Aurelius Podcast

Show highlights: - Komal’s research on international women’s mobility challenges - Tips for doing research across multiple countries and cultures - Culture differences and considerations when doing research in other countries - How language can make so much of a difference in research - Small but impactful steps you can take to do better UX research

- Psychology and UX Design - How behavioral economics applies to UX design - Common behavior patterns we can design for - Design ethics and moral implications in UX design and research - How do you decide your design, product or service is ethical or not? - Examples of non-ethical design and marketing patterns - Considerations to take for designing a more ethical product or service - What UX desig...

- Sharing design decisions effectively - What is a design decision? - Who’s responsible for design decisions? - Similarities between cultural differences and different team role differences in tech - Getting stakeholder approval and agreement on your work - Preparing for a design review meeting

- Quantitative vs Qualitative Research - Starting a new UX research team and practice - How to sell UX research to your company - Pitfalls to avoid when starting a UX research practice at your company

- DesignOps 2.0 at Paypal - Shifting the focus from scaling designers to scaling design itself - Comparing DesignOps and DevOps - Changing the responsibilities of UX designers so a small team can focus on the work that matters - Scaling design without hiring more designers - Tools and processes to for successful DesignOps

- The critical things you can learn about business to make you a better UX designer or researcher - How important is UX in the success of building new products - The business of consulting versus the business of products or software - How to stand out as a UX person in the world of generic resumes and cover letters

- Dana’s stories about usability testing on ballot design prototypes - Overcoming stakeholder objections for doing user research - Challenges of local and federal elections in the United States - Ballot design and voter experience - Doing research for civic design and overcoming very complex roadblocks - How to get deep domain expertise in a regulated industry as a designer - Why our common approa...

- The differences and similarities between UX and product management - How planning a heist is just like building digital products - Who owns the responsibility of “knowing your customers” - Using both quantitative and qualitative research to improve your designs and products

- DesignOps and ResearchOps at a large enterprise like Best Buy - Fred’s story of how he got introduced to and a job working in DesignOps - A day in the life of a job in DesignOps - The part an insights repository plays in DesignOps and ResearchOps at a large company - Dealing with the unsexy parts of UX, Research and Designops

Episode 36 highlights with Natalie Hanson - Differences between in house and external UX teams and the unique challenges of each - Tips for collaborating with others on your user research work - How to encourage non-designers and non-researchers to collaborate on user research and insights - Tips for working with stakeholders who believe they already know what needs to be designed - Effectively co...

Episode 35 highlights with Rob Walling: - How Rob started and/or acquired multiple SaaS apps over the years and some product and design lessons he’s learned from that experience - Rob’s background as a software engineer and what made him decide to become an entrepreneur - The story of founding Drip and how Rob and how the team made some pretty big changes in the product - Finding the confidence to...

Episode 34 highlights with Jason Voiovich: - Jason’s background in marketing and consumerism as well as what led him to become an author on the topics - The pitfalls of focusing too much on analytics and quantitative data to understand your customers - Why empathy is a key to the future of our work and society - Jason’s research about empathy - The connection between empathy and burnout… and what...

Episode 33 highlights with Kate Towsey: - Kate’s background and how she got into user research and ResearchOps - What it was like to “research the researchers” - The global ResearchOps community and how it all began - Research repositories and libraries - Leading research operations at Atlassian - How and why the ResearchOps community grew to what it is now - Kate’s definition for #WhatisResearchO...

Episode 32 highlights with Gregg Bernstein: - How Gregg and his team are doing user research at Vox Media - Doing user research for broad audiences and industries - Using smaller research projects to lead to larger more strategic research - How to most effectively share your user research findings with stakeholders and your team - Thoughts on UX research repositories and libraries - Tools and tips...

Episode 31 highlights with Hana Nagel: - How the President of the United States did “user research” and what you can learn from that in your work as a UX designer, researcher and product maker - Doing user research...about user research, so that you can see much more success with your organization adopting a more user centered mindset - Focusing on the outcomes of research to create a greater impa...

Episode 30 highlights with Dave Malouf: - What is ResearchOps and DesignOps? - Challenges of operationalizing research and design in growing organizations and how to overcome them - Dave’s tips and insights in how to grow design and research in your company more efficiently - Who owns “ResearchOps” and what does that person(s) do? - How to determine when you should be thinking about DesignOps and...

Episode 29 highlights with Jorge Arango: - The similarities between physical architecture and UX design - Tips we can apply from the process of architecture to digital design - How to think about physical spaces to inform the digital information spaces you create - Feedback loops in digital information spaces - How the rate of change in physical buildings vs. digital spaces has changed our expecta...

Episode 28 highlights with Jim Kalbach: - What is the difference between user experience, customer experience and marketing - Jim’s background in UX design and how that helped him transition to his role now in customer experience and product education - Remembering that the “grass is never greener” and no organization is perfect in order to have a longer term impact where you work - What is the tr...

Listen to Episode 27 for highlights with Brianna Sylver including: - The difference between user research and market research -Using both market research and user research to build a better design strategy - Why market research may not be what you think it is - How and when you should think about doing user research more like a market researcher - Project mindset vs. product mindset - Tactical vs....

- How Jeffrey and the team at An Event Apart design the experience of the conference - The dangers in the seduction of building “cool” stuff as opposed to the things people need - What’s the difference between junior designers and senior designers? - Design ethics, mindfulness and inclusiveness in UX design and product management - How the web and design has changed since 1995

- Product management at Intercom - Choosing the right problems to solve for your customers - What user research looks like at Intercom - How Michelle and the product team at Intercom chooses which projects to work on - Where does UX design start and Product Management end?

Episode 24 Highlights: - What is creativity? - The concept of “flow” and its role in identifying and harnessing your creativity - Denise’s story of her very own zone of genius and how you can find yours - Dangers of burnout, how you got there, how to dig yourself out and also how to avoid it - Different types of motivation and what they have to do with your work - How making custom earrings helps...

Episode 23 Highlights with Lindsey Redinger: - What is ResearchOps and how do you operationalize user research? - Making research accessible to everyone in the organization - How InVision documents and stores user research insights - Lindsey’s trick for helping all of InVision build empathy with their customers - Getting new employees at InVision up to speed with who their customers are as part of...

Episode 22 highlights: - Peter’s new book “Planning for Everything” and what led him to decide to write a book about planning - What we can learn from the U.S. Marines about planning better design and research projects - Peter’s framework of S.T.A.R.F.I.N.D.E.R and how to use it for better planning of your ux, design and research projects - How Agile development process can help...and hinder your...

Episode 21 Highlights: - Lou’s background, the beginning of the internet and how UX/IA all started - The stories behind Lou meeting Tim Berners Lee and Larry Page - How Lou started Rosenfeld Media, the UX book publishing company - The story of the blind men and the elephant and how it applies to building a great user experience - DesignOps, ResearchOps and how Lou began major conferences around th...