Design Untangled | A UX & design podcast in plain English (Chris Mears & Carla Lindarte)

We’ve partnered with ProtoPie, the future of interactive product design, to help you navigate through uncertainty and overcome the challenges today's unprecedented conditions have brought to the industry. Join us for Season 2 - Designing for a new level of uncertainty.

Design Thinking has been used for many years as a framework to solve all kinds of problems. Is this methodology still valid, when customers, organisations and the society are facing a completely new and unprecedented set of conditions?

Kieron Leppard shares his experience working with different clients during the pandemic, talks about the challenges they’re facing and gives his point of view on Design Thinking and how designers can help make change rather than just being part of it.

He also highlights the accelerated importance of "Society Centered Design” and how this should be part of everything designers and organisations are delivering during this time. Kieron believes Design Thinking is still the right methodology to deliver value, but he encourages Designers to focus on real solutions rather than just deliverables.

Speculative design processes and constant prototyping and testing are some of the techniques that Kieron thinks Designers should keep utilising in order to respond to this new level of uncertainty.

About our guest

Kieron is the Vice President Experience Design at HUGE. Apart from juggling family during two lockdowns in the UK, Kieron has also been helping his clients respond quickly to their digital needs.

Kieron is an Interaction Designer at heart.This means he designs how people interact with brands, products, services and experiences to get something done. How they look, how they behave, how they feel. He is always. He always gives a fresh perspective on design and provides tangible and practical advice.

What you’ll learn

• How has Covid-19 impacted what businesses are asking from designers
  
• How can designers help clients navigate this new level of uncertainty
  
• What can designers do to help companies unlock existing value rather than looking for new products or services
  
• What is society centered design and how do you apply it
  
• How can designers help with change and not just to be part of it
  
• Is our responsibility as designers to help define the new normal
  

Show notes

• Rethinking Design Thinking
  
• Design will grow up
  
• Society Centered Design 
  

We’ve partnered with ProtoPie, the future of interactive product design, to help you navigate through uncertainty and overcome the challenges today's unprecedented conditions have brought to the industry. Join us for Season 2 - Designing for a new level of uncertainty.

If you are a digital designer you may be used to designing experiences for existing hardware your customers may use, such as a smartphone or tablet.

But how do you approach designing for an entirely new device?

How do you ensure both new hardware and the software on it meet customer needs and work together as a seamless experience? And how do you test this experience that’s been designed in the hands of real customers in the middle of a global pandemic?

About our guest

Eduardo is a Senior Product Designer at Microsoft and was most recently involved in the development of the new Surface Duo and had to come up with different ways to respond to new customer needs due to the Coronavirus pandemic.

The Surface team sits at the interjection between software and hardware and involves both hardware and software engineers and designers. Eduardo talks to us about how these disciplines come together to create unified experiences for customers.

What you’ll learn

• How do hardware and software come together to form new experiences?
  
• How do you prototype experiences that involve hardware and software elements?
  
• What techniques can you use to test both hardware and software when there is limited access to users for usability testing given the Covid-19 restrictions?
  
• What teams and skill sets do you need to create these combined experiences?
  
• What challenges are there in testing hardware with customers during a pandemic and what research approaches can you use?
  
• How have customer needs around personal technology and home tech changed as a result of the increased time we are spending at home?
  
• How does a hardware and software team come together to make design decisions around the hardware itself?
  
• What things can you learn from users only when a product is post-release?
  
• How do you test for human factors such as neurology or ergonomics during the design process?
  

Show notes

• Finish: Give yourself the gift of done - John Acuff
  

Chris sits down with Stuart Davis, Head of Consumer Product at notonthehighstreet.com to talk about product strategy and leadership. We also talk about how product, design and engineering teams can work together to deliver products customers love.

• How do you define an effective product strategy within your organisation?
• How does a product team work with Design and Engineering?
• How does the product strategy tie back to your company objectives?
• How do features move from inception through to end of life?
• Is a product strategy different in different types of organisation?
• How do you use OKRs?
• What is product leadership?

Design thinking is a powerful framework for implementing user-centred thinking and outcomes. But you shouldn't apply it to everything if it's not the most appropriate approach for your brief.

