Natalia is a design leader from La Paz, Bolivia and now works in Dallas, Texas as Director of Product Design for Cariloop, a caregiver support company focused on relieving the stress and anxiety felt by all caregivers. After interning at advertising agencies she fell in love with the interaction design portions of campaigns and quickly transitioned into the world of user experience. She’s had the great fortune of working with some exciting brands, most notably Verizon, 7-Eleven, Animal Supply...

Meesh Lin began designing and launching websites at age eight by learning from her self-taught web designer mother. She's had an unconventional path to design—having freelanced, contracted, and designed-in house for start-ups and public companies over the last 6+ years. Today, Meesh is designing Okta's first consumer product. Inspired by her design journey, she discovered a deep passion for mentorship and helping aspiring designers and technologists break into tech. Also, having worked...

Peter Szalontay is the DataGoat/CEO at DataMilk, it is a team of data science and UX experts on a mission to empower eCommerce brands to build AI-powered UX on the level of Big Tech. DataMilk’s Smart UX suite enables fast, fluid, and predictive digital experiences that boost user engagement and gross profit. In this episode, we talked about: How Artificial Intelligence will impact UX DesignWhat is AI software called “DALL-E”Peter’s career at GooglePeter on creating businesses out of AI...

Alicia is a Product Design Director for IT Products at Rippling - the platform that frees smart people to work on hard problems! She has been a designer across industries, including higher education, academia, insurance, pharmacy, e-commerce, and technology, and is an Adjunct Instructor at Columbia College, where she focuses on how to prepare for moving from college to what your life as a designer will be like. She co-organizes the Ladies that UX Chicago meetup, where she brings conversations...

Erick Arias is an Experienced Product Designer with a demonstrated history of transforming the way enterprises build software. He is currently the Sr. Product Designer at Meta (formerly known as Facebook, Inc.) In this episode, we talked about: Erick’s advice and tips with portfolio reviewsHow did Erick get into designWhere did Erick grow up and the story of his upbringing Erick’s first job as a designerErick’s mentorship at...

Nima H. K. graduated from York/Sheridan Program in Design, and is a passionate storyteller obsessed with user experience and telling the right story at the right time. Currently a design director in San Francisco, and just recently designed and built a SaaS product from scratch. He has 16+ years of experience working as a freelancer, at design agencies, and startups. He is happy to share his findings throughout this journey to inspire other designers. In this episode, we talked...

Glen Lipka is a product leader who has created innovative products for B2B companies since 1995. Previously, he was the first employee at Marketo, best in class marketing automation software acquired by Adobe and helped guide the company through IPO up to 1000 employees in 9 years. He holds several patents in design innovations. In this episode, we talked about: What is the definition of design for Glen? How does Glen think about design?Glen on being the first employee at MarketoHis job and...

Ari Krzyzek is the Co-founder and chief creative officer of Chykalophia (read: see-ka-lo-fia), she helps Femtech DTC and women-led companies craft a brand that delights their customers beyond a pretty design, delivers no-brainer user experience, and gets them the clarity they need to for their business to thrive online. She has over 10 years of branding and design experience, a certified brand strategist, and UX expert. She has transformed businesses' visions into a tangible form that helps...

Erik Kennedy is the creator of Learn UI Design and Learn UX Design. He’s also a freelance UX/UI designer based in Seattle, WA. He has also spoken in the US and abroad at businesses, meetups, and universities (like UC Berkeley, Yale, and UW). His design writing has been read by over a million people. In this episode, we talked about: How Erik got into teaching designErik’s design tipsErik enumerates and explains 7 Rules for Creating Gorgeous UIErik’s UI and UX courses for studentsErik...

Jeany Ngo is the co-founder at Kairos, which provides the tools for anyone to create, publish and sell NFTs without touching a single line of code. She blends her love of visual storytelling with thoughtful understanding of user behavior. 10+ years in product, UX/UI, and visual design comes from working at Brex, Airbnb, LinkedIn and consulting for design agencies and startups. Clients include Figma, Ueno, TM, Crunchyroll, Tempo Fitness, Handshake, Safari Riot, Yembo Inc, GoInsurance, Eleven...

Marissa Louie is the Director of UX Design at SiriusXM Pandora, she leads a design organization that thoughtfully creates experiences for 100m+ users. She also serves as the Chairwoman of Animoodles, and runs Designers Club and Designers Guild. Previously, she was a design leader at Apple, Expedia, Ness, and Yahoo. It brings her joy to design delightful products, drive innovative visions with billion dollar results, and help others achieve their full creative potential. In this episode, we...

Pawel Bak is a strategic and passionate product/service designer with 12+ years of experience designing for mobile, wearables and IoT devices. Designs and helps develop high-performing design solutions and engaging customer experiences which drive business goals and user satisfaction for well-known brands. An innovative and hard-working leader who is both strong on ideation and implementation, as well as on enabling global agile teams to succeed. Mentors designers and manages established or...

