Design Much

Andy and Patrick sit down or the last time on Design Much

Michal Chaplin joins Andy and Patrick to chat about her experiences finding a love of UX

Andy sits down with Michael Nielsen to chat about how you can stay creative in all your endeavors

Logan Williams joins Andy and Patrick to discuss some common UX myths

Mike Hall joined Andy and Patrick to chat about the best practices for rolling out a redesign

The legendary Tim Hansen joins Andy and Patrick to chat about what happens if you feel like just a mockup artist

Jordan Reading joins the podcast to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of being the lone designer

Andy and Patrick are joined by friend of the show Michael Nielsen to discuss whether designers have the chops to become PM's

Andy and Patrick read The Polar Express, sort of.

Andy and Patrick chat about team alignment, oh and also, ramen and candy.

Andy and Patrick sit down to chat about how you can move from an individual contributor role to a management role. Also, they discuss the important of soft skills and growth.

Halloween came a bit later this year for Design Much.

Sir Ben Picard submits a very regal topic for Andy and Patrick to dissect

Andy sits down with Derek Boman, Director User Experience Design at MX, to chat about how understanding your business's needs will help you be a better designer

Andy and Patrick sit down to tackle the longest topic ever submitted on the pod

Andy and Patrick discuss the the intricacies of the design levels

Andy and Patrick chat about what whitespace is and how to know if there is enough or not.

Andy talks while Patrick eats dots.

Andy and Patrick chat about how to handle burnout and why Andy didn't know who George Harrison was

Andy and Patrick open up about who really controls the podcast and why this is not the final episode. Also, a huge sausage versus bacon debate.

Andy has a new mic which just makes his voice feel even more smooth and elegant, so why not listen to him talk about Design Sprints.

Andy and Patrick span the globe of topics, from ethics in design, to design twitter, to shampoo bottle design, to how you can be heard as a designer

Andy and Patrick sit down with the Design Much adopted son Brian Talbert to discuss starting a career in design.

Andy and Patrick chat about moonlighting

Andy and Patrick discuss their favorite sitcoms before discussing what kind of impact they would like to make on their companies and career.

Right after Andy and Patrick chat about our poor system of sizing clothing they jump into best practices for developer handoff

Andy and Patrick chat about ideas on how to improve your relationship with your manager.

Andy and Patrick tackle baked potato toppings and why designers seem to change job frequently

Andy and Patrick chit chat about activities that slow down designers.

Andy and Patrick sit down with Nikki Isaacson to discuss her rise to fame and fortune as a UX design manager.

Dillon Winspear, host of Designed Today podcast, joined Andy and Patrick to talk about evolving as a designer

Tom Delong sends in a topic about aliens, Andy and Patrick talk about alien UI and humanity in general

Matt Born writes in: How many people does it take to screw in a lightbulb, or how many people does it take to ship a feature?

Patrick sat down with Andy to discuss his path to design.

Andy digs deep into the the brain of Patrick Cox to find out how he ticks.

Andy and Patrick sit down with Jason Metzgar and discover how hit ticks.

Andy and Patrick discuss what hills they die on and why

Matt Born joins the pod to chat about his path a designer and how building relationship can help build your own career.

Today's topic, Andy and Patrick tackle the age old question... do engineers make good designers?

Andy and Patrick celebrate the 100th episode of the pod by chatting with some of their favorite guests

Andy and Patrick discuss Squarespace, Web Flow and other platforms used for freelance design work

Andy and Patrick chit chat about the rules every designer should break.

Elissa Lauber jumps on the pod with Andy and Patrick to discuss how you can build your own research program at your company.

Andy and Patrick try to figure out the best way to save Christmas

Andy and Patrick chat about design QA, radio voices and The Mandalorean

Andy sat down with awesome special guest Alli Clark to discuss how anyone can be a UX leader on their team.

Patrick blows Andy's mind with his ability to snap using his ring finger as well as his index finger.

Andy and Patrick sit down via the interwebs to discuss ow often we should be validating working software.

