The Power of Disability - The Disabled List ft. Liz Jackson

Liz Jackson founded the Disabled List in 2017 in hopes of creating more space for disabled designers. She recognized that corporate conversations so often happen about them but without them. The Disabled List is working to change this by advocating for disability as a design advantage. They strategically place disabled designers into organizations to demonstrate the unique value disabled perspectives have. Through the Disabled List, I’ve had my first meaningful forays into the world of disability studies, ableism and disability advocacy. My perspective on the role of disability in design and research has changed, listen in and yours might too!

Sensemaking Through Information Architecture - Abby Covert, Etsy

Abby Covert, also known as Abby the IA, is a pioneer in the field of Information Architecture. Abby likes to think of herself as a “Sensemaker,” a role she believes is becoming more and more necessary in our increasingly messy world. To spread this message, Abby wrote the book How to Make Sense of Any Mess, helped found World IA Day that now has events all over the globe, and shared her thoughts on the subject here with us.

Coaching for Creative Professionals - Laura Weiss, Design Diplomacy

Laura Weiss never expected to be a leadership coach. Growing up she knew that she was meant tobe an architect and after earning an undergraduate and masters’ degree in architecture her fate seemed all but sealed. That is until she decided to change everything less than a decade later. She had realized that while she loved architecture, it wasn’t quite for her. So she decided to follow another passion and get an MBA from MIT. She went on to find a home for herself in the emerging field of design thinking, combining her love of design and business as a consultant at IDEO for almost 10 years. Today Laura is focused on helping others navigate tricky moments in their careers and grow design leaders through her work as a professor and as a coach. More and more people are turning to professional coaches as a way to grow, transition, and find fulfillment in their work, in this episode Laura shares a bit of what it means to be a coach and what you can gain from having a coach.

The Future is Life-Centered - Jane Fulton Suri, IDEO

Today’s guest, Jane Fulton Suri, always seems to be looking at the world in a new way and helping others to as well. She is currently a Partner Emeritus at IDEO, where she has been working since the late 80s in a number of different roles, including Chief Creative Officer and Executive Design Director. Jane is an expert observer and has a way of approaching each project with a voracious curiosity that has been inspiring the research world for decades. She is unequivocally one of the founders of the field of design research, a psychologist by training, who pioneered the idea that observing behavior and bringing principles of psychology into a design context could create a more human centered world. Listen to this episode to find out more about Jane’s path and her passion for not only Human-Centered Design, but something she is now calling Life-Centered Design.

The Future is Scalable - Kate Towsey, Atlassian

When it comes to Research Operations, Kate Towsey is an expert. In addition to her current experience leading the team at Atlassian, she has years of experience working independently for a variety of clients. In her free time, she also started the largest community for professionals in this space. As the field of UX research continues to grow at a breakneck speed, scaling effectively will be paramount. Join us to better understand how to scale your growing research team.

The Future is Ethical - Tristan Harris, Center for Humane Technology

In this episode, we’ll hear from Tristan Harris, a world renown design ethicist first at Google and now at the Center for Humane Technology. The Center’s mission is to make technology more humane by starting a conversation about the ways in which tech often ends up unintentionally harming users. Tristan offers context and suggestions for how researchers can not only make products usable and useful, but also ethical.

How to Work Internationally - Jan Chipchase, Studio D

Jan Chipchase has done it all. Before leading the global research practice at frog, the well-known design & innovation consultancy, Jan was a Principal Scientist at Nokia. He specialized in entry level products and his work caught the attention of a writer for the NY Times magazine. He became the center piece for an article titled, Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty? Jan was working on a product at the time that collectively sold over a billion units. He now runs a consultancy, Studio DRadiodurans, a luggage brand, SDR traveller, events all over the world and is the author of the popular, Field Study Handbook.

Outside the Lab - Emily Goligoski, The Membership Puzzle Project

Emily Goligoski grew up in a family of journalists.After studying the subject in college, she began exploring less traditional paths that would allow her to merge her love of journalism with her love of human factors. A few years and another degree later, Emily found herself working as a design researcher at the NYTimes. In 2015, she became the first researcher to go into the newsrooms, helping reporters better understand topics ranging from archiving to readers’ need during breaking news events. Last year she moved on to The Membership Puzzle Project, a NYU and De Correspondent collaboration exploring sustainable paths forward for public service news organizations. In the episode, we discuss Emily's work, the new methods she's experimenting with, presentation formats, and so much more.

Combining Qual & Quant - Jeff Sauro, MeasuringU

Jeff Sauro has had an amazing career. In addition to having a PhD in educational statistics and research methods, he’s worked at GE, Intuit, and Oracle. Jeff is probably best known though for his work at MeasuringU, the quantitative research firm he founded in 2004. As it says on their about page, they focus on “the statistical analysis of human behavior and quantifying the user experience.” When it comes to qual/quant research, Jeff is a leading voice in the community and in this episode wediscuss what motivated this approach and speak a bit about how UX researchers could begin to incorporate this type of thinking into their practice, including How To Make Personas More Scientific.

The True Value of UX Research - Matt Gallivan, Airbnb

Matt Gallivan has had an amazing career in research. From the redesign of NPR's website to Facebook ads, Matt has worked on amazing projects as an individual contributor and as a manager. For the last three years, he’s been at Airbnb and is now responsible for a team of researchers working on the Host side. This experience has given Matt a unique perspective on the role and value UX researchers bring to a product organization.