UX Cake
46 episodes - English -Helping you become more effective in your UX work and career. We talk with experienced pros and industry leaders to share practical advice on building skills that get the best outcomes for our users, our teams, and our UX life. UX life is hard... eat more cake.
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Episodes
Learn UX: Career Growth Through Community Involvement
February 17, 2020 13:00 - 37 minutes - 20.3 MBEp. 43: In the third of 3 episodes in our special mini-series called Learning UX, guest host Leo Zhang talks with Sara Hubbard and Caryn Wylie, the organizers of the meetup group Seattle Women of Design and UX, about growing your network and experience by getting involved in the UX community around you. From Leo: In our third and final Learn UX episode of the mini-series I wanted to bring on the founders of Seattle Women of Design and UX meetup (seaDUXX). Caryn Wille and Sara Hubbard are ...
Permission to Speak
January 22, 2020 23:26 - 39 minutes - 50.9 MBEp. 42: This week we're talking about Permission to Speak - Maybe there are times you’ve found yourself hesitating to speak up, to put your voice out there… this happens a lot, it’s not just a UX issue but is a common complaint in UX, and in tech in general. And it happens at every level, I’ve been in leadership roles for 20 years and I still experience this at times. My guest is LaDonna Willems, who is the associate editorial director at Dropbox. LaDonna is a writer, and she’s an expert o...
Learn UX: Aligning UX Value
January 17, 2020 13:00 - 33 minutes - 15.2 MBEp. 41: This episode is the second in our special mini-series called Learning UX, hosted by Leo Zhang. In this mini-series, Leo talks in-person with local UX leaders about their careers and topics they’re passionate about. This episode Leo is talking with Kimberly Wiessner, about her career spanning design, creative direction and product strategy, and about bringing teams together to align on UX value. From Leo Zhang: In our second Learn UX episode of the mini-series I wanted to bring on a ...
Bias Is The Context We're In
December 05, 2019 05:33 - 32 minutes - 22.3 MBEp 40: Since I started asking users questions as part of my design process over 20 years ago, I’ve often asked myself, how could I ask better questions. Am I asking the right questions? What bias am I bringing into the interaction? As we progress in our research practice and go beyond the 101 lessons like avoiding leading questions, asking questions that are open-ended, leaving silence in the spaces to allow participants to talk more, learning to interpret actions and expressions not just ...
Learn UX: Mentoring and Hiring
November 20, 2019 13:00 - 49 minutes - 33.8 MBWe're introducing a new series, called Learn UX, hosted by Leo Zhang. Leo started a meetup here in Seattle called Learn UX, aimed at UXers in earlier to mid-career, that hosts great speakers like Torry Podmajersky, who we had on our show talking about strategic UX writing back in episode 33. Leo is adapting his content to a podcast format for UX Cake, and we're trying out a three part series of to see how that resonates with our listeners. So we totally want to hear what you think about this...
Uplevel Your Career With UX Strategy
October 23, 2019 11:00 - 36 minutes - 16.7 MBEp. 38: This week I got to talk with Jaime Levy, a UX pioneer, and Author of the book ‘UX Strategy’, about 'moving beyond’ being a designer or researcher in UX, and ‘leveling up’ in your career by moving into UX strategy or digital transformation. We talk about the difference between UX Strategy as a process or workflow vs. UX strategy as a role, and what that takes. Then we talk about Digital Transformation as the next step up in leveling up, from UX Strategy. There are many different defi...
Collaborative Research
October 09, 2019 12:00 - 38 minutes - 17.6 MBThis episode was a live recording for the podcast at the 5th annual Radical Research Summit in Vancouver BC. Our panel topic was collaborative research - Working with people in other disciplines, in other teams, or even in other organizations to produce really impactful research that will get integrated into the experiences we’re creating. The panelists were Ariba Jahan, Innovation Director at Ad Council, Judd Antin, Director of Research at Airbnb, and Komal Faiz, a UX researcher at Zensurin...
Research Beyond Words
September 25, 2019 11:45 - 32 minutes - 44.2 MBEp 36: Sometimes words just can't get you the research insights you need. This week we’re talking about alternative ways of gathering insights in user research, beyond just verbal and written communication. There are many circumstances when words just aren’t the best way for people to tell us what they’re thinking, feeling, or doing, so being able to use physical or tactile methods can really affect the insights you’re able to gather. My guest today is Anna Macaranas who is a Senior Design S...