Andy and Patrick record the dirtiest episode yet.

Andy and Patrick sit down beside the campfire to tell scary stories when PM legend Michael Nielsen jumps out of the bushes.

Andy and Patrick debate whether doing free work and internships is better at getting a job then just waiting around, they also chat about finding ways to stand out when looking for a gig.

Andy asks Patrick what it takes to be a design manager and if it's fun or not.

Great throwback interview with the mighty Allison Zubal on how to speak up

Andy and Patrick try to figure our when you know you have designed enough on a project.

Andy and Patrick sit down and chat about Jessica Goldman's topic - what makes a senior designer.

Patrick interviews Andy about how to tell a story and be a more effective communicator of design, they also chat about Patrick's new Raycons

Following up on the last episode about junior designer career development, Andy and Patrick throwback to their interview with Ashley Hunt and her experience being a jr finding a gig.

Andy and Patrick chat about why some companies don't like to hire jr talent, and what can be done about that. Oh, we also talked about Andy's Halloween costume from a few years ago.

Andy finally watched Top Gun and he talks about how much sweat is in the film. Oh and Andy and Patrick chat about not feeling inadequate.

Andy and Patrick finally finished Hamilton and gave it a good solid crit. They also chat about how to hire the best talent.

Big episode packed with a ton of info. Andy and Patrick chat about rebranding themselves, how to get a job in the covid market and we take the Hamilton challenge,

Andy and Patrick chat about getting developers to do more work, watching Hamilton, and poopy talk.

Andy and Patrick sit down to discuss the stereotypes of designers.

Andy and Patrick sit down virtually to discuss how you can gather data and apply it to your design decision making

Andy and Patrick chat about their educational background and discuss if it's necessary to get a design degree to become a UX designer.

This episode is loaded with topics: What happens when your design work isn't built, how would our world be different if humans had eyes in the back of our heads, licorice, and the wisdom of Frozen.

After Andy and Patrick chat about how to arrest a crocodile and how to take down a standing shark they dive right into how to negotiate salary and promotions.

Andy and Patrick start off the pod trying to diagnose Andy's hatred for olives and then jumped into changing priorities.

Andy and Patrick sit down and discuss resolving and preventing design conflicts

Andy and Patrick discuss the perils of office politics, Andy's new rad Dribbble shots, and a few solid blog marketing ideas you can steal.

Andy and Patrick chat via the interwebs about a topic that every UX designer has experienced at least once.

Andy and Patrick kick off this episode by stack ranking their favorite nuts and end the episode with a great chat about design systems.

Yep, chicken switches are lame and will make you a lame designer, Andy and Patrick talk about why.

In this special episode, Andy and Patrick were joined briefly by Patrick's Grandmother before diving into the topic of how to build and scale end to end user experience.

Andy and Patrick chat about a lot of things in this episode; what happens when you lose your design at the mall, how to improve UX without alienating existing users and even Andy's take on Onward... good stuff, good stuff

Ken Jackson AKA K-Jax sent Andy and Patrick a very deep topic - How to handle broken trust in the workplace.

Aaron Watson sends forth the topic of favorite user research tools, Andy and Patrick discuss.

Andy and Patrick virtually chat about what happens when you feel like your job no longer serves your career. We also go in depth about Andy's job at the Training Table and when he quit nobody noticed.

Chelsea Nelson asked the question "How do you find and build creativity everyday?" Andy and Patrick sat down to figure it out.

Jordan Reading joins Andy and Patrick to chat about design bootcamps, are they good? Are they creating good designers?

Andy and Patrick sit down to discuss if it's UX's responsibility to bring people and departments together. Also chatted about all the old TV shows Andy hasn't seen and Star Wars.

Andy and Patrick sit down to chat about learning patterns, practice and trying new things.

Andy and Patrick sit down to talk about the pros and cons of working on cross-functional teams and the racist origins of Fanta

Trae Winterton joined Andy and Patrick to chat about his recent transition from user research to product management.