Chris and Carla get together in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic to talk about ways you can apply it in a sensible way to your projects.

• When should you use design thinking?
• How can you use parts of design thinking in your projects?
• When shouldn't you use design thinking?
• How can you use design thinking as a communication tool to stakeholders?
• Why should you stop panic buying toilet roll?

Designers operate and thrive in a world of uncertainty.

However, very often businesses and stakeholders don't.

Fear of the unknown can be a big barrier to delivering effective solutions that meet the needs of both users and the organisation.

Chris and Carla talk about how you can help guide your project stakeholders through the process of going from the unknown to the known, and how you can use the powerful technique of assumption mapping to help scope your project.

Chris sits down with Sandra Gonzalez - Product Design Director at Not on the High Street and Founder at UX for Change - an organisation that seeks to match the human challenges faced by the nonprofit sector with volunteering opportunities for the user experience (UX) design community.

We talk about how you can move beyond NPS to start to understand the impacts your designs have on people and their communities.

We also dive into how you can start to bring this impact to life within your organisation.

Show notes

• UX for Change
• Digital Impact Framework

We’ve partnered with ProtoPie, the future of interactive product design, to help you navigate through uncertainty and overcome the challenges today's unprecedented conditions have brought to the industry. Join us for Season 2 - Designing for a new level of uncertainty.

Advertising and branding have been around as long as there have been things to sell. What new and innovative approaches can brands use to maximise their marketing impact and deliver solutions that satisfy today’s ever changing customer needs?

How do different cultures affect the approach for creating and marketing products and how does the marketing itself have to change to appeal to customers?

What techniques can be used to explore creative ideas that aren’t necessarily part of a brief provided by a client? How can this culture be embedded in an agency’s way of working?

About our guest

Alex is the Chief Executive Officer, and founder of Zerotrillion, a global

creative agency that provides services to organisations in different continents, with very diverse cultures and approaches to marketing.

Alex has worked at a number of agencies during his career in Dubai, Amsterdam and Toronto. He brings a wealth of experience from his background in criminology and social psychology and applies this to creating experiences for well-known and upcoming brands.

What you’ll learn

• What do creatives do in an advertising agency?
  
• How can behavioural psychology be used to form part of a design or marketing approach?
  
• What is unique about brands and their customers in Dubai?
  
• How do you create brands for future looking brands and ideas like sustainability?
  
• How are you are brands and marketers adapting to the changes that have happened in consumer the landscape in 2020?
  

Show notes

• Wally Olins - Brand Handbook
  
• Ben Horowitz - The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
  

How have consumer and brand attitudes to sustainability changed over the last few years?

How have things changed with the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic?

From virtual conferences to shopping more locally, the impact of the lockdown has been large and far fetched across the globe.

Carla speaks to Yasmine Borain, Creative Director at Publicis Sapient about the changes she has seen, and how clients, society and businesses are responding.

Yasmine Borain is a creative leader with 15 years of experience across experience design, innovation, design and
storytelling. She is. a Creative Director and Head of Experience Design at Publicis Sapient London. She leads the experience team and clients to tackle a broad range of strategic customer experience challenges across retail, finance, commercial, health-care, luxury and retail.

Inclusive design is about more than just making something accessible. It takes into account all forms of difference in humans such as gender, culture and other diverse attributes.

Particularly important is looking at situations where people are excluded from using a product or service and ensuring that the needs of those people are catered for.

About our guest

Emma Goddard is Head of Inclusive Design at Deloitte Digital UK. She's spent the last five years channeling her creative energy as a designer into engaging with excluding communities to create solutions that allow everyone to participate in the digital and physical world.

Emma’s led a number of inclusive design engagements across industries, particularly healthcare. Most recently this includes her role leading a team of 17 as Head of Inclusive Design for NHS Test & Trace. She’s also the Co-Chair of the BIMA Inclusive Design Council.

What you’ll learn

• How inclusive design differs from accessibility
• Why inclusive design is important for organisations
• How do you get buy-in to practice inclusive design in your organisation?
• What are some key challenges in setting an inclusive design agenda?

Show notes

• Microsoft Inclusive Design Toolkit
• Kat Holmes - Mismatch

Trying to balance work and parenthood is always challenging.

