We take a dive into neuroscience and metacognition. Thinking about thinking and thinking about other minds. We are joined by Professor Stephen Fleming, neuroscientist and author of the book Know Thyself to learn more about how our cognition works and the implications for our work as mind-creating creatives and in the development of AI.

We talk to Tom Greever about Articulating Design Decisions. How do we talk about our designs effectively with stakeholders? Every designer has to explain (and justify) their design decisions to non-designers but what are the skills tactics and methods that are needed to pull this off in a way that opens the door for your project to create...

Informed consent is a critical part of the research process. We talk to Kim Foulds and Joyce Rafla about how they made use of videos featuring Sesame Workshop muppets to make taking a consent decision more inclusive, accessible and informed.

We’ve been tacking jokes onto the end of our shows since Episode 138. So to celebrate Episode 300, we take a look at jokes and humour. We’re joined by Professor Delia Chiaro, who has spent decades researching humour to learn more about what makes things funny and if it’s safe for us to be humorous...

“Let’s find out what’s best practice and just run with that”. That’s something many of us will recognise and have experienced. But what actually is best practice? Is it something we should follow? And can we? Rich Brophy joins us to talk about best practice and to offer some advice about what might be even...

Episode 298 is a linkshow. Per and James discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention – we feature articles about how car culture colonised our thinking, and how Figma is making you a bad designer.

In this classic UX Podcast, Jonas Söderström joins us to talk about complexity. We like to think that we have made the world better through digitalisation, but perhaps all of the productivity gains were actually in the very early days of computing. 

How do you make an impact as an introvert without pretending to be an extrovert? Often designers find themselves as quiet people in a noisy world, struggling in silence and being frustrated at not being heard. Tim Yeo joins us to talk about how introverted designers and design leaders can work with their introversion and...

We need to ask the big hard questions at the beginning of the process so we can make good design decisions later. We talk to Dan Brown about the “discovery phase” or, as Dan suggests, the “discovery mindset”.

Episode 294 is a linkshow. Per and James discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention – we feature articles about designing the perfect button, and how sitemaps are an essential tool in web design.

We often find ourselves in stressful situations. Sometimes that’s expected, but sometimes it’s not.  The same can be said about the things we design. Sometimes we knowingly design for stressful situations, but sometimes our designs are used (unexpectedly to us) by people while under stress. Katie Swindler, Author of Life and Death Design joins us...

What is product management? And “product”? And product designers? We talk to Christian Crumlish, author of Product Management for UX People to learn more about how designers can collaboration and contribute in a product organisation. 

Lifts and elevators are things that we love to talk about in UX circles. Every elevator panel is capable of being the starting point for a user experience conversation. In this classic UX Podcast interview, we talk to Reetta Ranne and Jussi Hiltunen who, at the time of recording, were senior UX design specialists at...

Web3 is a term that’s getting a lot of attention, along with associated concepts such as blockchain, crypto, NFTs. There are a lot of concepts and phrases to understand, some of them quite technical, before we can get to the question of what benefits they can deliver. Laura Kalbag joins us to help us gain...

Diagrams are everywhere and used by many people in many professions. But what is a diagram? When are they useful? And what makes a good one? Information architect and author of “How To Make Sense of Any Mess” Abby Covert joins us to talk about diagrams and diagramming – which is the topic of her...

Episode 288 is a linkshow. Per and James discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention – we feature articles about the problems with, and the alternatives to, the term “users” plus the surprisingly complex world of emojis.

Joe’s first book “Ends”, back in 2017 was focused on why we don’t do endings, and how that links into consumerism. Joe’s second book, “Endineering” is about how to actively design endings, a ‘how-to’ book for improving how products, services and consumer relationships end. 

We get a reintroduction to information architecture with Donna Spencer. Donna shares with us some of the methods and tools she teaches as part of her workshops as well as look at some of the challenges that information projects can throw at you.

Why don’t we just brainstorm that? Brainstorming as a tool for ideation has a number of drawbacks, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be useful. Design leader and leadership coach Christopher McCann joins us to discuss how we can improve our innovation processes, and hold better and more inclusive creative sessions.

Episode 284 is a linkshow. Per and James discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention – we feature articles about additive bias and the current state of mobile UX.

Your own vital signs are your heart rate, temperature, breathing and blood pressure. These are used to help get an idea of your health, and give a “heads-up” that something is not as performing as it should be. Google has come up with its own set of web vitals to give you an idea of...

Carolyn Wilson-Nash together with Julie Tinson, both from Stirling University, published a research paper entitled ‘I am the master of my fate’: digital technology paradoxes and the coping strategies of older consumers. Carolyn joins us to talk more about her research and the impact technology has on older people’s lives.

We often think of trauma as something that individuals go through, but organisations can experience trauma too. Vivianne Castillo was part of producing a research-based report that reveals the ways that organisations respond to trauma. The report also puts forward a suggestion of how organisations can handling healing better.

Mass democratisation and access to AB test tooling has meant that hundreds of millions of experiments have been run on people, via digital products and services.  Although we are not running pharmaceutical trials and tests, these experiments still raise numerous ethical issues that are shared with research or experiments in a medical scenarios.  Craig Sullivan...

For a number of years Steve Portigal has been collecting user research war stories. The stories describe experiences researchers have had whilst doing fieldwork. Awkward, morally challenging, painful, unsuccessful.