Podcasts about UX

Greg Heinz, Senior Director of Brand and Digital Strategy at Optimizely, led the company's rebrand — and he argues AI should amplify creative work rather than automate it away. Recorded live at Opticon 2026 in New York City.A rebrand is repositioning, not a new logo. Heinz walks through the research behind Optimizely's brand evolution, the market signals that made the case internally, and what the company had to give up to make the new promise credible.The line between amplification and authorship gets drawn on purpose. "AI" covers everything from a tool that speeds up a designer to a system that ships work with nobody in the authoring seat. Heinz on where he insisted a person stay in the seat, and why.A brand is proven by behavior, not messaging. What had to change in product decisions, sales conversations, and the digital experience for the new positioning to be true — and what keeps the brand recognizable as one company as the volume of expression goes up.Greg Heinz and Greg Kihlström also get into what changes when the first thing evaluating your brand is an AI system researching on a buyer's behalf rather than a person.About Greg HeinzGreg is a marketing manager with over fifteen years of professional experience in B2B software solutions and services, Healthcare, Sports and Entertainment. My goal is to help organizations achieve rapid growth through brand development and demand generation. I am a strong believer in creating amazing experiences and lasting impressions through UX design and storytelling.Greg Heinz on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gjheinz/---------- Resources ----------Optimizely: www.optimizely.comThe Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/2868abd8085a9703We're proud to be a media partner for #MAICON26 - Oct. 13-15! Learn how AI can power your marketing and business and help you grow smarter. Use code AGILE150 to save! https://aglbrnd.co/r/7fe458ced0f04658Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit! Learn more: https://advertalize.com/r/491818c79fb1873fChaser is the only Slack-native project management platform that helps teams turn messages into tracked tasks, automate follow-ups, and maintain team-wide visibility, without adopting another tool. Now integrated with Claude and other GenAI tools. Learn more at trychaser.com and use code AGILEBRAND for a 3-month free trial (normal trial is 14 days).The most influential minds in software, AI, and engineering leadership will be at WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America, September 23-25 in San Jose. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/60a7299222a7bcf1Start building your own apps with Replit and get $20 off. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/93531742a7625a20Enjoyed the show? Tell us more at and give us a rating so others can find the show at: https://aglbrnd.co/r/faaed112fc9887f3Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstromDon't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716baCheck out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.comThe Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

 EPISODE DESCRIPTION I sat down with Smit Vachhani from Cronos Labs, a fascinating builder who has worked across NVIDIA, LinkedIn, and Optimism before landing at the intersection of crypto, stocks, prediction markets, and AI. We dig into why Gen Z is financially nihilistic right now and why that actually creates a massive opportunity. Smit breaks down the concept of hyper-financialization, explains why retaining Gen Z users is far harder than acquiring them, and shares the raw growth lessons he picked up at big tech and in the trenches of a Layer 2 ecosystem. We also talk about what most Web3 founders get wrong, why bad UX has been the industry's dirty secret for too long, and how Cronos is building an everything trading app for eight tier one markets around the world. If you are building in Web3 or crypto and want a no-BS growth perspective from someone who has seen it all, this one is for you. DISCLAIMERNothing mentioned in this podcast is investment advice and please do your own research. It would mean a lot if you can leave a review of this podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and share this podcast with a friend. Be a guest on the podcast or contact us - https://www.web3pod.xyz/ CONNECT Cronos Website: https://cronos.com/Cronos App on X/Twitter: https://x.com/CronosAppCronos Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getcronos/Web3 with Sam Kamani Podcast: https://www.web3pod.xyz KEY POINTS WITH TIMESTAMPS • [00:00] Sam introduces Smit Vachhani from Cronos Labs and previews the episode themes• [01:55] Smit's background: growing up in the Bay Area, engineering at Cal, early Bitcoin experience selling video game gold• [03:30] Working at Optimism, building blockchain infrastructure for Coinbase, Kraken, Sony and others• [04:17] Why bear markets are the best time to build and how to filter signal from noise• [04:43] Introducing the concept of hyper-financialization and what it means for the next generation• [06:10] Why Cronos is not just an everything app for everyone , eight tier one markets and the Gen Z focus• [08:13] Why Gen Z is financially nihilistic and how that shapes product thinking• [11:25] Prediction markets as exhibit A of hyper-financialization, and a nod to Kalshi and Polymarket• [14:02] Onboarding is easy for Gen Z , retention is the real challenge• [15:53] Growth lessons from NVIDIA, LinkedIn, and Optimism applied to Cronos• [18:07] The single most important lesson for early-stage Web3 founders• [21:28] How to retain users and why being unopinionated about your own product is a superpower• [24:40] September 17th launch date for the Cronos app V1 , sports, stocks, perps, crypto, and more• [27:25] Products Smit admires: FOMO, Polymarket, and Tempo• [29:00] Partnerships with Polymarket, Hyperliquid, Morpho, and Chainlink• [30:39] The one ask: download the app, give feedback, and follow @CronosApp on X

Drop us a message! We'd love to hear from you.Bad design gets noticed instantly. Good design fades into the background.  In this episode, host Matt Pierce is joined by Melissa Milloway (Mel). With over 15 years' experience in Instructional Design, Mel now uses her expertise to build teams that design learning for tech. She talks about how heavily visual choices influence what a learner takes away from an experience. Mel breaks down how she decides what earns a place on the screen, the small details that shape a learners' focus, and how skill cannot be built on theory alone.  She also explains how she uses AI to speed up production without losing realism and previews a project that she is currently working on for the upcoming DevLearn Conference.  Learning points from the episode include:  Every visual choice should be intentional. If you can't explain why something's on the screen, Mel says it probably shouldn't be there. Spacing isn't just aesthetic. Mel points to an existing UX concept called the ‘BFFs of spacing', which explains how visual elements placed close together read as related, while elements placed further apart read as unrelated. This is often the case whether you intend it to be or not. Realistic practice, like Mel's 911 dispatcher training scenario, works because it closely mirrors the pressure and ambiguity of the real situation, so the actual moment isn't a surprise when it happens. Important links and mentions: Connect with Melissa Milloway on LinkedInMel's upcoming book, "Getting Unstuck in Learning Design" (available for pre-order, out February)

Today we're chatting with Ivana Perbi, founder of Wardrobe Affaire, the world's first discovery platform dedicated to pre-loved fashion events, which is on a mission to help secondhand event organizers seamlessly host fashion experiences and help shoppers discover them – all over the world. Ivana grew up in southern Germany, where secondhand wasn't a trend but simply how her family shopped, and where weekends at the flea market where her mother sold clothes shaped her eye for style. After a decade working inside luxury fashion houses like Louis Vuitton and Chanel, a research trip back to her birthplace of Accra, Ghana — and a visit to the sprawling Kantamanto secondhand market — changed everything for her. Ivana left the corporate world, retrained as a UX designer, and launched a fashion rental platform in Berlin.  But after three years of testing, and some incredibly successful event pop-ups, she recognized a much bigger opportunity and pivoted Wardrobe Affaire into what it is today: a platform built to solve the real logistical headaches of hosting and discovering pre-loved fashion events. We're getting into it all — the pivot from rental to events, and her favorite vintage finds, including the vintage Chanel she found for a steal at a Berlin flea market!  Let's dive right in! DISCUSSED IN THE EPISODE: [02:54] Ivana loved style and collecting fashion magazines growing up [07:04] When sustainability in fashion started to connect with her personal values  [08:20] Learning about Ghana's Kantamanto Market and the scale of secondhand clothing waste  [11:07] Ways to keep clothing in circularity — repair, swapping, and rental  [13:29] What she learned about repair and craftsmanship working at Louis Vuitton and Chanel  [15:23] The origin story of her first fashion rental platform  [16:18] Convincing lenders, consumers, and investors to embrace rental in Germany  [18:08] What she learned about the "attitude-behavior gap" in sustainable fashion [20:52] Deciding to pivot from rental into secondhand events [23:42] The gaps she was trying to fill in the pre-loved events space, including event discovery  [27:47] What's keeping would-be shoppers on the sidelines from attending events  [31:27] Why curation of vendors is everything at a vintage shopping event  [36:03] What the pivot required of her personally as a founder  [38:26] Her personal style and vintage collection  EPISODE MENTIONS:  Wardrobe Affaire @wardrobeaffaire By Rotation HURR Sami Miro Vintage Pre-Loved's original research on secondhand events LET'S CONNECT: 

When Divi came onto the scene and introduced the visual builder (in 2016), it became THE most popular visual builder for WordPress.But now, it's a decade later, and what was revolutionary back then isn't cutting it in 2026.Divi has been in a transition over the last couple of years since the announcement of Divi 5, which was a complete, modern rebuild.Many others and I, who were early adopters (I started using it in September 2024), have had to show patience, persistence, and perseverance through the many updates, bug fixes, UX and builder changes. Many Divi designers didn't last through the transition and abandoned the Divi ship for other WordPress page builder alternatives…, but like me, many Divi designers have grown to embrace and even love the new Divi 5 experience, for many reasons.One of those designers is my good friend Ania Romanska with Divi Lover.In this episode, we dug into our experience with transitioning from Divi 4 to Divi 5, what we love about it, what we're excited about, and what we're still frustrated with/hoping they address soon.And speaking of Ania, she is one of THE BEST Divi designers I know and has a real knack for not only designing websites, but creating a “Design System” that you can replicate and build on site after site after site after site, making website builds faster, more efficient, and more fun.She's hosting the next Divi 5 Design System Workshop Sept 7th-9th, 2026!The value you get for only $97 is absolutely wild, but as a listener of the show, you can use my code JOSHHALL at checkout for 30% OFF! Only $67 to learn how to master Divi 5 with a complete, workable design system that you can use over and over again.Head to joshhall.co/workshop to secure your seatAgain, use coupon code JOSHHALL at checkout for 30% off.P.S. I'll be there learning right beside you because I'm taking this workshop as well as promoting it! I know Divi 5 pretty well but have not kept up with the recent updates so I'm excited to learn from someone who may know Divi 5 better than anyone I know.Head to the show notes to get all links and resources we mentioned, along with a full transcription of this episode at joshhall.co/439

