The UX Coach

Today, I'm in conversation with Jorge Arango, an information architect and author of several books. His most recent, duly noted, has just been released. Jorge is a consultant based across the Americas and teaches in the graduate interaction design program at the California College of the Arts. We talk about why we make notes, the concept of thinking with notes and how connected notes can be used to further your development and personal knowledge. Now, with big data being at the forefront of the current evolution of computing and artificial intelligence, it kind of stands to reason that we should be thinking about how we make more of our personally generated data.

Today, I'm talking to Elizabeth Chesters. Born in Wigan, UK, Elizabeth now resides in Munich, Germany. We first met in 2015 when we both presented at a conference encouraging first-time public speakers. Since then, she has worked in-house for several organisations, both in the UK and Germany. I wanted to hear firsthand what it's like to move to another country for work when you don't know the language, the environment you're going to be in, and the personal and professional cultures. What I learned from talking to Elizabeth was that you don't necessarily need to move to an entirely different country to experience culture, clashes and discrimination because of where you are from.

Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I’m Andy Parker, the UX Coach. And this is where I share people’s stories of career success and failure from across the tech industry. Today, I’m talking to Marvin Hassan, a UX designer from Germany, who wants to pay back the community with his insights into design leadership, and navigating the different phases of tech startups. What is the role of a designer when a business is operating on VC money? How do you create great products when the mission is to pay back your debt? We’ll be talking about all of these things and more in this episode.

In this episode, I am talking to Pete Winchester. Pete and I have known each other for quite some time now. And he recently posted about his experience of taking on a Design MBA or the D.MBA, I was really curious to know what that was, and how it might differ from an MBA that you might have heard of people, Six Sigma, and all the rest of our business speakers talking about what benefit there might be in designers learning more about business. We got together at the beginning of September, things were chaotic and busy for both of us. It was really great to be able to carve out a bit of time one day to sit down and talk about that. And also to sort of pick into some of the career decisions that Pete has made within the last 10 years as somebody who has gone from being a individual contributor in UX, moving into leadership and management roles with varying sizes of teams, then going back to being an individual contributor, before finding himself where he is now as Head of Design

In this episode, Erica Johansson shares how she went from being a journalist with a love of music to the first content designer, a little known startup called Amazon, and has blazed the trail for content strategy working with big tech, including Microsoft and slack. We talk about the role of content in design, and the differences between content design, strategy, marketing and UX design, what the role of a Content Designer is how design research differs from UX research, and how you can get into content design and research today. Let's kick off with a little potted history.

This time around I am speaking to Tom Bird. Tom and I met a few years ago, and this actually the second time I’ve interviewed him for the show. We first tried this the week before the UK closed its borders and shut the country down for COVID-19. After some time away I wanted to revisit the topics of design education, and see how Tom’s feelings on Bootcamps for UX had changed, if at all, and to hear Tom share what it was like to join a company the week before the world caught fire, the impact that had on his employee experience, and his recent move into a product design role for a remote first company.

Our return to The UX Coach Podcast features an interview with Learning Experience Designer Fiona MacNeill. We talk about what the design industry can learn from education and visa versa, how to align professional development with business goals and the value of finding a community to lurk in. https://twitter.com/fmacneill

It's back! Season 3 of The UX Coach Podcast is returning Spring 2022 along with some other news from theuxcoach.com. Listen in for info on how to be a guest on the show and our debut course launching on the site.

In this episode I am in conversation with Vanessa Colina, founder of UX Backstage, a series of online courses for designers that aim to help develop the necessary skills to find your next job. --- Vanessa has some great advice for hiring managers of all kinds about what they can be doing to improve the quality of the candidates they attract and being honest about what they need, and how UX Backstage launched in order to support designers looking to move out of junior or mid-weight positions into organisations that will help you develop skills and spaces for the future. https://uxbackstage.com/

In this episode I am in conversation with Jo O’Keefe, Lead User Researcher with the Care Quality Commission in England.

This week I’m talking to Anna Kincses, head of research for Why? a Hungarian design agency.

