Design Better: Recent Episodes
The Curiosity Department, LLC
Design Better co-hosts Eli Woolery and Aarron Walter explore the intersection of design, technology, and the creative process through conversations with inspiring guests across many creative fields. Whether you’re design curious or a design pro, Design Better is guaranteed to inspire and inform. Episodes are released semi-weekly. Vanity Fair calls Design Better, “sharp, to the point, and full of incredibly valuable information for anyone looking to better understand how to build a more innovative world.”
Welcome to the first episode in our Design Better series on the creative process. In this series, we’re going beyond the confines of design to speak with some of the most creative people in the world, to learn how they approach collaboration, come up with innovative ideas, and overcome creative obstacles. We’ll speak with guests like Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar; Autumn Durald Arkapaw, cinematographer for Loki and Wakanda Forever, and OK Go, one of the most creative bands in the world right now. Before we get there though, we have a very special guest for you. You may have first heard of David Sedaris from his annual reading of The Santaland Diaries on National Public Radio in the U.S., a story that chronicles his misadventures as Crumpet the holiday elf, and has been a holiday tradition for over 30 years. Or, if you’re like us, you may have gotten to know him from some of his early books like Naked. And if you don’t know David Sedaris, you’re in for a real treat. We chat with David about his acute powers of observation, how he prototypes his essays in front of live audiences, and whether fear exists in his creative process. One quick announcement before we get started. We’re continuing to explore new ways to help you learn, grow your career, hone your craft, and get inspired here at Design Better. As part of that, we’d like to invite you to 3 free AMAs (“Ask Me Anything”) with some amazing experts: First, on September 21st, Dan Mall, founder of Design System University, who’s helped companies ranging from Eventbrite, to Nike, to United Airlines, develop and deploy sustainable design systems will share what he’s learned to help designers get the respect they deserve while scaling digital products sustainable. Next, on September 28th, Judy Wert, co-founder of Wert & Co, who has been guiding the careers of top designers through ups and downs in the job market, will join us for an open discussion where you can ask questions, get career guidance, and gain perspective on the challenging design and tech job landscape. Finally, on October 4th, Debbie Millman, host of Design Matters —the first podcast about design, and one of the longest running shows in the world—will be with us and you’ll have a chance to ask one of the best interviewers in the world what inspires her and what she’s learned about creativity over the course of her career. For more details and to sign up for free to each AMA, go to dbtr.co/AMA2023. Bio David Sedaris is the author of Barrel Fever and Holidays on Ice, as well as collections of personal essays, Naked, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, and his most recent book, Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls, each of which became an immediate bestseller.
Please visit the links below to help support our show: Methodical Coffee: Roasted, blended, brewed, served and perfected by verified coffee nerds 🤓 : https://methodicalcoffee.com/ (use code "designbetter" for 10% off of your order). Brain.fm: Music scientifically proven to increase focus. We use it to focus on important work, tap into our creativity, and wind down at night when we need to rest. As a Design Better subscriber, you can take 30% off of your subscription: https://www.brain.fm/designbetter Freehand by InVision: The intelligent whiteboard that's half the price of Miro and Mural: https://freehandapp.com/
Help us make the show even better by taking a short survey: www.dbtr.co/survey If you're interested in sponsoring the show, please contact us at: sponsors@thecuriositydepartment.com If you'd like to submit a guest idea, please contact us at: contact@thecuriositydepartment.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Design Better co-hosts Eli Woolery and Aarron Walter explore the intersection of design, technology, and the creative process through conversations with inspiring guests across many creative fields. Whether you’re design curious or a design pro, Design Better is guaranteed to inspire and inform. Episodes are released semi-weekly. Vanity Fair calls Design Better, “sharp, to the point, and full of incredibly valuable information for anyone looking to better understand how to build a more innovative world.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
We recently hit our 100th episode, and we have a big announcement to share. If you haven't already subscribed to our Substack at https://designbetterpodcast.com/ head over there so you can stay up to day with all the latest episodes, as well as our free newsletter. Thank you for your support!
Show notes: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/bonus-episode-with-don-norman-panel In this special bonus episode, renowned scholar and author Don Norman (The Design of Everyday Things, Design for a Better World) leads a discussion with recognized design leaders about how design can and should play a role in solving the biggest challenges of humanity today. This conversation was recorded at a live online event August 17, 2023 produced by the UX Design Institute. Panelists who participated in the conversation with Don Norman include Brenda Laurel (researcher, writer, and consultant), Irene Au (Design partner at Khosla Ventures and former Design Better guest), and our own Aarron Walter. Gareth Dunlop is the MC of the event.In this hour-long conversation the panelists discuss:
The role of design in understanding and navigating our current socio-economic challenges
How to think about design and UX as humanity-centered versus human-centered
How to harness the power of design in creating a better future for all of us
Learn more about the UX Design Institute, the gold standard in UX education at: https://www.uxdesigninstitute.com/ Get Don Norman’s new book Designing for a Better World at: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262047951/design-for-a-better-world/
In this special bonus episode, renowned scholar and author Don Norman (The Design of Everyday Things, Design for a Better World) leads a discussion with recognized design leaders about how design can and should play a role in solving the biggest challenges of humanity today.This conversation was recorded at a live online event August 17, 2023 produced by the UX Design Institute. Panelists who participated in the conversation with Don Norman include Brenda Laurel (researcher, writer, and consultant), Irene Au (Design partner at Khosla Ventures and former Design Better guest), and our own Aarron Walter. Gareth Dunlop is the MC of the event.In this hour-long conversation the panelists discuss:
- The role of design in understanding and navigating our current socio-economic challenges
- How to think about design and UX as humanity-centered versus human-centered
- How to harness the power of design in creating a better future for all of us
Learn more about the UX Design Institute, the gold standard in UX education at:
https://www.uxdesigninstitute.com/
Get Don Norman’s new book Designing for a Better World at: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262047951/design-for-a-better-world/
Subscribe for free to our show on Substack to receive episodes a week early, bonus content like post-show discussions, and more: https://designbetterpodcast.com/
What was it like to lead product design at Disney through the creation of Disney+, one of its biggest launches in the digital age? And how did a designer from Germany become a design leader for Major League Baseball, when he knew almost nothing about the sport?
We talk to Ole Lütjens, former VP of Product Design at Disney, about the arc of his career, from his early days in the electronic music scene through his roles at MLB Advanced Media, Hulu and Disney. We also talk about evidence-based design, the Nemawashi method, and why designer storytelling can be too fast.
Bio Ole Lütjens is a design executive with over 25 years of experience building and leading product design teams. He was formerly the Vice President of Product Design at Disney Streaming where he oversaw UX for Disney+, Hulu and Star+.
Throughout his career, he’s been generating and implementing new ideas about the design and technology of content interaction. He’s interested in new models of experience and storytelling and has been fortunate to work with thought leaders in diverse industries on the cutting edge of technology since the 90s.
This episode is brought to you by:
Methodical Coffee: Roasted, blended, brewed, served and perfected by verified coffee nerds 🤓 : https://methodicalcoffee.com/
(use code "designbetter" for 10% off of your order).
Freehand by InVision: The intelligent whiteboard that's half the price of Miro and Mural: https://freehandapp.com/
Help us make the show even better by taking a short survey: www.dbtr.co/survey
If you're interested in sponsoring the show, please contact us at: sponsors@thecuriositydepartment.com
If you'd like to submit a guest idea, please contact us at: contact@thecuriositydepartment.com
Subscribe to the Design Better Podcast on Substack to get episodes a week early and other bonus content: https://designbetterpodcast.com/
The New York Times has gone through many challenges and evolutions during its storied history. Founded in 1851—when it was called the New-York Daily Times—it faced draft riots during the Civil War, received the first telegraph transmission from a naval battle in 1904, and was involved in libel suits in the 1960’s that helped establish freedom of the press through the US Supreme Court
But it’s within the past 25 years or so that the “Newspaper of Record” has undergone some of its most radical transformations: shifting much of its focus away from the printed page to the web and app ecosystem, and expanding into food with NYT Cooking, consumer product reviews with The Wirecutter, and podcasts with The Daily.
Today we chat with Georg Petschnigg, SVP of Product Design at the New York Times, about what it takes to balance the tension between the rich legacy of the Times with the rapidly evolving digital landscape. We also talk about designing across products and platforms for a more unified experience, creating a tight coupling between design and engineering, and what the future holds for news products in a world where AI and ML can facilitate content creation but also manufacture deception.
Before we get to the show, we wanted to let you know about a cool project that our friend Felix Lee started called ADPList.
If you’re early in your career, or if you’re in the midst of a transition, you might want to connect with top-notch professionals in design.
Well, now you can now tap into the knowledge and wisdom of some of the most prominent figures in the design industry. And best of all, it's completely free!
ADPList is a community platform on a mission to democratize mentorship for all, with over 16,000 verified mentors contributing worldwide; opening up an entire world of possibilities for mentorship and networking.
Join ADPList today—for free—and accelerate your career growth.
Visit https://dbtr.co/adplist
Bio Georg Petschnigg is an executive, entrepreneur, and product leader. He feels most comfortable at the intersection of design, technology, and business. He currently serves as Head of Product Design at The New York Times.
Throughout his career, he’s created products that changed how people work, create, and see the world. He believes technology needs to serve the human need to create.
Georg co-founded FiftyThree in 2011 and served as CEO until WeTransfer’s acquisition in 2018. FiftyThree are the makers of Paper®, the fast and beautiful productivity app for getting ideas down, Paste® the fastest way for teams to share and gather around their ideas, and Pencil, the award-winning stylus. Internationally recognized for design excellence and innovation, they’ve received awards from Apple, IDSA, Communication Arts, and IxDA. FiftyThree’s products reach more than 30 Million creative thinkers worldwide and defined mobile creativity.
Before starting FiftyThree, he co-founded the Pioneer Studios, a design venture fund, where he led the incubation of new mobile devices such as the foldable tablet Courier, digital magazines and television services. He shipped graphic tools in PowerPoint, Word, Excel, and started a photo frame business with Samsung. While at Microsoft Research he published seminal work on computational photography. He was part of the first launch of a web-based version of Office, and the digital TV standard HDTV.
This episode is brought to you by:
Methodical Coffee: Roasted, blended, brewed, served and perfected by verified coffee nerds 🤓 : https://methodicalcoffee.com/
(use code "designbetter" for 10% off of your order).
Cruise: Cruise is a team of researchers and designers creating a self-driving transportation service for the people and cities we love. Visit design.getcruise.com to learn more about how you can help design the future of transportation!
Freehand by InVision: The intelligent whiteboard that's half the price of Miro and Mural: https://freehandapp.com/
Help us make the show even better by taking a short survey: www.dbtr.co/survey
If you're interested in sponsoring the show, please contact us at: sponsors@thecuriositydepartment.com
If you'd like to submit a guest idea, please contact us at: contact@thecuriositydepartment.com
Links Georg Petschnigg on Design Matters by Debbie Millman
Hi Folks-
We hope that everyone is enjoying their summer so far. We’re taking a few weeks off to be with our families, and to prepare for an exciting announcement that we plan to share soon. In the meantime, we’re rewinding to one of our favorite episodes with Eileen Fisher, founder of her eponymous fashion brand Eileen Fisher, Inc. Enjoy the episode, and we’ll see you in a few weeks.
You can subscribe to our Substack to receive episodes a week early, our monthly newsletter with job opportunities and career advice, and more bonus content: https://designbetterpodcast.com/
We’d also like to give a huge thank you and shout-out to our sponsors so far this season. Please help us continue to bring you great guests by visiting the links below:
Fable: Build inclusive products: https://makeitfable.com/designbetter/
Methodical Coffee: Roasted, blended, brewed, served and perfected by verified coffee nerds 🤓 : https://methodicalcoffee.com/ (use code "designbetter" for 10% off of your order).
Freehand by InVision: The intelligent whiteboard that's half the price of Miro and Mural: https://freehandapp.com/
Cruise: Cruise is a team of researchers and designers creating a self-driving transportation service for the people and cities we love. Visit design.getcruise.com to learn more about how you can help design the future of transportation!
In his book The Laws of Simplicity, John Maeda says that “simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.” Our final guest this season, Eileen Fisher, is a master at making the simple, meaningful.
Eileen is the founder of her eponymous and iconic fashion brand Eileen Fisher, Inc., which is known for its ethical & sustainable practices, and elegant yet simple clothing. She started the company in 1984, and grew it from her first sale of $3000, to annual revenue of over $300 million.
We speak with Eileen about her design principles, how she thinks about form, function, and sustainability, and how systems thinking has helped her develop a brand that stands the test of time.
We’re so glad you joined us for the sixth season of our show, and hope you were inspired along the way. Stay tuned for the next season, and in the meantime, we’ll be sharing some of our best episodes from past seasons, in case you missed them. Thanks for listening.
Bio Eileen Fisher founded her women's fashion brand in 1984, with $350 of startup money. It's since grown into a company with over 1200 employees and hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenue.
The company focuses on producing simple, timeless clothing, with sustainability initiatives including selling used pieces in excellent condition, resold through their Renew take-back program, as well as a Waste No More program which transforms damaged clothes into a new felted fabric, used to create wall hangings, pillows, and other accessories.
“Management is a job, whereas leadership is a quality you have to earn,” as we learned way back in Episode 21 from our guest Julie Zhuo. Today, we’re diving deeper into the topic of leadership with Donna Lichaw, author of the new book The Leader's Journey: Transforming Your Leadership To Achieve the Extraordinary Donna is also the author of The User's Journey: Storymapping Products That People Love.
We chat with Donna about why leadership often gets conflated with management, how to find your own narrative, and why your product isn’t the hero. One more thing before we get to the show: our newsletter this month is going to feature a new column by Margaret Lee, who founded the UX Community & Culture program for Google's global User Experience organization, and who is now an executive and leadership coach.
If you’re looking for solid leadership advice from someone who’s been in the trenches, subscribe at designbetterpodcast.com so you get the newsletter when it comes out later this month. Thanks for subscribing, and for listening.
Bio Donna Lichaw is an executive coach, keynote speaker, and author of the bestselling books, The User’s Journey and much-awaited follow-up, The Leader’s Journey. She helps high-growth startup CEOs, tech executives, and senior leadership teams scale their leadership so that they can amplify their business growth and make a positive impact in the world.
Before coaching, she was a product leader and consultant working with some of the most successful companies on the planet. What she found was that teams would bring her in to help solve product problems…and that their biggest challenges were actually people problems that could be easily solved with a little bit of design thinking, psychology, and ingenuity.