UX portfolio projects that didn't launch or didn't go as planned are exactly the kind of work recruiters and hiring managers want to see, not the kind you should hide. This is week four of a five part series on UX portfolio myths, and this episode tackles the belief that a canceled, pivoted, or unsuccessful project doesn't belong in your portfolio.Sarah pushes back on this directly. Smart hiring managers understand that things go wrong in real UX work all the time, and a project that didn't launch says nothing about whether you're a good researcher or designer. In fact, she argues that a messy or canceled project is one of the best opportunities to show how you adapt, collaborate, and think under real constraints, exactly the soft skills recruiters are trying to evaluate.She walks through common scenarios people worry about, like research getting cut entirely or not being able to run usability testing, and gives specific ways to handle each one in a portfolio. Rather than hiding the gap, she suggests explaining what happened, what you did instead, and what you would do differently with a do-over, which turns a limitation into a chance to show your thinking.She backs this up with a clip from her interview with Jeni Bible, a UX Manager at Home Depot and a Career Strategy Lab alum who is now hiring herself. Jeni's take is simple, projects get canceled constantly, and what she actually wants to hear is what you did, what you learned, and how you collaborated along the way. If you've been sitting on a portfolio project you assumed was too messy or unfinished to include, this episode makes the case for why it might be exactly what you need.Topics Discussed✅ Why a project that didn't launch doesn't signal that you're a bad researcher or designer✅ How to handle a portfolio project where research got cut or skipped entirely✅ What to include if you never got to run usability testing on something you worked on✅ The "do-over" framing Sarah recommends for showing what research or testing you would have done in hindsight✅ What Jeni Bible, a UX Manager at Home Depot and Career Strategy Lab alum, said she actually wants to hear about canceled projects✅ Why a canceled or pivoted project can be one of the strongest ways to show adaptability and collaboration✅ A preview of the fifth and final myth in the series, coming next weekLinks & Resources

In this episode, Scott Jenson, a veteran UX designer known for his work on the Macintosh, Google Maps, and Chrome examines the long-term stagnation of desktop operating systems and the limitations of current mobile and cloud-centric models. The conversation shifts toward specialised "Local-First" software, exploring how we can move beyond the "status quo" of interface design to create more intuitive, powerful, and privacy-conscious computing environments in the advent of the “LLM everywhere” era. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/4gwuQwC Newsletter: Subscribe to the Software Architects' Newsletter, a monthly roundup of the patterns and technologies senior practitioners are working through, with the news and lessons from people doing the work: https://www.infoq.com/software-architects-newsletter InfoQ Online Certification Programs: 5-week online cohorts for senior engineers and architects, built around QCon talks. Programs now cover software architecture, AI engineering, and organizational architecture. Each week you join a four-hour live session with a confidential peer group of practitioners from other companies, apply frameworks from QCon talks to the decisions you're making at work, and earn an InfoQ certification. You leave with new approaches, or confirmation that the calls you're already making are the right ones. Learn more: https://certification.qconferences.com/ Upcoming Events: QCon San Francisco 2026 (November 16-20, 2026) https://qconsf.com/ QCon London 2027 (April 13-16, 2027) https://qconlondon.com/ The InfoQ Podcasts: Weekly conversations with senior software leaders about how they build systems and teams, including what they'd do differently. Listen to all our podcasts and read interview transcripts: The InfoQ Podcast: https://www.infoq.com/podcasts/ Engineering Culture Podcast by InfoQ: https://www.infoq.com/podcasts/#engineering_culture Generally AI: https://www.infoq.com/generally-ai-podcast/ Follow InfoQ: Mastodon: https://techhub.social/@infoq X: https://x.com/InfoQ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/infoq/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InfoQdotcom Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/infoqdotcom/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/infoq Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/infoq.com Write for InfoQ: Share what you've learned building software with a community of senior practitioners, and get your work in front of the people who read InfoQ. https://www.infoq.com/write-for-infoq

This return to the Talk Circuit series highlights Dr. Darren's appearance on the Ready for Work podcast, hosted by Tom-Chris Emewulu (founder of Stars From All Nations), recorded in 2024 as a part of Tom-Chris' Guinness World Record Marathon attempt. In this set, Dr. Darren addresses several basic elements associated with the foundations of UX, including an explanation of the difference between UX and UI, and provided guidelines how how to manage one's maturity in the discipline.#ux#podcasts#cxofmradio#cxofm#realuxtalk#worldofux#worldouxDon't forget to like, subscribe, and share!Learn more about Tom-Chris and Stars From All nations at https://www.sfanonline.org/about.Bookmark the new World of UX website at https://www.theworldofux.com. Visit the UX Uncensored blog at https://uxuncensored.medium.com. Get your specialized UX merchandise at https://www.kaizentees.com.

Most Americans never truly disconnect from work—even on vacation. After decades of tying your identity, daily rhythm, and sense of worth to a paycheck, stepping away feels less like freedom and more like freefall. Oz Chen spent years financially independent before he could accept it, wrestling with the psychological gap between having enough money and being okay with not working. Key Topics Discussed Oz's Background and FI Journey (00:02:30) Oz shares his introduction to financial independence through Tim Ferriss's Four Hour Workweek, his career as a UX designer, and the moment he officially accepted being financially independent at 37—years after crossing the actual threshold. The Job That Changed Everything (00:08:15) After seven comfortable years at one tech company, management changes, an acquisition, and mounting burnout made Oz's dream job unsustainable. He reveals the "work policy statement" he'd written that predicted exactly when he'd need to leave. Taking FMLA Leave as an Experiment (00:15:40) Rather than quitting outright, Oz used 12 weeks of FMLA medical leave to test what not working would feel like. He set a deliberately low bar for success—sleep and play pickleball—instead of maintaining his productivity mindset. The Unexpected Layoff (00:22:30) During the final week of his sabbatical, Oz received a layoff notice with severance and garden leave. What could have felt devastating instead felt like "divine timing," perfectly aligning with his planned departure. Wrestling with Fear and Acceptance (00:28:00) Oz shares his practice of writing acceptance statements for every fear—from scarcity feelings to relationship changes. By acknowledging fears without resisting them, he reduced the suffering that comes from fighting his own emotions. Practical Strategies for Decumulation (00:35:45) Breaking down the scary process of drawing down investments: think month-by-month rather than annual withdrawals, and sell "junk" investments (random stocks, crypto) first before touching beloved index funds. Life After Work and Future Plans (00:42:20) Oz describes his current life taking community college music classes, learning trades, and planning for the next 2-3 years before potentially having children. He emphasizes honoring different life seasons and remaining flexible about future work. Notable Quotes Ginger: "Pain plus resistance equals suffering. The pain is part of the human experience, but the resistance is the thing that you can control." Oz Chen: "I accept that not having a paycheck coming in will feel weird and scary. I can have the feeling and it doesn't have to change what I'm doing." Oz Chen: "Clarity through action versus expecting clarity before action. Breaking things down into smaller components generates clarity." Oz Chen: "The productivity engine is something that often buzzes in the background for optimizers. There's always something to work on, always something to optimize." Oz Chen: "I realized my fear was a very generalized fear. Writing down that fear and asking, is that true? helped me see it's potentially a reversible decision." Key Takeaways Write a work policy statement listing specific conditions under which you'd leave your job, similar to an investor policy statement for market downturns Break down your fears by writing them out specifically, then question their validity and put dollar amounts to worst-case scenarios Create acceptance statements for your financial fears to reduce internal resistance rather than trying to eliminate fears entirely Calculate your first 3-6 months of expenses in retirement month-by-month rather than thinking about annual withdrawals to make decumulation less daunting Consider using all available time-off options (PTO, unpaid leave, FMLA if eligible) to experiment with extended breaks before making permanent career changes Identify "junk" investments in your portfolio that you'd be happy to sell first before touching core index fund holdings Set a low bar for success duri…

In fast-growing companies and competitive tech hubs, culture can quietly become the deciding factor between loyal, engaged teams and constant turnover. Today's guest, Heather Page, Culture and Experience Manager at AdvancedMD, shares how her journey from hand-coding websites in the early days of the internet to building brand and people-first initiatives prepared her to design an environment where nearly 700 team members feel connected, valued, and excited to show up on Monday. In this episode of Marketer of the Day, Heather reveals how her background in UX and digital experience naturally evolved into human experience and internal culture. She explains why the same questions you ask when designing a great product “Does this feel intuitive? Does it create connections? Does it reflect who we are?” should guide how you design your company culture. Instead of treating culture as perks and free sodas, Heather focuses on what people are really thinking and feeling on Sunday night: are they dreading Monday, or excited to plug back in? Heather walks us through her journey from web designer to culture leader, including how she volunteered for culture committees, paid attention to cross-functional teams, and ultimately had a role created specifically for her at AdvancedMD. She shares practical examples of how she and her team listen to employees through twice-yearly anonymous surveys and, crucially, act on the data instead of letting it collect dust. For Heather, people-first isn't a slogan, it's a pillar that drives decisions, programs, and daily behavior. We also dive into AdvancedMD's medical office software and how it's helping doctors reclaim their time, reduce burnout, and reconnect with the human side of healthcare. Heather explains how AI-enabled digital charting, automation, and integrated EHR/practice management tools free physicians from after-hours note-taking and clunky legacy systems. With strong onboarding and hands-on professional services, AdvancedMD doesn't just sell software; they guide practices through the change so the whole team feels supported, not overwhelmed. https://youtu.be/jzUqj0sMaTs?si=wfnr5SshZmJGn-11 Throughout the conversation, Heather emphasizes that rapport, curiosity, and genuine human connection are timeless superpowers. She encourages employees at every level to stop waiting for permission: sit with support, learn how sales thinks, understand your colleagues' worlds, and build real relationships. Promotions, opportunities, and innovation often follow the people who are genuinely interested in others, not just in climbing the ladder. If you want to: Build a culture where people feel seen, valued, and eager to stay. Reduce job-hopping by creating a true culture fit instead of surface-level perks. Use AI and better systems to give professionals (especially doctors) their time and focus back. Lead with empathy, listening, and follow-through in a way that never goes out of style; then this episode with Heather Page will give you a fresh, people-first lens on both culture and customer experience. Quotes: “Culture, to me, is a lot like a well-designed product: it's intentional, it evolves, and it's built for the people using it every day.” “If you take care of your people inside your company, they will take care of people outside your company, and that's a win-win.” “Each of us brings our own culture to the table every day, and sometimes those cultures mesh, and sometimes it's oil and vinegar.” Contact Details: Stop Letting Admin Work Slow Your Practice Down: See AdvancedMD In Action Today Connect With Heather Page On LinkedIn Follow Heather Page On Facebook Listen To The AdvancedMD Podcast On Apple Podcasts

