Hotline Design

Whilst it's almost the end of March, this episode was recorded mid-January when some of the 'New Year' chat was more appropriate. Regardless, it is not almost the start of Q2 of 2022, so hopefully these tips help you with your Q1 review and onwards planning. 

In this week's episode, Lauren, YuXin and Lavinia chat about their goals, their approaches to setting them and some tips on how to make them stick. And because we work in tech, the usual acronyms are also going to make an appearance. Expect to hear about OKRs and SMART goals.

Special thanks to @matt_beadnall for the music and Phil for calling into the Hotline Design Hotline this week!

Don't forget you can always record a question for us at https://anchor.fm/hotlinedesignpod

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This week on Hotline Design, we have the pleasure of welcoming the phenomenal Rachita and Rebecca of Sisterhood School + Studio, whose mission is to bring design education to the 21st century by using creativity as the vehicle for social change to positively impact girls and their futures. They share their journey of starting Sisterhood, from bonding together at design school to testing and persisting with their idea of running long-term creative programmes for girls aged 13-18. Rachita and Rebecca also share what design means to them - both as the creators of Sisterhood programmes and accomplished designers in their own right. In this episode, we also switch things up by interviewing Zainab, a former Sisterhood student, in the Hotline Design Hotline section.

We hope you enjoy the conversation - just in time for International Women's Day!

It's a new year and a new milestone, episode 30! This week, we're tackling onboarding journeys and ensuring they deliver value. We've all been there, clicking 'skip' on 10 modals or closing a boring video attempting to explain the product to us. In this episode, the cohosts are offering their experience and tips on how to make them successful. 

This week the co-hosts are joined by fantastic friend of the pod and design lead extraordinaire, Kelly Kornet Weber from Coeuraj in Canada! She's breaking down the collaborative design process and explaining the exciting world of participatory futurism, all while telling us how to spot the winning contestant on Survivor!

This week, the cohosts share the ups, downs and everything in-between of the day-to-day of being a designer in today’s workforce. We share top tips on structuring your day, writing a solid to-do list and why no agenda means no attenda.

The term designops has been floating around for a while now. Defined by the Nielsen Norman Group as the 'orchestration and optimisation of people, processes, and craft in order to amplify design’s value and impact at scale', the co-hosts discuss what this means for teams in terms of how they work together, how they accomplish the work they need to do, and how to amplify the impact of their work. Plus - hear about Lauren's low-down on the Graham Norton show and Lavinia's close shave with a bull in a field!

"Am I senior yet?" - a question just as philosophical as... "To be or not to be?". Jokes aside, the industry is rapidly changing and we don't yet have clear career structures between organisations. While they can be mapped against each other within tech giants, if you're working for a smaller company, a start-up, an agency or a consultancy, things can get confusing fast. In this week's episode, the cohosts hopefully demystify a little bit of what being a senior designer means. 

Whiteboard design challenges - an exciting, and at times, intimidating staple in the UX interview. This week the cohosts break down the top tips for acing your take home or live whiteboard challenge, all while brining in with pearls of wisdom from Artiom Dashinsky’ fantastic book Solving Product Design Exercises. The cohosts are also bamboozled by the word 'vehemently', but will they endure? Tune in to find out!

This week we tackle Part 2 of how to articulating your design decisions, continuing with our discussion of how to communicate with your stakeholders, keep your sanity, and deliver the best possible user experiences! We focus on top tips for productive conversations with your team and how to follow up to reinforce your design decisions.

Many thanks to Tom Greever for his book, Articulating Design Decisions, which has formed the basis of this 2-parter.