Design Downtime

We built this city, or rather Odette Jansen did, as she joins us to explore her deep love of city-building games. She talks about being drawn to games with genuine depth and resource management challenges, and a blank canvas that gives her full control without consequences. Games like Cities Skylines or Planet Zoo, where she's logged over 400 hours recreating Disneyland leaf by leaf. Odette also reflects honestly on how being late-diagnosed autistic and ADHD shapes her play style. From the hyperfocus and Excel sheets tracking city resources, to the pure joy of knowing random animal facts at the zoo.

Guest Bio

Odette Jansen (she/her) has spent 15 years in UX. She leads research and content at ING, and she also runs UXR Study (uxrstudy.com) - a training platform for UX researchers, used by over 80,000 professionals worldwide, with courses, templates, and support on everything from research to UX leadership. She's got a BSc in UX and an MEd in talent development and diversity. She's late-diagnosed autistic and ADHD, and that shapes a lot of her work - she's spent a long time looking at how organizations overlook neurodivergent people, and how to build places and leaders that don't.

Links

Odette on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/odett/

UXR Study: https://uxrstudy.com/

Credits

Cover design by Raquel Rubio Breternitz.

It's time to lace up when Jarvis Moore joins us to talk about his love for collecting sneakers. He shares how it grew from a childhood longing into a curated collection that serves as his primary form of personal expression, the systematic approach behind his collecting, and how he navigates the hype-driven world of limited collaborations and grail sneakers. Beyond the collecting itself, he reflects on how sneakers function as cultural shorthand, community building, and self-expression, including the Jordans he wore on his wedding day.

Guest Bio

Jarvis Moore (he/him) is a Senior Design Lead for Design Systems at Realtor.com, where his job is to build the infrastructure that makes great design possible at scale. In addition to maintaining and architecting systems, he’s spent his career teaching teams how to think in systems before they ever touch a component. His work spans enterprise design systems, AI tooling, and the harder question most orgs avoid “how do you actually build design culture, not just document it?” He speaks and teaches on all of it, because he’s lived it. He’ll tell you the hardest part of design systems was never the components. It’s the people. It’s always been the people.

Links

Jarvis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jarvismoore1016/

Jarvis on Twitter/X: https://x.com/jmodesigns10

Credits

Cover design by Raquel Rubio Breternitz.

Get ready for the beat to drop, when Sam Gordashko joins us to talk about her love of DJing. She traces her journey from recording mixtapes off the radio as a kid to spinning sets at Burning Man. She shares how she learned to embrace imperfection as a recovering perfectionist, breaks down her systematic approach to navigating 50,000 tracks, and explains how DJing puts her into a flow state of constant, calculated risk-taking. Sam also offers practical advice for anyone curious about trying DJing themselves.

Guest Bio

Sam Gordashko (she/her) is a freelance design systems pro with a design tokens obsession based out of Toronto, and she's on a mission to make complex tech feel human. Over the years, Sam has worked with big names like Getty Images, Shutterstock and Intuit, plus plenty of scrappy startups figuring it all out, with most of her career spent as a "Design Team of One" at various tech innovation startups. You might know her as Samantha Gordashko or Sam I am Designs, the public speaker, host of design systems events, and educational content creator focused on design tokens, design-to-development processes, and systems thinking. She's got a knack for turning intimidating technology into approachable, actionable workflows and has built a reputation in the design systems community for making people laugh while sharing her future-friendly design pro tips, real-world workflows, epic fails, and radical honesty about what not to do.

Links

Sam’s website: https://samiam.design/

Sam’s set, Promise Cherry Beach, June 12, 2022: https://soundcloud.com/ilovepromise/aubade-promise-cherry-beach-june-12-2022

Sam’s set, Solar Seance, Club Rapture: https://soundcloud.com/aubade_samiam/ssrapture

Credits

Cover design by Raquel Rubio Breternitz.

Love is in the air, when Helen Gaskell joins us to talk about writing rom com novels. She shares the story of her accidental path to publishing — from writing a fan letter to a mobile game, to landing a deal with just 10,000 words written. Helen reveals the surprising structural discipline behind the genre, and passionately defends romantic fiction as a misunderstood feminist art form, arguing it offers sophisticated social commentary and genuine emotional comfort. Her debut, The Regency Switch, is available now from HarperCollins.

