The Way of Product | A Podcast on Product Team Collaboration

In this podcast, Danny Morrow, co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Extend Payments, shares valuable insights about his personal and professional growth. He discusses the magic of taking an idea to a successful startup, emphasizing the critical role of building culture, attracting the right team, and instilling a continuous learning mindset. He recounts how Extend Payments was conceived and developed and highlights the significance of creating a solid product-market fit, fostering strong relationships, and maintaining humility in the face of success. A central theme of his narrative is the importance of iterating, feedback, and remaining open to change and growth.

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🎉 Series 7 Finale 🎉

In this episode, I chat about the UX Architect role and what it entails with Jeremy Miller, a UX architect for GE Aerospace.

In this episode:

• The future of knowledge management.
• Difference between research reports and an insight repository.
• What the Dualo team is doing to close the insights/decisions gap.

Staff design is a competency level. It could have several specializations. One of them being a strategist.

Today I chat with Larry Cheng about how to progress in the IC path, and what is required on the staff designer career trajectory.

How do you know if you have spotted a good idea?

In this episode, I chat with the CEO and Founder of Mobilo, a smart business card about evaluating pain points and how to be decisive in your product roadmap.

Design getting the seat at the executive table is still a steep hill to climb.

For the 100th episode of the show, I'm bringing my friend and longtime coworker Clay Walter to talk about his growth into the VP of Design role.

We discuss what you have to unlearn to become influential as a designer in your org and what is looked for in a VP of Design.

Today we learn from a veteran of the product design industry, Kevin Bailey from Product Design Agency "Design 1st".

We talk about abandoning the term designer in favor of "product development specialist" and what we need to focus on to increase the odds of success for our product in the market.

Great teams make great products, great design teams get companies to the next level.

My guest is Justin Tan, Cofounder and Design Leader at Turtle Design.

In this episode, we chat about helping companies get the right design hires for any stage of growth.

In this episode, I interview Doorloop's VP of Product, Noam Grebel, about the role of VP of Product.

My guest today is Jared Odeguard, a design director and certified coach.

In this episode, we talk about the most proven and effective style of management: Coaching.

My guest today has airdropped into multiple cities and set up fully functional design teams for the worldwide design agency Lollypop.

Anjali Deswandikar talks about hiring and establishing a design culture. We discuss diversity and how to foster it and scale something larger than yourself.

How do you harness your ideas? How do you create things that are worth making? In this episode, I chat with Joey Cafone, author of "The Laws of Creativity" a comprehensive book on the creative process.

Repost of one of my top listened-to episodes. With a couple of Google conversation designers. Michael is currently working on conversation design at Meta. 

Season 6 finale! In this episode, I talk with Anthony Armendariz about the culture he and his wife have built at Funsize, the prolific Austin TX-based design agency. We talk about reducing designer churn and the lessons he had to learn so he could grow Funsize. 

Connect with Anthony: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonyarmendariz/

Work at Funsize: https://www.linkedin.com/company/funsize/

Imagine hiring a company whose value proposition is more revenue? That's the promise of Wunderkind, an agency based in NYC that uses creativity and design as levers to drive business growth. In this episode, I chat with their VP of design, Richie Lokay, about running a large design org the levers they focus on at Wunderkind to drive business growth. 

Connect with Richie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richielokay/

In this episode, I discuss the product design role with Peter Loving, owner of the agency, UserActive, and the differences between UX and Product Design. I recommend this interview to anyone wanting to figure out what specialty they are going to focus on in their career. 

Connect with Peter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterloving/

In this episode, I chat with Ian Peterman, Founder of the Peterman Design Firm, about the value of time and consistency when working out innovations. This interview will get you hyped to stick to something long-term because that's what it takes to be an impact player in the industry. 

In this episode, I talk with serial entrepreneur Richard White, founder of Fathom, about how he balances vision and execution, and how to translate research insights into actual product roadmap moves.

Connect with Richard: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rrwhite/

In this episode, I talk to Pek Pongpaet, CEO of the almost decade-old agency Impekable, about the lessons he has had to learn to grow his agency by not designing. This is a great episode for designers who want to grow into business operators.