Patrick sat down with Jon Anderson to follow up on Jac Madsen's question about Agile principles and methodologies.

Let the giggle factory continue. Andy and Patrick tackled Jac Madsen's topic of Agile.... what it is and what it means to designers.

Andy and Patrick chat about recent tech layoffs and how it effects designers

Weston Youd sent a great topic about how product managers can better critique designs - Andy and Patrick sat down in the new pod digs to discuss it.

Friend of the show Matt Born submitted a great topic - what does "senior" mean. Andy and Patrick chatted about the requirements and traits of a senior designer.

The first ever Design Much live! Andy and Patrick had the opportunity to record this podcast at a Product Hive Utah Meetup, hosted by Solution Reach. Fun times, fun times.

Matt Born asks the question, How much design output is informed by observation vs. gut? Andy and Patrick sit down and try to figure it out.

Visual artists make fun of UX designers and UX design make fun of visual artists.... so who right? Do visual artists make better UX designers? Well, Andy and I make the final judgement in this gripping episode of Design Much.

After building a snowman, Andy and Patrick warm up with a nice conversation about the user experience of Christmas.

In this episode, Andy and Patrick argue about when Frozen 2 was released, the difference between a raven and a crow, but most importantly the benefits of specializing, being a generalist or jumping into management.

Andy and Patrick sit down and chat about thanksgiving as well as being threatened by the skills of other designers.

Andy and Patrick field a topic from listener Danny G about networking practices for junior and senior designers.

Andy and Patrick tell spooky design stories around the campfire.

This week we have a special guest, product management legend Michael Nielson joined us to chat about reboots, series, original ideas and familiarity in movies, pop culture and design.

Andy and Patrick sit down and chat about why design trends are cyclical? Why do they evolve? Why haven't jorts made a huge comeback yet.

Andy and Page sit down and chat about a hot topic in the design world today - how do 1980's car designs influence today's modern web design.

Andy and Patrick chat about the pros and cons of remote work and mix in a little Kinky Friedman analysis.

Andy and Patrick power through their allergies to chat about the state of design tools in 2019. What they like, what they don't like and fig newtons.

Andy and Patrick discuss the inevitable design question, "How long will this take?"

Andy and Patrick explore how designers can coach project stakeholders on design best practices and how it can improve the effectiveness of their involvement.

Andy and Patrick explore the nuances of how designers approach a larger design project vs a smaller design update.

Andy and Patrick sat down with Ingrid Cruz to talk about how self-awareness can help designers with their career growth.

LISTEN IN TO HEAR:
How to learn about the strengths and weaknesses that you my not see in yourself
How to foster a culture of feedback in a design team.

How to look for self-awareness attributes when hiring a new design candidate

MORE ABOUT INGRID:
Ingrid is the Director of User Experience at RainFocus, a rapidly growing software company that powers some of the largest tech conferences in the world, for companies like Adobe, LinkedIn, Oracle, and Cisco. Prior to RainFocus, she led the UX team at Infusionsoft, a $100M SaaS company based in Arizona. As the site leader for their Utah office, she was also responsible for day to day operations, employer brand, and employee happiness. Ingrid has almost 20 years of experience in the design industry, and loves to bring cross-functional teams together to solve difficult problems—and have fun in the process. In her free time she can be found doing DIY projects, perfecting her barista skills, and enjoying the outdoors with her husband, daughter and three dogs

ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Design Much has opened a merch store with 2 different t-shirt designs for sale! Check them out here and help support the podcast.

The next Lunch UX will be on March 22nd at Jane. RSPV here and join us to learn how to handle silence and nervous participants during research from Danielle Green.

As designers, there are many potential things that could keep us up at night. Fear that our portfolio isn’t good enough, logo redesigns that we just love to hate, or even worry that you aren’t doing the right level of user research to inform your design decisions could all lend to your tossing and turning at night.

In an effort to help you sleep better, Andy and Patrick sat down with Danielle Green, a user research manager at Jane.com, to get a better understanding what advanced level user research looks like and what steps you can take to get there.

