Design Better Podcast

In today’s episode, we talk with Boyuan Gao and Jahan Mantin—the founders of Project Inkblot—who have built a practical framework that can help everyone design for diversity, and can also be a guide for challenging conversations. We discuss how they see design as an opportunity to bridge the divide and bring people into the conversation about designing products and services that address everyone’s needs, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or religion.

Are you on a product team or a feature team? After you listen to our interview with Marty Cagan, legendary product management guru, author, and partner at SVPG, you’ll know just where you stand, and how to become a product team leader if you aren’t already one. We also discuss why product management is misunderstood, the dual track agile process, discovery sprints, and the four types of prototypes that Marty has classified, including user, feasibility, live data, and hybrid prototypes.

Naveen Gavini, Head of Design and User Experience at Pinterest, spent time as an engineering manager and then as head of product engineering before taking on his current role, and he brings a unique perspective on leading design teams with him from his journey. Naveen shares how they “knit” different disciplines together at Pinterest, and we explore what he’s learned from scaling a team in hypergrowth.

“Designers are about possibilities. Engineers are about probabilities.” This quote, from Stephen Deasy, Head of Cloud Engineering at Atlassian, is just one example of how concisely he can describe the relationship between designers and engineers. Our interview with him was our first chance to learn from a leader on the engineering side, and he shared a wealth of knowledge that will help designers work more effectively with their engineering counterparts.

We're Webby nominated! Vote: https://dbtr.co/webby2020 Love it or hate it, the agile approach to software development seems to be here to stay. Often, it’s hard to get good design practice to fit within an agile framework, so our next guest, Joshua Seiden—co-author of Lean UX and Outcomes Over Output—may be particularly helpful to those of you who are struggling. We chat with Joshua about how to fit user research into a sprint, and how he advocates for setting outcomes to guide the work of your

We chat with Steve Rader, who is Deputy Director for the Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation at NASA, about how he communicates across teams where expertise and vernacular might be very different, and the importance of having teams that are diverse on an array of different levels, from personal background to expertise. We also learn how vision gets communicated by leadership at NASA, and the lessons he’s learned in his career about leading people.

Now more than ever, designers need to be able to demonstrate an understanding of the business they work within, and show a return on investment for the work that they do. That's why we’ve just published a new book on DesignBetter.com called Business Thinking for Designers by Ryan Rumsey, formerly of Apple, USAA, EA, and Nestlé. In this episode we speak with author Ryan Rumsey about how designers can learn to speak the language of business and create more value for their companies and in their careers.

We’ve just published a new book on DesignBetter.com called Remote Work for Design Teams, to help you make a graceful transition from the office to a remote work environment. In this bonus episode, we speak with the authors (all from InVision): Abby Sinnott, Managing Editor, Greg Storey, Senior Director of Executive Programs, and Ben Goldman, Director of InVision Films. We chat with them about their own remote collaboration and teamwork while writing this book, which they turned around in record time.

In this bonus episode, we’re once more focused on remote teams, and more specifically on best practices for facilitating remote design sprints, building trust between teams in a remote environment, and running effective critiques and design reviews remotely. Tune in for our chat with Richard Banfield, VP of Design Transformation at InVision, and author of the book Enterprise Design Sprints, and Alison Rand, our Senior Director of Design Operations.

In this bonus episode, we chat about balancing personal and professional demands in a remote environment, especially during these challenging times. Join special guests Jennifer Aldrich, Senior Manager of Design Community Partnerships, and Stephen Gates, Head Design Evangelist, at InVision, as we discuss best practices for remote communication and how to build trust within your remote teams. We hope this episode helps you and your teams as you transition to remote work during this challenging time.