Design For The Future
September 11, 2019 12:00 - 42 minutes - 60.5 MBFor any experience you’re designing, you want to know what the current trends are, but if you’re looking for innovative solutions, you want to predict what future trends will affect your audiences' needs & motivations & obstacles so you can design for the future. Our topic this episode has a fairly unsexy name but is thoroughly intriguing — innovation-based trend forecasting. This isn’t currently a common methodology in UX today, but it’s something that could definitely be a game-changer for...
The Cognitive Diversity Issue in UX
August 27, 2019 15:05 - 39 minutes - 54.3 MBEp #34: Today’s episode is a conversation with Melanie Polkosky who is a UX Psychologist with a PhD in cognitive psychology and a long history in tech. After Melanie left a 13-year career at IBM, she wrote a book called Uncovering Truffles, a book about the scarcity and value of Women in Stem. And something she wrote about in her book stood out to me as really relevant to many people UX, across genders. In researching her book, Melanie found that certain cognitive styles can make it more dif...
Getting The Work You Want
August 20, 2019 12:00 - 37 minutes - 54.3 MBEp. #14 (re-run) Much of the work in UX and in our careers requires convincing others, about our ideas, our work, or our ability to do the work we want to do. My guest is Fiz Yazdi, a managing director at cxpartners in London and Bristol, UK. Fiz developed an approach to selling based on what’s called a ‘consultative’ model which Fiz adapted into a simple framework she uses in her own UX practice and has begun sharing it with others. More about Fiz Yazdi Fiz is an enthusiastic design ...
Words Make Experiences Work
August 05, 2019 12:00 - 36 minutes - 49.6 MBEp #33: This week I’m talking with Torrey Podmajersky about her new book, Strategic Writing for UX - how to drive engagement, conversion, and retention with every word. Torrey is not only an expert at UX Writing, she’s an expert at getting the right words into the experience — which is half the challenge sometimes, even if you’ve determined what the right thing to say where is, getting the rest of the team to see the value can be harder than it should be. So of course, we talk about that. He...
Negotiate the Salary & Title You Deserve
July 22, 2019 12:00 - 39 minutes - 17.9 MBEp #32: Welcome back to UX Cake! We took a short break and now we're back on our regular publishing schedule. In this episode I talked with Tamara Adlin, a UX strategy expert, speaker, and author, who was a guest in season 1, episode 10, talking about creating alignment personas. This time we're talking about a really important topic that plagues many of us and that she is really passionate about, she’s been sharing her wisdom in meetups and conferences in Seattle, and I wanted to make this ...
Influencing Without Authority
April 01, 2019 05:31 - 54 minutes - 37.4 MBThis week's episode was a live recording at the ConveyUX conference in early March with a panel of UX pros talking about Influencing without authority, which is such an important topic and clearly very relevant based on the turn-out - it was standing room only. This episode is almost twice as long as our normal episodes — but you won’t want to miss the second half, where we turned it over to audience members to ask advice about their own situations, kind of mini-mentoring sessions, on a vari...
When UX and Agile Meet...
March 12, 2019 03:58 - 30 minutes - 20.9 MBThis week we’re talking about incorporating UX into an Agile product development process. It’s been a common complaint for the past couple of decades most agile processes don’t allow time for ux research and design. Teams that want the best human-centered design outcomes have to be intentional about that and it means adjusting their agile processes in some way, so they can use ux resources more effectively. But many teams don’t even know they need to do this, or if they do know they have iss...
Recipe for Effective User Research
February 25, 2019 13:00 - 27 minutes - 19 MBAre you committed to doing user research in order to design and build products and services that work well, solve real needs, and create engaging experiences? Chances are pretty good that if you produce user research in your work, at some point you will feel like your research is just not making the impact it should be. Or you may have trouble making a case for doing more research — and the number one way to get your organization on board with doing more research is to make sure the research...
UX Cake Pop: Getting Buy-in
February 18, 2019 04:00 - 3 minutes - 5.11 MBA UX Cake Pop is like a bite-sized piece of UX Cake. In this Cake Pop, we're talking about being more effective through getting buy-in early. We interviewed a few UX pros who were attending the Interaction19 conference while we were there, and got lots of great responses to our question: What's the biggest challenge you've been dealing with in your work lately? We got a great response from Marie Williams, who’s the founder and CEO of Dream Networks CIC in London, about both the difficulty an...
Fast and effective - Agile Strategy with Marty Neumeier
February 04, 2019 13:00 - 31 minutes - 21.3 MBIn this episode we talk with the renown brand strategist Marty Neuemeier about a strategy framework he calls Agile Strategy. Marty’s written many strategy books - design strategy, brand strategy, business strategy - and his most recent book Scramble has a very unique approach to the business book genre. It’s set as a novel - Marty calls it a ‘business thriller’ I haven’t read any other business book like it. Marty tells us about why agile strategy is more likely to create innovation and bold...
