Surviving UX

What does it feel like to lose everything? What's left over when you walk away from your corporate job and your dream home burns to the ground? Margot Dear faced this unthinkable scenario and has risen from the ashes to rebuild her career, reasses her life, and rediscover the bonds she formed over years of working with UX teammates. Support Margot's GoFundMe to support Altadena, CA: https://gofund...

What's the biggest irony of our jobs? Can maximize your productivity if you also have care tasks? How many times do you read your layoff notice? And does your manager really care when you get laid off? Uday Gajendar returns to the podcast.  Zirp Soda Tshirt Zirp Soda Sticker

Can you take on a chatbot and win? Are you making your users do chores? Are you pumped about automatic renewal laws? Get hyped with us about UX in 2025.

Are you in UX for the right reasons? If you lost your job would you walk away from the UX field  or fight for your passion? Do you have the stamina to apply to over 1,000 jobs? We talk to seasoned UX professional Shawn Kenney who is navigating the UX job market in these insane times.

Do designers have enough supervision? Can you be proactive about your destiny in this job market? And who's a worse train passenger: babies or bachelorettes? User Experience Research Leader Ben Basilan joins the podcast to talk about mastering the research interview and evolving in your career.  

What proved to be most sticky from UX Y'all the TriUXPA conference? What does it take to get the tech obessesed to look up from their phones? Is there anything that can make bad team dynamics better? More tales of UX survival with guest Matt Rogers, Product Design Lead and fellow UX Y'all presenter.

It's the final countdown! Join us for all the conference fun 1 day before, 2 hours before, and 1 hour after our talk at UX Y'all in Raleigh. 

Nearing the finish line! Is our stress a manufactored crisis? Perhaps a Meg-ufactured one? We forge on and share reflections on the final, tired days of prep. 

We continue to collaborate on our conference talk and ponder: After all this time, how could we be learning new things about each other? What makes all this effort worth it? And, this is going to be fun, right? Right?

We continue to prep for UX Y'all and the rewriting and second guessing is in full swing! This week we talk about nervously crafting slides and talk tracks: What's gonna hit? What's gonna land? 

In a few short weeks Jessamyn and Meg will present at UX Y'all. Will we get the presentation done in time? Will our friendship hold out? And what is it like to get ready for such a UX professional extracurricular? 

What would you do to save your most precious notebook? Is the remote-worker promotion penalty real? How many chicken nuggets can your AI order? 

How do you move from mocks to strategy? Does anyone appreciate UX consultants? Courtney Campbell joins Surviving UX to talk about her big switch to UX strategy and why she tells designers to get out of Figma.

What happens when you stay at the same company for over a decade? Do you feel represented by UXPA or Figma's communities? Joshua Ledwell joins me and Meg Cramer to talk about staying put.

What sets you off? Have you ever had an emotional freak out at work? Does it matter if we stay professional or is okay to cry?  

UX research practitioner Troy Effner joins the podcast! What is work like after a dyslexia diagnosis? How might you sell your super powers to the business? And where can you look to find what nourishes your brain?

Join Meg, Jessamyn, and two special guests for the first Surviving UX Draft to determine the best ever conditions for UX design work. Laura Martin returns and Patrick Kovacich joins for draft day 2024. 

Are you a UX saint or sinner? Do dark patterns have a place in design? Should you push back if you're asked to design "dark"?

When's the last time you had the courage to look your stakeholder in the eye and put a design workshop on their calendar? Sami Lee joins us to talk about extra long coffee runs and agenda-less meetings.

Tension? Boredom? Burnout? Are you stuck professionally? It's the perfect time to explore career moves with UX coach Amy Santee.

Have you ever been right at work but had to let someone else believe they were? Did your latest performance review's negative feedback ring true? Is it possible not to get tricked by online shopping UX compliance patterns? 

When do employees not want cupcakes? How can one keep calm and M&A on? Is any tech actually improving our lives? Meg and Jessamyn tackle these and other UX quandries spurred by recent tech headlines. 

Dinner with the family or drinks after work? Users' time or engineering time? Candy or pain relievers? Jessamyn and Meg tackle the tough judgement calls that come with UX.

Can coaching and meditation get you through a tough job market? Can you to push past pixel pushing to UX strategy? And are true offsites just a fleeting memory now? Meg and Jessamyn welcome Dvir Adler and Dor Reich to talk about their warmest onboarding memories.

Glad to see the end of 2023? Meg survives a return to work, including cat attacks. Jessamyn survives on vending machine snacks in a race to the bottom of the cheapest eats in the office.