UX portfolio case studies don't need to walk through every single step of your process, and trying to do that is actually working against you. This is week three of a five part series on UX portfolio myths, and this episode tackles a big one, the belief that every case study needs to show the whole end to end process for a project.Sarah argues the opposite works better. Going deep into just one or two parts of a project beats trying to cram in everything you did, especially for projects that spanned six months, a year, or longer. Trying to show it all just skims the surface of everything and overwhelms the person reviewing it, which is the opposite of what you want.She backs this up with a clip from her interview with Alexander Zeh, former Head of Product Design at ManyChat, who said he's specifically listening for problem solving language, phrases like "I facilitated," "I unblocked," "I synthesized," because those signal maturity in how a candidate thinks, not just what they produced.The bulk of the episode is a screen share walkthrough where Sarah rebuilds a weak case study slide by slide, showing exactly what it looks like to go from a shallow "next, I made some wireframes" slide into one that explains the problem, the decision, the reasoning, and the impact. If your case studies currently read like a list of what you did, this episode shows you exactly what to change and why.Topics Discussed✅ Why cramming your entire UX process into one case study actually works against you✅ What Alexander Zeh, former Head of Product Design at ManyChat, said he's actually listening for in a portfolio walkthrough✅ A live screen share breakdown showing the difference between a shallow case study slide and one that goes deep✅ Why "next, I made some wireframes" is what Sarah calls a five alarm fire in a portfolio✅ How to handle a case study for a project that spanned six months, a year, or longer without trying to cram in everything✅ What questions your case study should actually be answering, beyond just what you did✅ Why you might choose to highlight different parts of the same long project depending on the specific role you're applying forLinks & Resources

Episode web page: https://bit.ly/4qpHthC Episode summary: In this episode of Insights Unlocked, Lija Hogan chats with Nick Cawthon, founder of Gauge and a veteran UX researcher, designer, and strategist, about what happens to UX research when AI makes it dramatically faster and easier to build digital experiences. Nick explains why speed alone isn't a competitive advantage. As AI accelerates prototyping and product development, teams need the humility to test, iterate, and make sure they're solving the right problems—not simply moving faster in the wrong direction. That makes human insight and strategic research more important, not less. The conversation explores where AI can create meaningful efficiencies in research, from transcription and tagging to indexing qualitative data, and where Nick believes humans should remain firmly in the loop. He also shares how researchers can make insights more accessible across an organization, demonstrate their connection to business outcomes, and evolve from gatekeepers of research into educators and strategic partners. Finally, Nick offers advice for researchers thinking about the future of their profession: learn the new tools, invest in human connection, and make yourself indispensable by becoming the connective tissue between customers, product teams, designers, engineers, and business leaders. You'll learn: Why faster product development makes human insight even more important How AI can help teams prototype, test, and iterate at greater speed Where AI can eliminate tedious research work—and where human connection still matters Why researchers need to look beyond tactical usability questions to the broader customer experience How research repositories can make customer insights more accessible to leaders and teams Ways UX researchers can connect their work to business outcomes and product metrics Why human connection and cross-functional influence can help researchers future-proof their careers Resources & links Nick Cawthon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickcawthon-ux-digital-agency-product-design-leadership/ Gauge: http://Gauge.io Nick Cawthon's website: http://nickcawthon.com/ Lija Hogan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lija-hogan-894769/ Learn more about Insights Unlocked: https://www.usertesting.com/podcast

Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Everett Swain.

Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Everett Swain.

Denny, Kenton, and Ibek discuss Unstoppable Wallet's THORChain integration, RUNE and TCY support, privacy, open-source development, AI security, DEX aggregation, stablecoin wallets, and the future of Unstoppable Wallet.Swap now https://swap.thorchain.org/ THORChain is a decentralized crypto exchange. THORChain is the first and biggest DEX for Bitcoin. You can use any self custody wallet to swap and there's no KYC required.Timestamps:00:00:00 Intro00:03:00 Marketing update00:05:00 Referral links structure00:06:00 Unstoppable integration history00:07:00 Unstoppable introduction — Ibek00:08:00 Unstoppable was created out of necessity00:11:00 The wallet has been a core product for eight years00:13:00 The wallet lets you swap anything to anything00:14:00 Ibek loves working with THORChain due to the ideological alignment and attention to detail00:16:00 What separates Unstoppable from being completely private? — UX trade-offs00:20:00 XMR and Zcash support, including shielded Zcash00:21:00 You now support RUNE and TCY — what else?00:22:00 Unstoppable is purely a mobile wallet00:23:00 No browser wallet for now due to the risks of the AI era00:25:00 It's very difficult to lose your RUNE through either passive holding or bonding00:28:00 How difficult was it to add RUNE support?00:29:00 Adding THORChain was easy for Unstoppable Wallet00:32:00 Forking Unstoppable's integration into other wallets00:35:00 Open-source vs. closed-source in the AI era00:39:00 Open source should always be the medium- to long-term goal00:41:00 AI capabilities00:45:00 Are you planning to add App Layer primitives?00:47:00 Houdini Swap discussion — how do they achieve privacy?00:51:00 NEAR is permissioned but fast due to this trade-off00:53:00 STO needs to integrate more DEXs to give customers more options00:56:00 We need to support tokenized assets00:58:00 THORChain, Maya Protocol, and other DEX aggregators explained01:01:00 We can enable the DEX aggregator for other pathways01:03:00 Unstoppable has not integrated Houdini Swap due to risk considerations01:05:00 Tainted funds and aggregator considerations01:07:00 Another layer of complexity — aggregation introduces additional failure risks01:10:00 Edge cases like memoless swaps01:13:00 UX consideration: Pop-up for double swaps01:15:00 Is Unstoppable considering a token?01:18:00 Token design possibilities01:21:00 Announcing a new product — a wallet specifically for stablecoins01:23:00 Is this a trend for stablecoin wallets?01:25:00 Thesis: Stablecoins will be integrated into everyday apps within 1–2 years01:26:00 How do you make money with this wallet?01:27:00 Feeless stable-to-stable swaps on THORChain01:28:00 Would you see value in that capability, Ibek?01:30:00 Is there demand for this wallet right now?

Scott and Wes answer your questions about coding in the AI era, atrophying skills from too much autocomplete, whether it's finally time to leave VS Code, chasing flow state with agents, and which single AI subscription is worth your money. Plus: AT Protocol vs Solid, making your AI config portable across tools, and bringing Shadcn-level UX to server-rendered frameworks. Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 00:57 AI-Generated Code: Are My Skills Atrophying? 06:03 Is It Time to Move On from VS Code? 13:19 Hitting Flow State with AI Coding See Wes' Post on X 19:15 AT Protocol vs Solid: Decentralized Web Approaches 24:55 Which AI Should You Subscribe To? 30:23 Making Your AI Setup Portable Across Tools 33:56 When to Drop a Tool That Still Works 40:12 UX Quality for Traditional Server-Side Frameworks FluxUI GraffitiUI 44:14 Using Hermes and Self-Hosted AI Assistants 49:27 Sick Picks + Shameless Plugs Sick Picks Scott: ESP32-S3 Wes: Sharge ICEMAG3 Hit us up on Socials! Syntax: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Wes: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Scott: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Randy: X Instagram YouTube Threads

For years, the checkbox to get a PC out of the Insider Program when that Windows version shipped in stable did absolutely nothing. That's no longer the case. Windows A new context menu for File Explorer heads out to Insiders along with five new preview builds There are lots of other like UX changes happening with little communication. Will Microsoft really touch (and update) all the ancient UIs in Windows 11? New Release Preview builds point at next Week D and Patch Tuesday updates: New Taskbar, New Start, new Windows Search, many minor changes throughout Hardware Now we know more about Snapdragon C ahead of IFA, where we may see the first laptops Google is holding a PixelBook reviewers event in mid-September You know that Commodore is back, but now the Amiga is back too! Lenovo surges on AI spending, but it's now engaged in financial shenanigans too. More like Spotify than Big Tech, but still bad AI Big Tech spending on AI is finally getting more scrutiny from financial/business publications It's happening: Microsoft "pulls a Teams" and will consolidate its Copilot (consumer) and Microsoft 365 Copilot (business apps) into a single app, evolve it in a "super app" OpenAI's new strategy: Get 'em while they're young Mozilla provides a progress report on Smart Window for Firefox, details new AI search partnership Alexa+ is now free on all FireTV devices in the U.S., no Prime required XBOX Resonance: A Plague Tale and more are heading to Game Pass during the second half of August XBOX August Update is here with more Achievements details, Game Hubs now support Xbox 360 titles, Game Pass subscribers can now stream a game while it installs in the background XBOX Insiders can now test Home Improvements, local save game management, and profile badges Apple makes major App Store concessions in the EU. But Epic Games says it is not enough. The new Call of Duty has a public beta on Friday, and there will be a single-player episode for the first time Tips and picks Tip of the week: Yes, Virginia, you can exit the Insider Program now App pick of the week: Brave RunAs Radio this week: Automatic Attack Disruption with Liz Tesch Brown liquor pick of the week: Red Bank Premium Blended Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell Download or subscribe to Windows Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsor: scribe.how/windows

For years, the checkbox to get a PC out of the Insider Program when that Windows version shipped in stable did absolutely nothing. That's no longer the case. Windows A new context menu for File Explorer heads out to Insiders along with five new preview builds There are lots of other like UX changes happening with little communication. Will Microsoft really touch (and update) all the ancient UIs in Windows 11? New Release Preview builds point at next Week D and Patch Tuesday updates: New Taskbar, New Start, new Windows Search, many minor changes throughout Hardware Now we know more about Snapdragon C ahead of IFA, where we may see the first laptops Google is holding a PixelBook reviewers event in mid-September You know that Commodore is back, but now the Amiga is back too! Lenovo surges on AI spending, but it's now engaged in financial shenanigans too. More like Spotify than Big Tech, but still bad AI Big Tech spending on AI is finally getting more scrutiny from financial/business publications It's happening: Microsoft "pulls a Teams" and will consolidate its Copilot (consumer) and Microsoft 365 Copilot (business apps) into a single app, evolve it in a "super app" OpenAI's new strategy: Get 'em while they're young Mozilla provides a progress report on Smart Window for Firefox, details new AI search partnership Alexa+ is now free on all FireTV devices in the U.S., no Prime required XBOX Resonance: A Plague Tale and more are heading to Game Pass during the second half of August XBOX August Update is here with more Achievements details, Game Hubs now support Xbox 360 titles, Game Pass subscribers can now stream a game while it installs in the background XBOX Insiders can now test Home Improvements, local save game management, and profile badges Apple makes major App Store concessions in the EU. But Epic Games says it is not enough. The new Call of Duty has a public beta on Friday, and there will be a single-player episode for the first time Tips and picks Tip of the week: Yes, Virginia, you can exit the Insider Program now App pick of the week: Brave RunAs Radio this week: Automatic Attack Disruption with Liz Tesch Brown liquor pick of the week: Red Bank Premium Blended Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell Download or subscribe to Windows Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsor: scribe.how/windows

