Dillon Winspear is an experienced UX Designer with a background in marketing and advertising. After 3 startups, Dillon moved into a corporate role with Domo, a business intelligence platform, where he leads a team of UX Designers on their Explorer portfolio. Dillon is also the host of the Designed Today Podcast, where he shares insights he’s gathered throughout his career and shares them with any designer looking to up their game. His guests have ranged from entry-level designers sharing their experiences, to experienced experts.

Today we talk all about the role of soft skills in the work of designers, including:
👉 An overview of the discipline of UX and its evolution as a field
👉 The role of soft skills in both getting and succeeding in your design job
👉 How to become aware of your opportunities for soft skills to work on
👉 Dillon’s take on the most important soft skills for designers

Resources:
👉 Dillon’s podcast: Designed Today
👉 Soft Skills Self Assessment
👉 The Soft Skills Disconnect (Research)

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Today’s guest is Kat Kennedy, Chief Experience Officer at Degreed. Kat is a problem solver, passionate about making great products that help people lead more productive lives. Kat has worked with top companies and brands in leading their companies to be the best in the industry. As part of the founding team at Degreed, she has helped build the company into an award-winning learning platform. She has helped shape a tech and product team that is inclusive and has been a leader in sharing how to build more inclusive workplaces in technology. 

Today we talk about: 
👉 How and why Degreed created the concept of the Learning Experience Platform and how this has evolved with technology and growing interest in skill credentialing
👉 How Degreed is working to use technology to help facilitate taxonomies and language of expertise and skill
👉 All about how work is changing and what role technology might play in helping humans learn and develop into the future

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Are you one of the 68% of US workers (and 87% of global workers) who are disengaged from your job? Are you ready to quit your boss? (People quit bosses, not companies) don’t do it yet! Authors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans provide solutions to these and so much more in their book Design Your Work Life. Today I’m joined with Hope Kramek, an Instructional Designer and Content Manager at Intuit. Here’s a primer from the book’s website:

"Bill Burnett and Dave Evans show us how design thinking can transform our present job and our experience of work by utilizing the designer mindsets: Curiosity. Reframing. Radical collaboration. Awareness. Bias to action. And, the new mindset, Storytelling, helps engage others in helping you find the best job for you."

In summarizing and reflecting on the book, Hope and I cover topics such as:
👉 How reframing your problems can help determine what’s next in your career
👉 Focusing on the best doable options rather than the best theoretical option
👉 The power of aiming for “good enough for now” and a growth mindset
👉 The flaw of trying to “follow your passion”
👉 And the many ways that simply figuring out what you are curious in and talking to others about it can open new doors in your career.

Resources
👉 The Peril’s of Following Your Passion (podcast episode)

Introduction music, “For Mimi” by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.

Artist: TwinMusicCom

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Meghan is a Principal Learning Experience Designer at HubSpot focused on creating remote-inclusive experiences and enabling performance. She has facilitated adult learner education at Michigan State University; designed, developed, and facilitated learning programs in various industries through international consulting; and contributed to corporate learning management at PepsiCo and Coca-Cola Beverages Florida. She is a member of the 2018 Learning 30 under 30 program.

Today we talk about:
👉 Meghan’s journey to becoming a business partner (not simply an order taker)
👉 The importance of talking to learners and doing a workflow analysis both for great design and also stakeholder alignment
👉 What Meghan does to help stakeholders to partner with her on projects with tips for effective training request processes
👉 The role of asking questions, educating stakeholders, and dealing with the worry of being an inconvenience

Resources:
The 5 Moments of Need

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Dr. Beth Wilkins is the founder and CEO of Foresight Collaborative, a management consulting firm that focuses on accelerating innovation and growth by helping clients envision and achieve aspirational strategies. Prior to starting Foresight, she was the Head of Organization Effectiveness at a global non-profit and the Director of Talent Development at Oracle. She was also a Principal Consultant at DecisionWise and the RBL Group. Beth holds a Ph.D. in Instructional Psychology with a focus on transformative learning. 

Today we talk about: 

• Dealing with Imposter Syndrome and the role of storytelling in shaping identity and learning
• How transformational leaders can leverage values and learning to inspire and energize others
• The learn, experiment, reflect model to bring about real change individually or as an organization
• How you can influence change in your organization without any formal power
• The qualities of positive deviants and their influence in transforming teams and people

Resources:
👉 Reading and resources on Beth’s website: Foresight Collaborative 
👉 Moments of Greatness: Entering the Fundamental State of Leadership (HBR article)
👉 Dan Duckworth - Positive Deviance Program
👉 Shawn Quinn - Lift Consulting

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Hello everyone! Here is a brief update on some changes coming soon. Stay tuned for more great conversations in the coming weeks. Thank you for listening! Please take a second and leave a voicemail with any feedback by calling(801) 900-5970.Support the show

With 25 years in high-tech software development—Dr. Christian Weibell provides a very passionate and informed perspective to envision, incubate, and develop new product offerings and set high standards of excellence for the overall customer experience. He is most widely known for his Principles-of-Learning Framework that articulates seven principles on which all learning is based, and provides a foundation for the development of domain-specific theories of learning. 

Today we talk about: 

• Christian’s journey through formal and informal learning to eLearning brothers
• The 7 principles of learning framework and applications and details for each of them 

Additional Resources:
👉  Summary of principles of learning (blog posts)
👉 Principles of Learning (full dissertation text
👉 A Theory of Personality (book) 
👉 Conversation with Jon Tota on the Learning Life Podcast

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Zach Atherton is the owner, founder, director, and regular main stage cast member of ImprovBroadway in Provo Utah. When not performing or directing on stage, Zach works as a writer with the Harmon Brothers viral ad agency. 

Today we talk about: 

• Getting past fear filters and failure
• Giving feedback that honors people and builds upon their ideas
• How to turn draining transactions into inspiring conversations with a shared purpose
• The essential role of play and asking, “what is the most fun?” to unlock trust and creativity

Resources
👉 Business Improv (website)
👉 Upright Citizen’s Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual (book)
👉 Improvising at the Speed of Life (book) 

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Dr. Stephen Yanchar is a professor at Brigham Young University’s Department of Instructional Psychology and Technology. Along with a book, he has authored or co-authored chapters and articles in numerous psychology, learning, and design-related publications. Dr. Yanchar’s research and teaching interests include agency and learning, instructional design in practice, and hermeneutic and phenomenological approaches to qualitative inquiry.

Today we talk about: 

• What actually is practice? What is theory? and is there really a gap between them?
• The role of morals and values in design practice 
• How your questions and methods of inquiry influence projects and investigations
• Intentional use of theory in practice using critical flexibility

Resources:
👉 Between Eclecticism and Orthodoxy in Instructional Design (article): 
👉 The Design Way (book)
👉 The Sciences of the Artificial (book): 

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Abby Covert is an information architect, writer, and community organizer. Abby served as President of IA Institute, co-chair of IA Summit, and Executive Producer of IDEA. She is a founding faculty member of the School of Visual Arts’ Products of Design program, Design Operations Summit and, Advancing Research Conference. She invented World IA Day, bringing IA education to thousands in local communities annually. Abby wrote, “How to Make Sense of Any Mess” a book teaching IA to everybody of which we talk about today. 

Additionally, we discuss: 

• A high-level introduction to information architecture
• Defining Good on your project
• Three deceptively simple things for creating a good structure 
• And the power of creating a shared vocabulary in building solutions that scale

Resources
👉 How to Make Sense of Any Mess (book):
👉 Mental Models (book) 

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