This episode is brought to you by:
Fable: Build inclusive products: https://makeitfable.com/designbetter/
Methodical Coffee: Roasted, blended, brewed, served and perfected by verified coffee nerds: https://methodicalcoffee.com/
(use code "designbetter" for 10% off of your order).
Freehand by InVision: The intelligent whiteboard that's half the price of Miro and Mural: https://freehandapp.com/
Help us make the show even better by taking a short survey: www.dbtr.co/survey
If you're interested in sponsoring the show, please contact us at: sponsors@thecuriositydepartment.com
If you'd like to submit a guest idea, please contact us at: contact@thecuriositydepartment.com
Links * SCARF: Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, Fairness * The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt
Our guest today, Robert Brunner, once joked that his tombstone will say: “Here lies the guy who hired Jonathan Ive.” But there’s much more to Robert than that. He did indeed build out the industrial design team at Apple in the 90’s, but he’s also been a partner at Pentagram Design, and was the chief designer of Beats by Dr. Dre, a brand that sold to Apple for $3 billion dollars.
We talk with Robert about the arc of his career, what it takes to run a successful design consulting business, and why great products are more about ideas than objects.
Before we get to the episode, we’ve got something new to share. We just released the first issue of our monthly newsletter. It includes a guest post from April Luelling, former Senior Product Design Recruiter and Program Manager at Meta, who shares tips on working with recruiters as well as current job openings in the design world. We also share highlights from some of our recent interviews, and links to interesting tools and summer reads.
You can subscribe for free to the newsletter, and also get the podcast a week early, at designbetterpodcast.com. Thanks for subscribing, and for listening.
Bio Robert Brunner is an industrial design leader with broad experience in consumer electronics, personal computers, communications, and appliance industries. He was the co-founder of Lunar Design and former Director of Industrial Design at Apple Computer. Robert was also a Partner at Pentagram Design in San Francisco, after which he formed Ammunition LLC, a product design and brand development group in San Francisco, CA. He co-authored the book Do you matter? How great design will make people love your company, published by Financial Times Press.
This episode is brought to you by:
Fable: Build inclusive products: https://makeitfable.com/designbetter/
Methodical Coffee: Roasted, blended, brewed, served and perfected by verified coffee nerds:
https://methodicalcoffee.com/
(use code "designbetter" for 10% off of your order).
Cruise: Cruise is a team of researchers and designers creating a self-driving transportation service for the people and cities we love. Visit design.getcruise.com to learn more about how you can help design the future of transportation!
Freehand by InVision: The intelligent whiteboard that's half the price of Miro and Mural:
https://freehandapp.com/
Help us make the show even better by taking a short survey: www.dbtr.co/survey
If you're interested in sponsoring the show, please contact us at: sponsors@thecuriositydepartment.com
If you'd like to submit a guest idea, please contact us at: contact@thecuriositydepartment.com
Links Rethinking Everyday Things - Robert Brunner keynote
How Design Drives The World's Best Companies w/ Robert Brunner | Chase Jarvis LIVE
Do You Matter? Robert Brunner, Stewart Emery, Russ Hall
Today we welcome back John Maeda, who is currently Vice President of Design and Artificial Intelligence at Microsoft. You’re probably familiar with John’s work, but if not, take a listen to Episode 42 of this show, where he talks about the arc of his remarkable career.
In today’s episode, we talk with John about his role at Microsoft, what’s most misunderstood about AI, and his optimistic take on what the future holds for designers who embrace these new tools.
One more thing before we get to the show…if you can take a moment to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, or rate the show on Spotify, that will help us reach new people. Go ahead and hit the pause button right now and leave your review, we’ll wait for you. 😉 Thank you for listening, and thanks for your support.
Bio John Maeda is an American technologist, designer, engineer, artist, investor, author, and teacher. He is currently the VP of Design and Artificial Intelligence at Microsoft. He’s the author of five books including a gentle intro to AI/ML "How To Speak Machine (Penguin)" and the "Laws of Simplicity (MIT Press)."
John is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NYC, and the Cartier Foundation, Paris. He’s the first recipient of the White House’s National Design Award for algorithmically-generated visualizations informed by data. Maeda serves on the Board of Sonos and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.
He has held positions with Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com; the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins; served as president of the Rhode Island School of Design; and began his early career at the MIT Media Lab at the intersection of computer science and visual art. Named as one of the “75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century” by Esquire, Maeda draws on his diverse background as an MIT-trained engineer, award-winning designer, and MBA-community translator to bring people and ideas together at scale.
This episode is brought to you by:
Fable: Build inclusive products: https://makeitfable.com/designbetter/
Methodical Coffee: Roasted, blended, brewed, served and perfected by verified coffee nerds:
https://methodicalcoffee.com/
(use code "designbetter" for 10% off of your order).
Freehand by InVision: The intelligent whiteboard that's half the price of Miro and Mural:
https://freehandapp.com/
Help us make the show even better by taking a short survey: www.dbtr.co/survey
If you're interested in sponsoring the show, please contact us at: sponsors@thecuriositydepartment.com
If you'd like to submit a guest idea, please contact us at: contact@thecuriositydepartment.com
We may not think about it all that often, but the choices that we make often end up defining who we become. Dr. Sheena Iyengar, the S.T. Lee Professor of Business at the Columbia Business School, makes the psychology of choice and decision-making the focus of much of her research. She wrote a best-selling book called The Art of Choosing, and just published a new book called Think Bigger.
We talk about Sheena’s new book, and dive into why decision-making has become a focus of her career. We also have a lively discussion about design thinking and its shortcomings, and talk about some of the myths associated with innovation.
Join our Substack to get access to episodes a week early, post-show discussions, and other bonus content: https://thecuriositydepartment.substack.com/
Bio Sheena S. Iyengar is the S.T. Lee Professor of Business at the Columbia Business School. She graduated with a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Stanford University.
Dr. Iyengar’s research focuses on the psychology of choice and decision-making, addressing how humans face challenges in a world where they are inundated with options. She has also tackled issues in the business world through the lenses of network analysis and diversity-inspired ideation. She studies the processes used by both groups and individuals in making choices to see how we can improve on innovation, problem-solving, and leveraging business relationships.
Dr. Iyengar currently sits on the board of the Asian University for Women and is looking to expand her work on further board opportunities. She is also a member of the Ashinaga Kenjin-Tatsujin International Advisory Council. She is a blind, first-generation Indian-American who lives in New York City.
This episode is brought to you by:
Fable: Build inclusive products: https://makeitfable.com/designbetter/ Freehand by InVision: The intelligent whiteboard that's half the price of Miro and Mural:
https://freehandapp.com/
Methodical Coffee: Roasted, blended, brewed, served and perfected by verified coffee nerds:
https://methodicalcoffee.com/
(use code "designbetter" for 10% off of your order).
Help us make the show even better by taking a short survey: www.dbtr.co/survey
If you're interested in sponsoring the show, please contact us at: sponsors@thecuriositydepartment.com
If you'd like to submit a guest idea, please contact us at: contact@thecuriositydepartment.com
Get the show transcript, bonus content, and access to episodes a week early on our Substack: https://thecuriositydepartment.substack.com/
Matt Mullenweg started out as a jazz saxophonist, and went on to create WordPress, which is the platform behind an astonishing 42% of the websites in the world.
We chat with Matt about his journey from musician to developer to entrepreneur, his perspective on distributed work, and his thoughts on the transformative capabilities of the latest generation of Generative Artificial Intelligence.
We also come back to Matt’s roots in jazz and his continued love for music and musicians.
Bio (via Wikipedia)
Matthew Mullenweg is an American entrepreneur and web developer living in Houston. He is known for developing and founding the free and open-source web software WordPress, and its parent company Automattic.
After dropping out of the University of Houston, he worked at CNET Networks from 2004 to 2006 until he quit and founded Automattic, an internet company whose brands include WordPress.com, Akismet, Gravatar, VaultPress, IntenseDebate, Crowdsignal, and Tumblr.
Help us make the show even better by taking a short survey: www.dbtr.co/survey
If you're interested in sponsoring the show, please contact us at: sponsors@thecuriositydepartment.com
If you'd like to submit a guest idea, please contact us at: contact@thecuriositydepartment.com
*** This episode is brought to you by: Fable: Build inclusive products: https://makeitfable.com/designbetter/ Freehand by InVision: The intelligent whiteboard that's half the price of Miro and Mural:
https://freehandapp.com/
Methodical Coffee: Roasted, blended, brewed, served and perfected by verified coffee nerds:
https://methodicalcoffee.com/
(use code "designbetter" for 10% off of your order).
Cruise: We’re a team of researchers and designers creating a self-driving transportation service for the people and cities we love. Visit design.getcruise.com to learn more about how you can help design the future of transportation!
Not many people can say they’ve gone from being a nuclear engineer to helping design Air Jordans at Nike. But that’s part of Kevin Bethune’s story, and today we chat with him about his journey from engineering to design.
Kevin also published a best-selling book last year called Reimagining Design: Unlocking Strategic Innovation. We talk about what he hoped to learn from writing the book, and discuss a critique of design thinking, the role of rigor in creativity, and the rewards and challenges of working with multidisciplinary teams. Bio
Kevin Bethune is a Design & innovation executive leader serving, scaling and leading creative teams as large as 30+ nationwide, and influencing global teams as large as 70+ in the definition of design functional excellence and innovation best practices while respecting local differences.
He’s also an entrepreneur and founder of dreams • design + life, a “think tank” combining strategic design and industrial design to address human-centric and holistic opportunities to solve latent needs across industries that benefit from integrated physical, digital and service-oriented experiences.
Kevin is a globally recognized speaker who’s given talks at TED, DMI, IDSA, AIGA, MIT, Northwestern, Carnegie Mellon, Notre Dame, ArtCenter, Lucerne, Nike, BCG and Google Design.
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Help us make the show even better by taking a short survey: www.dbtr.co/survey
If you're interested in sponsoring the show, please contact us at: sponsors@thecuriositydepartment.com
If you'd like to submit a guest idea, please contact us at: contact@thecuriositydepartment.com
- This episode is brought to you by: Fable: Build inclusive products: https://makeitfable.com/designbetter/ Freehand by InVision: The intelligent whiteboard that's half the price of Miro and Mural: https://freehandapp.com/
Methodical Coffee: Roasted, blended, brewed, served and perfected by verified coffee nerds: https://methodicalcoffee.com/
(use code "designbetter" for 10% off of your order). Athletic Greens: Build a foundation for better health: http://athleticgreens.com/designbetter
For many of us, being the co-creator of two of the most transformative products of the early 21st century—the iPod and iPhone—would be enough for one career. But Tony Fadell was just getting started.
After his time at Apple, Tony went on to start Nest Labs, known for its smart home products like thermostats and fire alarms, which sold to Google for over 3 billion dollars. He’s authored more than 300 patents, and with his newest venture, the Build Collective, he’s investing time and money to help engineers and scientists build a greener world.
He’s also written a book about what he’s learned over the years called Build. In this interview, we chat with him about what some of his early failures taught him, why the best teams are multigenerational, and how to deal with the different types of—for lack of a better word—a*holes you might encounter in your career.
Bio
Tony Fadell started his 30+ year Silicon Valley career at General Magic, the most influential startup nobody has ever heard of. Then he went on to make the iPod and iPhone, start Nest and create the Nest Learning Thermostat. Throughout his career Tony has authored more than 300 patents. He now leads the investment and advisory firm Build Collective, which invests its money and time to help engineers and scientists build a greener world, in which every person enjoys a longer, richer life.
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Help us make the show even better by taking a short survey: www.dbtr.co/survey
If you're interested in sponsoring the show, please contact us at: sponsors@thecuriositydepartment.com
If you'd like to submit a guest idea, please contact us at: contact@thecuriositydepartment.com
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This episode is brought to you by:
Fable: Build inclusive products: https://makeitfable.com/designbetter/ Freehand by InVision: The intelligent whiteboard that's half the price of Miro and Mural: https://freehandapp.com/
Methodical Coffee: Roasted, blended, brewed, served and perfected by verified coffee nerds: https://methodicalcoffee.com/ (use code "designbetter" for 10% off of your order). Athletic Greens: Build a foundation for better health: http://athleticgreens.com/designbetter
It’s a challenging time in tech right now. Chances are, if you haven’t been directly affected by the layoffs, you know someone—or many people—who have.
In today’s episode, we’re welcoming back Judy Wert, along with her son and colleague Daniel. At their executive search firm Wert & Co, they’ve guided many leaders through navigating career changes. We discuss the layoffs, and strategies for dealing with changes in your own career when the environment is as difficult as it is right now.
We’ll also discuss what skills you need to cultivate as an individual contributor if you want to advance your career, and the ins-and-outs of transparency when it comes to salary policies. Thanks for joining us, and we hope it’s helpful wherever you are in your career.
Bios
Judy WertJudy has been working with the leadership of innovative companies for over 25 years. She has earned an international reputation as a pivotal force in executive search. A trusted authority in the world of design and business, Judy is also known for bringing an added dimension to her work—a humanistic approach—fostering deep relationships through empathy, intuition, and curiosity. Daniel WertWith an intimate understanding of venture-backed start-ups, Daniel has developed expertise in recruiting at scale, executive search, and in the people operations that hold businesses together. He has spent the last decade in-house, building companies, managing cross-functional teams, and coaching executive leaders to better understand the value of both people and design.
What is the difference between creativity and innovation? What does it take to find your superpowers? How can you become open to embracing failure to learn and grow?
Tina Seelig, Executive Director of the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program at Stanford, has spent a large part of her career answering questions like these, while studying and teaching creativity, leadership, and entrepreneurship.
Tina has a PhD in neuroscience, and we speak with her about how her background influences the way that she approaches these topics. We also discuss how to approach creativity in a corporate environment, and why being a good listener is an underrated superpower that many of us can cultivate.
Bio
Dr. Tina Seelig is Executive Director of Knight-Hennessy Scholars and Emeritus Director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program at Stanford School of Engineering. She teaches courses on leadership, creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school) at Stanford.
In 2014, Dr. Seelig was honored with the SVForum Visionary Award, and in 2009 she received the Gordon Prize from the National Academy of Engineering, recognizing her as a national leader in engineering education. She also received the 2014 MS&E Award for Graduate Teaching, the 2008 National Olympus Innovation Award, and the 2005 and 2019 Stanford Tau Beta Pi Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.