For years, the checkbox to get a PC out of the Insider Program when that Windows version shipped in stable did absolutely nothing. That's no longer the case. Windows A new context menu for File Explorer heads out to Insiders along with five new preview builds There are lots of other like UX changes happening with little communication. Will Microsoft really touch (and update) all the ancient UIs in Windows 11? New Release Preview builds point at next Week D and Patch Tuesday updates: New Taskbar, New Start, new Windows Search, many minor changes throughout Hardware Now we know more about Snapdragon C ahead of IFA, where we may see the first laptops Google is holding a PixelBook reviewers event in mid-September You know that Commodore is back, but now the Amiga is back too! Lenovo surges on AI spending, but it's now engaged in financial shenanigans too. More like Spotify than Big Tech, but still bad AI Big Tech spending on AI is finally getting more scrutiny from financial/business publications It's happening: Microsoft "pulls a Teams" and will consolidate its Copilot (consumer) and Microsoft 365 Copilot (business apps) into a single app, evolve it in a "super app" OpenAI's new strategy: Get 'em while they're young Mozilla provides a progress report on Smart Window for Firefox, details new AI search partnership Alexa+ is now free on all FireTV devices in the U.S., no Prime required XBOX Resonance: A Plague Tale and more are heading to Game Pass during the second half of August XBOX August Update is here with more Achievements details, Game Hubs now support Xbox 360 titles, Game Pass subscribers can now stream a game while it installs in the background XBOX Insiders can now test Home Improvements, local save game management, and profile badges Apple makes major App Store concessions in the EU. But Epic Games says it is not enough. The new Call of Duty has a public beta on Friday, and there will be a single-player episode for the first time Tips and picks Tip of the week: Yes, Virginia, you can exit the Insider Program now App pick of the week: Brave RunAs Radio this week: Automatic Attack Disruption with Liz Tesch Brown liquor pick of the week: Red Bank Premium Blended Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell Download or subscribe to Windows Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsor: scribe.how/windows

Anika Jackson sat down with Mark Williams, founder of NUUX Design Studios, to explore why so many businesses keep UX design and marketing completely isolated—and how bridging that gap can make or break a brand. Streaming live from Madrid, Spain, Mark shared his unexpected journey from a pre-med neuroscience and psychology major to leading a remote design agency working with enterprise clients. The conversation offered a look into how founders can use modern AI workflows to bring ideas to life without massive budgets.   In This Episode   The Pre-Med Pivot: Why Mark walked away from the MCAT, research labs, and a medical track during lockdown to jump into advertising and UX design. The UX-Marketing Disconnect: Why sending traffic to a broken website (or designing a great website with no traffic strategy) kills conversions. Moving Beyond Blind Redesigns: Why looking at data, heat maps, and user sessions matters more than guessing solutions with AI. The Remote Agency Model: Managing a global team across time zones with a startup hustle mindset. AI-Native Workflows: Using tools like Claude Cowork, Motion, and voice dictation to automate tasks and build foundational design systems faster. The Imposter Syndrome Reality: Relying on the grounded support of friends and family when making massive life leaps.   Timestamps   00:00 Introduction: Building in parallel with modern AI tools 01:09 Meet Mark Williams from Madrid, Spain: Celebrating the World Cup energy 03:13 From Pre-Med Psychology and Neuroscience to UX Design 07:05 Why UX and Marketing need to talk to each other 08:35 Where enterprise teams and marketers get design wrong 10:48 Case study: Restructuring and improving conversion rates for auto insurance brands Amax and Alpha 13:16 Balancing the need for speed with foundational quality in an AI era 16:58 Taking the leap from agency employee to starting NUUX Design Studios in LA 18:44 Building a global, remote team based on capability over location 21:54 What small businesses and SMBs can learn from enterprise workflows 23:11 Mark's favorite AI tools: Claude Cowork, Motion, and voice dictation workflows 26:52 Design trends: Are we making a mistake skipping mid-fidelity wireframes? 29:11 Dealing with imposter syndrome and the support of family 32:37 Expanding NUUX Design Studios to compete with the industry giants 34:48 Maya Angelou, belonging, and finding your footing anywhere in the world   Key Insights & Takeaways   Insight 1: UX and Marketing Cannot Live in Isolation Mark points out a critical flaw in many companies: marketing teams send traffic to web experiences without checking if they work, while design teams focus purely on aesthetics without looking at the business goals. True conversion happens when both sectors communicate constantly. If your landing page experience is broken, all the ad spend in the world won't save it.   Insight 2: Data Tells You What Is Happening, Not Why Many teams see a drop in a metric and immediately prescribe a complex redesign or blindly prompt an AI tool for a new layout. Mark emphasizes that real optimization requires looking deeper at heat maps, user session recordings, and heuristics to understand user behavior before making targeted changes.   Insight 3: Leverage AI to Move Faster, But Keep the Foundation Founders today don't need massive budgets to bring ideas to life. By utilizing AI agents and workflows (like Claude Cowork or automated task planners), lean teams can move at lightning speed. However, for enterprise stability, building a strong, consistent brand design system once prevents fragmented, chaotic user experiences down the line.   Insight 4: Hiring for the Startup Hustle Mindset When running a remote, global agency, location doesn't matter nearly as much as execution. Mark looks for team members who share an entrepreneurial drive—people who take ownership, get the work done under any circumstance, and keep the client experience human, approachable, and deeply collaborative.   Insight 5: You Are More Capable Than You Think The barrier to entry for building a business or bringing a creative vision to life has never been lower. Armed with modern digital tools and the courage to take risks—whether moving across the country to LA or relocating abroad to Madrid—founders can parallel-track multiple projects and accomplish far more than previous generations could.   Resources & Links Mentioned NUUX Design Studios: Mark's UX and marketing agency (nuuxdesignstudios.com) Upwork: The platform where Mark initially sourced early global clients Claude & Claude Cowork: AI assistants used for workflow automation and content structuring Motion: AI-powered time-blocking tool for daily scheduling ClickUp: Project management tool used in Mark's daily automation stack ContentSquare & Hotjar: Tools for analyzing user sessions and heat maps Braving the Wilderness by Brené Brown (featuring the Maya Angelou quote on belonging)   About Mark Williams Mark Williams is the founder of NUUX Design Studios, a remote design agency based out of Madrid, Spain. With a background in psychology and neuroscience from his pre-med days, Mark brings a deeply human-centric, analytical approach to user experience design, bridging the crucial gap between digital marketing and high-converting web interfaces. He manages a global team helping businesses optimize their digital ecosystems while living the digital nomad dream abroad.   Connect with Mark LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/msijuadewilliams/ Company Website: nuuxstudios.com Like the show? Leave us a rating or review: https://lovethepodcast.com/67940257010b317cdaa9d857Follow the Show: https://followthepodcast.com/67940257010b317cdaa9d857Send a Message: https://podcastfeedback.com/67940257010b317cdaa9d857Check out our Website: https://www.yourbrandamplified.comSpeak to my Delphi Clone: https://www.delphi.ai/amplifywithanika Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

For years, the checkbox to get a PC out of the Insider Program when that Windows version shipped in stable did absolutely nothing. That's no longer the case. Windows A new context menu for File Explorer heads out to Insiders along with five new preview builds There are lots of other like UX changes happening with little communication. Will Microsoft really touch (and update) all the ancient UIs in Windows 11? New Release Preview builds point at next Week D and Patch Tuesday updates: New Taskbar, New Start, new Windows Search, many minor changes throughout Hardware Now we know more about Snapdragon C ahead of IFA, where we may see the first laptops Google is holding a PixelBook reviewers event in mid-September You know that Commodore is back, but now the Amiga is back too! Lenovo surges on AI spending, but it's now engaged in financial shenanigans too. More like Spotify than Big Tech, but still bad AI Big Tech spending on AI is finally getting more scrutiny from financial/business publications It's happening: Microsoft "pulls a Teams" and will consolidate its Copilot (consumer) and Microsoft 365 Copilot (business apps) into a single app, evolve it in a "super app" OpenAI's new strategy: Get 'em while they're young Mozilla provides a progress report on Smart Window for Firefox, details new AI search partnership Alexa+ is now free on all FireTV devices in the U.S., no Prime required XBOX Resonance: A Plague Tale and more are heading to Game Pass during the second half of August XBOX August Update is here with more Achievements details, Game Hubs now support Xbox 360 titles, Game Pass subscribers can now stream a game while it installs in the background XBOX Insiders can now test Home Improvements, local save game management, and profile badges Apple makes major App Store concessions in the EU. But Epic Games says it is not enough. The new Call of Duty has a public beta on Friday, and there will be a single-player episode for the first time Tips and picks Tip of the week: Yes, Virginia, you can exit the Insider Program now App pick of the week: Brave RunAs Radio this week: Automatic Attack Disruption with Liz Tesch Brown liquor pick of the week: Red Bank Premium Blended Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell Download or subscribe to Windows Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsor: scribe.how/windows