Recovering and Reinvention with John Maeda
January 28, 2019 13:00 - 27 minutes - 22.3 MBEp #27: I’m really excited to share with you my conversation with John Maeda — about Reinvention. This episode covers a lot of ground John talked about why we should focus on recover fast vs. fail fast, why inclusive design is so important, and why we should be using Anpanman to train our AI platforms. John is well known for so many things, across design, tech, and business worlds. He wrote one of my favorite books, titled “The Laws of Simplicity.” He’s also written extensively on design, le...
Designing The Impossible with Nelly Ben Hayoun
January 21, 2019 13:00 - 36 minutes - 42.3 MBEp #26: This week we are talking about designing the impossible, with Dr. Nelly Ben Hyoun, founder and experience designer of Nelly Ben Hayoun Studios in London. They create large scale, extreme experiences like being an astronaut, or erupting volcanos, or recreating natural disasters, for organizations as diverse as Nasa, the European Space Agency, Google, Mattel, Nike, Lego, the list goes on and on. So designing impossible things is just part of every day for Nelly and her teams — and even...
Changing the Disability Design Narrative
January 14, 2019 15:00 - 34 minutes - 62.5 MBEp. #25: This week we’re talking about designing withdisability, rather than fordisability, with my guest Liz Jackson. Liz is a disability advocate who is trying to shift the disability narrative. We talked about how the way we currently approach disability in design can actually cause more problems that solutions for people with disabilities, and how language - phrases we commonly use in design, like accessibility and inclusion, and even design thinking methodology - makes disabled people ...
Design a Better World, with Don Norman
January 08, 2019 05:48 - 35 minutes - 65.7 MBEp. #24: Welcome to season 2! We are kicking the season off with a fascinating conversation about changing the world with design, with Don Norman. Don Norman has been a well-known name in the design field for over 30 years, and is currently Director of Design Lab at UC San Diego, where he spoke to us from, in between trips around the world spreading the practice of design to change the world. You might know Don from his book The Design of Everyday Things, or maybe you know him as a co-founde...
Designing a Life You Love
November 27, 2018 04:59 - 36 minutes - 33.4 MBThis week, I had the opportunity to speak with Ayse Birsel, a renown designer and the co-founder of Birsel + Seck, an award-winning design and innovation studio in NY, working with Herman Miller, IKEA, and Toyota, among others. Ayse is also the creator of Design the Life You Love, which is a guide for anyone who wants to create their very best life. Ayse developed this transformative process when she decided to try out a design methodology she created called Deconstruction-Reconstruction, on...
Being in UX at a Startup
November 07, 2018 04:59 - 46 minutes - 42.2 MBI recently joined a start-up called Spruce Up so topics related to startups have been top-of-mind for me. In this episode of UX Cake, I am joined by Phillip Hunter of Pulse Labs and Cassie Wallender of Invio, Inc. We really enjoyed recording live in Seattle and had a candid conversation about the challenges and benefits of being in UX at a start-up and shared the techniques we have found effective while working in this type of start-up environment. Phillip Hunter is VP of Products at Pulse...
Redesigning The Way We Work
October 23, 2018 03:59 - 37 minutes - 34 MBThis week on UX Cake I had a chance to catch up with David and Mary Sherwin about their new book, Turning People Into Teams. I love this topic — how do we go from being just a bunch individual people with different motivations, attitudes, working styles, communication styles, into a team where the whole is better than the sum parts? It’s about redesigning the way we work together. And the exciting thing about it is that it can happen in small incremental ways; it doesn’t mean a big re-org o...
Creating and Nurturing a Culture of Diversity and Inclusion
October 08, 2018 03:59 - 40 minutes - 37 MBEven if we consider ourselves advocates for diversity and inclusion when it comes to considering gender, race, age, LGBTQ or ableness, how do we stretch ourselves even further? How can we create a truly diverse team in thought, background, and culture, and how do we make sure we are creating products that are inclusive to all? How do we break the molds that are exclusive in their very nature? On today’s show, I have a candid conversation with Timothy Bardlavens, an outspoken advocate for equ...
Work Together Better to Design Great Products
August 29, 2018 06:45 - 43 minutes - 39.8 MBEp. #19: Much of the time we like to work independently, maybe because of work environment, preference, or pride. And yet we know there are great benefits and advantages to working as a team and collaborating with other people. This week’s episode is a re-edit of episode 3, one of my favorite episodes, when I spoke with David and Mary Sherwin, co-founders of Ask the Sherwins, about doing the impactful work we want to do, through improved collaboration and effective teams. David and Mary work...