Dr. Seelig earned her Ph.D. from Stanford University Medical School in 1985 where she studied Neuroscience. She has worked as a management consultant for Booz, Allen, and Hamilton, as a multimedia producer at Compaq Computer Corporation, and was the founder of a multimedia company called BookBrowser.
She has written 17 popular science books and educational games. Her books include The Epicurean Laboratory and Incredible Edible Science, published by Scientific American; and a series of twelve games called Games for Your Brain, published by Chronicle Books. Her three newest books, published by HarperCollins are What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20, inGenius, and Creativity Rules.
Design Operations, or “Design Ops,” is entering a new era. No longer the new kid on the block, it’s becoming a required discipline in many design organizations. We wanted to catch up to see where design ops is now, so who better to chat with than Meredith Black, a guest from our second season back in 2018.
After leaving Pinterest, where she was head of Design Operations, Meredith co-founded the DesignOps Assembly, which focuses on fostering community, offering educational opportunities, sharing resources, and generating best practices within the DesignOps Industry.
We chat with Meredith about what’s changed with design ops in the past four years, the skills that a person needs to be successful in a design ops role, and what she’s hoping to accomplish with the DesignOps Assembly.
Bio
Meredith Black is the co-founder of DesignOps Assembly and now a consultant working with companies worldwide to implement DesignOps within their organizations.
Prior, Meredith spent five years at Pinterest, where she started and grew the DesignOps team into an internationally renowned team while also being instrumental in growing and building the Pinterest Product Design Team.
You can listen to her discuss DesignOps on an earlier episode of the Design Better Podcast, or check out “The DesignOps Handbook.” Meredith is also the co-host of the Reconsidering Podcast, along with our very own Aarron Walter.
There is probably no better training ground than Nike to learn about creativity as a team sport, and Greg Hoffman, former Chief Marketing Officer of Nike, shares this lesson—along with many other valuable insights—in his new book, Emotion by Design.
In this episode, we chat with Greg about how his childhood shaped the way he thinks about creativity and collaboration, how working in inspiring spaces can influence your work (and how you might accomplish that in a remote environment), and about curiosity as a catalyst for creativity.
Bio
Greg Hoffman is a global brand leader, former NIKE Chief Marketing Officer, and founder and principal of the brand advisory group Modern Arena.
For over 27 years, Greg held marketing, design, and innovation leadership roles at NIKE, including time as the brand’s CMO. In his most recent role as NIKE’s Vice President of Global Brand Innovation, he led teams tasked with envisioning the future of storytelling and consumer experiences for the brand.
Greg oversaw NIKE’s brand communications and experiences as NIKE was solidifying its position as one of the preeminent brand storytellers of the modern era and the leading innovator in digital and physical brand experiences. His role in the rise of marketing and design through that period was recognized in 2015 when Fast Company named him one of the Most Creative People in Business. He’s also been recognized for his transformative leadership in the industry through the Business Insider’s 50 Most Innovative CMO’s and AdAge’s Power Players annual lists.
For over two decades, he was a major strategic and creative influence for Nike at every major global sporting event, for the launches of NIKE’s signature products and innovations, and for the building of the brands of its athletes.
Through his leadership, Nike drove themes of equality, sustainability, and empowerment through sport in some of its most significant brand communications. That work was, in part, driven by his role on the Advisory Board of the NIKE Black Employee Network and as a member of the NIKE Foundation Board of Directors.
Today as founder and principal of Modern Arena, Greg advises Fortune 1000 brands, startups, and nonprofits in creating brand strength, business growth, and social impact. He sits on the advisory boards of the brands Shred Adventures and AO-Air and is a board member for Summit Impact, the philanthropic arm of Summit Series.
In addition, he is the Branding instructor at the University of Oregon's Lundquist College of Business and the Innovation Chair of the Board of Trustees for the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. In 2022, Greg brings all of his brand experience to the world through his new book Emotion by Design: Creative Leadership Lessons From a Life at Nike.
There is probably no better training ground than Nike to learn about creativity as a team sport, and Greg Hoffman, former Chief Marketing Officer of Nike, shares this lesson—along with many other valuable insights—in his new book, Emotion by Design.
In this episode, we chat with Greg about how his childhood shaped the way he thinks about creativity and collaboration, how working in inspiring spaces can influence your work (and how you might accomplish that in a remote environment), and about curiosity as a catalyst for creativity.
Bio
Greg Hoffman is a global brand leader, former NIKE Chief Marketing Officer, and founder and principal of the brand advisory group Modern Arena.
For over 27 years, Greg held marketing, design, and innovation leadership roles at NIKE, including time as the brand’s CMO. In his most recent role as NIKE’s Vice President of Global Brand Innovation, he led teams tasked with envisioning the future of storytelling and consumer experiences for the brand.
Greg oversaw NIKE’s brand communications and experiences as NIKE was solidifying its position as one of the preeminent brand storytellers of the modern era and the leading innovator in digital and physical brand experiences. His role in the rise of marketing and design through that period was recognized in 2015 when Fast Company named him one of the Most Creative People in Business. He’s also been recognized for his transformative leadership in the industry through the Business Insider’s 50 Most Innovative CMO’s and AdAge’s Power Players annual lists.
For over two decades, he was a major strategic and creative influence for Nike at every major global sporting event, for the launches of NIKE’s signature products and innovations, and for the building of the brands of its athletes.
Through his leadership, Nike drove themes of equality, sustainability, and empowerment through sport in some of its most significant brand communications. That work was, in part, driven by his role on the Advisory Board of the NIKE Black Employee Network and as a member of the NIKE Foundation Board of Directors.
Today as founder and principal of Modern Arena, Greg advises Fortune 1000 brands, startups, and nonprofits in creating brand strength, business growth, and social impact. He sits on the advisory boards of the brands Shred Adventures and AO-Air and is a board member for Summit Impact, the philanthropic arm of Summit Series.
In addition, he is the Branding instructor at the University of Oregon's Lundquist College of Business and the Innovation Chair of the Board of Trustees for the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. In 2022, Greg brings all of his brand experience to the world through his new book Emotion by Design: Creative Leadership Lessons From a Life at Nike.
Often it’s the little things, and not the flashy technology or slick user interface that make a product or experience memorable. The handwritten note from customer service, or the humorous quote that pops up as you’re waiting for a screen to load. Our guest today, Felicia Hatcher, calls these “moments of enchantment,” and she advocates for more opportunities for a human touch, as artificial intelligence and machine learning push us in the opposite direction.
Felicia is the CEO of Black Ambition, an organization founded by Pharrell Williams that works towards closing the opportunity and wealth gap through entrepreneurship. Prior to her current role, she was Chief Popsicle and co-owner of Feverish Ice Cream, and was Co-Founder & Executive Director of the Center for Black Innovation.
In our conversation, we talk about the perpetual growth and achievement across her career, what she learned bootstrapping her ice cream business from her parent’s backyard to Fortune 500 clients, and how her entrepreneurial experiences shape the way she advises and mentors students and entrepreneurs.
Bio
Felecia Hatcher is on a mission to rid communities of innovation deserts by working with community leaders and government officials to create inclusive and diverse tech/startup ecosystems as the Co-Founder of Code Fever, Black Tech Week and Tribe Cowork and Urban Innovation Lab.
Hatcher has raised over 3 million dollars to support Code Fever's work which sits at the intersection of economic development and inclusive innovation. As an Author, Social Entrepreneur and the former Chief Popsicle of Feverish Ice Cream, Hatcher was named one of the Empact 100 Top 100 Entrepreneurs under the age of 30 by the White House and Kauffman Foundation in 2011, a 2014 White House Champion of Change for STEM Access and Diversity, Ruth Shack Honoree, 2017 Comcast/Nationswell Tech Impact Allstar, a Black Enterprise 2017 TechConnext Game Changer and 2016 Innovator of the Week, Essence Magazine Tech Master, and featured on the NBC Today Show, MSNBC, FORBES, INC, The Cooking Channel, & Grio’s 100 African American’s Making History.
If you don’t know who Seth Godin is, just type “Seth” into Google or DuckDuckGo. The first entry will lead you to his blog, where he writes—every day—about marketing, design, writing, how being a better human will make you better at your job.
Once you’ve started to read his blog, you’ll probably be hungry for more of his wisdom. He’s written over eighteen bestselling books on business and marketing, including Linchpin, Purple Cow, and The Dip.
We’ve been following Seth for a long time, and his writing and speaking have influenced how we think about creating and marketing products. So it was a huge honor to have him on our show, where we spoke about subjects ranging from how to take risks in your career, to why being creative is an act of generosity, to the idea of “creative destruction.”
We hope you enjoy our conversation with Seth as much as we did, and after you finish, we encourage you to go make a ruckus.
Takeaways:
- Why the counterintuitive idea of “surplus” means that, despite everything going on in the world, we all have access to more resources than the last King of France did.
- Why writing is often the best starting point for almost any type of creative work.
- Why a company is more like an organism than an organization
Bio
Seth is an entrepreneur, best-selling author, speaker and teacher. In addition to launching one of the most popular blogs in the world, he has written 19 best-selling books, including The Dip, Linchpin, Purple Cow, Tribes, and What To Do When It's Your Turn (And It's Always Your Turn). His most recent book, This is Marketing, was an instant bestseller in countries around the world.
Though renowned for his writing and speaking, Seth also founded two companies, Squidoo and Yoyodyne (acquired by Yahoo!).
By focusing on everything from effective marketing and leadership, to the spread of ideas and changing everything, Seth has been able to motivate and inspire countless people around the world.
In 2013, Seth was one of just three professionals inducted into the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame. In an astonishing turn of events, in May 2018, he was inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame as well. He might be the only person in both.
Seth created the altMBA and Marketing Seminar to transform online education and help people connect with their audience.
If you’re looking for an inspiring human being, it would be hard to beat Dr. Sian Proctor. Dr. Proctor is a geoscientist, and also an artist and poet who uses her afro-futurist space art to encourage conversations about women of color in the space industry.
For 21 years, she taught geology, sustainability, and planetary science. She also happens to be an astronaut(!), and was the mission pilot for the Inspiration4 all-civilian orbital mission to space. Her call sign “Leo” was eaned from her crewmates, who consider her a modern-day Rennaisance woman in the mold of Leonardo DaVinci.
This special episode of the Design Better Podcast was recorded at an internal event for InVision, where we brought Dr.Proctor in to speak to our team. After her inspiring presentation, we had the chance to interview her, and we spoke about topics ranging from imposter syndrome, to learning to speak the language of your collaborators, to the natural synthesis between art and science.
Bio
Dr. Proctor is a geoscientist, explorer, space artist, and astronaut. She is the mission pilot for the Inspiration4 all-civilian orbital mission to space. She is also one of The Explorer’s Club 50: Fifty People Changing the World. Her motto is called Space2inspire where she encourages people to use their unique, one-of-a-kind strengths, and passion to inspire those within their reach and beyond. She believes that we need to actively strive for a J.E.D.I. space: a just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive space as we advance human spaceflight.
Dr. Proctor spent 21 years as a professor teaching geology, sustainability, and planetary science at South Mountain Community College, Phoenix, Arizona. She is currently the Open Educations Resource Coordinator for the Maricopa Community College District. She has a B.S. in Environmental Science, an M.S. in Geology, and a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction: Science Education. She recently finished a sabbatical at Arizona State University’s Center for Education Through Exploration creating virtual field trips. She did her 2012-13 sabbatical at the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Emergency Management Institute developing their science of disasters curriculum. She has appeared in multiple international science shows and is currently on A World Without NASA and Strange Evidence. You can follow her on social media @DrSianProctor.
If you lead a team of over 700 people, what skills would you need to bring to the table to help them collaborate effectively? In today’s episode, we chat with Katrina Alcorn, General Manager of Design at IBM, about how she develops partnerships across her organization to resolve conflicts and get aligned. We also talk to Katrina about the challenges that large teams face in remote and hybrid environments, how her training in journalism influences her work as a leader, and what she learned about living a balanced life from writing her book Maxed Out: American Moms on the Brink.
Bio
Katrina Alcorn spent the first decade+ of her career as a consultant, leading strategic design and research initiatives for startups, non-profits, and Fortune 500s in a variety of industries including financial services, medical devices, energy, e-commerce, the arts, and education.
In 2015 she went “in-house” and learned what it means to be a change-maker from the inside. Katrina built two successful design practices, the first at Hot Studio (bought by Facebook in 2013) and the second at Autodesk, centralizing all digital design and research functions, leading to major improvements in e-commerce sales and customer satisfaction.
You’re sitting at your desk, trying to do some deep work—finishing up a presentation, writing some code, sketching out a new interface—and you hear a noise. It’s the familiar knock of Slack, or the chime of your e-mail inbox. All of a sudden, you’re taken away from a state of flow and into an attempt to multi-task, which is the enemy of getting things done.
By some estimates, distractions cost the US economy more than $650 billion dollars a year in lost productivity. And Nir Eyal, bestselling author of the book Hooked, may have been the inspiration behind some of the most habit-forming products out there.
But he also has another book, Indistractable, which can give you the tools to avoid distractions both at work and at home. In this episode, we chat with Nir about what got him interested in the intersection of technology and psychology, how we as consumers can have a better relationship with habit-forming products, and how he—as a parent— thinks about kids and technology.
Bio
Nir Eyal writes, consults, and teaches about the intersection of psychology, technology, and business. Nir previously taught as a Lecturer in Marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford.
Nir co-founded and sold two tech companies since 2003 and was dubbed by The M.I.T. Technology Review as, “The Prophet of Habit-Forming Technology.” Bloomberg Businessweek wrote, “Nir Eyal is the habits guy. Want to understand how to get app users to come back again and again? Then Eyal is your man.”
He is the author of two bestselling books, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.
Indistractable received critical acclaim, winning the Outstanding Works of Literature Award as well as being named one of the Best Business and Leadership Books of the Year by Amazon and one of the Best Personal Development Books of the Year by Audible. The Globe and Mail called Indistractable, “the best business book of 2019.”
In addition to blogging at NirAndFar.com, Nir’s writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Harvard Business Review, Time Magazine, and Psychology Today.
Nir invests in habit-forming products that improve users’ lives. Some of his past investments include Eventbrite (NYSE:EB), Anchor.fm (acquired by Spotify), Kahoot! (KAHOOT-ME.OL), Canva, Homelight, Product Hunt, Marco Polo, Byte Foods, FocusMate, Dynamicare, Wise App, and Cutback Coach.