How can organisations support both expecting and recent parents more effectively?

What are the differences between supporting parents before and after they have their child?

Carla talks about her experience at Google and her newfound LinkedIn fame.

A global pandemic is not the time many would think about setting up a new branding business, but our guest today has done just that.

We speak to Andy Lester, founder and Creative Director at Childish Design about setting up his branding agency during COVID-19 and talk about what exactly a Brand Designer is.

A Brand Designer is critical in bringing brands to life and creating their identity. They help brands define how to talk to their customers and position themselves based on their values. But how are they different to Visual Designers or Copywriters?

We discuss:

• Packaging design
• Teaching the next generation of Designers
• Setting up an agency during COVID-19
• How brands are thinking about sustainability

ProtoPie is a rich and powerful prototyping tool straight out of South Korea. ProtoPie is used by companies such as Microsoft and Google. It can be used to prototype everything from mobile apps to in-car systems.

Chris and Carla chat to Chief Strategy Officer, Jenna Yim about her experiences in both Canadian and South Korean tech culture. We also talk about her experiences being a woman in leadership.

What is it like to get a company ready for Series A funding? What impact do investors have on the product roadmap?

What is unique about ProtoPie and what are interaction recipes?

Show notes

• Video on interaction recipes
• UX Researcher position

Transcript

Coming soon.

The choice between going agency or client-side as a Designer can be a tricky one.

Chris and Carla reflect on their experiences working in both and talk about:

• What challenges to expect in both environments
• The pros and cons of agency and client-side
• How you pitch to clients

Networking can strike fear into the very core of a person.

But networking is actually an essential skill for a Designer.

Chris and Carla talk through different approaches to networking, and why it doesn't have to be a terrifying experience.

We’ve partnered with ProtoPie, the future of interactive product design, to help you navigate through uncertainty and overcome the challenges today's unprecedented conditions have brought to the industry. Join us for Season 2 - Designing for a new level of uncertainty.

Design Sprints have been around for quite some time. It is a process that has been created by Google and adopted by many. It allows businesses to get answers to strategic questions quickly, using design thinking methods and tools.

The ZOO, Google's creative think tank for brands and agencies, has adopted and implemented Design Sprints as a way of helping brands quickly ideate, iterate, prototype and test creative ideas that then get implemented and launched.

During lockdown and due to people not being able to get together in a workshop environment, Design Sprint Masters have had to utilise different tools and methods of facilitation, and have had to change the process to fit with the new reality.

In this episode you’ll learn more about how they’re doing it at Google ZOO, what they’ve learnt in the process so far, what has worked and hasn’t worked as well as tips to make your remote sprints successful.

About our guest

Jani runs Design Sprints to help brands and agency partners solve business problems through user insight, Google Technology (from Machine Learning and Voice Interfaces to YouTube Content and Data Driven Creative) and rapid prototyping.

What you’ll learn

• What problems do Design Sprints solve?
  
• What’s the best thing about Design Sprints?
  
• What are some of the challenges clients have implementing them?
  
• When shouldn’t you use a Design Sprint?
  
• What are the challenges in running Sprints remotely?
  
• What are some of the benefits of facilitating things remotely?
  
• What methods have had to change due to the pandemic?
  
• Are Design Sprints as effective when not done in person?
  
• How does prototyping work in a remote environment?
  
• How have Design Sprints evolved over time?
  

Show notes

• About Google ZOO
  
• All about Design Sprints
  

With 2019 drawing to a close, Chris and Carla talk about beards.

Thank you to all of our listeners for making 2019 so memorable and we wish you a great holiday season!

--

We Wish You A Merry Christmas by Yoshinori Tanaka / 田中 芳典 | https://soundcloud.com/yoshinori-tanaka-guitar
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

We’ve partnered with ProtoPie, the future of interactive product design, to help you navigate through uncertainty and overcome the challenges today's unprecedented conditions have brought to the industry. Join us for Season 2 - Designing for a new level of uncertainty.

How can diversity in the design process help organisation future proof products and services in this unpredictable world we live in? Abbie Walsh talks about her diversity journey and how she’s helped organisations identify and overcome the biggest barriers to create an inclusive working culture using service design as a methodology.