Guest Bio

Helen Gaskell (she/her) is a freelance lead content designer based in the UK. After ten years at the BBC as a content producer she now works on GOV.UK projects and has spent time at over a dozen central government departments. Most notably, she worked on the first public-facing AI-driven project for the Foreign Office, and wrote the UK government's guidance on AI for services.

Links

The Regency Switch: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-regency-switch/helen-gaskell/9780008769574

Helen’s author website: http://helengaskellwriter.co.uk/

Helen’s design website: https://www.helengaskell.co.uk/

Credits

Cover design by Raquel Rubio Breternitz.

Get your fill of chlorophyll, when Mike Perrotti joins us to talk about his passion for plants. He shares how a therapist's recommendation to add greenery to combat seasonal depression unexpectedly spiraled into a tropical obsession. Mike describes how he catches himself coveting rare expensive plants and consciously redirects back to the meditative joy of caregiving and cultivation. He also reveals how managing a diverse collection in a low-light apartment requires the same constraint-driven creative thinking as design.

Guest Bio

Mike Perrotti (he/him) is a Product Designer at Datadog living in Brooklyn with an assortment of plants and reptiles, a cat, and a loving partner who tolerates it all. He spends his weekends in his lush greenhouse by day and on dark, foggy dancefloors by night. Before moving to New York in 2012, he studied art in Philadelphia, then fell sideways into UI design and frontend development. He later went on to become a major contributor to various design systems, including GitHub's Primer. Along the way he developed a pattern of picking up hobbies and going completely and shamelessly overboard with them. His houseplant hobby snuck up on him and (predictably) spiraled into an obsession.

Links

Mike on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-perrotti-81402572/

Mike on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mperrotti_

Credits

Cover design by Raquel Rubio Breternitz.

It’s time to wax on, wax off as Daniel Sanchez Griborio joins us to talk about his lifelong love of karate. He describes how his parents enrolled him at age five, and how the structure and rigor created a sense of belonging. Daniel explains karate's core philosophy of seeking perfection while understanding it's unattainable, and how focusing on incremental progress sustained him through five consecutive years of losing in the first round of nationals before finally winning at age 17. He talks about karate becoming an anchor and a reminder that "what you put in, you get out," shaping how he approaches everything from work to parenting.

Guest Bio

Daniel Sanchez Griborio (he/him) is a design leader at Scotiabank and a lead instructor in User Experience Design at BrainStation. With over 15 years of experience in various design roles, he has held positions such as Director of Product Design and Senior Manager of User Experience at Scotiabank, guiding the creation of user-centric digital banking solutions. Daniel has also contributed to organizations like The Felt Store and TD, where he has focused on enhancing design strategies and e-commerce experiences. He possesses a passion for empowering future designers with industry insights and real-world applications.

Links

Daniel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielsanchezgriborio/

Daniel on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therealdanielsan/

Credits

Cover design by Raquel Rubio Breternitz.

In the first episode of season 5, Mike Monteiro is "still listening to wax, he's not using the CD" when he joins us to share about his lifelong love of vinyl records. From his parents' 70s console record player to a 4,000-record music room, he traces how music became a path of self-discovery. Mike explains how he keeps track of his incredible collection, talks about the Platonic idea of the prefect record store, and makes a passionate case against audiophile gatekeeping: however you listen to music, you're doing it right.

Guest Bio

Mike Monteiro (he/him) is the co-founder and Design Director of Mule. He writes and speaks frequently about the craft, ethics, and business of design. He's written a bunch of books, including Design Is a Job, Ruined by Design, and the brand new How to die (& other stories), which is only tangentially about design. He lives in San Francisco, with his wife Erika and their dog Rupert. He has been buying vinyl his entire life, and currently has about 4,000 records.

Links

Mike’s website: https://www.mikemonteiro.com/

Mike’s Good News newsletter: https://buttondown.com/monteiro

Muhammad Ali inserting a 45 into the record player of his 1959 Cadillac Eldorado: https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1edo3g1/muhammad_ali_inserting_a_45_into_the_record/

Credits

Cover design by Raquel Rubio Breternitz.

