The Informed Life

Margot Bloomstein is the principal of Appropriate, Inc. , a brand and content strategy consultancy. Over a twenty year career, she has consulted in a wide range of industries. Margot is the author of Content Strategy at Work and of a new book, Trustworthy: How the Smartest Brands Beat Cynicism and Bridge the Trust Gap , which is the subject of our conversation today. Show notes Appropriate, Inc. @...

Hà Phan is the Director of Discovery for Pluralsight, an e-learning platform. Before becoming a product leader, she was a principal UX designer at GoPro. In this conversation, we discuss Hà’s journey from UX design to product leadership. Show notes @hpdailyrant on Twitter Pluralsight GoPro  The Double Diamond Some show notes may include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchase...

Kourosh Dini is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and productivity expert. He is the author of an excellent book on how to take smart notes using DEVONthink, a personal information management tool. In this conversation, we discuss smart note-taking and how DEVONthink can help us work more effectively. Show notes Kourosh Dini Being Productive Taking Smart Notes with DEVONthink by Kourosh Dini How to T...

Jason Ulaszek is an experience designer, activist, entrepreneur, and educator. He is the founder of Inzovu , a design collective, and UX for Good , a nonprofit that aims to provide elegant solutions to messy problems. In this conversation, we discuss Jason's work on just such a problem: helping Rwandans heal after their 1994 genocide. Show notes Jason Ulaszek on LinkedIn @webbit on Twitter In...

Grace Lau is an information architect and user experience designer based in the Greater Los Angeles area. She’s the co-president of World IA Day and one of the program chairs of the 2021 IA Conference . In this conversation, we discuss those professional community events, and why you should participate. Listen to the show Download episode 52 Show notes Grace Lau @lauggh on Twitter Grace G. Lau on...

Cheryl Platz is an accomplished interaction designer who has designed multimodal experiences for Amazon, Microsoft, the Walt Disney Company and more. The focus of our conversation is her new book on the subject, Design Beyond Devices . Show notes Cheryl Platz Ideaplatz Cheryl on Twitter Ideaplatz on Twitter The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Kinect Xbox Design Beyond Devices: Creating Multimoda...

My guest today is Brian Breslin . Brian is a tech entrepreneur, educator, and community builder based in Miami. He’s the director of The Launch Pad , the entrepreneurship center at the University of Miami, and founder of Refresh Miami , a non-profit organization dedicated to growing South Florida’s tech and startup ecosystem. In this conversation, we focus on community-building, especially during...

My guest today is Phillip Hunter. Phillip is a strategy and innovation consultant focused on conversational systems. He has a long trajectory working on such systems; among other roles, he was head of user experience for Amazon Alexa Skills. In this conversation, we focus on conversation itself, and how to design systems that converse. Listen to the show  Download episode 49   Show notes Phillip H...

My guest today is Caroline Crampton . Caroline is a freelance writer and podcaster. Among other things, she edits The Listener , a daily newsletter that curates the best podcasts. In this conversation, we focus on Caroline’s curation workflow. Listen to the full conversation  Download episode 48   Show notes Caroline Crampton The Way to the Sea: The Forgotten Histories of the Thames Estuary by Car...

My guest today is Peter Morville. Peter is a pioneer in the discipline of information architecture. Among many other distinctions, he co-authored with Lou Rosenfeld Information Architecture for the World-Wide Web , the classic O’Reilly “polar bear” book on the subject. This is Peter’s second appearance on The Informed Life podcast. I asked him back because I wanted to learn more about his recent c...

My guest today is Dr. Jeff Johnson. Jeff has been applying his background in psychology towards designing better human-computer interfaces for over forty years. He teaches computer science at The University of San Francisco, and has written several influential books on UI design. Among these, he co-authored with Kate Finn Desiging User Interfaces for an Aging Population , which is the focus of thi...

My guest today is Tanya Rabourn. Tanya is a design strategist and researcher based in Dubai. Her focus is on service innovation for social impact. In this conversation, we discuss the role of ethnographic research in understanding the people and cultures served by design. Listen to the full conversation  Download episode 45   Show notes Tanya Rabourn on LinkedIn United Arab Emirates (UAE) United N...