Designer-founded startups
August 14, 2018 20:31 - 36 minutes - 33.7 MBEp. #18: Over the past few years we’ve seen a growing trend of designer founded startups. There are a few really notable designer-founded startups like — Airbnb, Kickstarter and Lynda.com have paved the way… and in general startups are realize the value of user-centered design as a competitive differentiator, so there’s definitely more value placed on design and user experience. But the designer as founder is still not the norm for startups. This week I’m talking with designer-founder Will S...
Outcome-focused Design - Tarot Cards for Tech
July 31, 2018 01:00 - 35 minutes - 34 MBEp. #17: Using tarot cards to create outcomes-focused designis a very out-of-the-box approach, and yet it's actually really simple and approachable. In this episode I talked with Sheryl Cababa, an executive creative director at Artefact Group design agency, about their Tarot Cards of Tech. It's a card deck of prompts for team discussions, a fun product that's meant to be playful, but with a serious purpose – to get teams thinking differently about their strategy and design. In this fun inter...
Shark-proofing Your UX Presentations
July 16, 2018 03:00 - 45 minutes - 52.3 MBEp. #16: This special episode of uxcake was a panel discussion recorded live in front of an audience in Seattle on June 28. If you’ve been in ux design or research for awhile, it's almost certain you’ve been involved in a review of your work, or your team’s work, and chances are you’ve experienced a review that goes off the rails, or that causes chaos after the fact, or you just don't get the feedback you really need. In this episode we discuss lessons learned and techniques you can use to m...
Understanding Client Dynamics
July 02, 2018 03:00 - 26 minutes - 29.9 MBEp. #15: Have you ever had a meeting with a stakeholder or client who you thought you were in alignment with, and afterward thought “What the heck just happened in there?” Well it happened often enough to Morag Johnston and her team that she’s created a website and blog dedicated to the problem of understanding client dynamics, called understandingclients.com. Morag is a digital strategist and leadership coach at Effective by Design in Toronto, Canada, and she joined me for a conversation ab...
Getting More of The Work You Want to Do
June 18, 2018 03:00 - 36 minutes - 50.6 MBEp. #14: Besides needing strong technical skills, much of the work in UX and in our careers requires convincing others, about our ideas, our work, or our ability to do the work we want to do. My guest is Fiz Yazdi, a managing director at cxpartners in London and Bristol, UK. Fiz developed an approach to selling based on what’s called a ‘consultative’ model which Fiz adapted into a simple framework she uses in her own UX practice and has begun sharing it with others. Fiz Yazdi is generously ...
Design & Dev: How to create solutions together
June 04, 2018 03:00 - 44 minutes - 40.5 MBEp. #13: No one would argue about the relationship between UX and development being a critical one, but it’s not easy. Join us for a conversation with Jaime Lopez, an experienced developer and co-host of the More Than Just Code podcast (www.mtjc.fm) about the UX and developer relationship, creating solutions together, and increasing collaboration and communication. Jaime is an experienced software developer with a focus on iOS development. He led the iOS development team at OfferUp where he...
Going Independent, part 2 – Making it work for you
May 21, 2018 04:35 - 42 minutes - 39 MBEp. #12: Part 2 of Leigh & Laura's conversation about freelancing. In this episode we focus on ways to be more effective in your freelance career, from finding and managing clients to managing balance, and continuing to grow in your career. If freelancing is something you’re considering, or maybe you’ve been doing it for awhile and wondering what other people do, or what mistakes other people make, then listening to our experiences might fill in some blanks. And for lots more online resources...
Going independent – is it for you?
May 07, 2018 03:00 - 36 minutes - 34.3 MBEp. #11: In this episode, Leigh and Laura discuss being an independent UX pro — contract, freelance, or consulting. The flexibility is what draws a lot of people to independent work, whether it's to have more time to travel or more time for family or a hobby, but of course there are drawbacks as well. Is there a personality type that works better for independent work? What are the benefits and drawbacks during different parts of your career? How does it affect your career over the long run? I...
Creating Personas That Align Stakeholders
April 23, 2018 03:00 - 32 minutesEp. #10: We’re talking with Tamara Adlin, a persona pioneer, about a process for creating personas that not only aligns executives and stakeholders, but that also actually gets those personas used. Tamara’s honed this process over the last decade, and she shares with us what "alignment personas" are, how and why she creates them, and how you can create them too. Plus, how to navigate this potentially political process that is fraught with danger! For information regarding your data privacy, ...
