust Lab team at Carnagie Mellon Universty, where they conduct research into making trustworthy, human centered, and responsible AI systems. Our conversation highlights the importance of guardrails and ethical considerations in AI development, as well as to ask the right...

S02E10 (#320). What does it mean to own something? We talk with David about the concept of ownership, going beyond the legal definition and into the wider concept of ownership and how digital artefacts lead us to re-think and re-evaluate some of the concepts that we have previously relied on.

S02E09 (#319). A linkshow. James and Per discuss two articles that have caught their attention. The articles in this episode are about pragmatic discovery; delivering value to projects, and how UX Strategy should focus on, understand, and design, across all touchpoints, for the users – Experience strategy.

S02E08 (#318). Zoë has been researching the history of some of the creative thinking methodologies we use as designers. In this episode she takes on a journey back to the origins of brainstorming, the double diamond, and design thinking.

S02E07 (#317). A slightly different linkshow featuring two articles, one by James and one by Per. The articles in this episode are about how the experience of a delayed flight highlights the wider impact of poor service design, and how the way in which you type can reveal who you are.

S02E06 (#316). Reflections and Lessons from heathcare design. Kim Goodwin has spent many years working within the healthcare industry. We discuss design principles used in healthcare and how they are transferrable across industries, as well as how designers should be more accountable.

S02E05 (#315). Death by screens. Presenting high stakes design work with Ben Sauer. We talk about how presenting is an experience that needs to be designed, and we discuss some of the ways in which you can approach crafting a presentation experience and become better at communicating your design work.

S02E04 (#314). Sci-fi and AI. Over a decade on from our first chat with Chris and Nathan, after the publishing of their book Make It So – Interaction Design Lessons from Science Fiction, Per and James found themselves with the opportunity at UXLx to talk to Chris and Nathan again. Our conversation starts with AI...

S02E03 (#313). A linkshow featuring two articles that have grabbed James and Per’s attention. The articles in this episode are about the need for low-carbon and sustainable computing and CSS media features that can be used for detecting user preferences and creating more inclusive experiences. 

S02E02 (#312). Torrey Podmajersky, author of Strategic Writing for UX, joined us to help us get the words to work. Together with Torrey we highlight the importance of giving our work context as well as establishing a shared vocabulary.

S02E01 (#311). Donna Lichaw takes us on another enthrawling journey in our latest podcast interview with her. This time Donna helps us understand the value of finding out your superpower and becoming a superhero. What’s all that got to do with leadership? Listen along and find out.

We’ve got an update for you about season 2 of UX podcast. After our 10-year long first season, we’re soon back for season 2. August 11th 2023 will see the first episode of the new season released.

We’ve got a little update for you about UX podcast. We’ve been publishing an episode every other Friday without fail for just over a decade since episode 33, which is absolutely insane. It’s a streak of 277 episodes. 554 weeks. We’ve quite recently actually surpassed 2.5 million downloads. What we’re going to do now is...

Power dynamics, egos, “I know best”. The ways in which we go about solving problems need to be challenged and changed. Anna Kirah joins us to help us facilitate that change and make a move from design thinking towards transdisciplinary thinking.

Episode 309 is a linkshow. James and Per discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention – we feature articles about container queries being available to use in all major browsers and how design thinking was supposed to fix the world. Where did it go wrong?

What is systems thinking and how can designers make use of it in their work? In her book Closing the loop, Sheryl Cababa lays out her answer and approach to this question. We talk to her and discuss some of the core definitions and concepts. 

In this conversation with Alex Schmidt, author of Deliberate Intervention, we discuss “policy” in relation to digital design and tech. We discuss how even though designers intend to do good and have a positive impact, harm can still happen as a result of our designs. We talk about how it is natural for systems to...

We are constantly simplifying the world around us and the people within it. This is a perfectly understandable reaction to the messy things we have to work with. But with every step back we are building a wall between the user and what it is to be human. We talk to Alastair about human centred design. How...

Episode 305 is a linkshow. James and Per discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention – we feature articles about designing for people with dyscalculia and low numeracy, and How ChatGPT is blowing Google out of the water: a UX breakdown.

Getting anything up and running takes both time and planing. Content strategist Natalie Marie Dunbar joins us to talk about her content strategy practice blueprint and how it can help you when building a practice. What to do in order to avoid being an unheard and unappreciated silo as you grow from being a solo...

We take a dive into neuroscience and metacognition. Thinking about thinking and thinking about other minds. We are joined by Professor Stephen Fleming, neuroscientist and author of the book Know Thyself to learn more about how our cognition works and the implications for our work as mind-creating creatives and in the development of AI.

We talk to Tom Greever about Articulating Design Decisions. How do we talk about our designs effectively with stakeholders? Every designer has to explain (and justify) their design decisions to non-designers but what are the skills tactics and methods that are needed to pull this off in a way that opens the door for your project to create...

Informed consent is a critical part of the research process. We talk to Kim Foulds and Joyce Rafla about how they made use of videos featuring Sesame Workshop muppets to make taking a consent decision more inclusive, accessible and informed.

We’ve been tacking jokes onto the end of our shows since Episode 138. So to celebrate Episode 300, we take a look at jokes and humour. We’re joined by Professor Delia Chiaro, who has spent decades researching humour to learn more about what makes things funny and if it’s safe for us to be humorous...

“Let’s find out what’s best practice and just run with that”. That’s something many of us will recognise and have experienced. But what actually is best practice? Is it something we should follow? And can we? Rich Brophy joins us to talk about best practice and to offer some advice about what might be even...

Episode 298 is a linkshow. Per and James discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention – we feature articles about how car culture colonised our thinking, and how Figma is making you a bad designer.

In this classic UX Podcast, Jonas Söderström joins us to talk about complexity. We like to think that we have made the world better through digitalisation, but perhaps all of the productivity gains were actually in the very early days of computing. 

How do you make an impact as an introvert without pretending to be an extrovert? Often designers find themselves as quiet people in a noisy world, struggling in silence and being frustrated at not being heard. Tim Yeo joins us to talk about how introverted designers and design leaders can work with their introversion and...

We need to ask the big hard questions at the beginning of the process so we can make good design decisions later. We talk to Dan Brown about the “discovery phase” or, as Dan suggests, the “discovery mindset”.

Episode 294 is a linkshow. Per and James discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention – we feature articles about designing the perfect button, and how sitemaps are an essential tool in web design.

We often find ourselves in stressful situations. Sometimes that’s expected, but sometimes it’s not.  The same can be said about the things we design. Sometimes we knowingly design for stressful situations, but sometimes our designs are used (unexpectedly to us) by people while under stress. Katie Swindler, Author of Life and Death Design joins us...