Nir attended The Stanford Graduate School of Business and Emory University.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal last year, Detria Williamson, former Chief Marketing Officer of IDEO, said that “diversity can be engineered and inclusion cannot.” In this episode, we dive deeper into that statement, and also ask Detria what roadblocks she encountered over the course of her career—from working as a head of marketing in Dubai, to her most recent role at IDEO. We also ask her about what it means when design becomes commoditized, and how remote and hybrid work impact inclusivity.
Bio
Detria Williamson is an internationally recognized digital marketer, who for over 20 years has helped category-leading companies become experience-led and content-driven. Informed by her experiences living and working from the U.S., London, Singapore, and the Middle East, she created the ICX (inclusive customer experience) approach, enabling visionary leaders to embrace inclusivity as an end-to-end element of their business ecosystem.
Guy Kawasaki has certainly had a remarkable career. From gaining popularity as the Chief Evangelist at Apple for the Macintosh computer in the 1980’s, to authoring fifteen books, to hosting the Remarkable People podcast, Guy has made a habit of trying new things During our conversation with Guy, we talk about why it’s important to be able to make a sale, no matter what your role is. We discuss the start of his career at Apple, and how he got developers to write software for a relatively unknown platform. And we ask his advice for people just getting started in their own careers, whether that’s in tech, writing, or entrepreneurship.
The Ministry of Silly Walks. The Cheese Shop. French Taunting. If you haven’t seen any of these Monty Python sketches before, do us a favor and go watch one or two of them. You’ll discover—or re-discover—why our guest for this episode is a creative comic legend.
John Cleese starred in and co-wrote the award-winning series Fawlty Towers, was nominated for an Academy Award for the screenplay of A Fish Called Wanda, and even has a species of lemur named after him (Cleese’s wooly lemur, Avahi cleesei). He’s also an expert on the creative process, and so if you’re looking for a new framework to level-up your own workflow, his book Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide is a great resource.
We talk with John about his new book, and also about creative collaboration in the midst of friction, how to be comfortable with ambiguity, and creating boundaries of space and time to get in a creative mode. We also get to ask him a question that’s been bugging us ever since we first watched Monty Python and The Holy Grail.
After everything that happened in 2020, we can all use a little more laughter in our lives. We hope our interview with John sparks some joy, and leaves you with some new creative tools. Thanks for listening.
Takeaways:
- How John’s childhood influences the way he approaches creativity
- Why John uses writing to explore ideas
- What “closed mode” and “open mode” are (and how they relate to convergent and divergent modes of thinking).
Bio
John Cleese is an English actor, comedian, writer, and film producer. He achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report. In the late 1960s, he co-founded Monty Python, the comedy troupe responsible for the sketch show Monty Python's Flying Circus and the four Monty Python films, And Now for Something Completely Different, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Life of Brian, and The Meaning of Life. In the mid-1970s, Cleese and his first wife, Connie Booth, co-wrote and starred in the British sitcom Fawlty Towers. Later, he co-starred with Kevin Kline, Jamie Lee Curtis, and former Python colleague Michael Palin in A Fish Called Wanda and Fierce Creatures. He also starred in Clockwise, and has appeared in many other films, including two James Bond films, two Harry Potter films, and the last three Shrek films. He is also the author of Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide.
In his book The Laws of Simplicity, John Maeda says that “simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.” Our final guest this season, Eileen Fisher, is a master at making the simple, meaningful.
Eileen is the founder of her eponymous and iconic fashion brand Eileen Fisher, Inc., which is known for its ethical & sustainable practices, and elegant yet simple clothing. She started the company in 1984, and grew it from her first sale of $3000, to annual revenue of over $300 million.
We speak with Eileen about her design principles, how she thinks about form, function, and sustainability, and how systems thinking has helped her develop a brand that stands the test of time.
We’re so glad you joined us for the sixth season of our show, and hope you were inspired along the way. Stay tuned for the next season, and in the meantime, we’ll be sharing some of our best episodes from past seasons, in case you missed them. Thanks for listening.
Bio
Eileen Fisher founded her women's fashion brand in 1984, with $350 of startup money. It's since grown into a company with over 1200 employees and hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenue.
The company focuses on producing simple, timeless clothing, with sustainability initiatives including selling used pieces in excellent condition, resold through their Renew take-back program, as well as a Waste No More program which transforms damaged clothes into a new felted fabric, used to create wall hangings, pillows, and other accessories.
If you’re a fan of architecture and design, you’re probably familiar with the mid-century modern movement. It brought a simple, clean aesthetic inspired by the Bauhaus and International movements to the US. Heath Ceramics, founded by Edith Heath in 1948 and influenced by mid-century modern principles, is still making beautiful hand-crafted tableware and architectural tile in Sausalito, California.
We wanted to chat with Heath’s current owner, Robin Petravic, to find out how they approach designing within the legacy of the Heath brand, as well as the story of how he and his partner and co-owner Catherine Bailey came to be owners of the company.
We also talk with Robin about how the pandemic affected their business, and some of the collaborative challenges and opportunities they faced in transitioning to a hybrid-remote scenario.
Bio
Robin Petravic runs the day-to-day business of Heath Ceramics with a focus on operations, manufacturing, and retail. As co-owner, he also sets the long-term vision and goals for the company which is led by design and a passion for creative opportunity, with the responsibility to ensure they are met while maintaining financial viability and the ability to continue to invest for the long term. In business since 1948, the company has 130+ employees and is headquartered in Sausalito, CA, where all design, marketing, and administrative functions are based, and has two factories in Sausalito and San Francisco which produce all of is ceramic dinnerware and tile.
Prior to Heath Ceramics, Robin studied product design in the MFA program at Stanford University, and worked as a product designer and mechanical engineer at several companies.
Vicki Tan has worked at companies that change the way we travel, think about our mental health, and access music from around the globe. To each of these roles she has brought her background in psychology, to better understand the needs of the people using these products.
We chat with Vicki about some of the things she has learned over the course of her career, from Lyft to Headspace to Spotify, the ways that the pandemic has changed her work and her creative process, and how her team does research.
Vicki also talks about why she regularly takes a sabbatical from her work, and why “finding umami” is important to figuring out the core mission of a company.
Bio
Vicki Tan is an Associate Principal Product Designer at Spotify Earlier in her career, she was a senior product designer at Headspace, worked on communication and UX design at Google, and product design at Lyft. According to Frank Yoo, design director at Lyft, Vicki “is positive and thoughtful and puts as much care into people and teams as she does creating the artifacts themselves.”
The way that we work has been disrupted by the global pandemic, and for those of us who are fortunate enough to have kept our jobs, it’s also caused many of us to question why we do what we do, and wonder if there are ways we could have a more positive influence on the world.
We thought it would be great to speak with Judy Wert, co-founder of the executive search agency Wert & Co, who has guided many leaders through navigating career changes, and who shares her perspective on knowing when it’s time for something new, and when it might be better to stick it out.
We also chat with Judy about pay transparency, the kinds of skills that individual contributors should cultivate to advance in their career, and tips on negotiating your salary.
Bio
Judy has been working with the leadership of innovative companies for over 25 years. She has earned an international reputation as a pivotal force in executive search. A trusted authority in the world of design and business, Judy is also known for bringing an added dimension to her work—a humanistic approach—fostering deep relationships through empathy, intuition, and curiosity.
Benjamin Evans, Inclusive Design Lead for Airbnb, is part of a new kind of problem solvers tackling issues like racism, sexism, and bias in digital product design. In this episode of the Design Better Podcast, Eli and Aarron chat with Benjamin about using techniques like design thinking, research, and storytelling to ensure a more inclusive experience for all your users.
Do you have a colleague who just doesn’t get what design is all about? Or maybe you’ve tried explaining it to your parents, but they just respond by asking you to fix their printer.
If that’s the case, then Scott Berkun has written a book for you, to give to them. It’s called How Design Makes the World, and it’s a great beginner’s guide to how design shapes just about everything we interact with in modern society, for better or for worse.
It is also a good refresher for those of us who are more well-versed in design. Scott—who has written other bestselling books like The Myths of Innovation and Making Things Happen—does a great job of distilling design concepts down into everyday examples that are accessible and engaging.
In our conversation, we chat with Scott about the differences in thinking between designers and engineers, what UX design has to do with deep-sea anglerfish, and how good design is often shaped by understanding the constraints on a product.
Bio
Scott Berkun is a bestselling author and popular speaker on creativity, leading projects, public speaking, design and many other subjects. He’s the author of eight books, including How Design Makes The World, The Myths of Innovation, Confessions of a Public Speaker, and The Year Without Pants. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Guardian, Wired magazine, USA Today, Fast Company, National Public Radio, CNN, NPR, MSNBC and other media. His popular blog is at scottberkun.com and he tweets at @berkun.
The most innovative electric car announced in 2021 was not a Tesla, but a Ford. The new Ford F-150 Lightning, a fully electric version of the best-selling vehicle in America for the past 30 years, is the culmination of thorough user research and fresh thinking on a familiar product.
We were curious to learn how design and innovation are playing a role in Ford’s transformation, so we’re excited to bring Sandy Fershee, lab director at D-Ford Detroit, on to the show.
Sandy talks about her role at D-Ford, and we also discuss the challenges of doing research & development in a large organization, how her team shares their design and innovation tools with the whole company, and how they approach design at the intersection of hardware and software.
Bio
Sandy Fershee leads a human-centered design team at At D-Ford Detroit, pushing the edge of Ford’s future strategies. They design new products, services, and ventures that customers love and drive business profitability.
Prior to this role, Sandy was the global leader of Experience Design at Ford, transforming Ford’s ways of working through human-centered design and creating new possibilities for future customer and business value.
Sandy was also Managing Director at the agency Punchcut, and Design Manager at Motorola.
Over 50 years after humans first landed on the moon, it’s still extremely difficult—and expensive—to get anything into orbit. But imagine if there were a more affordable way to give scientists and entrepreneurs access to space. We could develop more efficient agriculture to feed people more affordably and sustainably, or more closely monitor the evolution of dangerous storm patterns to save lives.
The company Astra is on a mission to do just that, by creating a lower-cost platform that offers smaller, more frequent launches to get satellites into space. We sat down with Astra co-founder and CEO Chris Kemp to learn more about how his teams collaborate on the immense technical challenges involved, and how design is playing an increasingly important role as traditional control room roles become automated.
Chris has an impressive background, from founding 3 companies to being the CTO of NASA, and we dive into the arc of his career, the lessons he has learned in leading people, and how he communicates mission and vision to his teams.
Bio
Chris is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Astra. Previously, Chris founded several tech start-ups and served as the Chief Technology Officer of NASA, where he introduced new technologies into America’s space program and founded OpenStack, the largest and fastest-growing open-source project in history. While at NASA, Chris worked at the White House to develop the cloud strategy for the United States.
Chris has been recognized in the Silicon Valley Business Journal "40 under 40," the CNBC Disruptor 50 list, and received the prestigious "Federal 100" award for his service at NASA.
Listen as Julie Zhuo, VP of Product Design at Facebook and author of The Making of a Manager, recalls some of her earliest professional experiences at one of the fastest growing companies on the planet. She reveals how she got her start and grew to be a highly influential design leader renowned for building top-notch teams. Julie talks about the difference between leading and managing, and shares personal examples that can help you advance your career.
Bio
Julie Zhuo is one of Silicon Valley’s top product design executives and author of The Making of a Manager. Aside from her day job as VP of Product Design at Facebook, Julie writes about technology, design, and leadership on her popular blog The Year of the Looking Glass and in The New York Times and Fast Company.
In its 144-year history, the Rhode Island School of Design—also known as RISD—has graduated numerous notable designers and creatives, from graphic designers Shepard Fairey and Tobias Frere-Jones, to painter Kara Walker, to cartoonist Roz Chast, to Airbnb co-founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia.
Rosanne Somerson became president of RISD in 2015 after a distinguished teaching career there (and after John Maeda’s departure). We speak with her about some of the common traits of RISDs most successful graduates. We also learn what she brings from her own studio practice of furniture design to her current work, how COVID has changed higher education, and about the power of a degree in the arts.
Rosanne also talks about how the overlap of disciplines leads to innovation, and the importance of staying connected to your craft.
Bio
An accomplished educator, academic leader and furniture designer, and a sought-after speaker and juror, President Rosanne Somerson is an advocate for the arts and the relevance of RISD’s unique type of studio-based education. As the 17th president she is committed to expanding inclusion, equity and access to enhance a genuinely rich learning environment full of diverse experiences, viewpoints and talents. Somerson is also a practitioner with three decades of experience directing her own furniture design studio.
Somerson has deep roots at RISD—extending back to when she was an undergraduate student at the college in the 1970s. In 1985 she returned to campus to teach furniture design, and in 1995 became the first leader of RISD’s new Furniture Design department, helping to establish its strong reputation in the field. After subsequently serving in several academic leadership roles on an interim basis, Somerson emerged as the top candidate in two separate international searches, which led to her appointment as provost in 2012 and then president in 2015.
An interview with Somerson is included in the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art Oral History Project and she has earned fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts along with the James Renwick Alliance Distinguished Crafts Educator Award and a 2019 Pell Award for Outstanding Leadership in the Arts.
If you’re lucky enough to look up into a clear night sky and see the thousands of stars visible to the naked eye, it’s hard not to wonder, “are there other planets like ours out there?” Our guest for this episode, Professor Sara Seager, is on a mission to discover potentially habitable planets outside our solar system.
Sara is an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at MIT, and to discover these exoplanets, she relies not only on her own brilliance—she’s the recipient of a Macarthur Fellowship, otherwise known as the “Genius Grant”—but also on some pretty extreme collaboration across different disciplines.
In the course of our conversation, we talk to Sara about how these teams push beyond initial friction, and how giving herself permission to fail has driven much of her success. Sara is also the author of a memoir titled The Smallest Lights in the Universe, and we talk to her about the book and bringing her full self to work
Bio
Sara Seager is the Class of 1941 Professor of Planetary Science, Professor of Physics, and Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her past research is credited with laying the foundation for the field of exoplanet atmospheres, while her current research focuses on exoplanet atmospheres and the future search for signs of life by way of atmospheric biosignature gases.
Professor Seager is involved with a number of space-based exoplanet searches including as the Deputy Science Director for the MIT-led NASA mission TESS, as the PI for the on-orbit JPL/MIT CubeSat ASTERIA, and as a lead for Starshade Rendezvous Mission (a space-based mission concept under technology development for direct imaging discovery and characterization of Earth analogs).