Abbie talks about her experience as a gay woman in the design industry and how she overcame difficult challenges during her personal and professional life. She discusses the importance of creating spaces in organisations for people from minorities to have a voice and talks about the power of having diversity in design teams.

She also talks about a service design methodology called Living Business. A practical way to identify organisational blockers for change and a process to become truly flexible in these uncertain times.

About our guest

We talk with Abbie Walsh, Chief Design Officer at Accenture Interactive (former Fjord) and recently recognised as one of the women who have shaped the Digital Industry in the UK by The Drum.

Abbie has a strong voice for diversity within the industry, which she believes is a good step towards tackling unconscious bias in design. Before joining Accenture, she was at the BBC where she worked on the BBC iPlayer.

What you’ll learn

• How can diversity be a tool to help designers and organisations to face what Covid-19 has brought to the world?
  
• What are the common problems organisations have about diversity and inclusion and how can service design help?
  
• What benefits does diversity bring in the design process?
  
• What is unconscious bias and how does it affect the design process?
  
• How can organisations become flexible enough to be able to respond to fast changes and challenges?
  
• How can companies keep being a people oriented organisation in the middle of a pandemic?
  

Show notes

• 25 From 25: women who have shaped the digital industry
  
• Living Business: Rewiring your organization to unlock your people’s potential
  

We’ve partnered with ProtoPie, the future of interactive product design, to help you navigate through uncertainty and overcome the challenges today's unprecedented conditions have brought to the industry. Join us for Season 2 - Designing for a new level of uncertainty.

Design and the technology used to implement it, have always been two sides of the same coin. How can these two disciplines come together and utilise new technological tools like artificial intelligence, language processing and machine learning to deliver better experiences? Can these technologies help Designers make more informed decisions and mitigate risk?

Different cultures can also impact the challenges Designers and Technologists face. How is the Japanese digital landscape different to the UK and what opportunities does it bring for creativity?

About our guest

From Costa Rica in South America to Japan, Anthony Baker has a very interesting and international trajectory. Currently, he is Executive Technology Director at R/GA. He was based in London and then moved to Japan, learnt the language and now manages teams and clients in the region.

What you’ll learn

• How does the design and business culture differ in Japan and what are the challenges?
  
• How can you overcome a culture of consensus and lack of risk taking to push boundaries?
  
• How can technology and design work together to create digital experiences that meet user needs?
  
• How can you get clients and stakeholders involved in prototyping?
  
• How can artificial intelligence and machine learning enhance the experiences we can build for customers?
  
• How does technology allow you to make better design decisions?
  
• Should design and user needs drive the technology we use or vice versa?
  
• What changes have there been around the digitisation of internal platforms in Japan to help ways of working during the pandemic?
  

Show notes

• Disrupting Japan podcast
  
• The Happiness Lab
  

How do design approaches and techniques work when it comes to designing spaces rather than digital products?

We speak to Anna Lee, Senior Interior Designer at HLM Architects. She shares how she works with clients to deliver spaces that add value to the people using them.

• What is the difference between Interior Design and decorating?
• How do Interior Designers work with clients?
• How do brand and values feed into the design process?
• What are the elements of good Interior Design?
• How do digital elements form part of a space?
• How has Coronavirus changed the way spaces and buildings are being designed?
• How do you measure the effectiveness of a design?

Show notes

• A Pattern Language - Christopher Alexander
• Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things - Don Norman

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) has changed the way organisations are thinking about and delivering Design. For many, getting things designed, developed and out the door is a matter of survival. Discovery Research or strategic UX work seems to be on the back burner for now, in favour of tactical approaches.

Chris and Carla talk about the changes they have seen in industry hiring. They discuss:

• How can UX and Research specialists fit into this new world?
• What risks are there to focussing on Product Design?
• What vegetables is Chris growing?
• How can Product Designers step outside of their day to day to look at the big picture?

Transcript

Coming soon.

Not having your developers nearby can be tough. It's even harder when they are in a totally different country, timezone and perhaps even speak a different language.

We discuss some tips on how best to work with remote development teams to ensure that everyone is aligned on delivering good outcomes for customers.

Service design, systems thinking, user centered design, human centered design…what does it all mean? Chris and Carla untangle these terms and talk about how great the intro music is.

