NN/G UX Podcast

AI has made building software easy. Deciding what to build is another story. When founders and product teams can vibe-code a working product in a weekend, where does design add value? In this episode, Therese Fessenden welcomes back design psychologist Thomas Watkins, founder of 3Leaf and NN/G guest instructor, to talk about why the bottleneck in product development has shifted from building to deciding, how specs are becoming the source of truth for AI-built products, and why taste and research matter more than ever.

About Thomas & 3Leaf: LinkedIn | 3Leaf

The Design Psychologist Podcast: https://designpsychologist.buzzsprout.com/2395044

Thomas's Previous Episode: 57. The Next Decade of UX: Why Psychology Matters More Than Ever

Thomas's Course with NN/g: Writing Specs for AI-Built Products

Other Related NN/g Articles & Courses:

• UX-Context Design: Using UX Knowledge to Inform AI-Generated Design
• Prompt to Design Interfaces: Why Vague Prompts Fail and How to Fix Them
• GenUI vs. Vibe Coding: Who's Designing?
• Good from Afar, But Far from Good: AI Prototyping in Real Design Contexts
• Context Architecture
• Context Libraries: How AI Power Users Manage Context Engineering

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If you've ever wrapped up a great research study, delivered the readout, and then watched the insights vanish into a folder no one opens again, this one's for you. Laura Klein talks with Jake Burghardt, author of Stop Wasting Research, about why a repository alone never gets research used, how to treat insights as durable business assets instead of one-time reports, and where generative AI genuinely helps — and where it doesn't — when it comes to getting more value out of research your organization already has.

About Jake Burghardt & Integrating Research: LinkedIn | Medium | Integrating Research

Jake's book: Stop Wasting Research: Maximize the Product Impact of Your Organization's Customer Insights (Rosenfeld Media) — get 20% off with code: swr-pod

Related NN/G Articles & Courses:

• Why Research Repositories Fail and How to Get Them Right
• Research Repositories for Tracking UX Research and Growing Your ResearchOps
• ResearchOps 101
• Accelerating Research with AI
• Course: Usability Testing

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Job searching has always been harder than it looks, and if you've been searching for a while without much traction, there's a good chance your strategy is working against you. Guest host Laura Klein sits down with Sarah Doody, founder of the Career Strategy Lab, to talk about what UX practitioners get wrong when searching for work.

They cover:

• Why the DIY approach tanks your confidence over time
• How to treat yourself as a candidate-product — complete with features, benefits, and a roadmap
• The role of community in the job search
• what your LinkedIn is actually signaling to recruiters
• Why some of the best UX opportunities are hiding in industries you've never considered.

About Sarah Doody | Bio | LinkedIn

• Career Strategy Lab (Website)
• Career Strategy Lab Podcast
• Follow Sarah on Instagram

Related NN/G Articles & Episodes:

• EP 59 | Getting Hired in UX: What to Do When Apply-and-Wait Isn't Enough (with Evan Sunwall)
• EP 53 | Why You’re Not Getting Job Interviews (with Hang Xu)
• Ep 19 | Designing a UX Career (with Sarah Doody)
• UX Layoff Crisis: A Guide for Resilience and Recovery
• Templates and Tools for UX Job Seekers
• Growing in Your UX Career: Study Guide

Try One of Our Courses

• Successful UX Job Searching (Self-Paced)
  
• Hiring UX Talent (Self-Paced)
• Becoming a UX Consultant: Launch Your Practice (Self-Paced)
  
• 
  Storytelling to Present UX Work (Live Online)

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OKRs are a popular choice to communicate team goals… but most teams do them wrong. In this episode, Laura Klein talks with Christina Wodtke, author of Radical Focus, about what actually makes objectives and key results work: the weekly and quarterly rituals that keep goals alive, why psychological safety matters more than making perfect predictions, and how strategy and vision have to exist before you can even set an OKR in the first place.