Having authored three of her own books (’The Smallest Lights in the Universe: a Memoir’, ‘Exoplanets and the Search For Habitable Worlds’, and ‘Exoplanet Atmospheres: Physical Processes’) and edited a fourth, Sara has experience consolidating years of research into an authoritative resource and is credited with producing a book that “will be a bible for students and professionals interested in exoplanet atmospheres.”
To Sell is Human. That’s the title of one of Dan Pink’s books, and also the foundational concept for his recent Masterclass on persuasion. Dan is also the bestselling author of books like When, Drive, and A Whole New Mind, and we sat down with him to discuss how we’re all tasked with selling something in our day-to-day roles, and why collaboration is the key to being persuasive.
We chat with Dan about creating meaningful connections in a Zoom-dominated workplace, and giving teams a sense of purpose given all that is going on in the world today. Dan also dives into the reasons that design literacy is critical for all business leaders who want to remain relevant.
We hope you enjoy this mini-masterclass with Dan, and thanks for joining us as we kick off the sixth season of the show.
If you’re anything like us, you’ve been watching more than your fair share of Netflix this past year. And with such great original content, from The Queen’s Gambit to more obscure shows like Midnight Diner, we were curious what it takes from a product design perspective to create and deliver these shows to a massive audience, in a way that’s accessible not only to audiences here in the US, but all around the world.
So we sat down to chat with Steve Johnson, Vice President of Design, and Rochelle King, Vice President of Creative Production at Netflix, to talk about how they approach inclusive design for a global audience, how they use a data-informed rather than data-driven product strategy, and why looking for passion rather than for credentials might be the key to your next great hire.
This is the last episode of Season Five of the Design Better Podcast. But don’t worry, Season Six is just around the corner, where we’ll be sharing interviews with guests like bestselling author Dan Pink, who will teach us how to use persuasion to be better at our jobs, and Professor Sara Seager, an astrophysicist and planetary scientist whose research on exoplanets can shed light on how we can be better collaborators here on Earth.
Also, in-between seasons we’re going to do a bonus Q&A show, where you’ll have a chance to record your questions about design, creativity, leadership, or any of the topics we cover here on the show and we’ll do our best to answer them. Just head over to http://dbtr.co/ama and fill out the short survey there to submit your question.
Takeaways:
- Learn about the ROI for inclusive design
- Hear how the design team at Netflix approaches the power dynamics between product and design
- Understand how to prioritize and say no to work that won’t impact the business
Of the designed objects we interact with on a daily basis, our homes are probably the most influential on the way we live our lives. In Apple’s new series Home, the creators investigate the ways that some of the world’s most imaginative dwellings help their occupants reframe the way they live and work.
In this episode, we chat with Matt Weaver and Doug Pray, who are both executive producers for the show. Matt also produced several other notable documentaries, including Chef’s Table and Jiro Dreams of Sushi. In addition to directing several episodes of the Home, Doug has directed or produced a number of documentaries including The Defiant Ones, and collaborated with Doug on the documentary Surfwise.
We’re always curious how creative folks in different industries address challenging design problems, so we asked Matt and Doug about how the subjects of Home used their own stubbornness and resilience to push their projects forward, how constraints of location and material encouraged creative solutions, and about some of the common threads they see across creative disciplines.
Takeaways:
- How the creators profiled in Home think about seeing: seeing in detail, seeing the unseen, seeing opportunity where others don’t, seeing a better way.
- How design can shape behavior by building community, connecting us to nature, and calming and shifting emotions.
- The benefits of bringing professional life into personal life, and living an intentional life.
Bios
Doug Pray is best known as a director of feature documentary films about American subcultures and maverick individuals. He has also directed short films and documentary-style commercials for a wide range of major clients and causes. He received a BA in sociology from Colorado College and an MFA from the UCLA School of Film and Television. He recently wrote, edited, and executive produced The Defiant Ones (2017), a television documentary mini-series that aired on HBO and garnered a Grammy Award and five Emmy nominations.
Matt Weaver is an executive producer of Apple’s TV series Home, and also produced many other notable documentaries such as Chef’s Table, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, The First Monday in May, and Jiro Dreams of Sushi.
As we head into a new year—and leave behind a year that was challenging for just about everyone on the planet, with the hope that this year will be better for all—we wanted to share an interview with one of the most optimistic, creative, and insightful people we know: designer, entrepreneur, and educator Jason Mayden.
When we first interviewed Jason in 2018 for one of our Design Better Conversations, we knew we had to get him on the podcast. He had such a unique perspective on design as a service to humanity that we sensed our audience would love to hear his story.
We spoke with Jason on a wide range of topics, from how a near-death experience in childhood shaped his career and life, to how he maintains his energy and focus, to why being a polymath is an enormous advantage in today’s job market.
We finish the interview on a topic that strays a little from our usual subjects but is ultimately more important: how through all of our individual struggles we can benefit from recognizing our shared humanity.
Takeaways:
- Learn what drove Jason to create his company SuperHeroic, and what he took away from the process.
- Hear how servant leadership shapes his work and creativity.
- Understand how Jason designs his life using tools like creative direction and brand strategy,
Bio
In his previous role at Nike, Jason oversaw the design and execution of all conceptual products, data-driven innovations, and inline lifestyle and performance product for Jordan Brand, as the Senior Global Design Director. During his 13+ year career at Nike, Mayden led and contributed to the creation of innovative sport performance products for athletes and cultural icons such as Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul, Russell Westbrook, Derek Jeter, and Michael Jordan.
In 2011, Mayden successfully received his Master’s in General Management and Social Innovation from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and shortly thereafter he returned to Nike as the Global Director of Innovation for Nike's Digital Sport division where he was responsible for the strategic investigation of new technologies and services, such as the Nike Fuel Band and the Nike+ platform.
Currently, Jason is an advisor, d.Fellow and Media Designer at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University, a frequent lecturer at Stanford University’s prestigious Graduate School of Business, and an advisory board member to his undergraduate alma mater, the College for Creative Studies.
It all started with a box of cereal. Well, that’s not exactly the beginning, but when Brian Chesky and his roommates had maxed out their credit cards while starting up what would become Airbnb, they had a crazy idea to continue funding the company by designing and selling limited-edition cereal boxes during the 2008 presidential election, and call them Obama O’s & Captain McCain.
Now, 12 years later Airbnb just made its initial public offering—IPO—on the Nasdaq on December 10th, and what a ride it’s been. In this interview we speak with Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky, and learn how being a designer has influenced the arc of his journey, leading a company from a 3-person startup to a public company. We talk about what it’s like to design for trust during a pandemic, and the power of having a clear company mission that all can align to.
If— like some of our colleagues— you’re living in or working from an Airbnb right now, or have taken your family on a holiday made possible by them, we hope Brian’s story will be especially inspirational. As always, thanks for listening, and enjoy the show.
Takeaways:
- Learn how Airbnb designs with a mission of belonging, to counteract the loneliness so common in our digital-first era.
- Hear why Airbnb organizes their teams by customer journey
- Learn about Project Lighthouse, Airbnb’s effort to combat discrimination.
As designers and design leaders, most of us understand the ethical importance of making our products accessible and inclusive for all the people who use them. But we don’t always understand the best way to go about doing this, or the business case for making it a priority.
That’s why we were excited to speak with Annie Jean Baptiste, Head of Product Inclusion at Google. Our recent guest John Maeda said, "If there is one voice in tech to listen to right now, it is Annie's on the material impact of inclusion in business today and in the future."
Annie recently wrote a book called Building For Everyone: Expand Your Market With Design Practices From Google's Product Inclusion Team. We ask her about what spurred her to write the book, along with some of the strategies she uses for researching, designing, and shipping inclusive products.
We hope you come away from this conversation with some ideas you can bring back to your own team, to make better products for everyone. Thanks for listening.
Takeaways:
- Learn about the "ABCs of Product Inclusion" which Annie writes about in her book
- Hear about hiring practices to build inclusive teams
- Get guidance on how to build this role into your own team.
In the wake of a worldwide pandemic and economic catastrophe, many of our friends and colleagues in the world of digital product design are fortunate to have kept their jobs, but there have also been many who were not so lucky. We thought it would be timely to bring in an expert who has been using a designer’s mindset to help people reframe their approach to their careers.
Bill Burnett, co-author of the bestselling book Designing Your Life, has written a new book called Designing Your Work Life. Bill has been the executive director of the design program at Stanford for 13 years and has also taught one of the most popular elective classes there (which his first book was named from). He and his co-author Dave Evans have taken what they have learned from teaching and running workshops for adults in the midst of a career or life transition to come up with a framework for using tools like curiosity, reframing, radical collaboration, and a bias to action to transform your work life and find the best job for you.
In this interview, we speak with Bill about how adopting a designer’s mindset can help you through your current challenges if you’re searching for work. We also chat about how grit and perseverance maps to happiness at work, and how setting aside time for reflection can help you understand what changes you need to make to find a better job (which may even be in your current company).
Takeaways:
- How setting micro-goals can help you achieve positive change at work.
- Why you might think about redesigning and iterating on your role at your current company if you’re unhappy.
- What the idea of “generative quitting” is, and why asking the question “What am I doing wrong?” might be a good idea before you decide to quit.
Bio
Bill Burnett is the co-author of the NYT Best-seller Designing Your Life. He’s also co-director of the Life Design Lab at Stanford University. He’s a designer, educator, and an Adjunct Professor at Stanford University. He’s also the Executive Director of the Design Program where he manages the undergraduate and graduate degree-granting programs and advises 70 -100 students annually.
We’re not ashamed to admit that, when we booked Debbie Millman for our show, we were a little intimidated. Not by Debbie herself, who always comes across as kind, smart, and thoughtful in the interviews she does for her own show, Design Matters.
But just knowing that we were interviewing a pioneer in the podcasting space, someone who has been interviewing designers and creatives for over 15 years, and who spends a huge amount of time and effort researching each of her guests… that had us a little nervous.
That fretting turned out to be completely unwarranted, as Debbie is as gracious and entertaining a guest as she is an interviewer. In addition to her long-running podcast, Debbie is the President Emeritus of AIGA and chair and co-founder of the Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
We spoke with her about the role that teaching plays in her learning process, and covered a range of topics from ethics in design to the differences between being a designer and an artist.
Takeaways:
- Learn why it’s important for design to be personal, even when you’re designing for other people.
- Hear how digital product designers can learn from other creative disciplines that have a long history.
- Find out how to stay in better “career shape,” whether you are a recent graduate or further in your career.
| Over the arc of his career, John Maeda has been many things: a professor at MIT, president at the Rhode Island School of Design, a Design Partner at Kleiner Perkins, head of Computational Design and Inclusion at Automattic, and now Chief Experience Officer at Publicis Sapient. In our interview with John, we learn how curiosity and humility have driven his wide-ranging and accomplished career. We also dive deep into his recent CX Report, which was formerly called the Design in Tech Report (we ask him about the name change). We discuss why algorithms have the potential to narrow our point of view, and why digital transformation is so hard for companies that are lower on what he refers to as the “Kardashev Scale.” Takeaways:* Why “shipping your org chart” may not be a bad thing. * What “L.E.A.D.” products are (Light, Ethical, Accessible, Dataful). * How design becomes more important as the frequency of interactions with digital products increase
Bio John Maeda is an American technologist, designer, engineer, artist, investor, author, and teacher. He is Chief Experience Officer at Publicis Sapient, the technology consulting and delivery arm of communications and marketing conglomerate Publicis. Maeda serves on the Board of Sonos and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. He has held positions with Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com; the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins; served as president of the Rhode Island School of Design; and began his early career at the MIT Media Lab at the intersection of computer science and visual art. Named as one of the “75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century” by Esquire, Maeda draws on his diverse background as an MIT-trained engineer, award-winning designer, and MBA-community translator to bring people and ideas together at scale. He is the author of several celebrated books, including The Laws of Simplicity and Redesigning Leadership. He has appeared as a speaker all over the world, from Davos to Beijing to São Paulo to New York, and his talks for TED have received millions of views. |
If you don’t know who Seth Godin is, just type “Seth” into Google or DuckDuckGo. The first entry will lead you to his blog, where he writes—every day—about marketing, design, writing, how being a better human will make you better at your job.
Once you’ve started to read his blog, you’ll probably be hungry for more of his wisdom. He’s written over eighteen bestselling books on business and marketing, including Linchpin, Purple Cow, and The Dip.
We’ve been following Seth for a long time, and his writing and speaking have influenced how we think about creating and marketing products. So it was a huge honor to have him on our show, where we spoke about subjects ranging from how to take risks in your career, to why being creative is an act of generosity, to the idea of “creative destruction.”
We hope you enjoy our conversation with Seth as much as we did, and after you finish, we encourage you to go make a ruckus.
Takeaways:
- Why the counterintuitive idea of “surplus” means that, despite everything going on in the world, we all have access to more resources than the last King of France did.
- Why writing is often the best starting point for almost any type of creative work.
- Why a company is more like an organism than an organization
Bio
Seth is an entrepreneur, best-selling author, speaker and teacher. In addition to launching one of the most popular blogs in the world, he has written 19 best-selling books, including The Dip, Linchpin, Purple Cow, Tribes, and What To Do When It's Your Turn (And It's Always Your Turn). His most recent book, This is Marketing, was an instant bestseller in countries around the world.
Though renowned for his writing and speaking, Seth also founded two companies, Squidoo and Yoyodyne (acquired by Yahoo!).
By focusing on everything from effective marketing and leadership, to the spread of ideas and changing everything, Seth has been able to motivate and inspire countless people around the world.
In 2013, Seth was one of just three professionals inducted into the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame. In an astonishing turn of events, in May 2018, he was inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame as well. He might be the only person in both.
Seth created the altMBA and Marketing Seminar to transform online education and help people connect with their audience.
To celebrate the new InVision DSM, we're sharing one of our favorite episodes in conversation with Design Systems Advocate, Jina Anne.
If you’re engaged in any sort of community surrounding Design Systems, whether it’s the Design Systems Slack, or the Clarity Conference, then you have likely benefited from Jina Anne’s work. A self-styled Design Systems Advocate, Jina has been passionate about creating events, content and resources that bring together communities of people who care about design systems and how they impact product design. In this bonus episode of the Design Better Podcast, we chat with Jina about how she got into Design Systems, what she has learned from building these communities, and how being a hybrid designer-developer influences her understanding of Design Systems.