Also Carla recorded this from a cupboard.

Personas are one of the more controversial tools in the UX design toolkit. Chris and Carla take a look at the common issues with them, when they can be useful and why you should never print them out larger than you are.

Are wireframes redundant in the new Agile way of delivering projects or do they just need to change?

Chris and Carla explore the changing way these traditional UX deliverables can help or hinder our projects.

Show notes

• The beginner’s guide to wireframes
• Content strategy for wireframes

In this episode Chris chats to Clive Trounson – Agile coach extraordinaire – about Agile, Scrum, retrospectives and other process jargon in yet another freezing cold location in central London.

Agile isn’t always the best solution.

Chris and Carla talk about when Agile isn’t the best way to build great products and what you can do instead.

This is a follow up to our previous episode where Chris interviewed Clive Trounson, an Agile coach.

We recommend you check that out if you haven’t already.

Carla takes to the streets to talk to Kieron Leppard, Group Creative Director at Huge about the do’s and do nots of Design Principles.

You will learn about:

• What makes a good design principle
• What makes a bad design principle
• How you use design principles in your organisation

We’ve talked about content first, now it’s time to talk about content strategy.

Carla once again channels her inner Jeremy Paxman to talk to Emma Hoddinot who is Associate Content Strategy Director at SapientRazorfish.

What is a design workshop? Who should be in it? How do you tell people to be quiet without making them hate you? How do you achieve the right outcomes?

The answer to these questions and many more in unlucky (and slightly late) episode 13 of Design Untangled.

At some point before getting a UX job you usually have to have a job interview.

The format of UX job interviews can vary a lot. Some contain design challenges, most will want to explore your design thinking and process and some just involve having a coffee.

Chris and Carla talk through some of their experiences from being both interviewers and candidates and pass on some tips to help you prepare.

Guerilla user testing is the art of approaching complete strangers and getting them to test your designs out in the real world.

It can be scary, but with the right preparation, it doesn’t have to be a shot in the dark at getting the insight you need.

Chris and Carla pass on their hard won tips from the field.

UX portfolios are how you sell yourself to potential employers.

But what goes into a portfolio? How much UX work should you show? What format should a UX portfolio be in?

Chris and Carla pass on some tips from both sides of the fence as hirers and candidates which should help you craft a winning story and land that dream UX job.

Prototyping is the process you go through to get the design in front of real users.

Paper prototyping, Axure mockups, Invision, Sketch – there are a hundred ways to get an output you can use in user research. But which is best and what should you use when? There’s only one way to find out..

No we aren’t talking about job interviews this time, we are talking about how to extract juicy insights out of your users and stakeholders.

We have tips for interviewing when using different research methodologies, how to deal with different personalities in your research sessions and finding out why Carla looks like a bear.

Users have needs. They are the foundation of everything you do as a UX Designer and should be taken seriously.

But how do you uncover user needs and what do you do with them once you’ve found them?

What do you do when the business poops on them?

What is the mysterious process between doing user research and then doing something with it? Hint – it’s called user research analysis.

Carla, Chris and special guest Christina Li talk about note-taking, affinity mapping and sh*t sandwiches.

As Chris and Carla didn’t prepare properly for this episode we are going to go through and answer some of your questions from the uxmentor.me Slack channel and call it a special. It’s also a day late – enjoy!

What is a job to be done? How is it different to a user need? What size hole do you want?

Chris speaks to Liz Kessick, Senior Researcher about how you can use Jobs to be done as part of your UX toolkit.

Chris speaks to Josh Harris, Product Manager at Dog Buddy. We chat about the difference between a Product Owner and a Product Manager, what they do, who they talk to and why they are important in the project delivery process. We also talk about drills for the second time in two episodes.

Carla chats to Calum Forsyth about experience strategy.

What is experience strategy? How does it differ to UX Design? How do you set KPIs for experience?

Why are there so many trains and who is texting?

Carla talks to Liam Harberd, Design Director at Deloitte Digital (4D’s) about visual design, how it interacts with UX and as usual what all the different job titles mean.

They also talked about UI vs UX without mentioning that stupid tomato ketchup graphic.

Chris also gets mentioned extensively.