My guest today is Alexis Lloyd . Alexis is VP of Product Design at Medium and co-founder of Ethical Futures Lab . Previously, she led design and innovation work at The New York Times , Axios , and Automattic . Alexis has been thinking about the future of media for a long time. In this conversation, we focus on the evolving ways we consume and produce media. Listen to the full conversation  Downloa...

My guest today is Rob Haisfield . Rob is a behavioral product strategy and gamification consultant. He’s also an expert user of Roam , “a note-taking tool for networked thought.” In this conversation, we talk about Roam — what it is and how it can help you think more effectively. Listen to the full conversation  Download episode 43   Show notes Rob Haisfield @roberthaisfield on Twitter Rob Haisfie...

My guest today is Nataly Restrepo . Nataly is an industrial designer specialized in food design. She works as a food and beverage innovation consultant for restaurants and consumer goods, and is based in Mexico. In this conversation we explore food design and how designing for experiences calls for a holistic understanding. Listen to the full conversation  Download episode 42   Show notes Nataly R...

My guest today is Arvind Venkataramani. Alongside Adam Menter, Arvind has been working on an open source toolkit to help people design secular rituals. In this conversation, we explore what rituals are and how being more intentional in their structure and use can improve our lives. Listen to the full conversation  Download episode 41   Show notes Arvind Venkataramani Adam Menter The Ritual Design...

My guest today is Heather Hedden. Heather is an information management consultant specialized in taxonomies, controlled vocabularies, metadata, and indexing. She’s the author of two books, including The Accidental Taxonomist , a guide to the discipline of taxonomy creation and management. In this conversation, we explore taxonomies and why they’re important for organizations. Listen to the full co...

My guest today is Stephen P. Anderson . Stephen is a design leader who is focused on workforce learning and organizational development. He and Karl Fast recently published Figure it Out , a new book about how we can transform information to increase understanding. This is also the subject of our conversation; I hope you find it valuable. Show notes Stephen P. Anderson @stephenanderson on Twitter T...

My guest today is Andy Polaine . Andy is a service designer, consultant, educator, author, and podcaster. He’s co-author of the book Service Design: From Insight to Implementation and host of the Power of Ten  podcast . In this conversation, we discuss service design, and how it helps organizations think more holistically about the experiences they enable. Listen to the full conversation   Show no...

My guest today is Audrey Crane. Audrey is a partner in DesignMap , a UX strategy and digital product design consultancy based in San Francisco. Audrey recently published a book called What CEOs Need to Know About Design , and in this conversation, we talk about the evolving role of design in organizations and why this book is needed now. Listen to the full conversation   Show notes DesignMap TRS-8...

My guest today is my friend Lou Rosenfeld. Besides publishing books — including my own Living in Information — Lou and his team at Rosenfeld Media organize and manage industry conferences. In this episode, we talk about how they transitioned the recent Advancing Research conference from an in-person to a fully virtual event. Listen to the full conversation   Show notes Louis Rosenfeld Rosenfeld Me...

My guest today is Matt Nish-Lapidus . Matt is an artist, musician, researcher, designer, and educator based in Toronto. Besides creating art and music, and doing design work, Matt also teaches at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design . In this conversation, we discuss the role of art in our evolving technological and cultural environments. Listen to the full conversation   Show notes Matt...

My guest today is Ren Pope. Ren is a Principal at Info-Do , which offers data, information, and knowledge architecture consulting. He’s worked in these domains for the last 25 years or so, and has also taught colleagues how to do these things through workshops and presentations. In this episode, we focus on why organizations need to know about and develop ontologies. Listen to the full conversatio...

My guest today is my friend Abby Covert, also known as Abby the IA . Abby is a Senior Information Architect at Etsy. She wrote the book How to Make Sense of Any Mess , a wonderful primer on information architecture, and co-founded World IA Day. She’s also taught graduate design students and curated global conferences about design. She’s done many of these things remotely over the last decade, whic...

My guest today is Aynne Valencia. Aynne is my colleague at the California College of the Arts, where she is the former Chair of the undergraduate interaction design program. In addition to teaching at CCA, she is also the Director of Design at San Francisco Digital Services, which designs digital experiences for the citizens of San Francisco and the city employees that serve them. In this conversa...