Takeaways:
- How having a Design System affects company culture.
- What to consider when deciding to go public with your Design System, or keeping it private.
- How Design Systems can be effectively maintained.
In today’s episode, we talk with Boyuan Gao and Jahan Mantin—the founders of Project Inkblot—who have built a practical framework that can help everyone design for diversity, and can also be a guide for challenging conversations.
We discuss how they see design as an opportunity to bridge the divide and bring people into the conversation about designing products and services that address everyone’s needs, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or religion. We also talk to them about their definition of intent vs. impact, and how to close the loop on making sure your impact is what you intended.
We hope you can use some of their ideas as a way to open the door to difficult conversations, and better understand your colleagues and customers.
Takeaways:
- Understanding why the impact of a product can vary greatly from its intent.
- How design can act as an invitation to participate in difficult conversations.
- Learn about Project Inkblot’s D4D framework to start building more equitable products, services, and content.
Are you on a product team or a feature team? After you listen to our interview with Marty Cagan, legendary product management guru, author, and partner at Silicon Valley Product Group, you’ll know just where you stand, and how to become a product team leader if you aren’t already one. We also discuss why product management is misunderstood, the dual track agile process, discovery sprints, and the four types of prototypes that Marty has classified, including user, feasibility, live data, and hybrid prototypes. Takeaways: * How dual track agile can help to validate ideas in the fastest, cheapest way possible * The four risks for every product launch * Why good product teams all have the same qualities
We’ve spoken to a lot of design leaders over the course of the Design Better Podcast, but this episode is the first chance we’ve had to speak with someone who has made the move from being an engineering leader to a design leader. Naveen Gavini, Head of Design and User Experience at Pinterest, spent time as an engineering manager and then as head of product engineering before taking on his current role, and he brings a unique perspective on leading design teams with him from his journey.
Naveen shares how they “knit” different disciplines together at Pinterest, and we explore what he’s learned from scaling a team in hypergrowth. We also ask about the strategic advantage that co-founder Evan Sharp’s design background has brought to the company from day one.
Takeaways:
- How product magic can happen when the boundaries blur between designers and engineers.
- Why scaling a team in hypergrowth is a lot like making soup.
- How design ops serves as the connective tissue at Pinterest.
“Designers are about possibilities. Engineers are about probabilities.” This quote, from Stephen Deasy, Head of Cloud Engineering at Atlassian, is just one example of how concisely he can describe the relationship between designers and engineers. Our interview with him was our first chance to learn from a leader on the engineering side, and he shared a wealth of knowledge that will help designers work more effectively with their engineering counterparts. Stephen gave us insights about running regular retrospectives and health monitors with your team, and “plays” like Roles and Responsibilities. He also spoke to the mindset and process shift that occurs when teams scale from 15, to 50, to 150 people. Stephen also relayed some great insights on design and agile. Takeaways: * How to look across a company to get a pulse on the health of teams * Understanding the mindset shift as teams scale * What it looks like when teams are efficient and productive in an agile environment
We’re nominated for a Webby 2020! Vote here: dbtr.co/webby2020
Love it or hate it, the agile approach to software development seems to be here to stay. Often, it’s hard to get good design practice to fit within an agile framework, so our next guest, Joshua Seiden—co-author of Lean UX and Outcomes Over Output—may be particularly helpful to those of you who are struggling.
We chat with Joshua about how to fit user research into a sprint, and how he advocates for setting outcomes to guide the work of your team. We also talk about how design teams should think about measuring their work.
You’ll hear:
- Why it’s important to set goals as outcomes, and not focus on output.
- How design leaders are uniquely well-equipped to lead the conversation about measuring impact, because of their close relationship with the customer.
- What mistakes designers make when working in an agile environment, and why going faster isn’t always better.
There’s a lot of talk in the tech world about moonshots, and what it takes to build a team capable of achieving them. We thought it might be helpful to speak with someone at an organization that has achieved actual moonshots, and so we were thrilled to get a chance to speak with Steve Rader, who is Deputy Director for the Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation at NASA. We chat with Steve about how he communicates across teams where expertise and vernacular might be very different, and the importance of having teams that are diverse on an array of different levels, from personal background to expertise. We also learn how vision gets communicated by leadership at NASA, and the lessons he’s learned in his career about leading people. You’ll hear: * How to counteract fear of change in an organization by setting the right vision. * How an innovative solution for potato chip manufacturers (delicious!) was brought about by crowdsourcing input from a diverse set of skilled people. * Why it’s important to define the problem before jumping to a solution, to lead people effectively.
We’ve just published a new book on DesignBetter.com called Business Thinking for Designers by Ryan Rumsey, formerly of Apple, USAA, EA, and Nestlé. It’s a challenging time out there, and we know many of you are facing uncertainty in your work, whether you’re in an industry that’s been heavily hit by the current crisis, or even if you’re lucky enough to be with a company that is navigating the current storm more or less intact. Now more than ever, designers need to be able to demonstrate an understanding of the business they work within, and show a return on investment for the work that they do.
This is why we’ve released this book now, and in this bonus episode with author Ryan Rumsey you’ll learn:
- Why an analytical approach to storytelling is crucial to conveying your vision
- How to prepare for negotiations after you pitch to stakeholders
- Ways business thinking can help individual contributors in addition to managers
In the new book Business Thinking for Designers, you’ll get to know how to speak design in the language of business, learn essential strategies to effectively communicate with your business partners, and tools, tips, and frameworks that you can put right to work.
If you’re eager to download the book now, for free, just head over to https://www.designbetter.co/business-thinking-for-designers.
We’ve just published a new book on DesignBetter.com called Remote Work for Design Teams, to help you make a graceful transition from the office to a remote work environment. In this bonus episode, we speak with the authors of the book (all from InVision): Abby Sinnott, Managing Editor, Greg Storey, Senior Director of Executive Programs, and Ben Goldman, Director of InVision Films.
We chat with Abby, Greg and Ben about their own remote collaboration and teamwork while writing this book, which the team turned around in record time. We also review some tips for leaders during this crisis, and discuss why being productive at work shouldn’t necessarily be top priority for everyone on the team.
If your team needs a little helping hand during these challenging times, you can head over to designbetter.com/remotework, and download the book for free.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- The non-obvious advantages of being a distributed team when creating this book
- How remote work lends itself to both divergent and convergent modes of creativity
- Why remote collaboration can build trust through vulnerability
In this bonus episode, we’re once more focused on remote teams, and more specifically on best practices for facilitating remote design sprints, building trust between teams in a remote environment, and running effective critiques and design reviews remotely.
In the first half of the episode, we chat with Richard Banfield, VP of Design Transformation at InVision, and author of the book Enterprise Design Sprints, who gives us practical guidance on how to run a remote design sprint effectively. In the second half, Alison Rand, our Senior Director of Design Operations, will reveal the inner workings of how our own design teams perform design reviews remotely, and make sure that work is visible across teams.
You’ll learn:
- How to facilitate a remote design sprints and run effective design reviews
- The virtuous cycle that you need to put in place to build trust with your remote teams
- Why preparation is the most critical part of running a design sprint remotely
- How our veteran distributed team at InVision runs remote design reviews
To discover more remote work resources from InVision, check out www.invisionapp.com/remote.
In this bonus episode, we chat about balancing personal and professional demands in a remote environment, especially during these challenging times. Join special guests Jennifer Aldrich, Senior Manager of Design Community Partnerships, and Stephen Gates, Head Design Evangelist, at InVision, as we discuss best practices for remote communication and how to build trust within your remote teams. We hope this episode helps you and your teams as you transition to remote work during this time of change in the face of our current health crisis. You’ll learn:
- How to set expectations for remote communication
- Tips for creating boundaries between work and life
- Establishing documentation and processes for team collaboration
- The value of soft skills in remote leadership
- Benefits of working from home in building trust and connection for teams
In this episode, we speak with VMWare’s Head of Design Jehad Affoneh about how he measures the business impact of design, and aligns design goals with engineering goals. We learn why he thinks it’s important to lead with context, and how he goes about ensuring that the diverse voices on his team are heard.
You’ll hear:
- How OKRs can align goals across design and engineering
- Lessons from running an internal conference for designers and executives
- Tactics for ensuring diverse voices on your team are heard
Joanna Peña-Bickley has had an amazing arc to her design leadership career: from Chief Creative Officer at Matter Worldwide and IBM, to her current role as Head of Research and Design for Alexa Devices at Amazon, Joanna has always sought to design things that are “useful, usable, and magical.”
In this interview, we talk with Joanna about working cross functionally with both software and hardware teams, and what she’s learned about building a more connected workflow. We also get Joanna’s take on speaking design in the language of business, and how she works to bring more diversity into leadership at the companies where she's worked.
Takeaways:
- How Joanna approaches building high-functioning teams.
- What the opportunities and challenges are when designing for invisible interfaces.
- How to create partnerships that will make your team successful.
Natalya Shelburne, Tech Lead for Design Engineering at The New York Times, sits at a fascinating crossroad of design and development. She leads a team of front-end developers and brings her own experience as a designer and art director to her current role.
We chat with Natalya about her move from design to front-end dev, and some of the fears she faced along the way. We also talk about her approach to bridging design and dev, and what she brings from her prior career as a teacher into product design.
Takeaways:
- Ways to approach the unnecessary dichotomy between designers and engineers
- Why respect is key to developing good cross-functional partnerships
- How to overcome fear of moving into a technical role as a designer
In the tech world, it's rare these days to spend more than a few years at one company. So we were curious to learn more about Kristin Wisnewski after hearing she’d been at IBM for 18 years. In her words, she “basically grew up at IBM,” and made a rapid transition from an individual contributor role to a leadership position in 2016, where she now leads an award-winning design team.
We got to know the story of that career transformation, and what it took to get there. We also spoke with Kristin about clearing roadblocks for better work, and how to bring women into more leadership roles at technology companies.
Takeaways:
- How to remain authentic to yourself as a leader
- The keys to peak team performance
- The way DesignOps works at IBM
Nancy Douyon has a remarkable story that lead her into a career in technology. From her childhood in Haiti, to moving to Boston and taking part in an MIT program as a kid, to running away from home and then teaching as a teenager, and on to design roles at Google and Uber, Nancy’s unconventional path gives her a unique perspective on how to approach product design for an audience that includes everyone.
We chat with Nancy about her initial reluctance to enter a technical field despite her talent, how she thinks about making sure research represents a diverse set of users, and understanding global perspectives in product design.
- Takeaways:
-
- Approach hiring by looking at someone’s story
- Tips for making user research more representative
- How to tackle ethical product design
Quick episode summary:
- 2:03 Roundtable discussion
- 35:39 Interview with Nancy Douyon
Next week we'll be launching our fourth season of the Design Better Podcast by InVision. Listen now for a special preview of the new season and get ready for new episodes coming to you weekly starting February 18th. In this new season we’re taking a closer look at how teams can work better together for greater impact across design, engineering, business, and product.
We speak with Joanna Peña-Bickley about bringing more diversity into leadership, the head of cloud engineering at Atlassian, Steve Deasy, about psychological safety and the keys to high velocity teams, and Kristin Wisnewski of IBM discusses how to inspire teams to go farther and empower managers to build trust and vulnerability. Jehad Affoneh from VMWare shares his philosophy on how empathy for his colleagues and assuming good intention helps him create the best experiences possible for customers. And Marty Cagan from Silicon Valley Product Group shares his behind-the-scenes lessons on the differences between product teams and feature teams, and why product management is often misunderstood.
Hear from the people shaping design and engineering transformation at The New York Times, Uber, Amazon, Pinterest, IBM, and even NASA. And you'll learn more about how to communicate the business impact of design at your company and how teams are leveling up their design maturity for even greater influence at work.
To celebrate 1 million listens to the Design Better Podcast, we're rewinding to our episode with David Kelley, Founder of IDEO and the Stanford d.school, in honor of David just receiving the Edison Award for Innovation. And we're sending a special thanks to YOU for listening and helping us reach this 1 million milestone. We're tremendously grateful to you, your friends, and colleagues for tuning in and joining the journey with us.
David Kelley doesn’t like to claim to have come up with the term design thinking, even though most people would say he did. But regardless of who coined it, as founder of IDEO and the Stanford d.school he has been one of the most influential proponents of design thinking, and human-centered design in general.
When it comes to bringing together engineering, product, and design teams early in the design process, and aligning those teams towards a common goal, design thinking has few equals, and should be part of the toolkit for every product driven company.
In this episode, Eli and Aarron speak with David about what it takes to bring designers and engineers together, how our workspace influences our work, and how we can encourage creative confidence in our companies.
Enjoy the chat and cheers to 1 million listens to the Design Better Podcast. Thank you so much for listening.
| InVision is starting a new series of quarterly reports on design trends. The first in the series, a Design Trends Report on Talent, was created to help you learn proactive new ways to recruit, develop, and retain creative talent. In this bonus episode, we chat with Stephen Gates, Head Design Evangelist at InVision, about some of the things he learned while researching and producing the report as its co-author, and how the report can best be used by design leaders looking to hire, and individual contributors looking to get hired. Also, we’re trying out something new: a roundtable discussion about some current topics in the design world. Aarron and Eli chat with some of their colleagues from InVision (in this episode, Design Specialist Emily Campbell and Stephen Gates). So get ready for our first roundtable, to be followed by an exploration of the Design Trends Report on Talent, with co-author Stephen Gates. Articles discussed in the roundtable: How to run inclusive meetings * Bob Baxley on design reviews at Apple * You don’t have to be a manager to be a leader with Julie Zhuo* |
The third season of the Design Better Podcast recently wrapped up, where we explored the connected workflow: how designers can work more effectively and efficiently with their engineering and product counterparts to create incredible customer experiences.
We interviewed guests ranging from Julie Zhuo, VP of Product Design at Facebook and author of The Making of a Manager, to Diego Rodriguez, Chief Product and Design Officer at Intuit.
In this episode, Aarron and Eli share what they learned from some of the brightest minds in digital product design.
Here are a few of the top takeaways:
- Learn how Google’s Abigail Hart Gray approaches measuring the value of design.
- Hear how Lori Kaplan from Atlassian explains “designing across the seams” to create a unified customer experience.
- Listen to Benjamin Evans discuss how practicing inclusivity can create a framework for inviting roles outside design into the design process.
So while we’re hard at work producing Season 4 of the podcast, enjoy this look back at some of the best moments in Season 3.