About Christina Wodtke: LinkedIn | Eleganthack (blog) | Books by Christina Wodtke

Other Related NN/g Articles & Courses:

• Aligning UX Metrics with Organizational Goals: A Workshop Guide
• Crossfunctional Collaboration: Challenges and Strategies for Success
• Project Postmortems for UX Teams: Learning from Success and Failure
• Lean UX & Agile: Study Guide
• Psychology for UX: Study Guide
• Course: Lean UX and Agile
• Course: Leading Highly Effective UX Teams

Most UX practitioners have spent their careers fighting for the user — pushing back against dark patterns, advocating for quality, and insisting that making things better for people is also better for the business. Eric Ries would say that instinct is exactly right. And that it's not enough.

In this episode, host Laura Klein talks with Eric Ries — New York Times Best Selling Author of The Lean Startup and founder of the Long Term Stock Exchange — about his new book, Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad...and How Great Companies Stay Great. Eric makes the case that most of today's business best practices are actively value-destroying, and that the builders, designers, and makers who already believe product quality matters are more revolutionary than they realize — they just lack the tools to protect that belief inside their organizations.

They dig into the history of shareholder primacy, why corporate governance is something every practitioner should understand, and the very specific questions you can ask in a job interview to find out whether a company is genuinely mission-driven or just mission-hopeful.

About Eric Ries | Linkedin

• The Eric Ries Show
• Incorruptible (New Book) - Available Now!
• The Lean Start Up (Book)

Related NN/G Articles & Videos

• UX Stakeholder Engagement 101
• Deceptive Patterns in UX: How to Recognize and Avoid Them
• Four Factors in UX Maturity
• UX Maturity Is a Living System, Not a Ladder
• UXers Need to Think Like Product Leaders

Try One of Our Courses

→ Becoming a UX Strategist (Live Online)→ Successful Stakeholder Relationships (Live Online)→ Lean UX and Agile (Live Online)→ Demonstrating UX Value (Self-Paced)→ UX Maturity: Elevating Organizational UX Practices (Self-Paced)

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Tiago Pedro (Design Assistant)

Megan Brown (Social Media Lead)

What does it actually mean to design conversationally? Not "add a chatbot" — but genuinely apply the principles of human conversation to the systems we build?

In this episode, host Laura Klein sits down with Erika Hall, author of Conversational Design and Just Enough Research, to re-visit a topic that's only gotten more relevant since her book came out in 2018. They dig into why language has always been an important part of any interface, what the cooperative principle of conversation can teach us about interaction design, and how the current AI moment is muddying what "conversational" even means.

Erika also makes a sharp distinction between AI that solves real problems and AI that performs work — and offers a theory about why so many people are reaching for answer machines right now. Plus: why the best consulting advice is often just "you have to talk to each other," the role of domain expertise in getting anything useful out of an LLM, and what painting chickens has to do with learning to see.

About Erika Hall | LinkedIn | Bluesky

• Her Studio - Mule Design
• Conversational Design
• Just Enough Research

Related NN/G Articles:

• AI Chatbots Discourage Error Checking
• Designing AI Products and Features: Study Guide
• Sycophancy in Generative-AI Chatbots
• AI Features Must Solve Real User Problems

Try One of Our Courses

→ Designing AI Experiences (Live Online)

→ The Human Mind and Usability (Live Online)

→ Understanding LLMs (Self-Paced)

→ Informative Microcopy (Self-Paced)

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Tiago Pedro (Design Assistant)

Megan Brown (Social Media Lead)

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Navigating the UX job market has always had its ups and downs, especially with AI reshaping the industry. In this episode, host Laura Klein sits down with Evan Sunwall, NN/G's Director of Self-Paced Training, to share candid advice for UX practitioners trying to actively job search or level up in today's competitive market. With nearly 19 years in the field as both a designer and a hiring manager, he has a lot to say about where the field is headed — no matter what stage you're at in your career.

That experience is also what shaped Evan's self-paced course on getting a job in UX, part of NN/G's new and growing library of practical, pre-recorded courses built around real skill gaps. Evan was one of the first to help develop the format — running experiments and prototypes to figure out what actually works for self-directed learners.

Evan also previews a companion course aimed at hiring managers and shares that he's looking for sharp instructors to help expand the library into new topics across research, design, and AI.

Check out our NEW Self-Paced Courses!

