Aurelius

Show highlights: - Sense-making and user research synthesis - How to find hidden insights in the research data you collect - Avoiding product backlog rot by simply reacting to things you hear about from customers - Steps to take for a better UX research process - Doing UX, research and sense-making better with product management - Should UX researchers be doing design too? - How to get into (or better at) UX, research and design

Show highlights: - Social impact of UX and research work - Remote research tips, tricks and challenges - The future of UX research in a post-pandemic world - Can you prove the ROI of UX research? - Balancing the need for delivering a great story from the research and keeping good rigor in your study - How to deal with people who don’t believe the findings from your research

Episode highlights: - Design leadership and what it means to be a UX manager - Differences between being an individual contributor and manager/leader - Tips and tricks to being an awesome UX design/research leader - Strategies for providing feedback and criticism effectively - Common challenges for folks transitioning from team member to team leader

Show highlights: - Design ethics and ways to examine if your work is doing more harm than good - Inclusion in business and design - Things you can do to make your participants feel more comfortable and welcome - Using your position and influence to make positive ethical change in your company - Alba’s work at HmntyCntrd - Tips for making social change personally and professionally

Show highlights: - The difference between leadership and management in UX - Being a UX mentor and coach - Expectations and differences between junior, mid level and senior UX practitioners - What it takes to be a great UX professional - Myths about hiring and working with a junior UX person - Tips for job hunting, applications and interviewing - Things hiring managers are looking for in UX candidates - Career progression for UX designers and researchers

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 designers and researchers need to know about psychology and behavioral economics

- 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 approach to software design isn’t enough for civic design problems

- 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 communicating user research insights to inspire action from executives, developers and more

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 help you figure out how, and when, to make big product decisions - Minimum Path to Awesome and how to successfully launch new features in your product

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 you can do about it - Doing less to get better results in UX, research and marketing - What does it mean to be scientific versus “scientism”?

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 #WhatisResearchOps?

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 for setting up your ResearchOps and process for taking in, conducting and sharing user research at your company - Making user research more strategic to influence company focus and direction - Avoiding the pitfalls of overthinking in the user research process

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 impact with user research at your company - Learning the behavior of your teams and company in order to sell user research internally - How to empower other teams to do user research themselves in order to scale user research at your company - How to turn user research and findings into action and recommendations - Giving your team and company confidence in doing the right things