And for more free articles, videos, books, and stories to level up your design practice, visit https://www.designbetter.com.
If you’re engaged in any sort of community surrounding Design Systems, whether it’s the Design Systems Slack, or the Clarity Conference, then you have likely benefited from Jina Anne’s work. A self-styled Design Systems Advocate, Jina has been passionate about creating events, content and resources that bring together communities of people who care about design systems and how they impact product design. In this bonus episode of the Design Better Podcast, we chat with Jina about how she got into Design Systems, what she has learned from building these communities, and how being a hybrid designer-developer influences her understanding of Design Systems.
Takeaways:
- How having a Design System affects company culture.
- What to consider when deciding to go public with your Design System, or keeping it private.
- How Design Systems can be effectively maintained.
Diego Rodriguez has had a remarkable career at the intersection of design, business, and education. He has served as Global Managing Director of design firm IDEO, founding faculty member of Stanford’s d.school, and is currently Executive Vice President, Chief Product and Design Officer at Intuit. In this episode, we discuss how design can influence broader business goals. Diego shares Intuit’s unique approach to product design, and the need to build a certain level of trust and empathy with customers when designing financial products.
Takeaways:
- How to build design into the culture of an organization
- How Intuit acts on its mission to Design for Delight
- How design thinking brings a diversity of perspectives to the design process
As we prepare for the last episode of Season 3, take a look back at some of the stories that have inspired us. In this short update episode, hear from hosts Aarron Walter and Eli Woolery about what they've enjoyed about this season of the Design Better Podcast so far and preview our upcoming episode with Diego Rodriguez, Executive Vice President, Chief Product and Design Officer at Intuit. There's lots more to come, so be sure to subscribe for updates at www.designbetter.com.
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Design Better by InVision provides unprecedented access to the insights that power the world’s best design teams.
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Download a library of free ebooks and audiobooks to propel your design team forward at https://www.designbetter.com/books.
Che Douglas led the transformation of the design team at The Wall Street Journal, from a service-based organization to a strategic component of an embedded Engineering, Product and Design (EPD) structure. We chat with Che, who is now VP of Design at Booking.com, about how he got the right people involved to transform their design organization and spread design throughout the company. Che discusses the use of design sprints and how he showed the value of design to the organization through some of the team's key initiatives.
Takeaways:
- How the design team can best collaborate with key partners
- Showing the value of design with a direct impact on the bottom line
- Going beyond defensiveness and being open to critique
Lori Kaplan is a veteran design leader, whose pioneering work includes authorship of the original Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines in the 1980s. In this episode we speak with Lori about how the Atlassian playbook helps both internal and external teams address design challenges, the deep roots of cross-functional collaboration at the company, as well as Lori’s perspective on how attitudes towards design have shifted in recent years across industries.
Takeaways:
- How Atlassian “designs across the seams” with a broad view of the customer
- The habits and rituals of teams within Atlassian that help create better cross-functional collaboration
- How quantitative and qualitative metrics work together to measure the impact of design.
Quinton Larson is a design leader who has consistently brought thoughtful leadership into the companies where he works. In this episode we speak with Quinton about his prior work at IDEO and eBay, his involvement with Indeed’s Job Seeker Journey team, how he makes sure the right people are involved in project kickoffs, and how design systems help create a more connected workflow between designers and developers.
Takeaways:
- Getting the right people involved in project kickoffs
- Being adaptable as a design leader
- Working efficiently and thoughtfully with key partners
What do Yahoo, Apple, and Pinterest have in common? Silicon Valley design vet Bob Baxley. With extensive design leadership experience under his belt, Bob knows a thing or two about bridging the gaps between teams to help champion a connected workflow. In this episode, Aarron and Eli tap Bob’s insights on productive design reviews, getting in sync with engineers, and what it takes to build key relationships with executives—all in the name of making products people can’t imagine living without.
Josh Ulm has quite the CV—Adobe Design Lead, Vodafone Head of UX, Oracle VP of Design, and now Wells Fargo SVP of Strategic Design and Insights. One thing he’s learned along the way is that “the most valuable role for design to play is influencing the business—not just the product." In this episode of the Design Better Podcast, Aarron and Eli covered subjects ranging from where the connected workflow is most broken, to the one critical question to ask executive sponsors when starting a project.
Enter design system pros Brad Frost and Dan Mall, long-time collaborators known for their expertise in bridging the gap between designers and developers. In this episode of the Design Better Podcast, Aarron and Eli talk with Dan and Brad about reducing friction between these two very different disciplines. They explore a few misconceptions around agile methodology, the risks of the creative technologist role, and breaking the design process to fix it. This is a conversation you don’t want to miss.
Benjamin Evans, Inclusive Design Lead for Airbnb, is part of a new kind of problem solvers tackling issues like racism, sexism, and bias in digital product design. In this episode of the Design Better Podcast, Eli and Aarron chat with Benjamin about using techniques like design thinking, research, and storytelling to ensure a more inclusive experience for all your users.
Abigail Hart Gray, Director of UX at Google, is one of the most inspiring design leaders we know. A self-proclaimed analytics nerd, Abigail uses numbers to deftly communicate the value of design to her colleagues, giving her team the runway to do great work. In this episode of the Design Better Podcast, Eli and Aarron get Abigail’s take on measuring design’s impact on business, how parenthood has changed her approach to problem solving, and more.
Listen as Julie Zhuo, VP of Product Design at Facebook and author of The Making of a Manager, recalls some of her earliest professional experiences at one of the fastest growing companies on the planet. She reveals how she got her start and grew to be a highly influential design leader renowned for building top-notch teams. Julie talks about the difference between leading and managing, and shares personal examples that can help you advance your career.
Bio
Julie Zhuo is one of Silicon Valley’s top product design executives and author of The Making of a Manager. Aside from her day job as VP of Product Design at Facebook, Julie writes about technology, design, and leadership on her popular blog The Year of the Looking Glass and in The New York Times and Fast Company.
What if you could unlock the full potential for business impact in design? On today's episode we are joined by Leah Buley, InVision's Director of Design Education and author of the new report on design in business, The New Design Frontier. Leah shares the insights she's learned from surveying thousands of companies to explore the relationship between design practices and business performance. We chat with Leah about how teams are measuring success in design, the dimensions of design maturity, and debunk myths around team size and designer to engineer ratios. Check out the full report at http://invisionapp.com/designmaturity.
The next season of the Design Better podcast is nearly here. Listen to a special preview of the upcoming season which focuses on the impact and challenges of the connected workflow. We sat down with some incredible design leaders from Facebook, Airbnb, Google, Wall Street Journal, Atlassian, and Intuit for honest conversations that will give you a fresh perspective on the way you work. Be sure to subscribe for the new season coming soon.
What if you could set aside a distraction-free space to accomplish one meaningful thing in your life each day? How might that change your relationships, hobbies, work, or mental wellbeing?
In a special episode of the DesignBetter.Co Podcast, we talk to Jake Knapp, co-author of the New York Times bestseller Sprint, about his new book, Make Time. The book advocates for forgetting about being productive and focusing instead on being purposeful by using design sprints thinking to define a “highlight” for each day.
If you enjoy this episode, we hope you’ll leave a review on iTunes or Google Play to help others members of the design community discover the podcast.
Bio
Jake Knapp is the author of Make Time and the New York Times bestseller Sprint. Jake spent 10 years at Google and Google Ventures, where he created the Design Sprint. He has since coached teams like Slack, Uber, 23andMe, LEGO, and The New York Times on the method.
Previously, Jake helped build products like Gmail, Google Hangouts, and Microsoft Encarta. He is currently among the world’s tallest designers and is a facilitator for DesignBetter.Co workshops.
As organizations grow, they tend to think in terms of processes and data, and although those elements are vital to scale, teams sometimes lose sight of the why. Key to scaling is building an infrastructure that supports a company’s core mission.
In our final Season 2 episode of the DesignBetter.Co Podcast, Facebook Vice President of Product Design Margaret Gould Stewart talks with Aarron and Eli about how storytelling, open communication, and keeping the focus on the customer help the company's design team scale.
“The most important thing you can do is have a story around what you're doing, for whom, and why.”
If you enjoy this episode, we hope you’ll leave a review on iTunes or Google Play to help others members of the design community discover the podcast.
Bio
Margaret is a seasoned UX executive with over 15 years experience leading design and research teams, including in her current role as Vice President of Product Design at Facebook. Over the course of her career, she's led user experience for six of the top 10 websites (Facebook, Tripod, Angelfire, Lycos, Google Search, YouTube). She has a proven track record of leadership in a variety of contexts, from startups to Fortune 500.
A design system helps deliver a unified experience for the end user, no matter what the medium. But it also means a cohesive internal experience as well. Design systems unite teams across time and space, bring designers and engineers together through a shared language, and help designers focus on experience over style.
In our newest episode of the DesignBetter.Co Podcast, Indeed’s director of design experience, Kim Williams, talks with Aarron and Eli about the evolution of Indeed’s design system, and how collaboration across the company is key to any design system’s success.
“I think for us, the design system is one part of how people feel about the brand and the product itself. The design system is really this tool that can help you tell your best story.”
If you enjoy this episode, head over to iTunes to leave a review so other members of the design community can learn from Kim too.
Bio
Kim is the design director for Indeed’s Design Platform Studio, leading a team of copywriters, brand strategists, technologists, user researchers, interaction and visual designers, and illustrators defining Indeed’s product experiences. Before joining Indeed, Kim was head of brand systems at eBay and associate creative director at agency Ogilvy & Mather.
For many years, Google’s engineering-led culture cherished efficiency over user experience. Irene Au arrived at a pivotal moment in the company’s history and helped shape the way Google’s products clearly value design today.
In this Rewind episode of the DesignBetter.Co podcast, Khosla Venture’s Irene Au talks about how she helped scale design at Google, shaped the design philosophy that carries into today, and now, as design partner at Khosla Ventures, helps startups build their own teams and processes to create the best design experiences.
If you like the episode, I hope you’ll post a review on iTunes, Google Play, or your favorite podcast source. It helps other discover the podcast.
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to scaling design, but there are similarities between fast-growing companies that prime them for lasting success.
In this episode, Accel Partners’ Vas Natarajan talks about effective ways design leaders can operationalize hiring and scaling. He also discusses the hallmarks of a healthy team at any growth stage, what designers and developers can to do collaborate better, and why storytelling is key to growing a company.
“Storytelling capability—especially at the founding stages—can really make the difference between something that gets up and off the ground and something that doesn’t.”
Listen as Eli and Aarron chat with Vas about design’s role in making companies successful, the importance of balancing data with customer insights, and more.
If you enjoy this episode, head over to iTunes to leave a review so other members of the design community can learn from Vas too.
Rallying around a shared vision is one of the biggest challenges for design teams operating at scale. So how can you foster that vision and bring people together to execute it?
In this episode, Hot Studio Founder and former Autodesk VP of Experience Design Maria Giudice talks about overcoming team silos and learning to lead with influence instead of authority. She also discusses why diversity is one of the keys to great product design, along with lessons she learned while working with fast-moving companies like Facebook.
“Agile was not developed with design in mind—but we as designers can impact that process and bring our own processes in. I call it human-centered Agile...At the end of the day, it doesn't matter about being a designer, or an engineer, or a data scientist—it's more about ‘Did we ship a great product together?’”
Listen as Eli and Aarron chat with Maria about everything from Hot Studio’s role in establishing the practice of DesignOps to how companies can reinforce their design culture foundation.
If you enjoy this episode, we’d appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes.
Do you ever wonder what it’s like to be part of fast-growing, design-led companies like Slack, Medium, or even InVision? Every team has challenges with scaling—and it turns out those challenges share many common traits when you peek behind the curtain.
In this episode, Spark Capital’s Megan Quinn talks about the common hurdles she sees across companies as they scale. She also discusses her own experiences going from the engineering-driven culture at Google to the design-driven culture at Square, and more.
“At the end of the day, design is not how something looks or feels. Design is the abstraction of the technology to the end experience for the consumer.” –Megan Quinn
Listen as Eli and Aarron chat with Megan about scaling with purpose and overcoming widespread hurdles—like how to incorporate the “why” into your product roadmap along with the “what” and “when.”
If you enjoy this episode, head over to iTunes to leave a review so other members of the design community can hear Megan’s perspective too.
When companies start scaling design, the emphasis is sometimes on getting more shipped—but what if the first deliverable was a balanced team instead of a new feature?
USAA’s Chief Design Officer Meriah Garrett has a unique approach to creating balanced design teams. In this new episode, she also discusses her role in the C-suite and how being mission-driven affects product development across multiple offices.
“We have this power to synthesize the world into something that feels actionable, and that is both a burden and a gift...Your job is not to just put your headphones on and make a beautiful object. Your job is to listen to the world around you and drive a new perspective on it.” –Meriah Garrett
Tune in on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play—and if you enjoy Meriah’s episode, I hope you’ll review and share it with others in the design community.
Design leaders spend a lot of energy trying to get a seat at the table. It’s an ongoing process—and it’s tough to keep design involved over time. What questions should be asked along the way, and what business language can design leaders use?
In this episode, LogMeIn’s Vice President Product Design & Customer Experience TS Balaji talks about helping big corporations use design to be competitive in new ways. He covers everything from maturity models and setting up team playbooks to how LogMeIn measures the business impact of design.
Listen as Eli and Aarron chat with TS about design’s place in business—and hear why a multidisciplinary background could be the ultimate career boon, even if it does require a bit of statistics.
TS Balaji's Bio
TS is a user experience and product development executive, currently leading product design, internationalization, and insights and analytics functions for LogMeIn.
As a former designer turned strategist, TS specializes in identifying new technologies, spotting trends, introducing business models, and combining all of the above with design to advocate for customers. Prior to his current role, TS established and led digital experience practices at Cox Communications and Sprint.
Design systems give product designers and developers reusable, interchangeable components to make the design process efficient and repeatable. They’re a critical part of scaling—so why build everything from scratch when you can plug in pre-built elements?
In this episode, GitHub’s Design Systems Manager Diana Mounter talks about navigating the path from style guide contributor to full-time design systems manager. She covers everything from getting buy-in beyond the design team to deciding whether or not to make a system open source.
Listen as Eli and Aarron chat with Diana about refining and growing GitHub’s design system, Primer—and learn how a little-known vegetable became part of her personal brand.
Diana's bio
Diana Mounter is a designer based in Brooklyn, NY. She specializes in design systems and has a background in user-centered design.
