UX & Growth Podcast

What are Technical Debt and Design Debt, and why they so important in the experimental process? What can we do to identify and combat them? In this episode, we discuss the critical experimentation downfall that they don’t mention in the A/B testing handbook. "Having a cohesive and consistent experience is really important in design. So, going through the process of recognizing when your design has gone through a lot of experiments and it's become a different version of itself, and taking those learnings and compiling them back together in a single and cohesive design, is the best way to approach that. But unfortunately, in the iterative mindset, a lot of the time we forget to do that last step." — Austin at 8:11 Design Debt essay: https://austinknight.com/writing/design-debt/ Email us: Hello@UXandGrowth.com Austin on Twitter: Twitter.com/ustinKnight Geoff on Twitter: Twitter.com/dailydaigle Matt on Twitter: Twitter.com/mattrheault

What does it mean to build a strong UX team and when should a company look to do that? With no formal education path, how should designers be cultivating their abilities? In this episode, Austin sits down with Aarron Walter (VP of Design Education at InVision) to discuss what it was like to build the UX Team at MailChimp and what his vision is for the future of education in design. "A lot of times, designers want to refine. They want to change the typeface, adjust the kerning, or tweak the button color. A lot of engineers will see that and think that's self-indulgent. That's another thing that designers really struggle with. And I'll be honest, designers kind of just suck at talking about the value of their work." — Aarron at 29:30 Aarron on Twitter: Twitter.com/aarron Aarron's Website: www.AarronWalter.com Check out InVision: www.InVisionApp.com Email us: Hello@UXandGrowth.com Austin on Twitter: Twitter.com/ustinKnight Geoff on Twitter: Twitter.com/dailydaigle Matt on Twitter: Twitter.com/mattrheault

With the dawn of VR, AR, and IoT, how will things change for designers? What opportunities could lie within these emerging technologies? In this episode, we speculate on the possibilities and implications that the changing technological landscape could bring. "I think that there are a lot of parallels or things that we're doing well in the digital space that aren't being solved in the physical space, with appliances or anything else. But what we're going to find with something like Augmented Reality or Virtual Reality is that we can start merging the two together." — Geoff at 40:36 Google Cardboard: https://vr.google.com/cardboard/index.html An Internet without screens: http://www.ted.com/talks/tom_uglow_an_internet_without_screens_might_look_like_this Virtual science lab: https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_bodekaer_this_virtual_lab_will_revolutionize_science_class Email us: Hello@UXandGrowth.com Austin on Twitter: Twitter.com/ustinKnight Geoff on Twitter: Twitter.com/dailydaigle Matt on Twitter: Twitter.com/mattrheault

What are the important qualities that go into design leadership? What can design leaders do to help their teams collaborate and grow? In this episode, we sit down with Tim Merrill (Director of Product Design at HubSpot) to discuss the unexpected intricacies and challenges of leading a design team. "When you're doing design critiques, which are ultra important to growth as a designer, you have to have that kind of trust and understanding that you're both coming from a place of wanting to make things better. Not from a place of ego or trying to show that you know what you're talking about and somebody else doesn't." — Tim at 10:30 Tim on Twitter: Twitter.com/timeril Tim on LinkedIn: LnkedIn.com/in/timmerrill Email us: Hello@UXandGrowth.com Austin on Twitter: Twitter.com/ustinKnight Geoff on Twitter: Twitter.com/dailydaigle Matt on Twitter: Twitter.com/mattrheault

What is Accessibility and why should businesses care about it? How difficult is it to design for disabled audiences? In this episode, we discuss the myths and misconceptions around Accessibility, why it’s so important to incorporate it into products (and the unexpected benefits that come from doing so), and how designers can do that with ease. "When I first really started to work with Accessibility Standards, my initial reaction to it was 'I don't have time for this. Why would I try and add this extra bit of work into my workflow to serve a small demographic? Is it worth the time and energy to do it?'" — Matt at 1:35 Sim Daltonism: https://michelf.ca/projects/sim-daltonism/ Tota11y: http://khan.github.io/tota11y/ W3C Accessibility Evaluation Tools: https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/ W3C Accessibility Guidelines: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/ Section 508: http://section508.gov/ and http://www.usability.gov/ Accessibility Inspector for Mac: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Accessibility/Conceptual/AccessibilityMacOSX/OSXAXTestingApps.html aXe: http://www.deque.com/products/axe/ Web Accessibility Toolbar: https://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/wat/ Email us: Hello@UXandGrowth.com Austin on Twitter: Twitter.com/ustinKnight Geoff on Twitter: Twitter.com/dailydaigle Matt on Twitter: Twitter.com/mattrheault