For years, the checkbox to get a PC out of the Insider Program when that Windows version shipped in stable did absolutely nothing. That's no longer the case. Windows A new context menu for File Explorer heads out to Insiders along with five new preview builds There are lots of other like UX changes happening with little communication. Will Microsoft really touch (and update) all the ancient UIs in Windows 11? New Release Preview builds point at next Week D and Patch Tuesday updates: New Taskbar, New Start, new Windows Search, many minor changes throughout Hardware Now we know more about Snapdragon C ahead of IFA, where we may see the first laptops Google is holding a PixelBook reviewers event in mid-September You know that Commodore is back, but now the Amiga is back too! Lenovo surges on AI spending, but it's now engaged in financial shenanigans too. More like Spotify than Big Tech, but still bad AI Big Tech spending on AI is finally getting more scrutiny from financial/business publications It's happening: Microsoft "pulls a Teams" and will consolidate its Copilot (consumer) and Microsoft 365 Copilot (business apps) into a single app, evolve it in a "super app" OpenAI's new strategy: Get 'em while they're young Mozilla provides a progress report on Smart Window for Firefox, details new AI search partnership Alexa+ is now free on all FireTV devices in the U.S., no Prime required XBOX Resonance: A Plague Tale and more are heading to Game Pass during the second half of August XBOX August Update is here with more Achievements details, Game Hubs now support Xbox 360 titles, Game Pass subscribers can now stream a game while it installs in the background XBOX Insiders can now test Home Improvements, local save game management, and profile badges Apple makes major App Store concessions in the EU. But Epic Games says it is not enough. The new Call of Duty has a public beta on Friday, and there will be a single-player episode for the first time Tips and picks Tip of the week: Yes, Virginia, you can exit the Insider Program now App pick of the week: Brave RunAs Radio this week: Automatic Attack Disruption with Liz Tesch Brown liquor pick of the week: Red Bank Premium Blended Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell Download or subscribe to Windows Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsor: scribe.how/windows

Stephen and Chris hop on to talk about the couple of weeks post 2.0 launch. Things are certainly different in 2.0! Literally the location of certain buttons is in a new place, and that requires folks to poke around a bit and figure it out. Some people just do that and it's a non-issue. Some write in for help and even find delight in the new features. Some lash out. The cheese metaphor is from an old book by Spencer Johnson about people experiencing change in the workplace and learning to deal with it. You might call it a bit heavy handed, and the metaphor was plucked away by UX folks to describe interface changes, so consider this the end of the line for this already-stretched metaphor. That didn't stop us from using the icon in our documentation about this though. Sponsor: Notion With the recent launch of Custom Agents, Notion became the collaborative AI workspace where teams and agents work side by side. And now, their new Developer Platform is turning that workspace into infrastructure developers can build on. Time Jumps

Recently, I met David Krauza, VP of Enterprise Data Strategy and Products & Governance at Comcast, at the 2026 CDOIQ symposium, and after chatting for a bit, he agreed to come on the show to talk about how he, as an enterprise buyer, thinks about B2B software purchases in the age of AI. As vibe coding makes internal development more accessible, David explains why the buy-versus-build decision isn't simply about whether a company can build a solution itself. Leaders need to weigh long-term roadmaps, maintenance, integrations, and whether they want to take on the responsibility of becoming a software company. The real question is not just what can be built, but what makes the most strategic sense to own. David also highlights an important consideration vendors frequently overlook: the data their own products create and the possible importance of that to an enterprise data leader. This is particularly true when the product's primary intended purpose is not analytics itself. In a complex sales environment, which may include a senior data leader as a champion or decision maker, product metadata, or what you might currently be thinking of as a byproduct, might actually be a primary decision point in an enterprise purchasing conversation. David then outlines the pre-implementation work required before any of this can be evaluated: establishing shared definitions, explicit success metrics, and a documented “before-picture” you can run at renewal time to understand the ROI of the product. We also explored the hidden costs that can undermine an otherwise compelling product. A polished UI may still create UX friction if users have to constantly move between systems, while complex data integrations can introduce additional labor and operational burdens. This friction should be considered during the evaluation rather than discovered after development. David says vendors can stand out by demonstrating that they understand where a customer's business is headed and how their roadmap supports that direction. He also dropped some real gold about the difference he sees as a buyer when being pitched by a founder vs. a B2B salesperson—and what the latter is missing when they pitch him. Highlights / Skip to: Why buy any products when AI allows you to build them yourself? (2:03) Allowing use cases and goals to dictate the adoption of internal solutions (4:03) Making data capture, accessibility, and ecosystem fit part of the buying decision (5:54) Is data missing in sales conversations due to a lack of marketing or of results? (8:36) Comcast's method for deciding to renew when the intelligence is invisible (11:22) The importance of pre-post analysis when making a renewal argument (14:02) Where David sees the most time being wasted in the pitch process and why vendors who did _____ win more often (16:36) The hidden costs that often go undiscussed during the sales process (20:07) How Comcast evaluates UX friction (back-and-forth of switching between applications to accomplish work) (22:22) Other hidden factors that can prevent your sale from closing (25:13) Differences David sees between founder-led sales and sales-led sales (26:41) David's advice for founders selling in the analytics and data space right now (28:14) Links David Krauza's LinkedIn David Krauza's Substack

Most Shopify brands don't have a traffic problem. They have a conversion problem.After auditing 50 Shopify stores and analysing hundreds of ecommerce experiences, Nick reveals the biggest mistakes that stop visitors from becoming customers.In this episode, you'll discover the product page, trust, UX and conversion issues that could be costing your Shopify store sales - and the changes successful DTC brands make to turn more visitors into buyers.You'll learn:The product page mistakes making customers hesitate before buyingWhy great products fail without trust, proof and clear positioningHow reviews, content and social proof influence purchase decisionsWhy your mobile experience could be losing potential customersThe biggest friction points stopping visitors from convertingHow successful Shopify brands continuously improve conversion ratesNick shares real examples from Shopify stores, explaining how brands can remove buying friction, improve customer confidence and turn more of their existing traffic into revenue.In this episode:(00:00) - Why Shopify stores lose sales(01:42) - The 4 questions every customer needs answered(02:37) - Mistake #1: Product pages that don't help customers buy(05:05) - Mistake #2: Lack of trust and price justification(07:38) - Mistake #3: Poor product photography(11:21) - Mistake #4: No clear differentiation(12:00) - Mistake #5: Website friction killing conversions(13:09) - Mistake #6: Ignoring mobile-first shopping(15:36) - Mistake #7: Not A/B testing your Shopify store(21:04) - Final Shopify conversion takeawaysFollow Winning With Shopify for practical ecommerce growth advice every Tuesday and Friday.Exclusive listener offers:Ships-A-Lot - Improve fulfilment costs and find hidden shipping margin leaks.Inventory Planner - Free seven-day inventory bootcamp.Omnisend - 30% off paid plans for three months with code WINNINGWITHOMNISEND.Yoast - 15% off Shopify and WordPress with code WWS15.506 - Extended 30-day free trial on any of their three Shopify apps with code WWS.About Winning With ShopifyWinning With Shopify is powered by Spec Digital, a PPC & SEO agency helping ecommerce brands grow through performance marketing.

In this Talkin' Shop session, Dr. Darren hosts Lou Susi and Debra Michalides, fellow UX educators. The trio addresses topics such as advice for visual designers transitioning into UX, lifelong learning, UX culture traits, the state of today's UX community at large, the state of UX education, and first-hand experiences with teaching at bootcamps and taking the Google UX course. Check out this extremely powerful and enlightening episode!#ux#podcasts#cxofmradio#cxofm#realuxtalk#worldofux#worldouxDon't forget to like, subscribe, and share!Bookmark the new World of UX website at https://www.theworldofux.com. Visit the UX Uncensored blog at https://uxuncensored.medium.com. Get your specialized UX merchandise at https://www.kaizentees.com.

UX portfolio websites eat up months, sometimes years, of time that could be spent applying, and Sarah argues you don't need one at all. This is week two of a five part series on UX portfolio myths, and this episode takes on one of the most repeated pieces of advice in the industry, that your portfolio has to be a website.Sarah's counter is a portfolio presentation instead. It's free, doesn't require learning new software, takes weeks instead of months, and can be duplicated and tailored for each specific role in under an hour. She walks through a full comparison of time, cost, customization, and what she calls interview readiness, the idea that a presentation portfolio doubles as the exact thing you'll need to present in interviews anyway, so you're never scrambling to build something new once you land one.She backs this up with two hiring manager perspectives. Patrick Neeman, Director of UX and AI Experiences at Workday, told her he prefers presentations because that's the format his own team works in day to day. Steph McDonald, a lead recruiter at HubSpot focused on hiring UX designers, said presentations are completely fine as long as the craft level is polished. Sarah also shares Marcus's story, who got hired as a Lead Product Designer at NAVA after building his portfolio as a presentation instead of a website.If you've been stuck for months trying to wrangle a website builder instead of actually working on your portfolio content, this episode is a direct permission slip to stop, and a breakdown of exactly what to do instead.Topics Discussed✅ Why a portfolio website can actually hurt your first impression with recruiters and hiring managers instead of helping it✅ The alternative Sarah recommends instead of a website, and why it takes weeks instead of months to finish✅ A full breakdown of time, cost, customization, and interview readiness for a website versus a presentation✅ What Patrick Neeman, Director of UX and AI Experiences at Workday, said he actually prefers to see in a portfolio✅ What Steph McDonald, a lead recruiter at HubSpot, said about presentation portfolios and craft level✅ How Marcus got hired as a Lead Product Designer at NAVA using a portfolio presentation instead of a website✅ Why "link to portfolio" on a job application doesn't actually mean your portfolio has to be a website✅ The exact question to ask anyone who insists you need a portfolio website, and why most people can't answer itLinks & Resources

Episode web page: https://bit.ly/4wqOtMn Episode summary In this episode of Insights Unlocked, UserTesting's Mike Mace sits down with AI product strategist, UX thought leader, and UX for AI author Greg Nudelman to explore how AI is reshaping the role of UX and product professionals—and what teams need to do differently to build AI products that deliver real customer and business value. Greg argues that simply using AI to work faster isn't enough. As traditional UX tasks become easier to automate, the bigger opportunity is for UX researchers, designers, and product leaders to move upstream: uncover customer needs, frame the right problems, understand how AI systems work, and rapidly validate working concepts with customers. He shares his “snowball sprint” approach, where teams start small and continuously add capabilities only after validating that they're solving the right problem. The conversation also explores why speed can become a liability when teams rush into AI development without considering real-world consequences. Greg discusses the importance of evaluating ROI and risk before building, including his use of a value matrix to examine what happens when an AI system gets something right—or wrong. For AI products with increasingly consequential actions, customer-centered design and responsible product leadership become more important, not less. Ultimately, Greg believes the companies that succeed with AI will be those that stay focused on customers and use the technology to empower people. For UX and product professionals, that means rediscovering their core strengths in empathy, problem-solving, discovery, and strategic thinking—and applying them to a new generation of AI-powered experiences. You'll learn: Why UX professionals need to move beyond simply using AI to make existing workflows faster How customer discovery and strategic problem framing become even more valuable as AI accelerates product development Why Greg believes UX professionals should become AI product and relationship designers, not just interface designers How the “snowball sprint” approach keeps customers involved throughout AI product development Why teams should evaluate AI ROI, risk, and the consequences of incorrect outputs before they build How rapid prototyping and real-world customer feedback can help teams avoid expensive AI product failures What will separate the companies that succeed with AI from those that fall behind Resources & links Greg Nudelman on LinkedIn UX for AI book UX for AI website Greg's “Iceberg UX” post Mike Mace on LinkedIn Learn more about Insights Unlocked: usertesting.com/podcast

On this episode I'm joined by Jess Holbrook, Head of UX Research for Microsoft AI. We talk about what UX research can—and cannot—tell us about what people need; why user-centered design may be too individualistic for technologies whose effects extend across families, workplaces, communities, and institutions; and what it means to put researchers in the room while AI systems are still being built rather than after fundamental design decisions have already been made. Over the past 12 years, Jess has held senior research and design leadership roles across Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Amazon. He previously led Generative AI, Responsible AI, and data transparency UX research at Meta, and at Google he founded and led the People + AI Research group, or PAIR, before serving as Head of UX for the Responsible AI and Human-Centered Technology group. His work has focused on bringing human-centered and inclusive approaches into the development of AI systems and translating emerging machine-learning capabilities into products designed around people's needs. Jess also writes regularly about AI, frontier UX research, research slop and the future of human-centered technology on his Substack, Gen Purpose. This episode was produced by Jack Lucas Chang.