Diana currently leads the Design Systems team at GitHub, where she helps manage their design system, Primer. In her spare time, she organizes the NYC Design Systems Coalition, writes, and speaks about design, code, and working with people.
Diana is also a co-author of the DesignBetter.Co Design Systems Handbook
A lot of companies are investing more in design. As they do, the organization scales. As it scales, it has to operationalize, become more efficient, and plug into the rest of the company—but what makes all that possible?
In this episode, Pinterest’s Head of Design Operations Meredith Black talks about the emerging practice of DesignOps, and how she introduced it to Pinterest more than three years ago. Meredith covers everything from when it’s time to start building a DesignOps team to advice for getting started. She even reveals where she finds most of her best hires.
Listen as Eli and Aarron chat with Meredith about starting and growing a DesignOps practice—and how she nearly joined the FBI before finding herself in a different kind of “ops” career.
Meredith's bio
Meredith Black is the Head of Design Operations at Pinterest, where she's pioneered the Design Program Management organization and grown it to 11 design program managers in almost four years. Within Product Design, she’s also responsible for operations, recruiting, resourcing and risk management.
Prior to Pinterest, Meredith worked at design firms Hot Studio (acquired by Facebook) and IDEO. Her love for design runs deep. Real deep.
Over the last 10 years, Shopify has grown from a scrappy 5-person startup to a team of more than 3,000 across five locations. Scaling a company that fast takes a lot of talented people—and Lynsey Thornton is one of them.
As Shopify’s VP of UX and Core Product, Lynsey takes on an array of challenging tasks. In the first episode of the season, she talks about everything from building a leadership pipeline to governance of the famed design system Polaris. Her advice and first-hand experiences also highlight major technology pain points—like implementing customer-centric business models and helping individual contributors successfully transition to leadership.
Listen as Eli and Aarron talk about scaling design at Shopify with Lynsey—and don’t miss her biggest piece of advice for finding great org design inspiration.
Lynsey Thornton's Bio
Originally from Ireland, Lynsey is now the VP of UX and Core Product at Shopify in Vancouver, BC. With a background in design, project management, and business, she focuses on building UX teams and practices in high-growth tech companies.
Prior to leading Shopify’s front-end developers, designers, researchers, and content strategists—along with the team that builds the core product—Lynsey designed gaming and gambling experiences. In addition to UX, her true loves are ethnographic research and developing women in tech.
Follow Lynsey on Twitter @lynseythornton
“Will I lose my creativity? Will I be stuck in meetings all day?” Those are common concerns for any individual contributor transitioning to a managerial role—even experienced product leaders like Mia Blume.
Luckily, Mia’s impressive career spans positions at places like IDEO, Pinterest, and Square, so she’s had plenty of opportunities to see what it takes to make a fundamental impact on culture from beyond her laptop screen.
In this episode, Mia shares what it was like stepping away from daily design work to lead, how she combats imposter syndrome, and how being a designer ultimately made her a more effective manager. Now, with a motto for time management and loads of experience walking other people through that transition, Mia can expertly explain how to navigate the intricacies of being a great leader—which includes everything from managing priorities to being vulnerable on the job.
Mia’s bio
As a former design leader at Pinterest, Square, and IDEO, Mia’s work is informed by her deep understanding of the unique challenges and opportunities designers face in hyper-growth start-up environments. She is specifically attuned to the challenges of women in tech—and, more importantly, their potential impact on individuals, teams, and organizations when their authentic, empathetic, and intuitive leadership style is unlocked.
In today’s tech-driven economy, it seems like it can be hard to justify the value of a traditional liberal arts education. But given the speed at which AI-driven advancements are taking over traditional jobs—even technical ones—perhaps a better understanding of humans and their cultures is exactly what we need.
Because being product-driven really means people people-driven—and we’re betting few people understand the human experience better than the author of Sensemaking, and co-founder and Senior Partner of ReD Associates, Christian Madsbjerg.
In this episode, Aarron and Eli chat with Christian about using tools from human and social sciences to inform business decisions. Christian’s expertise helps clarify the methods a lot of fast-moving companies botch, like gathering proper ethnographic research, and the hazards of conducting focus groups. Together, they also dig into the pros of a liberal arts education and how it helps foster the crucial skill of critical thinking.
Put on your thinking cap and enjoy this interview with Christian Madsbjerg, and thanks for listening.
Christian Madsbjerg’s bio
For the past 20 years, Christian Madsbjerg has worked as a management consultant—but he writes, speaks, and teaches on the practical application of Human Sciences. So far, his work has been featured in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Washington Post, Der Spiegel, and Bloomberg Businessweek.
Madsbjerg’s latest book, Sensemaking: The Power of the Humanities in the Age of the Algorithm, was released in the Spring of 2017 by Hachette Book Group. His first book, Moment of Clarity, co-written with Mikkel Rasmussen and published in the Fall of 2014, has been published in 15+ languages. Christian studied philosophy and political science in Copenhagen and London, and has a master’s degree from the University of London.
If we asked you to name a recent book that’s really changed how product teams address sticky challenges, there’s a good chance Jake Knapp’s Sprint would be at the top of your list. Since publishing and popularizing the process, design sprints have become a tool for teams at organizations as wide ranging as Prudential, the United Nations, and The British Museum.
Given the impact of Sprint, we’re delighted to have Jake on the show to dig into questions we’ve been curious about since reading. In this episode, we run through topics like the relationship between design thinking and the sprint process, how design sprints can work in harmony with an agile development cycle, and when not to use design sprints.
Jake also shares a sneak peek of his next book.
Grab your copy of Sprint and get ready to learn from the guy who literally wrote the book on design sprints.
Jake's Bio
Jake Knapp the New York Times bestselling author of Sprint. He spent ten years at Google and Google Ventures, where he created the Design Sprint process and ran it over 150 times with companies like Nest, Slack, 23andMe, and Flatiron Health. Today, teams around the world—from Silicon Valley startups to Fortune 500s to schools and governments—are using Design Sprints to solve big problems and test new ideas.
Previously, Jake helped build products like Gmail, Google Hangouts, and Microsoft Encarta, and nowadays, he's writing new books and hanging around IDEO as a Visiting Fellow. Jake is currently among the world’s tallest designers.
If there’s anyone we’ve interviewed on the DesignBetter.Co Podcast so far that really embodies the product-driven concept, it’s Laura Martini. Not only does she have a background in both design and engineering, but she also has a keen product sense with a real understanding the business factors behind good design decisions.
Laura has had a really interesting career too—from working as a researcher in John Maeda’s Media Lab at MIT and leading the design team at med-tech startup Counsyl to her current role as a senior interaction designer on Google’s Analytics Platform.
In this episode, Aarron and Eli chat with Laura about how her engineering and design backgrounds complement each other, how a company’s values shape her own work, and how design leaders can help individual contributors grow.
How do you go from being a self-professed skate punk, to a design director at Nike, creative director at Patagonia, and land as the global creative director for Sonos? As a creative force, Michael Leon has worked with some of the most product driven companies out there.
In this episode, Aaron and Eli talk with Michael about the tension between sustainability and business goals, maintaining a consistent voice and tone across a company like Patagonia that sells hundreds of different products globally, and some of the traits that Michael looks for when hiring for his creative teams.
So crank up your Sonos and enjoy this episode with Michael Leon!
Airbnb’s mission is both simple and powerful: to help create a world where you can belong anywhere. Alex Schleifer, Airbnb’s head of design, fully embraces this mission. To create the products that make the Airbnb experience so welcoming and immersive, he also believes in being product driven, and organizes his teams in an Engineering, Product, Design (EPD) structure, which they also call “the triforce.”
Have a listen as Aarron and Eli talk with Alex about the advantages of this team structure, and about some of the problems companies run into when they try to create a “design-led” culture. They also dig into Airbnb’s mission and vision, and talk about the tradeoffs between quality and speed when building products. Enjoy the episode, and may the triforce be with you!
Alex Schleifer’s Bio
Alex is a designer, who as a teenager co-founded the digital agency Sideshow, which went on to produce award-winning work for a variety of global clients. They were acquired by Say Media in 2011.
He’s been on the incredible design team at Airbnb since 2015.
Albert Lee has had an amazing arc to his career. From his beginnings as a wine-steward at Chez Panisse, to working at Frank Gehry’s architecture studio, and on to the role of Associate Partner at IDEO and now Design Partner at NEA, the nation’s largest VC firm, Albert always strives to work with the best of the best.
Given the breadth of his experience at these top institutions, it’s probably not a surprise that even though his expertise is in design, he values the balanced approach between design, engineering, and product teams that are the hallmark of a product-driven company.
In this episode, Albert helps us explore subjects like: why the VC world has become more cognizant of the impact of design, how organizational design influences product design, and how to kickstart a design transformation. We hope you’ll get as much as we did from the insights Albert shared, and thanks for listening.
Albert Lee's Bio
Albert is currently the Design Partner at NEA (New Enterprise Associates), the world's largest venture capital firm, with a portfolio of over 450 companies. In this role he works closely with portfolio companies, furthers the understanding of design within the tech eco-system, and seeks out design-centric investments.
In addition, he coaches CEO's, founders and entrepreneurs as an executive coach with Reboot.io, founded by Jerry Colonna, on all the questions and challenges that come along with building a high-growth company.
He is also a Special Partner at Juxtapose, where he supports a multidisciplinary team in their user research, design, and product processes to launch and invest in high-growth consumer concepts.
Albert has a deep background in both design and business. Albert was previously the Managing Director of IDEO’s New York office, where he brought more than a decade of experience in digital product, communication, and venture design to bear. He specialized in developing new offerings and incubating ventures for clients based on consumer insights in a wide range of industries, including retail/fashion, financial services, and consumer technology.
Prior to IDEO, Albert was a Managing Director at the design firm 2x4, and founded their Asia office in Beijing. Earlier in his career he was a design architect at Frank Gehry’s office. Albert also co-founded the product, Popplet, which provides a visual productivity and collaboration platform for K-12, which has had over 9 million downloads.
He was also recently named to Fast Company's Most Creative People in Business in 2014.
Albert holds a BA in architecture from U.C. Berkeley, a MFA in graphic design from Yale, and an MBA from Columbia Business School. His work has been recognized and exhibited by SFMoMA and MOMA. In 2006, he was chosen as a Young Gun by the Art Director’s Club. He has served on the board of directors of AIGA/NY
If you’re anything like us, playing with LEGOs was a foundational part of your childhood, and a big part of the reason you got interested in design. And given the arc of their history, it is clear that LEGO is a product-driven company: their products are addictively engaging, highly-engineered design masterpieces, they clearly understand the needs of their customers, and they are constantly evolving and innovating with their products to remain a highly-profitable company.
So you can imagine our excitement when we had a chance to chat with Dan Winger, Senior Innovation Designer at the LEGO Future Lab. We had a chance to dive into user testing at LEGO (how do I sign up?!), what the future of physical play looks like in the age of VR, and how story affects product development at LEGO. It turns out the design process at LEGO has a lot in common with the software design world.
Dan Winger's Bio
Dan designs playful products, experiences and interactive entertainment at the forefront of technology. For over nine years, he has been driving growth through innovation at LEGO, exploring the intersection of physical and digital play, and bringing these new experiences to life. He has also consulted for various companies large and small, ranging from motocross to cosmetics. His experience spans a broad spectrum of projects and many different roles.
David Kelley doesn’t like to claim to have come up with the term design thinking, even though a most people would say he did. But regardless of who coined it, as founder of IDEO and the Stanford d.school he has been one of the most influential proponents of design thinking, and human-centered design in general.
When it comes to bringing together engineering, product, and design teams early in the design process, and aligning those teams towards a common goal, design thinking has few equals, and should be part of the toolkit for every product driven company.
In this episode, Eli and Aarron speak with David about what it takes to bring designers and engineers together, how our workspace influences our work, and how we can encourage creative confidence in our companies. Enjoy their chat with David, and thanks for listening.
David Kelley's Bio
(via IDEO.com)
David Kelley is the founder and chairman of the global design and innovation company IDEO. Kelley also founded Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, known as the d.school. As Stanford’s Donald W. Whittier Professor in Mechanical Engineering, Kelley is the Academic Director of both of the degree-granting undergraduate and graduate programs in Design within the School of Engineering, and has taught classes in the program for more than 35 years.
Kelley’s most enduring contributions are in human-centered design methodology and design thinking. He is most passionate about using design to help unlock creative confidence in everyone from students to business executives. A frequent speaker on these topics, Kelley and his brother co-authored the New York Times best-selling book Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, Kelley worked as an engineer at both Boeing and NCR. Drawn to design, he entered Stanford University in 1975, where he earned his master’s degree in Engineering/Product Design. In 1978, he founded the design firm that would become IDEO and, in that same year, began his teaching career at Stanford, receiving tenure in 1990. He also founded an early-stage venture-capital firm in 1984 called Onset, and was instrumental in starting a special effects firm called Edge Innovations, which creates unique Animatronics for the film industry.
Kelley was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 2000. He holds honorary PhD's from both the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth and Art Center College in Pasadena. He has been recognized with numerous honors, including the Chrysler Design Award and the National Design Award in Product Design from the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, the Robert Fletcher Award from Dartmouth, and the Edison Achievement Award for Innovation. Preparing the design thinkers of tomorrow earned him the Sir Misha Black Medal for his “distinguished contribution to design education.”
Google could now be considered a product driven company, but it wasn’t always that way. For many years Google’s engineering-led culture cherished efficiency over user experience. Irene Au arrived at a pivotal moment in the company’s history, and helped shape the way that Google’s product’s clearly value design today.
Now in her role as a design partner at Khosla Ventures, she helps startups “build high performing teams, establish design practices, mentor and grow the next generation of great designers, and design interfaces and experiences.” Here is her story.
Irene Au's Bio
Irene is design partner at Khosla Ventures, where she works with CEOs, executives, and designers to make products and services people can't live without. Irene has extensive experience elevating design at the highest levels of the organization by starting first with an empathetic understanding of human needs, and building high performing teams who create products people can’t live without.
Irene has unprecedented experience elevating the strategic importance of design within internet companies, having built and led the entire User Experience and Design teams at Google (2006-2012), Yahoo! (1998-2006), and Udacity (2012-2014). She began her career as an interaction designer at Netscape Communications, where she worked on the design of the internet’s first commercial web browser.
Irene is also a yoga teacher at internationally-recognized Avalon Yoga in Palo Alto, where she offers an accessible and challenging yoga practice for all.