Transitions in UX - AR/VR
April 16, 2018 00:46 - 37 minutes - 34.7 MBEp. #9: Many UX practitioners are interested in transitioning into emerging technology but aren’t sure where to start, or what that path looks like. In this episode we’re talking about the practical aspects of getting into augmented, virtual, or mixed reality, with Di Dang, who’s a UX specialist in AR/VR, and leads an emerging tech department at POP agency in Seattle. For information regarding your data privacy, visit Acast.com/privacy
Overcoming Mentoring Challenges
April 02, 2018 03:13 - 31 minutes - 29.2 MBEp. #8: Mentoring is one of the most powerful tools for developing talent and leadership… it’s also often taken for granted as something anyone who’s been working for awhile can do. So we end up with senior practitioners going into a managerial track with no management training, and no real mentoring experience. And yet, think about how important managers have been in the jobs you've had, whether they've been good, or bad. Mentorship is part of management, but it's also a practice unto itsel...
Transitioning in UX: Voice Design
March 20, 2018 04:58 - 40 minutes - 37.3 MBEp #7: How people interface with technology is constantly evolving, but we’re seeing big changes in the technolgy platforms themselves, and that means big changes in the UX field. This week is the beginning of an occasional series on UX careers in transition, starting with voice design, talking with Cheryl Platz, a principal designer at Microsoft. Cheryl has worked on high profile voice platforms including Cortana and Alexa, and she has also moved between voice-based design and visual-based d...
Augmented Humanity & Our Changing Reality
March 12, 2018 04:59 - 38 minutes - 53.3 MBEp #6: Technology is changing the way we perceive reality — whether you have some kind of headset on or not… and it’s much more than pokeman go. In this episode we hear from Galit Ariel, self-proclaimed ‘digital hippy’ and author of Augmenting Alice, and Chirryl-Lee Ryan, a trans-disciplanary design leader, two brilliant multi-disciplinary UX experts, on two different sides of the globe, about augmented reality, the minister of loneliness, and experience design as the ‘muse’ of product devel...
Adding To Your Creative Toolbox
March 05, 2018 04:00 - 35 minutes - 32.7 MBEp #5: Generating, sustaining, and selling creative ideas requires a lot more than inspiration.There is process and structure - which doesn't sound or even always 'feel' creative. It isn’t always easy or straightforward. As author Scott Berkun says, it’s a dance, which he talks about in his latest book, The Dance of The Possible. In this episode we talk about some of the tools you can use for staying creative, selling creative ideas, or motivating your teams' creativity. Which may or may not ...
004: Improv for Empathy & Make Better Products
February 26, 2018 04:00 - 32 minutes - 29.5 MBWhen you're designing products for people, having empathy for those specific people (aka users) is critical. Yep, you know that, but how can you increase empathy for the users from the entire team, and stakeholders too? In this episode, Karen Reilly, UX Director at Iterate in Dublin, Ireland, shares insights and techniques inspired by her work in improv for developing more empathy, not only for users but within our teams as well. Karen is an expert both at creating user-centered products, and...
Better Cross-team Collaboration - Made Fun!
February 20, 2018 20:04 - 42 minutesEpisode #3: Collaborating across teams is hard, and it doesn't happen without intention, and some structure. But the benefits for your product, wow - it's like the difference between a beautiful chocolate soufflé and... just a mess on your kitchen counter. (Guess which one has a better UX.) David and Mary Sherwin are experts in teamwork (and design & innovation) and, as they put it, 'helping teams make better cake.' They joined me for a fun and informative conversation about how to make a bet...
002: Executive Buy-in for UX
February 19, 2018 23:35 - 28 minutesWe know showing the business value of UX is the way to any MBA's heart/wallet, but it's often still a struggle. In this episode we get practical advice and techniques from former Amazon executive and UX champion, Eva Manolis. For information regarding your data privacy, visit Acast.com/privacy
001: UX Mentor Masters
February 18, 2018 19:05 - 26 minutesExploring the benefits of being a UX mentor with Rachelle Kauffman, UX Designer at Zillow. The benefits can be surprising, including improving your own design and research skills, increasing confidence, and upleveling your career in user experience or product design. For information regarding your data privacy, visit Acast.com/privacy
000 Introducing UX Cake
February 16, 2018 17:00 - 16 minutesLearn a little about Leigh and Laura who make Amplify Alliance, the producer of UX Cake, and hear about what this podcast is about, why we're making it, and what's in store. UX Cake is a podcast for user experience professionals who want to be more effective and happy in their career. Every week we talk to experienced UX pros and industry insiders for practical advise on building skills to get the best outcomes for our selves, our teams, our users, and our UX careers. We'll hear stories fr...