What if you didn't have to escape the city to reconnect with nature? In this episode, we explore the practice of forest bathing and how simple moments of intentional connection with the natural world can become part of everyday life—even in the middle of a busy city. Modern life can easily pull us away from the natural world. Screens, schedules, noise, and the pace of daily life can make nature feel like something we have to travel to experience. But the benefits of nature connection aren't reserved for remote forests or weekend getaways. In this episode, discover simple ways to bring more awareness, curiosity, and connection with nature into your everyday routine—whether you live in the countryside, a suburb, or the heart of a city. In This Episode, We Explore: What forest bathing really means What a "sit spot" is and how to create your own How mindfulness isn't about achieving a specific state Why you don't have to leave the city to experience nature connection Simple ways to notice and engage with nature every day How slowing down can change the way we experience familiar places Why connection with nature is about relationship, not escape Take a listen to this episode and share your takeaways with us: @OneWade and @enchanted.place.inc Resources: Download Centered walks and get one of my favorite walking meditations to guide you on connecting to "Awe" on your walk. Learn more about some of the research on Forest Bathing: Standford Medicine  Get a copy of my interactive journal guide, 100 Mindful Moments to Balance & Energize  ***** Cyndi is a certified forest bathing guide and the founder of Enchanted Place , a Vancouver-based platform dedicated to helping people reconnect with the living world. Grounded in the belief that taking care of our mental health and taking care of the planet are deeply connected, her work offers guided forest immersions and somatic practices that help us slow down, regulate our nervous systems, and find calm. Cyndi studied Psychology and Sustainability at Minerva University and holds her certification through the Forest Therapy School.   Cyndi is also looking for a UX designer/technologist/artist who can help her build enchanted place's digital experience. If you are interested to chat, please reach out to her via email: Cyndi@enchanted.place  

In this first quarterly update I talk about the private company cohorts I'm building, the free Adobe Firefly workshop series, and three shifts I saw in the field over the last three months. Plus the honest version of how I actually work: three days a week, what that constraint did to my business, and the one thing I got wrong and waited far too long to fix.IN THIS EPISODEWhy Claude Code stopped being a developer tool and turned into a research interfaceHow documentation moved from hygiene to infrastructure, and why designers are well positioned for that shiftWhat changes in your design work the moment an AI feature acts instead of suggestsWhy being an expert in everything is no longer the goal, and what replaces itHow working three days a week made my business sharper instead of smallerWhy design teams rarely struggle with tool knowledge and almost always struggle with agreementThe thing I waited six months too long to fixRESOURCESWork with me: if you're self-employed and open to collaborating at some point, fill out this short survey. Completely non-binding, takes two minutes.https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSef6hsir1t5StSir8yPVA-0T6YsojyCmfR8X4kidDb8f7wJXw/viewformAI for Designers: 5-week Bootcamp

I spent a good chunk of my career insisting that proper UX work should only be done by proper UX people, and I told myself that was about protecting quality, when honestly a fair amount of it was about protecting my own job description. I would sit in a meeting, watch a product owner sketch a screen on a whiteboard, and feel a small internal wince, as if they had wandered into my kitchen and started rearranging the crockery. It felt professional at the time. It was territorial, and it has not aged well. These days I find myself telling clients something that would have horrified younger me. If you want better digital products, the answer probably isn't sending more work through your UX team. It's changing what you employ them to do. Everybody is designing now, whether you sanctioned it or not You have almost certainly seen this happening inside your own organization. Somebody without design in their job title describes an idea to an AI tool and comes back a few hours later with a clickable prototype, realistic content, passable copy, and a flow that mostly hangs together. Developers are generating interface options before the ticket is even refined. Marketers are building and testing their own landing pages. Product owners are turning a rough thought into something demonstrable over a lunch break. Some of that work is genuinely good. Some of it is a small mountain of plausible looking rubbish that nobody has the expertise to spot. All of it is happening whether the design team blesses it or not, and it happens fast, which means it usually arrives before anyone thinks to involve them. Cutting the design team is the obvious response and the expensive one I understand the temptation. The team is expensive, the tooling has made production cheap, and somebody senior is asking what the return on all that research actually is. So the headcount that leaves doesn't get replaced, the budget line gets trimmed, and the design team's seat at the table quietly becomes an invitation to comment on decisions after they have been made. What you lose in that trade is judgment, and it shows up about two quarters later. Every team invents its own version of the same pattern, so the product starts to feel like it was assembled from three different companies. Accessibility problems accumulate because generated interfaces look fine and fail quietly. Decisions get made on assumption rather than evidence, so you build things nobody wanted and only find out after launch. Rework becomes the largest hidden line in your delivery costs, and nobody attributes it to the design cut that caused it. The organizations getting this right aren't the ones with the biggest design teams. They are the ones who moved their design people upstream, away from producing every screen and toward setting the conditions in which everybody else produces decent ones. What that structure actually looks like The version of this role that earns its keep looks less like a traditional designer and more like a conductor. Rather than routing all design work through a small team and watching a queue form, you fund that team to build the tools, standards, and guidance everyone else needs. Quality gets protected through what you hand people, rather than through gatekeeping that colleagues will route around anyway. In practice that means investing in a handful of assets. A design system with real usage guidance**, so a developer building a screen at 4pm on a Friday makes a reasonable decision without asking permission. Playbooks for the work people keep repeating**, like a landing page playbook that walks a marketer through structure, evidence, and calls to action without them inventing it from scratch each time. A research repository anybody can query**, tagged and maintained, so the research you already paid for keeps earning its money long after the readout deck has been forgotten. Functional personas that stakeholders can interrogate**, built around what customers are trying to get done rather than their age and job title, and useful enough to settle an argument in a meeting. Standards for briefing AI well, because the difference between useful output and confident nonsense sits almost entirely in the brief, and your design people are better placed than anyone to teach that. Alongside those assets, the team offers services rather than delivery. Open office hours for anyone about to build something, quick audits of work in progress, coaching for the team that keeps getting it wrong, training for the people who want to get it right. They still take on the genuinely hard, high risk design problems, but they stop being the only route to a wireframe. What has to change on your side None of this survives contact with the existing performance conversation, because most design teams are still measured on throughput. If you judge them on how many screens and tickets they got through, they will keep behaving like a production line and the queue will reappear within a month. Measure adoption of the design system instead, along with reuse of existing research, and the quality of what non-designers are shipping without help. The hiring mix shifts too. You need fewer people whose main strength is producing polished interfaces, and more who can think about systems, standards, research operations, and how to influence colleagues who don't report to them. Give them the authority to set standards that hold across teams, and get them into decisions early enough to shape what gets built rather than tidy it afterward. Somewhere sensible to start Ask whoever runs design for you what people keep coming to them for, week after week. Not what they think colleagues should want, the requests that genuinely keep landing. Then fund turning one of those into something the rest of the business can use without them. One playbook, one documented pattern, one persona people can question. See what it does to the queue, and do the next one. The uncomfortable part is that a team working this way looks less busy for a while, and busy has been our proxy for valuable for about two decades. That freed up time is the whole point, because it's where the strategic work finally happens. There is considerably more to it than I can fit in an email, which is why I have put together a free course on exactly this. Fourteen short lessons on shifting from doing the work to directing it, with the workshop slides thrown in. You can sign up here, and it's worth forwarding to whoever leads design for you. If you think I've got any of this wrong, hit reply and tell me, because I'm still working out how much of it I have.

Roy Sheinfeld of Breez returns to walk through Glow, the team's new reference wallet built using Spark. It's designed so non-custodial Bitcoin feels simple: send, receive, and go.Glow uses passkey onboarding (no seed phrase to write down), automatic backup via the passkey provider, and a single-balance UX so users can pay Lightning, on-chain, and stablecoin destinations without wrestling settings.They also cover client-side swaps (Flashnet, multi-vendor architecture after Boltz), AI-driven attacks on swap providers, where Lightning volume actually comes from, Spark unilateral exits, and how AI plus the Breez SDK lets non-developers ship Bitcoin apps from a prompt.Timestamps04:21 — Bitcoin Wallet Onboard with One Passkey08:05 — Stables on Lightning: Overhyped?09:59 — Swaps Needed Even With Lightning Stables11:48 — AI Attacks: Cheaper to Attack Than Defend15:07 — Why Small Teams Get Hacked First17:15 — Swaps Going Private to Survive?19:17 — Backends Drive Most Lightning Volume21:32 — 80/20 Rule: B2B Drives Lightning Volume25:13 — Making Unilateral Exit Economically Viable29:48 — Spark Public Mode31:38 — One Prompt Builds a Bitcoin App33:13 — Non-Technical Users Now Ship Bitcoin AppsLinks: https://x.com/roy_breezhttps://x.com/breez_techhttps://breez.technology/glow/Stephan Livera links:Follow me on X: @stephanliveraSubscribe to the podcastSubscribe to Substack

Job searching has always been harder than it looks, and if you've been searching for a while without much traction, there's a good chance your strategy is working against you. Guest host Laura Klein sits down with Sarah Doody, founder of the Career Strategy Lab, to talk about what UX practitioners get wrong when searching for work.They cover:Why the DIY approach tanks your confidence over timeHow to treat yourself as a candidate-product — complete with features, benefits, and a roadmapThe role of community in the job searchwhat your LinkedIn is actually signaling to recruitersWhy some of the best UX opportunities are hiding in industries you've never considered.About Sarah Doody | Bio | LinkedInCareer Strategy Lab (Website)Career Strategy Lab PodcastFollow Sarah on InstagramRelated NN/G Articles & Episodes:EP 59 | Getting Hired in UX: What to Do When Apply-and-Wait Isn't Enough (with Evan Sunwall)EP 53 | Why You're Not Getting Job Interviews (with Hang Xu)Ep 19 | Designing a UX Career (with Sarah Doody)UX Layoff Crisis: A Guide for Resilience and RecoveryTemplates and Tools for UX Job SeekersGrowing in Your UX Career: Study GuideTry One of Our CoursesSuccessful UX Job Searching (Self-Paced)Hiring UX Talent (Self-Paced)Becoming a UX Consultant: Launch Your Practice (Self-Paced)Storytelling to Present UX Work (Live Online)Don't forget to like and subscribe! ❤️Follow Us On:NewsletterInstagramLinkedin

Hisense 2026 UX, U7, UR8, and UR9 Series TVs are the first to get Dolby Vision 2 Max. Marantz Cinema Series 2 Receivers arrive. ... The post AV Rant #999.9r: Rob’s Shopping Hack appeared first on AV Rant.