LISTEN IN TO HEAR:
How to know when you should start employing an advanced research process
How to deal with bias in your user research
Why you should involve fake data to your user research (I know, crazy right?)

Danielle Green is the User Research Manager at Jane. She has 4 years of experience as a UX researcher. Danielle has been involved in many types of businesses and projects, including: start ups, enterprise B2B, B2C, SaaS, physical products, and digital products. Before researching users in the business world, she conducted cognitive research in the fields of neuroscience and psychology.

PS Design Much has opened a merch store with 2 different t-shirt designs for sale! Check them out here and help support the podcast.

Andy and Patrick sat down with product manager, Eric Avarell to get a better understanding of how he works to break down large projects so that his team can be more effective in building the best product possible.

LISTEN IN TO HEAR:
How to product managers and designers can approach breaking a project into smaller pieces

How you can leverage team involvement to improve a break down

How to use tools like StoriesOnBoard to form a project narrative and map out objectives and milestones.

MORE ABOUT ERIC:
Eric is a Product Manager at Canopy. He has enjoyed wearing a number of different hats, and working on a wide variety of products as Canopy has quickly grown over the last 4 years. Connect with Eric on LinkedIn.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Design Much has opened a merch store! We are releasing a t-shirt design with 2 different variants. Check them out here and help support the podcast.

Communication is a vital part of each UX designer’s role. However, sometimes we can find ourselves in situations where we lack the confidence to speak our opinions or offer feedback even if we think our input could offer more value for a product. Andy and Patrick had a speak up session with product designer, Allison Zubal to find out why speaking up is important and how designers can get better at sharing their thoughts with others.

LISTEN IN TO HEAR:
How to can gain the confidence to speak up.

How senior designers and executives can create a better environment that encourages more to speak up.

How to get better at offering feedback that has value.

MORE ABOUT ALLISON:
Allison is a UX designer at Canopy. She has nearly 4 years designing great user experiences for industries such as e-commerce, healthcare and tax. Connect with Allison on LinkedIn.

ANNOUNCEMENTS
The next Lunch UX will be Friday, November 30th. Mike Curtis will teach us how write about your work and present your portfolio with confidence. Free lunch and venue provided by 1800- contacts in Draper. RSVP here

Testing, in some form or another, can almost always be found in each designers utility belt. But as designers, when and how often should we be testing our designs? How do we know we are testing the right thing? Andy and Patrick sat down with UX designer, Bret Gunter, to learn about the importance and the benefits of incorporating more testing into the design process.



LISTEN IN TO HEAR:
How to know when you should test a design

Strategies for testing designs earlier and more often

How testing more can lead to better designs and better designers

MORE ABOUT BRETT:
Brett Gunter is a UX designer at Landvoice. He has a little over 3 years experience in UX design working on mobile file managers, language learning products, and real estate lead generation products. Connect with Brett on Product Hive, follow him on Twitter or check out his portfolio.

As designers, should we all know the differences that make up the other various disciplines? Can having that understanding benefit us as designers? Andy and Patrick conversed with Jeff Carter, the UX Director at RizePoint, to talk about the differences.

If you are a designer, chances are you know that your app should, in some way, support users with disabilities. But with so many potential disabilities that can affect a portion of your users, you may not know how or where to start building accessibility into your app. We get it, it can seem to be a daunting task. Especially if you run into issues with getting buy-in from developers and executive teams.

Patrick and Andy sat down with Carlos Filoteo (a developer at Canopy) to discuss how designers can learn accessibility basics, how they can decide where to begin and how to continue learning and implementing new accessibility functionality into their designs.



LISTEN IN TO HEAR:


How to approach learning and implementing accessibility in bite-sized pieces
How designers can work with developers to understand technical aspects and limitations of accessible-friendly designs.
How being proactive about accessibility now will help your app and your users in the long run.