Fun fact: Liam designed the Design Untangled logo!

Chris and Carla speak to Zander Brade – Product Designer at Monzo Bank.

Monzo is a startup challenger bank here in the UK offering a mainly app based service and has been built from the ground up. They are known for their transparency, innovative features and mission to make banking better.

You can also check out Chris’ interview with Zander from a year ago over on The UX Review.

Carla speaks to Kate Crowley – Agency Head of Google Marketing Platform about GDPR, ePrivacy and the impact this legislation has on companies and designers.

It’s our birthday and we’ll cry if we want to.

Over the past year we have pumped out 27 episodes, covered topics from UX portfolios to Jobs to be done, interviewed some amazing Designers and Researchers and had a whole lot of fun doing it.

In fact, we’ve had so much fun we’re willing to  give away a free Design Untangled t-shirt!

Listen for more details on how to enter.

We speak to Dan Harvey from The Dots about the challenges facing our design community now and in the future.

Brexit, diversity, the glass ceiling – what does it all mean for us as designers?

You can also join Chris and Carla on a nice walk around London.

We get to grips with the Stock market with James Storer – Head of Design at Freetrade.

Freetrade is a new London-based startup aiming to disrupt the stock market old guard and make investing affordable and understandable to the masses.

We talk about scaling, product approach, designing inclusively and the problem with the title ‘Junior Designer’.

How do you design when you have a user-base of millions? Chris and Carla speak to Brendan Kearns about Product Design at Google, Twitter and his work with startups.

What do we mean when we talk about ‘data’?

How can you use data and insights to create design hypotheses that allow you to create and test your designs effectively and help remove bias?

What did we get up to at Christmas?

Nobody likes being criticised.

But as a Designer, getting critiques is an essential way to help power up your designs and your thinking to the next level.

We talk about what makes a healthy and productive design critique and what you can do to improve how you handle feedback.

What is a proposition?

How do you identify a proposition?

How do you test a proposition?

Great questions everyone! Let’s do an episode on just that.

What should designers keep in mind when they are releasing things into the world?

Is what you’re letting lose going to benefit humanity? Is it going to screw them over?

Why is just designing for 80% of users a bad idea?

All this and more from a freezing cold rooftop at Google HQ.

We speak to Steven Blyth – Designer at one of the main fintech challenger banks in the UK – Starling Bank.

Starling is an app based bank and is also moving rapidly into the business account space.

We chat to Steven about how they do design at Starling, branded interactions and how to work be Zen at work.

#IamRemarkable is a Google initiative empowering women and underrepresented groups to celebrate their achievements in the workplace and beyond.

Carla speaks to Aggie Dawborn and Sofia Corrêa de Sá Stratton about the background to I am Remarkable and the reasons for its existence.

You can learn more at #IamRemarkable.

Supposedly 1 in 3 of us are introverts.

In the world of UX, Design and Research you are often expected to talk in front of large groups of people, run workshops and talk to users – typically things you might associate with extrovert personality traits.

However, it is possible to do these things as an introvert and maybe even enjoy them!

If you prefer a book and a hot chocolate to a crazy party but want to overcome those nerves then join Chris and Carla on this little chat boat to find out how.

Design systems or design languages are a holistic set of instructions that help Designers and product teams understand how to build their products, and why to build them that way.

This is more than your bog standard pattern library or style guide and is intended to give direction to your design.

They come in all shapes and sizes so join Chris and Carla and special recruit Liam Harberd as they untangle these jargon filled beasts.

Design thinking is a methodology that works anywhere. You don’t have to be designing an app or website to apply it to problem solving both in business and in your every day life.

Chris and Carla talk about how you can apply this powerful set of tools anywhere, any time.

The D&AD New Blood awards are for students, grads, and aspiring creatives between 18 and 24.

Real briefs, set by real clients, judged by top creatives.

Carla interviews two fellow judges from the DNDA awards – Sila Nur Isik and Daniel Hirschmann.

They discuss new technology trends, advice for young designers and recommendations for the next generation of entrants.

Design Club is a social enterprise that aims to introduce design thinking to school aged kids.

Chris and Carla chat to founder Noam Sohachevsky to find out the origins of Design Club and why design thinking can be a powerful tool for young children.