Connect with Pek: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pekpongpaet/

Season 5 Finale! 

In this episode I learn about excelling in your career by talking to Taylor Palmer.

Taylor has found that he grows most quickly on teams and in environment where there is a culture of experimentation. He tries to set aside 20% of his time to always be working on something that's not on the roadmap.

Taylor has had a steep growth curve since starting at Lucid fresh out of college. Within 5 years he became a director of UX there, and helped build a team of 20 designers. He also started an awesome side project called UX tools which is now the go-to resource for showing the top UX tools in the industry. 

The design thinking philosophy outlines a way to think and approach product development. It isn't a process.

In this episode, I talk with co-creator of UX tools, Jordan Bowman, about the real day to day of a product designer. 

We discuss:

-The job is not a linear process, so your methods change based on the problem.

-The best way to learn about UX, by breaking down methods and using scenarios to practice them.

-How to do consistent customer interviews by reducing your planning to a single focus you need solved right now. 

William needed a job, and even with a strong portfolio and track record, it took him three months to land on his feet. 

William talks about how he learned to take control of his career from that day forward, so it no longer took "3 months" to find a new job.

William is the author of "101 Random UX Facts" and a Senior Designer at PayPal and former designer at Home Depot. This episode is a masterclass on hustling to get better career prospects. 

The key to performance as designer is getting to a point where you are relaxed in the role. 

I chat with Bobby Lloyd, a Principal at United Health and a former UX/UI Strategist at Goldman Sachs, about what needs to happen to become relaxed as a designer.

Bobby calls it being "organic" and a lot of it has to do with practice and getting over imposter syndrome. We dive deep in this one. 

In this episode I chat with Janet Lee on operating a design business.

Janet is Director Of Operations, Digital Agency for the prolific agency Impekable. Where she started off as a design intern. We discuss her shift from designing to becoming an operator of the business itself. Recommend this episode with anyone who is curious about operations in a design or product organization. 

This episode is about creating products that are designed to "generate value" for consumers, in place of "extracting value" from consumers. There is a big difference! 

George Serediuc is a Principal Designer based in Romania. He runs a consultancy gig to help companies & institutions build inclusive digital products that are purposeful & human-centered. 

Why are designers moving into Product Managment roles?

I bring on an old guest, Bryan Mortensen, to talk about our recent discussions on why we both are considering moving into Product Managment one day. 

We discuss designers losing influence at the business seat of the table, how product management is taking over aspects of design thinking we both like doing, and why having a solid PM is a game changer for a company.  

In this episode, Carey Jenkins and I talk about Digital Optimism, a school of thought that empowers technologists to believe in the power of technological innovation to improve our lives and society.

Carey Jenkins is CEO of Substantial, a world-class product development studio based in Seattle, serving a diverse set of clients - from Fortune 50s like Google and Amazon to emerging start-ups and social impact organizations. (They are also hiring remote friendly positions) 

Connect with Carey here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/careyvjenkins/

UX can be romanticized as a profession that can airdrop into any business and work miracles, when it's really just another stakeholder. 

In this episode, I chat about the pitfalls of UX's rising popularity with Michael Tinglin. We also talk about the non-linear career, which is giving yourself the freedom to jump back and forth between IC and management roles as a design professional. 

Michael has a lifetime of experience in the field, and provides some awesome nuggets of wisdom based off his decades of experiences working on innovative products and services for companies like 7-Eleven and Fanny Mae.

In this episode I chat with Adam Fry-Pierce, a former director of the design leadership forum at InVision and current head of design ops at Docusign.

He has personally onboarded and interacted with over 3200 design leaders in the DLF and has some takeaways and lessons from those experiences that you might find interesting. Topics we cover:

In this episode, I chat with Patricia Dwyer, about designing for ecosystems. 

Patricia is a content designer on Intuit's Platform Design team, and shares what the design challenges are in a platform environment. 

Anyone interested in how design contributes to huge architectural efforts should give this a listen.