What makes for an effective design review? And how should designers be preparing for them? In this episode, we sit down with Tom Greever (Author of Articulating Design Decisions) to take a deep dive on the components of design meetings, and how designers should communicate their decisions. "I've heard it likened to a Rubiks Cube, where our job as designers is to solve for all sides of the cube, but the problem that we face is that we have that developer who comes in and is like 'Oh, I want this side to be red'. We bear the responsibility of making all these parties come together and realize that, by twisting one side, it messes up the other side. And we have to work together to solve the whole cube." — Tom at 34:03 Tom’s website: www.TomGreever.com Read Articulating Design Decisions: http://amzn.com/1491921560 Tom on Twitter: Twitter.com/tomgreever Email us: Hello@UXandGrowth.com Austin on Twitter: Twitter.com/ustinKnight Geoff on Twitter: Twitter.com/dailydaigle Matt on Twitter: Twitter.com/mattrheault

What makes Apple’s recent customer letter on iPhone privacy so important? How will data security play into future business strategies and customer purchase decisions? In this episode, we discuss the importance of encryption, the opportunity for companies to compete on security and trust, and the ethics of experimenting with users. "I actually see that as being a trend that will come out of this. We see companies have classically competed on features, or technology, or prices. Now they're competing on design. I think another thing we're going to see companies competing on is data security and respect for their users." — Austin at 19:16 Apple's Customer Letter: http://www.apple.com/customer-letter/ Facebook study: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-users-emotions-news-feeds UXPA Code of Ethics: https://uxpa.org/resources/uxpa-code-professional-conduct Email us: Hello@UXandGrowth.com Austin on Twitter: Twitter.com/ustinKnight Geoff on Twitter: Twitter.com/dailydaigle Matt on Twitter: Twitter.com/mattrheault

What is Lean UX and how does it change the way that designers work? What are the most effective ways for design organizations to be structured? In this episode, Austin interviews Jeff Gothelf (Author of Lean UX & Sense and Respond) to take a deep dive on UX in the modern workplace and the future of design. "The goal for me is to illustrate to the folks that I'm speaking with, what the new focus of digital product and service design is. And it's not cranking out more features. It's not getting more stuff out the door and in front of customers. It's having a meaningful impact on customer behavior." — Jeff at 7:54 Jeff’s website: www.JeffGothelf.com Read Lean UX: www.LeanUXBook.com Read Sense and Respond: http://SenseAndRespond.co Jeff on Twitter: Twitter.com/jboogie Email us: Hello@UXandGrowth.com Austin on Twitter: Twitter.com/ustinKnight Geoff on Twitter: Twitter.com/dailydaigle Matt on Twitter: Twitter.com/mattrheault

What are the most effective SEO plays today and what are the best tools available? If you're running a business, how should you build your SEO strategy and hire talent to execute it? In this episode, we sit down with SEO expert Matthew Barby to discuss the tactics that he's seeing work best and where he believes SEO is going in the future. "One link from Entrepreneur literally may be better than 1,000 links from other random websites. Because if volume mattered, we'd just build new websites every day and not care about them. They wouldn't get any links. They'd be nothing. But it'd just be a volume game. That's how Google used to work." — Matthew at 17:55 Recommended reading: Moz Blog, HubSpot Blog, ViperChill, Backlinko. Recommended tools: BuzzSumo, Ahrefs, Majestic SEO, AccuRanker, Google Search Console, BuzzStream, URL Profiler. Matthew’s website: www.MatthewBarby.com Matthew on Twitter: Twitter.com/matthewbarby Email us: Hello@UXandGrowth.com Austin on Twitter: Twitter.com/ustinKnight Geoff on Twitter: Twitter.com/dailydaigle Matt on Twitter: Twitter.com/mattrheault

What is Growth Marketing and what are the most effective ways to do it? How does content, SEO, and persona creation play into growth? In this episode, we sit down with growth expert Anum Hussain to discuss the tactics that she's seen work best in her impressive career at HubSpot, where she took the Sidekick brand to market. "While all of these companies can sort of give a leading guideline as to things that are working, if you just mimic that same playbook, with the growth mindset it's really not going to work. Within the growth mindset, it's really about what your specific users want and how they're thinking about that in the context of how they're using your product." — Anum at 7:34 Anum's website: www.AnumHussain.com Anum on Twitter: Twitter.com/anum Email us: Hello@UXandGrowth.com Austin on Twitter: Twitter.com/ustinKnight Geoff on Twitter: Twitter.com/dailydaigle Matt on Twitter: Twitter.com/mattrheault