About Evan Sunwall | Bio | Linkedin

• Successful UX Job Searching (Course)
• Hiring UX Talent (Course)

Free NN/G Articles:

• How to Apply and Secure a UX Job
• Advice for Approaching a UX Job Search
• Templates and Tools for UX Job Seekers
• Preparation Tactics for a Tough UX Job Market
• Growing in Your UX Career: Study Guide

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Tiago Pedro (Design Assistant)

Megan Brown (Social Media Lead)

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If you work in UX, you’ve probably heard the terms lean, Agile, and MVP more times than you can count. But knowing the terms doesn’t mean knowing how to make them work.

In this episode, Laura Klein, Principal Experience Specialist at NN/G, joins Therese Fessenden to talk about what Lean UX was really meant to accomplish — and how teams today can apply its principles without falling into common traps.

Listen as they discuss how Lean UX came about, the skill of zooming between product vision and interaction details, and why growing companies struggle to balance speed and consistency. Whether you’re working at a startup or inside a large enterprise, this episode offers a grounded look at how to design thoughtfully in fast-moving environments.

We’re also excited to have Laura join as the newest co-host of the NN/G UX Podcast. And many congratulations to the Fessenden family as they welcome a new addition to their family.

About Laura Klein | Bio | Linkedin | Bluesky | Usersknow.com

• What is Wrong With UX (Podcast)
• Build Better Products (Book)
• UX for Lean Startups (Book)

NN/G Live Online Courses Taught by Laura

• Lean UX and Agile
• Product & UX: Building Partnerships for Better Outcomes
• All Our Live Courses

Free NN/G Articles & Videos

• Lean UX & Agile: Study Guide
• Lean UX & Agile Glossary
• What is Lean UX?
• Accounting for User Research in Agile
• Why Organizations Don’t Do User Research and How to Change That
• Why Most Product Teams Aren't Really Empowered

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Tiago Pedro (Design Assistant)

Megan Brown (Social Media Lead)

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Therese Fessenden talks with design psychologist and product strategist Thomas Watkins (host of The Design Psychologist and Product-Led Growth Leaders) about why understanding the human mind is still a true superpower for designers, researchers, and product teams. They explore how products subtly shape our behavior and identity, why over-relying on templates and patterns can flatten experiences instead of differentiating them, the risks of personifying AI tools, and the practical ways practitioners can use psychology and AI together to automate the tedious parts of work while staying human-centered and creating products that truly fit into people’s lives.

About Thomas Watkins: Bio | LinkedIn

• The Design Psychologist Podcast
• Product-Led Growth Leaders Podcast
• 3Leaf Consulting (Thomas’ Design Team)

Related Live Online Training: The Human Mind & Usability

Free NN/g Study Guides & Articles:

• Psychology Study Guide
• Humanizing AI Is a Trap
• The ELIZA Effect: Why We Love AI
• The 4 Degrees of Anthropomorphism of Generative AI

As AI-powered tools flood the market promising quick evaluations and audits, the conversation zeroes in on a critical issue: the reliability of these tools. In this episode, co-hosts Therese Fessenden and NN/G VP Kate Moran sit down with Jamie Holst and Christian Holst, the co-founders of Baymard Institute, to examine the growing role of AI in UX analysis. The group discusses the risks of over-relying on AI—particularly for junior UX practitioners—and the deeper implications for professionalism in the field.

About the speakers:

• Christian Holst (Co-founder & Research Director, Baymard Institute)
• Jamie Holst (Co-founder & CTO, Baymard Institute)
• Kate Moran (VP, NN/G)

Links Referenced in the Episode:

• Try UX Ray for Free: https://baymard.com/product/ux-ray
• Read their article on AI accuracy: https://baymard.com/blog/ai-heuristic-evaluations

Related NN/G Courses:

• Accelerating Research with AI
• AI for Design Workflows
• Designing AI Experiences
• AI Product Strategy

Check out ALL of our courses at nngroup.com/learning

Related NN/G Articles:

• AI Hallucinations: What Designers Need to Know
• AI-Powered Tools for UX Research: Issues and Limitations
• AI as a UX Assistant
• AI Chatbots Discourage Error Checking