In this episode I am really happy to be in conversation with Caroline Jarrett. Caroline has been an important voice in digital design for many years. Her mantra fix-the-forms is what lies behind her timeless book Forms that Work, designing web forms for usability, and her forthcoming book on survey design I am sure will become a go-to for years to come. --- I wanted to hear about Caroline’s diverse career, her thoughts on design leadership, management and career progression, as well as the state of education and what challenges lie ahead for people coming into digital design in 2020. This was a really deep dive and so this episode is a little longer than usual, I hope you agree with me that it was well worth it.

In this our final episode, I’m in conversation with Dylan Wilbanks. Dylan has been part of the digital design community since the mid-90s, a frequent writer Dylan was present a lot in the speaker circuit but in recent years has chosen to step down to make way for new voices, something he is greatly passionate about supporting. Thank you for joining me here on the debut season of The UX Coach podcast. In this our final episode, I’m in conversation with Dylan Wilbanks. Dylan has been part of the digital design community since the mid-90s, a frequent writer Dylan was present a lot in the speaker circuit but in recent years has chosen to step down to make way for new voices, something he is greatly passionate about supporting. I reached out to Dylan after he made a comment that he had reluctantly accepted his first job as a Manager. For someone who has been driving change, and leading design for almost 20 years I was fascinated to find out where this statement came from. We covered a lot of ground, and there were so many things we explored that it has genuinely been a challenge to edit this down and I really didn’t want to go full blown Sam Harris on you all. We pick things up with a bit of background.

In this episode I met with Mark Branigan, head of research at Hippo Digital a digital service design consultancy from the UK to talk about his career to-date, what it’s like being responsible for the hearts and minds of future generations and how a move into civil service opened his eyes to the amazing world of user research. Welcome to The UX Coach podcast, I’m Andy Parker and this is the show where we explore careers in digital design. You made it! This is our debut episode and boy have we learnt a lot already. Not as easy as you think stitching this together you know. In this episode I met with Mark Branigan, head of research at Hippo Digital a digital service design consultancy from the UK to talk about his career to-date, what it’s like being responsible for the hearts and minds of future generations and how a move into civil service opened his eyes to the amazing world of user research. We also discuss whether there really is such a thing as a mid-weight designer. For more info about Hippo Digital https://hippodigital.co.uk/ Follow Mark on Twitter https://twitter.com/markbrani

In this episode I’m in conversation with Bradley Orego is a User Researcher, Experience Designer, Entrepreneur, and Professional Dancer currently located in Brooklyn. --- In this episode I’m in conversation with Bradley Orego a User Researcher, Experience Designer, Entrepreneur, and Professional Dancer currently located in Brooklyn. We talk about the parallels in the digital product industry and creative arts, how the education sector is struggling to develop the career paths of Gen-Z and I ask how you continue to develop your own skills once you reach a senior level of experience. * [https://www.1010data.com/](https://www.1010data.com/) * [https://bradorego.com/](https://bradorego.com/) * [https://medium.com/performing-design](https://medium.com/performing-design) * [Google Machine Learning Course](https://developers.google.com/machine-learning/crash-course/)

In this episode I’m in conversation with Johnny Burch, founder of Progression app a new product to help design managers and team leaders that aims to Stop spreadsheet-wrangling, text-wordsmithing and ladder-shuffling when it comes to supporting team growth. --- In this episode I’m in conversation with Johnny Burch, founder of Progression app a new product to help design managers and team leaders that aims to Stop spreadsheet-wrangling, text-wordsmithing and ladder-shuffling when it comes to supporting team growth. Johnny’s experiences as a design manager at Deliveroo, one of the world’s fastest growing startups in the gig-economy gave him insight into the murky world of team management and career development that resulted in progression which is now in Alpha. We discuss how better tools for design leadership and management may be able to address and improve the current inequalities and balances in the design industry and his long-term dreams for how Progression could contribute to better identifying and remedying this problem. We dig into the definition of an Individual contributor, the transition to being a manager adjusting from maker mode to a calendar full of half our 1:1s. We met up with Johnny finding a rare hour in his day as he announced finding a partner to join him on the Progress journey. ## Links: [progressionapp.com](http://progressionapp.com) [https://makegrow.co/podcast](https://makegrow.co/podcast) [anchor.co/progressionpod](anchor.co/progressionpod) [https://www.jonnyburch.com/](https://www.jonnyburch.com/)