Bear Academy

Bear Academy Season 4. Lee Young spent nearly 20 years as a designer, most recently as Product Design Director at Xero in Auckland, where he and Bear were colleagues. Then he left, retrained, and became a creative arts therapist. He now works at two ends of life: neurodivergent children at Rainbow House, and hospice patients nearing the end at Dove Hospice, while running his own private therapy pr...

Most designers spend their careers shipping other people's products. Xinran Ma decided to build one of his own. He trained as an architect at Columbia, moved into product design, and spent four years in a stable remote role at Redfin before walking away to run Design with AI full time. The newsletter now reaches more than 40,000 designers, alongside a Maven course and three books. This convers...

Felix Lee from ADPList on vibe coding, why 30% of Figma might disappear, and how founders become translators between design and business.

Luca runs Skarlo, a London-based product studio now taking equity in YC and Antler companies. We unpack how he went from selling $1,000 websites to sharing cap tables with venture-backed startups, and why the game has shifted from "why design" to "why you."

This episode unpacks essential AI terms using insights from the AI-powered NotebookLM, designed to make understanding artificial intelligence accessible for everyone. With trusted insights from the Nielsen Norman Group, we clarify complex terms like algorithms, machine learning, and deep learning. Whether you’re on the go or taking a break, tune in to explore AI jargon in an easy-to-follow, conver...

In this episode, Bear breaks down essential UX and product design terms, providing a roadmap for anyone starting their journey in the field. From “Agile” to “Kanban,” “UX” to “UI,” we dive into practical definitions, explore how these terms play out in real-world projects, and discuss the critical role of shared vocabulary in building cohesive, user-centered products. Disclaimer: This content was...

In today’s episode, we dive into the insightful journey of Ray Tiong, Senior Design Researcher at Xero. We'll explore his career transition from graphic design to UX research, and share his valuable advice for professionals embarking on similar paths. Ray opens up about his beginnings in the design world, his strategic shift to UX research, and how his art history background has enriched his a...

A full episode of 3 topics: Adobe acquires Figma, Tips for getting a Design job, Digital hygiene. 1. A few thoughts on Adobe acquiring Figma - some of them might be unpopular from other designers’ opinions. 2. I mentored 10+ juniors and helped them transition from different industries to land a design job offer, including working at multinational companies. Here're a few things I noticed that...

Armando Torrealba is an Experience Design Manager at Atlassian, and I worked with him while he worked at Xero as a Product Design Director. He came from Chile (as a non-native speaker) and thrives as a design leader in New Zealand, which was one of the reasons I invited him to join my podcast. While I worked with Armando at Xero, I noticed he is really great at communication, design intention and...

Life Coach Ciao Chen shared her ways of working as a digital nomad travelling in China(currently) and running an international coaching business. It all started because of COVID :) Highlights 💡 Being a coach is as being a possibility enabler for others, and a coach needs to enable him/herself first. 💡 Coaching is a blessed job - I can talk to many smart people and get inspired on solving my prob...

Brendan Jarvis shared what he learned from 2 years of podcasting experience on finding and interviewing top UX influencers. Highlights 💡 A better experience for guests and audience: look at the camera and active listening 💡 Be authentic or professional? 💡 How to find guests for a UX podcast? 💡 How to get the workflow organised? 💡 How to deal with “I don’t want to do it today” 💡 Tips for rele...

A couple of weeks ago, I joined a podcast (Chiwi Journal) interview and shared my journey of being a bilingual content creator. With the host's permission, I shared this interview on my podcast as well. In this episode, we talked about: How do Chinese people pick up their English names? From working at a ‘tier 18’ city in China as a designer and building a business in web2 to migrant to New Ze...

Listening to an audiobook is a great way to learn new things, but you are more likely to forget most of the learnings as taking notes from an audiobook is tricky. I’ll show you a tip to help you better review what you’ve learned from an audiobook, and remember most of the key points. Sounds too good to be true? Check it to see if this approach suits you!

You might heard of 10000 hours rule by Malcolm Gladwell, which is to invest 10000 hours to master something. But how do you know which domain you would like to spend 10000 hours in the beginning? Introducing my 10 hours theory. Actually, it's 10,100,1000,10000 hours theory. By investing 10 hours at the very beginning, you can make sure the rest of 9990 hours you will spend is a good investment...

The making of a manager by Julie Zhuo is an awesome book for designers and design managers. It sounds like it's written for a new manager but I found it insightful and helpful for all the professionals working with other people. You will learn the mindsets, goals, and struggles of a manager, and better collaborate with your own manager. Also, if becoming a manager is your career goal, this is...

7 #tips for presenting your design work like a pro! Presentation is an essential skill for designers, and sometimes it might be overwhelming. Last week, I did a presentation with a wider audience to share what I work at in last 6 months in 12 minutes. The result was great, and I found some of my personal design presentation tips might be helpful for other designers to share or presenting design wo...

Confident career decisions? It's always hard to make career decisions, no need to say to decide confidently. How do I know if it's the right choice,? As a design mentor, I've been asked this question many times: what if I don't know which way to choose as my career direction? My answer is to define what you should know and get the answers in the cheapest and fastest ways. You can d...

We all know that uncertainties are something for certain in these years, and 2022 will not different at all. Any career tips 2022 for designer? I wrote a tips list for myself as a reminder for my career in 2022, and I think it might be helpful for many people here.

Why comics are so popular? What's the secret in comics? How to read comics and most importantly for designers: what's the top tip/secret we can borrow from comics to our work? In this video, I want to share a few thoughts on Scott McCloud's awesome book: Understanding Comics.

Finally read Just Enough Research by Erika Hall,, which has been on my reading list for a while. Wow! I feel bad after reading this book: why didn’t I read it when I started my UX design career!? I would avoid so many pitfalls and have many better outcomes if I followed some research suggestions from this book! If you need a just enough summary for this book, Erika summarised it in this awesome vi...

"How to get rich(without being lucky)" is one of the most popular Twitter threads, written by Naval Ravikant, a famous investor of Silicon Valley. I love his tweet so much, that guided me to the book of his thoughts and comments: The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. In this book, Naval talked about how to get rich, how to be a happier person, and shared many other insightful tips. I think of ge...

Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft shared his thoughts about the leadership, career and culture of Microsoft in his book, Hit Refresh. I'm quite interested in the leadership part, as Satya's personal journey clearly shows how he built his leadership from the very beginning.

I have a YouTube channel, and I post videos about design, productivity and other things every week. I want more views and more engagement with my audiences. That's the drive for me to read Crushing it by Gary Vaynerchuk. As the well-known social media guru, entrepreneur and multi-time New York Times bestseller, Gary Vaynerchuk shares many tips and suggestions on Crushing it - you could be an i...

5 books for designers in 2022 - I have kept reading 50 books a year since a few years ago, and this habit hugely changes my work and life. Since I started to work as UX/Product designer, I noticed that many non-design related books provide so much value for my career. So in this video, I would like to recommend 5 books for designers in 2022 - these books can hugely help you to improve your design...

Don't do new year resolution! It’s the end of the year, and normally we plan what we want to do in the next year, which is the New Year’s resolution. But, is it work? Half of the new year’s resolutions fail, and I failed on mine many times as well. This year, I decided to do things differently. I’m going to plan my next year based on last year's reflection, rather than half-blinded wishes....