Job postings breed excitement. But is the excitement always warranted or justified? Absolutely not! In this episode Dr. Darren offers some perspectives on how to be more grounded and sober-minded when reviewing UX job postings AND showing how having higher UX maturity can help navigate the wild world of job seeking.#ux#podcasts#cxofmradio#cxofm#realuxtalk#worldofux#worldouxDon't forget to like, subscribe, and share!Bookmark the new World of UX website at https://www.theworldofux.com.Visit the UX Uncensored blog at https://uxuncensored.medium.com.Get your specialized UX merchandise at https://www.kaizentees.com.

This January, four big AI × Pharma tools deals were announced at the huge JPM Pharma conference that takes over San Francisco every year. OpenAI-backed Chai Discovery (now worth $4B) was somehow at the heart despite being all of 2 years old. The Science team is proud to bring you the first podcast with cofounder Matt McPartlon and product lead Neil Patil to tell the full story! Editor's note: not to be confused with Chai AI, which was another top pod of ours.Pharma suddenly doing big AI tools dealsFor the non-pharma people, JPM is JP Morgan's annual conference for pharma deal-making that takes over San Francisco for a week in January with hundreds of side events, etc. It's a big thing. Tools deals for pharma are also a big (new) thing: companies that start as AI for Pharma usually end up building their own drug pipelines instead, and the reason is something like this: convincing pharma to use your tool requires proof that your tool works. Proof means good targets, maybe with good clinical validation. If you have that, then it's easier to raise money (with a known, if long path to commercialization) or sell (e.g payment in biobucks) for a specific target than it is to sell to lots of companies on a promise that it will work across their portfolios. The “we'll just partner / build our own drug” optionality proved to be the only good path up until January. What changed? In short, the tools got good enough for drug design teams to trust.Good-enough-to-trust unlocks the ability to scale discovery: get more, better candidates into the lab and animal trials faster. More screening for toxicity, better delivery, etc. This means that what you push to the clinic is more likely to succeed.Tools also unlock new capabilities: mechanisms that are very hard or impossible to develop using lab-based discovery. Designing an antibody that precisely triggers a very specific molecular cascade takes many years of trial and error. Designing bi-specific antibodies (that bind to two different proteins) is similarly difficult. Good design tools can unlock this.RJ: The fact that the quality of the model has jumped means you're enabling things you just plain couldn't do. So it's a step change. It's not an efficiency argument at all, or not so much.Matt: Yeah, exactly. It's kind of interesting, even for us — it took me a while to believe in the thesis, actually. I talked to Josh for months before Chai started... It's like, can I beat a mouse, and then can I do what mice can't do? And then how many levels of interaction can you just keep building on top of that?Everyone playing in the structural / binding space has an angle here, and some will be better than others, but Chai is pointing to a different unlock: getting good molecules right out of the gate (meaning they don't then need as much lab work) means that the iteration time is faster. This turns science into engineering: you can design your systems to reduce friction and hill climb towards one-shotting molecules all the way to the clinic.This, per-se, is not a new thesis: a16z articulated a version of this in 2020. What has changed is that structural models became binding models (how well doesn't this molecule bind to this molecule, aka “binding affinity). Binding models unlock design, which has been steadily improving. Chai's observation is that for engineering problems the best product tends to win, and good technology is a necessary but not sufficient condition. Photoshop for moleculesWith that in mind Chai has invested heavily in partnerships that allow them to learn from their Pharma counterparts. What is kind of cool about working so closely and supporting so many of these partners is we get to really learn about what is the stuff that would be helpful in research. So rather than doing research in a vacuum, based on what would hypothetically be cool, we're able to do informed research based on what our partners have just been organically asking us for help with.— Neil Patil, (Chai product lead)This means better UX, such as a molecule editor that is more like a CAD or graphics design program than a chatbot.Their approach has paid off: since June, Chai has announced three more major deals: Lilly, Novartis, argenx, plus an expansion of their Eli Lily program. This episode is too full of quotable moments for a short blog, so tune in to learn about * Why protein tokens have the highest downstream value of any token * Climbing levels of abstraction as models improve * How Pharma, VC, and research are all just portfolio optimization * How better tech changes the whole portfolio * How relentless focus on simplicity leads to scalePlus much more! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.latent.space/subscribe

In the latest version of our Spilt Soup series exploring the human factors behind product failures, we examine the issues with Boeing's 737 MAX airplanes. In the 2010s Boeing installed a feature meant to help pilots during mid-air stalls… but instead the feature allegedly contributed to confusion, crashes, and loss of life. How could this happen at a safety-driven company? And what UX lessons could be applied to products in other verticals, like medical or automotive?In Condensed Soup, we lighten the mood by sharing our tips for comfortable air travel.

Innovation comes in many areas and compliance professionals need to not only be ready for it but embrace it. Join Tom Fox, the Voice of Compliance as he visits with top innovative minds, thinkers and creators in the award-winning Innovation in Compliance podcast. In this episode, host Tom Fox visits with s Diego Panama, new CEO of LogicGate.  They discuss his career from Microsoft product management to scaling Live Ramp to an IPO, building go-to-market at Olo, and joining LogicGate through a planned CEO transition with co-founder Matt Kunkel. Panama describes his focus on scaling operations while preserving a customer-first, values-driven culture, and sharpening the company's positioning as the leading AI GRC platform for enterprise. The discussion highlights AI's role in moving GRC from check-the-box defense to real-time, strategic enablement, including holistic risk visibility across silos, third-party risk blind spots, and always-on monitoring. Panama explains LogicGate's workflow agents and the path toward orchestrated, autonomous GRC with humans setting risk appetite, emphasizes data access, quality, and governance, and outlines product UX evolution from no-code to prompt-driven configuration. He notes boards' increased attention to GRC due to AI risks and encourages students and practitioners to stay curious and aligned to business outcomes.  Key Highlights  ·      Why LogicGate and GRC ·      AI Makes GRC Strategic ·      Holistic Risk and Third Parties ·      Workflow Agents Explained ·      Data Access and Governance ·      Big Tech Lessons on Focus ·      Staying Current in Tech Resources  LogicGate Diego Panama on LinkedIn   Innovation in Compliance was recently honored as the Number 4 podcast in Risk Management by 1,000,000 Podcasts

This week's episode is with Kyle Zantos who is officially the first person to make three appearances on Dive Club

UX portfolio advice is full of numbers that sound official but aren't backed by anything. This episode kicks off a five part series on UX portfolio myths, starting with the most common one: that you need three to five projects before you can apply.Sarah says the opposite is true. One strong, detailed project beats five surface level ones every time. She backs this up from an interview she did with Alexander Zeh, former Head of Product Design at ManyChat, who said he'd rather see one or two case studies that map directly to the job description than five that walk through every step of the design process without any real depth.The episode shares two specific examples. Laura got hired as a Principal Product Designer in cybersecurity with a single, unfinished feeling project still sitting in Figma slides, and was actually found and reached out to on LinkedIn before she even applied. Leon, laid off after 11 years at the same company and an author of a book on wire-framing, got hired after focusing on just one project instead of trying to rebuild an entire portfolio from scratch.If you've been stalling on applying because you don't have "enough" projects yet, this episode is a direct challenge to that belief, and a reason to ask where that number actually came from in the first place.Topics Discussed✅ Why the three to five project rule is a myth with no real backing, and where it likely came from✅ Why one detailed project beats five surface level ones, and what "confuse and lose" means for a UX portfolio✅ What a former Head of Product Design at ManyChat said he actually wants to see in a portfolio✅ How Laura got hired as a Principal Product Designer with one unfinished project, and was found on LinkedIn without ever applying✅ How Leon got hired after being laid off from an 11 year role, focusing on just one project instead of rebuilding his whole portfolio✅ Why working on your portfolio alone can make you more critical of it than recruiters and hiring managers actually are✅ The question to ask yourself if you believe you need three to five projects, and where to trace that belief back to✅ What Sarah says to look for in UX job descriptions instead of following a generic project countLinks & Resources

Episode web page: https://bit.ly/4hS9ls9 Episode summary In this episode of Insights Unlocked, Rachel Blackburn sits down with Marc Majers, Head of User Research at Progressive Insurance, UX educator, author, and host of the UX Pathways podcast, to explore what separates great user experiences from merely functional ones. Drawing on more than two decades in UX, Marc shares how empathy, curiosity, and continuous learning have shaped his career—and why understanding people remains the foundation of effective design, even as AI rapidly transforms the industry. Marc discusses how UX professionals can thoughtfully integrate AI into their workflows without losing sight of the human perspective, why organizations should view UX as a strategic business advantage rather than a design function, and how speaking the language of business helps teams demonstrate measurable impact. He also offers his perspective on synthetic users, the future of AI-powered experiences, and why testing should become an organization's default mindset. The conversation wraps with an unexpected look at the parallels between UX and Marc's work as a wedding DJ, revealing how both disciplines rely on understanding human behavior, anticipating needs, and designing experiences that keep people engaged. You'll learn: Why empathy and curiosity remain the most important skills in UX—even in the age of AI How UX professionals can adopt AI thoughtfully without replacing human judgment Practical ways to communicate the business value of UX to executives and stakeholders Why continuous testing creates better products and stronger organizational cultures How synthetic users can complement—but not replace—real customer research Why the future of UX depends on balancing technological innovation with human-centered design What designing great digital experiences has in common with keeping a wedding dance floor full Resources & links Marc Majers on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mmajers/ UX Pathways: https://www.uxpathways.com/ Rachel Blackburn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/racheleblackburn/ Learn more about Insights Unlocked: https://www.usertesting.com/podcast