In this conversation, host Guy Segal and returning guest Pavel Samsonov challenge the recurring claim that the design process is dead — arguing that for many, it was never really alive in the first place. Pavel makes the case that process isn't a rigid framework imposed from above, but a set of self-imposed, iterative constraints that help designers make better decisions. The conversation explores how factory-era management thinking and agency-world deliverable culture have distorted our understanding of what process actually means, and why most "process transformations" fail because they serve managerial control rather than the people doing the work. Pavel and Guy also dig into the social dimension of design — how effective process is as much about managing stakeholder relationships and intake as it is about creating a decision-making framework that allows you to say "no".

Guest Bio

Pavel Samsonov (he/him) is a Principal Experience Designer at Justworks in New York. His approach to product & UX draws from his research at Nielsen Norman Group, experience building design practice at AWS, and managing product teams at Bloomberg.

Pavel often describes himself as a Problem Designer, because the biggest influence on the solution is always the framing of the problem.

Links

Pavel's weekly newsletter, Product Picnic: https://productpicnic.beehiiv.com/

Influence by Design, Pavel's full-day workshop with Active Voice HQ: https://www.throughlineconf.com/events/philadelphia-2026

Credits

Cover design by Kristine Planche (inspired by Raquel Rubio Breternitz).

In this inaugural episode, Pavel and I dig into the history and dysfunction of Agile, not to relitigate waterfall vs. Agile, but to examine why modern Agile practice has drifted so far from its original intent. We explore how the Agile manifesto was written entirely without designers in mind, how the "Scrum industrial complex" turned a flexible philosophy into a rigid checklist, and why two-week sprints often amount to waterfall in disguise. We cover the critical role of feedback loops, the danger of prioritizing outputs over outcomes, and why shared problem understanding is what teams actually need. We also make a case that good design principles are the closest thing we have to a genuine fix, because design is built around the kind of iterative, goal-questioning thinking that Agile always promised and rarely delivered.

Guest Bio

Pavel Samsonov (he/him) is a Principal Experience Designer at Justworks in New York. His approach to product & UX draws from his research at Nielsen Norman Group, experience building design practice at AWS, and managing product teams at Bloomberg.

Pavel often describes himself as a Problem Designer, because the biggest influence on the solution is always the framing of the problem.

Credits

Cover design by Kristine Planche (inspired by Raquel Rubio Breternitz).

It’s the season 4 finale and we’re celebrating at 150 bpm, when Vitaly Friedman joins us to talk about his lifelong journey through techno music. It all began in Belarus when, as a child, he discovered The Prodigy on cassette, continuing into his teens, that were spent obsessively exploring every possible musical avenue. Vitaly explains his preference for minimal, melodic, and "honest" techno over mainstream EDM, emphasizing his deep appreciation for the craft, passion, and commitment artists put into their work. He discusses how music serves different functions in his life, whether providing flow and calmness while working, or creating vivid, cinematic experiences at live concerts, and reveals his practice of continuously discovering new artists to avoid getting stuck.

Guest Bio

Vitaly Friedman (he/him) loves beautiful content and does not give up easily. Born in Minsk, Belarus, he studied computer science and mathematics in Germany. While writing algebra proofs and preparing for software engineering at nights in the kitchen, at the same time he discovered passion for typography, interface design and writing. After working as a freelance designer and developer for 6 years, he co-founded Smashing Magazine back in 2006, a leading online magazine for designers and developers. His curiosity drove him from interface design to front-end to performance optimization to accessibility and back to user experience over all the years. Vitaly is the author, co-author and editor of Smashing Books (https://www.smashingmagazine.com/books), and a curator of Smashing Conferences (https://www.smashingconf.com). He is the UX lead with the European Parliament and Smashing Magazine and front-end/UX consultant in Europe and abroad, working with large and small companies and organizations like Haufe-Lexware, Axel-Springer and others. He also runs Measure UX (https://measure-ux.com) and Smart Interface Design Patterns (https://smart-interface-design-patterns.com), friendly video courses on UX and design patterns, along with a live UX training for passionate UX and product designers.

Links

Vitaly on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vitalyfriedman

Amelie Lens at EXIT 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80jdSJxZUAE

Amelie Lens — Live In the tunnel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1-Xc7EfT44

Worakls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXJawwVI03E

Paul Kalkbrenner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YPbpWeIx2Q

Extrawelt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryc3YudCYXU

Prodigy — Out of Space: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4eav7dFvc8

Credits

Cover design by Raquel Rubio Breternitz.