We all know that communicating a design to our team is a vital part of the design process. But since many design tools don't focus on design transparency and collaboration, sharing our work while we are designing is not a seamless process. That's why some teams have switched to Figma, a design tool that focuses on collaboration.

Patrick and Andy met with Dan Vineyard to chat about how he is using Figma's collaboration features on his team and how it has increased team alignment and created a faster design process.

LISTEN IN TO HEAR:

How Figma has speed up his design process through open team collaboration.
How he gets developer and his product manager to ideate together in his design files in real time.
How to get buy-in from your team to start to implement Figma and see how it can improve your process.
And much, much, much more... Dan's an insightful guy.

Design critiques are a great way for a designer to get feedback from his/her design team. However, depending on the way they are facilitated or the manner of which a designer asks for feedback, sometimes they don't always turn out so great.

Knowing the value of feedback from design peers, how can we as design teams create a critique process that doesn't lead to negative, out of context or unproductive advice that can hurt designs or even bruise a designer's pride in the process?

Patrick and Andy met with Ben Peck to discuss the challenges that deign teams face when participating in regular design critiques and how we can make them more productive and helpful for all involved.

LISTEN IN TO HEAR:

How to build a proper critique process that will work for your team.

What sort of critique guidelines can help designers to give/receive productive feedback.

How to streamline rapid feedback during the critique and record the information given to the presenter for later review.

Ben Peck is a Product Design Director at Jane coming from over a decade of design experience working with software companies that have partnered with brands such as Nike, The North Face, Oakley, Under Armour, and Sonos. Ben is focused on designing Jane’s software and products to significantly impact the user experience needs of our consumers and sellers.

Ben is also the cofounder of the Front Conference, a product design and management conference held in Utah which is on it 4rd year, as well as the Director of Product Hive with over 3,000+ product designers and product managers.

Andy and Patrick attending the Front design and product conference last week in Salt Lake City Utah. We had a great time at the event and wanted to share our insights with you all. If you want to continue the conversation go to DESIGNMUCH.ORG and leave a comment or two. If you think this topic would benefit another designer or even your design team, feel free to share it and get them involved in the conversation as well. The opening and closing beats are 'High Road' by Fort Minor, the interview interlude is 'Two Faces of Fear' by Sgt. Slaughter, and the interview bridge is 'Drive' by Otis McDonald.

Andy and Patrick sat down with Andrew Ditto from Canopy to help us understand how QA approaches design. We had a great time interviewing Andrew and we hope you will enjoy it as much as we did. If you want to continue the conversation go to DESIGNMUCH.ORG.

Design Much, Level up your design game one bite size podcast at a time

Andy and Patrick sat down with the mighty Nate Sanders from Pluralsight to help us understand confirmation bias better.

Andy and Patrick sat down with engineer Neil Oler to discuss how to build long lasting relationships with developers to improve not only your work environment, but also to create better products/projects.

Andy and Patrick sat down with the mighty Nick Bluth again to chat more about design practice, specifically the 'deliberate practice' method and how we can hone our skills by slowing things down and being good with failure.

Andy and Patrick sat down with Senior Designer, Jonathon Juvenal to discuss the pros and cons of being a design team of one. Jonathon has deep experience in the world of digital design and has been a part of some fantastic design teams.

Andy and Patrick sat down with TJ Nelson to find out more about Gamestorming. TJ is a Sr Product Designer at Inmoment and Founder at ProductBound (productbound.co), you can find him on social media with @tarljames.

Andy and Patrick sat down with Blake Simkins, Director of Product Design at Podium to discuss how he has involved developers in the design process. Follow Blake on Twitter using @blakesimkins.

Andy and Patrick sat down with the articulate Trevor Nielsen to discuss how he selects the perfect font for his design projects. Trevor is currently a senior designer at Mojo Marketplace (https://www.mojomarketplace.com).

Andy and Patrick sat down with the tall and mighty Danaan Clarke to learn more about learning new tools, specifically learning FramerJS and his experience with the design and prototyping tool.

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This podcast doesn't have a description yet. Stay tuned!