Sarah is currently the Experience Designer at Patagonia. She also worked with Google, Pinterest and Nike, leading strategy and UX in a highly collaborative work environment. Mentored junior staff. Participated in the hiring process, project casting and scoping. She makes experiences by orchestrating cross-disciplinary teams of designers, writers, developers and content creators. Her passion and curiosity about people and how we interact with the world around us drive her to continuously...

Katie Swindler is a human-centered design strategist with 15 years of experience. Originally educated as a theatre director, her creative approach combines storytelling and technology, emotion and utility to enable brands to connect deeply with consumers and fulfill real human needs. Author of the book Life & Death Design, published by Rosenfeld Media in January 2022, which looks at what life-saving technology can teach us about designing for the human stress response. She’s an...

Nicole Torgersen is Vice President of Design at Dialpad. She’s been working in digital design since the late '90s working with a range of industries including cloud collab and storage at Dropbox, retail at Gap, and recruiting at Monster Worldwide. A Design craftsperson by trade, Nicole has been a leader most of her career, building teams by way of leveraging empathy and vulnerability in the balance to find business impact while mentoring individuals. In this episode, we talked...

Ryan Tauss is the leading product design for Tide Cleaners. The past almost 4 years, along with a talented crew have greenfield an entire suite of applications that help run operations, customer service, and improve the guest experience making laundry as convenient as just using your thumb. Before that, he worked at America's largest church, Life.Church. It was at this time in his career he made a switch from graphic design to product design. He went from art directing and brand creation to...

Sumier Phalake is Head of Design, Next Billion Users at Google, which focuses on products that bring connectivity to users in emerging markets. He has over 15 years of experience across both consumer and enterprise products. Episode highlights: What is “Next Billion Users” (Google) and how it benefits people?Files by Google - file management that helps mobile freeing up spaceFiles by Google success and its million users around the worldSumier cited more of their productsSumier on working...

Tessa Rodes joined the very first cohort of IBM Design Bootcamp in 2013, and since then has seen the design organization and company grow and evolve into a truly design-led system. She has reviewed 100s of portfolio applications in the 8.5 years of IBM Design, and has strong opinions about both what makes a great portfolio and what NOT to bother with. She launched the initial version of the product IBM Cloud and has worked to ensure quality, consistency and differentiating features ever...

Ryan has spoken all over the world at schools, and organizations sharing his story and inspiring others to live their dreams. Ryan is a father, husband, mentor, motivational speaker, and designer. His current role, leading product design at Rocket Homes. He is an experienced User Interface Designer with a demonstrated history of working in the financial services industry. Skilled in App Design, User Experience (UX), E-commerce, and Leadership. In this episode, we talked...

Jared Spool is the founding principal of User Interface Engineering (UIE), a research, training, and consulting firm that specializes in website and product usability, He is also the Maker of Awesomeness at @CenterCentre/@UIE. Helping designers everywhere help their organizations deliver well-designed products and services.  In this episode, we talked about: How did Jared started his business Center Centre-UIEMore about running a successful 30 year old companyJared’s early design research...

Michaela Mucha is an award-winning designer, art director, & matcha-drinker currently making fun things (virtually!) at The Walt Disney Studios. Michaela is a first generation Mexican–Filipina–American with over a decade of experience in graphic design. She is a design nerd at heart, and is currently at The Walt Disney Studios where she delivers best-in-class advertising campaigns for theatrical record-breaking box office hits and Disney+ streaming movies and series from Pixar, Disney,...

John Yesko is a veteran experience design, creative, and digital business leader; now Head of User Experience and Service Design at Walgreens. Responsible for the digital experience on Walgreens websites, consumer mobile apps, and in-store retail interfaces - as well as team member-facing digital. He also leads the Omni-Channel Service Design practice, with the mission of improving customer and employee experience across their ~9500 stores. John's specialties include Information architecture,...

Jesse Gaskin serves as a Co-Program Director for the Design Leaders Council of The Conference Board. In addition to his work with The Conference Board, Jesse is a patient experience and human-centered design lead at Kaiser Permanente who specializes in using human-centered design to develop and launch new care experiences. His hybrid background in design thinking and business enables him to develop products and services that solve real customer needs while balancing organizational...

Jane Portman is a UI/UX consultant specializing in web application design, founder of UI Breakfast and Userlist. At Userlist, Jane's goal is to provide flawless onboarding and engagement for SaaS companies through a simple customer messaging platform. Jane has also been running UI Breakfast Podcast since 2014. In this episode, we talked about: How did Jane get into design?Software design and Saas ProductsLife as UI/UX consultantProductized ConsultingJane’s workflow and process in...