JPEG Trading Co-Founder Kevin March joins CoinDesk's Sam Ewen to break down how his firm is building end-to-end liquidity for new crypto assets and why DeFi lending is the innovation most likely to make the space useful long-term. He explains how tokenized stocks are seeing organic, consistent growth in 2026, why prediction markets are one of crypto's best UX wins yet, and what agentic AI trading actually looks like in practice. - Timecodes: 00:00 - JPEG Trading Founder Kevin March Joins CoinDesk 00:37 - What JPEG Trading Does and How It Started 04:39 - Why DeFi Lending Is Crypto's Most Important Innovation 09:44 - Borrowing Against Real-World Assets Without a Bank 12:19 - Tokenized Stocks Are Seeing Organic, Consistent Growth 15:30 - JPEG's Role in Prediction Market Liquidity 19:39 - The Reality of AI and Agentic Trading - JPEG Trading is a global proprietary trading firm specializing in cryptocurrency and decentralized finance markets. From market structure and liquidity provision to quantitative trading strategies, JPEG Trading operates across the full spectrum of blockchain-based assets. Follow @jpegtrading on X to stay ahead of the latest developments in digital asset markets: https://x.com/jpegtrading

On today's episode, we welcome Jennifer Martinez, Founder of Elevation Tea Company — a premium tea brand sourcing rare, organic and small-batch teas from underrepresented regions around the world. Inspired by Northern California wine country and her background in UX and graphic design, Jennifer has built a brand that treats tea not just as a beverage, but as an elevated tasting experience rooted in origin, flavor, aroma and ritual. In this episode, we speak about tea sourcing from regions including Colombia, Tanzania, Kenya and Nepal, working with small-scale farmers, and how terroir impacts what ends up in the cup. We also discuss the launch of Elevation Tea Company's Rare Tea Tasting Kit, how tea can offer a wine-like experience without alcohol, and why consumers are increasingly looking for more intentional wellness rituals. A must-listen for founders, operators, tea lovers and anyone interested in premium beverages, wellness, sourcing, brand experience and how everyday rituals are being reimagined.   Are you interested in sponsoring and advertising on The Kara Goldin Show, which is now in the Top 1% of Entrepreneur podcasts in the world? Let me know by contacting me at karagoldin@gmail.com. You can also find me @‌KaraGoldin on all networks.   To learn more about Jennifer Martinez and Elevation Tea Company:https://www.elevationteaco.com/https://www.instagram.com/elevationteaco/https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-martinez-83676710a/   Sponsored By: AT&T Business - Switch to AT&T Business at business.att.com Square - Get up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at square.com/go/karagoldin Thrive Causemetics - Go to ThriveCausemetics.com/KARAGOLDIN for an exclusive offer of 20% off your first order. LinkedIn Jobs - Head to LinkedIn.com/KaraGoldin to post your job for free. Thirdlove - Head to Thirdlove.com and use code KARA15 for $15 off your first purchase. IM8 - Get a free Welcome Kit and 5 free Travel sachets plus 10% off with code KARAGOLDIN at IM8HEALTH.com/karagoldin   Check out our website to view this episode's show notes: https://karagoldin.com/podcast/874

In the world of UX, myths are a type of misinformation, concepts that masquerade as precepts or solutions, and general misconceptions about UX. One's level of UX maturity will determine the ability to overcome or be victimized. In this episode, Dr. Darren provides an overview of the connection between UX maturity and the ability to manage myths. Check it out!#ux#podcasts#cxofmradio#cxofm#realuxtalk#worldofux#worldouxDon't forget to like, subscribe, and share!Bookmark the new World of UX website at https://www.theworldofux.com.Visit the UX Uncensored blog at https://uxuncensored.medium.com.Get your specialized UX merchandise at https://www.kaizentees.com.

Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Money Making Conversations Master Class with Rushion McDonald is America's premier entrepreneurship, business leadership, financial literacy, and wealth-building podcast featuring successful entrepreneurs, executives, founders, celebrities, and industry experts sharing actionable insights for professional and financial success. Business Podcast Entrepreneurship Small Business Business Growth Financial Literacy Wealth Building Black Entrepreneurs Minority Business Leadership Executive Leadership Business Funding Marketing Strategies Personal Development Startup Advice Sales Training CEO Interviews Founder Stories Professional Development Economic Empowerment Business Success Networking Brand Building Innovation How to start a business Small business funding Entrepreneur success stories Business leadership podcast Wealth building strategies Black entrepreneur podcast Minority business development Marketing for small businesses Business growth strategies Startup funding opportunities Executive leadership training Financial literacy education Success mindset podcast Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Cassandra Lester.

Positioning is quietly becoming the skill that separates people who stand out in UX and product from people who get left behind, especially now that AI can build almost anything in seconds. In this episode, Sarah makes the case for why the ability to build fast is no longer the advantage it used to be, and why knowing what's worth building, and framing it well, matters more than ever.Sarah traces this back to a belief she used to hold herself, that good work speaks for itself. It doesn't. She shares how she avoided a required public speaking class in college, only to realize later that the real skill was never about sounding polished or the delivery. It was about the thinking that happens before you say a single word, or type a single sentence, or design a single sales page.She also shares a recent story from her own business, where a team she hired to build an AI tool ignored the detailed context she gave them and rushed straight into building, producing a prototype that missed the mark entirely. She ended up building it herself, faster, because she had the clarity they skipped in the process. That story becomes the jumping off point for two ideas Sarah argues will define who stands out in UX and product going forward, knowing what's worth building, and framing the work so people actually say yes to it.If you've ever felt invisible in a meeting, passed over for a promotion, or like your UX job search ideas keep getting ignored, this episode reframes that feeling as a positioning problem rather than a skills problem, and gives a concrete way to start fixing it this week.Topics Discussed✅ Why "good work speaks for itself" is a myth that's quietly keeping talented people invisible✅ The real reason some ideas get funded, approved, or hired for in UX, and it's rarely because they were the best idea✅ A story about hiring a team to build an AI tool, and what happened when they skipped the thinking and rushed straight to building✅ Why knowing what's worth building is about to matter more than how fast you can build it✅ A real example of a stakeholder update that got buried, and the exact rewrite that would have gotten a faster yes✅ Why leading with the "so what" instead of the "what" changes how quickly people respond to your ideas✅ How the same positioning skill applies just as much to your UX job search, your portfolio, and a promotion conversation as it does to a pitch✅ A simple challenge to try this week on your next email, Slack message, or updateLinks & Resources

In an era where personalization is king, can a brand truly be sustainable, or are we just using new technology to fuel the same old consumption patterns?Agility requires a willingness to challenge established business models and integrate new technologies not just for efficiency, but for purpose. It demands we rethink the entire value chain, from production to the end of a product's life.Today, we're going to talk about the intersection of artificial intelligence, sustainability, and retail. We'll explore how technology isn't just a tool for optimization, but a catalyst for building entirely new, purpose-driven business models that challenge the status quo of consumerism.To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome, Anya Cheng, CEO at Taelor. About Anya ChengAnya Cheng is the Founder & CEO of Taelor, an AI-powered men's clothing subscription service promoting sustainable fashion. A Silicon Valley entrepreneur, she has been recognized among "Girls in Tech 40 Under 40" for her expertise in tech product management and marketing. Anya played a pivotal role in launching Facebook and Instagram Shopping at Meta, led new business expansion at eBay, and helped grow McDonald's global food delivery. She also shaped Target's mobile commerce and has led teams in AI, product management, UX, and marketing across Fortune 500 companies. Her work has earned 20+ prestigious awards, including the Webby Award for Best Shopping App, Best Mobile App Award, and The Communicator Award. A best-selling author, adjunct professor, and two-time TED speaker, she lectures at Northwestern University and 500 Global and is a sought-after keynote speaker. Anya's award-winning venture, Taelor, won first place at Draper University's Startup Competition and was named a Startup to Watch by Bay Area Inno. She holds a Master's in Integrated Marketing Communications from Northwestern University and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.Anya Cheng on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anyacheng/---------- Resources ---------- Taelor: https://www.taelor.aiThe Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/2868abd8085a9703We're proud to be a media partner for #MAICON26 - Oct. 13-15! Learn how AI can power your marketing and business and help you grow smarter. Use code AGILE150 to save! https://aglbrnd.co/r/7fe458ced0f04658Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit! Learn more: https://advertalize.com/r/491818c79fb1873fChaser is the only Slack-native project management platform that helps teams turn messages into tracked tasks, automate follow-ups, and maintain team-wide visibility, without adopting another tool. Now integrated with Claude and other GenAI tools. Learn more at trychaser.com and use code AGILEBRAND for a 3-month free trial (normal trial is 14 days).The most influential minds in software, AI, and engineering leadership will be at WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America, September 23-25 in San Jose. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/60a7299222a7bcf1Start building your own apps with Replit and get $20 off. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/93531742a7625a20Enjoyed the show? Tell us more at and give us a rating so others can find the show at: https://aglbrnd.co/r/faaed112fc9887f3Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstromDon't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716baCheck out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.comThe Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Money Making Conversations Master Class with Rushion McDonald is America's premier entrepreneurship, business leadership, financial literacy, and wealth-building podcast featuring successful entrepreneurs, executives, founders, celebrities, and industry experts sharing actionable insights for professional and financial success. Business Podcast Entrepreneurship Small Business Business Growth Financial Literacy Wealth Building Black Entrepreneurs Minority Business Leadership Executive Leadership Business Funding Marketing Strategies Personal Development Startup Advice Sales Training CEO Interviews Founder Stories Professional Development Economic Empowerment Business Success Networking Brand Building Innovation How to start a business Small business funding Entrepreneur success stories Business leadership podcast Wealth building strategies Black entrepreneur podcast Minority business development Marketing for small businesses Business growth strategies Startup funding opportunities Executive leadership training Financial literacy education Success mindset podcast Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Everett Swain.