What were our biggest learnings in 2015? And how can they be applied in the coming years? In this episode, we cover what we've learned about factorial experiments, namespacing, A/A experiments, placebo tests, new user experience (NUX), work culture in the tech industry (and how it contrasts to work culture in Latin America), and more. "One thing about being 100% data all the way is that you do that and you start to take out the human side of it in the first place. So you start using data so much that you forget to solve for your customer. Activation rates, conversion rates, and lifetime value. They're not customers. Those aren't people." — Geoff at 25:00 Design is not Art article: http://austinknight.com/writing/design-is-not-art/ Austin's Top Product Design Lesson for 2016: https://studio.uxpin.com/blog/top-10-product-design-lessons-for-2016/ HubSpot Culture: http://CultureCode.com Email us: Hello@UXandGrowth.com Austin on Twitter: Twitter.com/ustinKnight Geoff on Twitter: Twitter.com/dailydaigle Matt on Twitter: Twitter.com/mattrheault

How important is site speed and what can you do to improve yours? As it turns out, the average user will abandon a site if it does not load within 3 seconds. So, what does this mean for you? In this episode, we discuss the importance of site speed and the ways in which anyone can quickly improve the performance of their site. "Amazon found out that if they were to slow down their page load time by 1 second, it would cost them $1.6 Billion per sales year. But this is not unique. If you take any high traffic leading tech company on the web right now, they will have published a study very similar to this." — Austin at 4:13 Google's PageSpeed Insights Rules: https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/rules?hl=en Facebook's Technology Behind Preview Photos: https://code.facebook.com/posts/991252547593574/the-technology-behind-preview-photos/ Five Easy Ways to Speed up Your Website: http://austinknight.com/writing/five-easy-ways-to-speed-up-your-website/ HubSpot's Website Grader: https://website.grader.com/ Google's PageSpeed Insights Analyzer: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ GTmetrix: https://gtmetrix.com/ Pingdom Speed Test: http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/ You Might Not Need jQuery: http://youmightnotneedjquery.com/ Email us: Hello@UXandGrowth.com Austin on Twitter: Twitter.com/ustinKnight Geoff on Twitter: Twitter.com/dailydaigle Matt on Twitter: Twitter.com/mattrheault

Are data-driven design and copycat culture destroying creativity on the web? Are designers oppressed by terrible content and templated frameworks? Or are we all complaining in an echo chamber? In this episode, we discuss the common sentiment that everything on the web looks the same. "This is kind of a good thing. We're actually training uses on a massive scale to recognize certain design patterns. And these design frameworks, it's also important to keep in mind, kind of came along as a natural progression out of necessity." — Matt at 33:08 Design Machines article: https://louderthanten.com/articles/story/design-machines Email us: Hello@UXandGrowth.com Austin on Twitter: Twitter.com/ustinKnight Geoff on Twitter: Twitter.com/dailydaigle Matt on Twitter: Twitter.com/mattrheault

What makes Adobe's new UX tool, Project Comet, so awesome for designers? What are the details behind the tool and it's unique features that are aimed at disrupting the entire UX toolset? In this episode, Austin sits down with Demian Borba (Product Manager at Adobe) to get an early look at Project Comet. “In my opinion, Project Comet will change everything. Everything that you just described is Comet, in one tool. We announced Comet at Adobe MAX and the feedback has been phenomenal. It went way beyond our expectations and that's just validation that what we're targeting is right.” — Demian at 14:13 Check out Project Comet: adobe.ly/comet Email us: Hello@UXandGrowth.com Austin on Twitter: Twitter.com/ustinKnight Geoff on Twitter: Twitter.com/dailydaigle Matt on Twitter: Twitter.com/mattrheault

Is a college education really a prerequisite to working in UX and Tech? Is it acceptable to copy design ideas from best-in-class companies and direct competitors? In this episode, we discuss some of the biggest myths in UX and share our thoughts on the bold philosophy behind Google's hiring process. “They're really screening for specific qualities that are much more related to results and what you can actually do, than they are to credentials. I think that this represents a huge shift in the way that we hire at the world's leading tech companies.” — Austin at 8:23 Google article: http://qz.com/180247/why-google-doesnt-care-about-hiring-top-college-graduates/ Imposter Syndrome article: http://product.hubspot.com/blog/engineering-challenge-impostor-syndrome Email us: Hello@UXandGrowth.com Austin on Twitter: Twitter.com/ustinKnight Geoff on Twitter: Twitter.com/dailydaigle Matt on Twitter: Twitter.com/mattrheault