You can check out more and learn how to become a volunteer at https://designclub.org.uk

Chris and Carla sit down over a pint of beer to discuss how you can transition into UX from both related and unrelated industries.

Hear our own stories on how we ended up working in the design space from journalism to dodgy internet cafes with sadomasochist children.

Chris and Carla chat about burnout – the state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by stress, which is a growing problem in the whole digital space.

Designers themselves, and now even agencies and consultancies are aware of the stress factors, such as modern life’s pace, peer pressure, never having the time to fully detach from work or not having some quiet time cause our mental health to suffer.

Fortunately we have some ideas on how you can spot if you’re getting burnt out, and a few things you can try to help improve your physical and mental wellbeing at work.

Contractor’s concern – as a contractor, you get paid by the day. Still, it’s important to get some time off to recharge, and while doing so, don’t think about the money you’re not earning at the moment.

Work – life balance – while there is nothing wrong with participating in social events after work with your peers, it’s important to separate work from life, and have your social life not completely tied to your work environment.

When your job doesn’t fulfil you – do something on the side that you care about. To feel like you’re making some change and positive in the world even if it’s not your main job, is a great motivation booster.

Getting lost in the agile project approach – you can find yourself getting stuck to solve a particular design issue, or not experimenting with new ideas, or even feel being distanced from the people that you’re designing for. This can happen in case of not enough/lack of user research. Take a step back from time to time and look at the big picture – don’t forget what you’re aiming to accomplish. Take the time to understand the problem, the user, plan your project, and put your thoughts into that specific design.

Managing expectations – of your own and others’. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. This applies if you’re trying to demonstrate you’re good as a woman in the digital world, or you’re managing a project with junior people with a tight project time frame. If you feel you can not function at your best, it’s not the end of the world to change your situation or mindset and leave that pressure behind. Watch your internal conversation with yourself, because many times the pressure that exists is created by your own perception of yourself.

Give yourself time – there are many things from which you can choose from to disconnect your mind from design issues such as doing yoga, exercising, listening to music, take on hobbies or meditation – doing something you love. You can train yourself to create that space for your mind to breath, and find those things that make yourself happy outside of work. Have and make the time for switching off – do things that you like. Life is more important than a wireframe! And remember you’re not alone. You can always ask tips and help from others in the community.

Receipts eh? Annoying bits of paper you get when you shop that often just go in the bin – an environmental problem that London startup Flux is trying to solve by integrating receipts with your bank.

Chris speaks to Filippo Corti, Product Designer at Flux to learn how he designs a product that lives within another product.

Power users are experts in your product.

It is easy to fall into the trap of only designing products which are easy to use the first time. Behaviour changes as users become more familiar with your product. Often they want to achieve different things.

Chris and Carla give you some tips to help make sure power users are included in your design thinking.

Would you know what to do on the first day of your new UX job?

It’s stressful joining a new company. You don’t know where the toilets are, how the coffee machine works or how to log in to your email.

It can be even harder to know the first steps you should take as a new UX Designer to get off to the right start.

Chris and Carla help calm those nerves with some easy tips to make sure your first day goes well.

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Chris shares his tips on how you can manage your first day nerves in your new job in this helpful video.

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What are the differences between UX contracting and being a permanent employee?

What are the advantages and disadvantages of UX contracting?

What kind of person is contracting appropriate for?

How do UX contractors find jobs?

What does Chris look like in speedos?

In a weird podcast twist, Carla interviews Chris about being a UX contractor.

Chris chats with Christina Li (Melon Experience Design) about doing lean UX research that delivers results.

We also cover how to bring research back to your team, recruit participants and how to point microphones the right way.

Show notes

User research – The beginner’s guide

In this Christmas special Chris and Carla play the UX drinking game (uxdrinkinggame.com), exchange shitty presents and talk about Carla’s replacement.

Music credits
Oh, Christmas Tree Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

We Wish you a Merry Christmas Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Fresh faced from new years eve Chris and Carla tackle the often overlooked subject of content and functional copy in UX design.

We also choose our favourite North Korean hairstyle.

Information Architecture means different things to different people. Chris and Carla attempt to untangle this confusing term whilst freezing their buttocks in Liverpool Street station.