UX Podcast

We need to ask the big hard questions at the beginning of the process so we can make good design decisions later. We talk to Dan Brown about the “discovery phase” or, as Dan suggests, the “discovery mindset”. Not too fast and not too slow. “The more we work on hard design problems, the more...

Episode 294 is a linkshow. Per and James discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention – we feature articles about designing the perfect button, and how sitemaps are an essential tool in web design. Article one is… Designing the perfect button by Domas Markevičius. “Buttons are one of the main UI elements in interactive...

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

What is product management? And “product”? And product designers? We talk to Christian Crumlish, author of Product Management for UX People to learn more about how designers can collaboration and contribute in a product organisation.  We talk about what skills UX-ers bring to the table within “product”, how quantitive and qualitive data are both valuable,...

Lifts and elevators are things that we love to talk about in UX circles. Every elevator panel is capable of being the starting point for a user experience conversation. In this classic UX Podcast interview, we talk to Reetta Ranne and Jussi Hiltunen who, at the time of recording, were senior UX design specialists at...

Web3 is a term that’s getting a lot of attention, along with associated concepts such as blockchain, crypto, NFTs. There are a lot of concepts and phrases to understand, some of them quite technical, before we can get to the question of what benefits they can deliver. Laura Kalbag joins us to help us gain...

Diagrams are everywhere and used by many people in many professions. But what is a diagram? When are they useful? And what makes a good one? Information architect and author of “How To Make Sense of Any Mess” Abby Covert joins us to talk about diagrams and diagramming – which is the topic of her...

We get a reintroduction to information architecture with Donna Spencer. Donna shares with us some of the methods and tools she teaches as part of her workshops as well as look at some of the challenges that information projects can throw at you. We reflect with Donna about how information architecture has changed through the...

Why don’t we just brainstorm that? Brainstorming as a tool for ideation has a number of drawbacks, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be useful. Design leader and leadership coach Christopher McCann joins us to discuss how we can improve our innovation processes, and hold better and more inclusive creative sessions. We talk to Christopher...

Episode 284 is a linkshow. Per and James discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention – we feature articles about additive bias and the current state of mobile UX. Article one is Additive Bias by Colin Wright. “There’s some evidence that, when presented with a problem, we’ll tend to favor solutions that involve adding...

Your own vital signs are your heart rate, temperature, breathing and blood pressure. These are used to help get an idea of your health, and give a “heads-up” that something is not as performing as it should be. Google has come up with its own set of web vitals to give you an idea of...

Carolyn Wilson-Nash together with Julie Tinson, both from Stirling University, published a research paper entitled ‘I am the master of my fate’: digital technology paradoxes and the coping strategies of older consumers. Carolyn joins us to talk more about her research and the impact technology has on older people’s lives. We discuss what we mean...

We often think of trauma as something that individuals go through, but organisations can experience trauma too. Vivianne Castillo was part of producing a research-based report that reveals the ways that organisations respond to trauma. The report also puts forward a suggestion of how organisations can handling healing better. In our conversation with Vivianne we...

Mass democratisation and access to AB test tooling has meant that hundreds of millions of experiments have been run on people, via digital products and services.  Although we are not running pharmaceutical trials and tests, these experiments still raise numerous ethical issues that are shared with research or experiments in a medical scenarios.  Craig Sullivan...

For a number of years Steve Portigal has been collecting user research war stories. The stories describe experiences researchers have had whilst doing fieldwork. Awkward, morally challenging, painful, unsuccessful. We talk to Steve about the benefits of sharing our stories – good and bad – and the ethically challenging situations that field research can place...