Alec speaks with Christelle Ngnoumen, Principal Behavioral Scientist at Headspace Health. They chat about what behavioral science is in the field of study as well as in application and how it’s a rich and broad field that is informed by many other disciplines, how it uses different techniques other interviews and surveys that researchers can leverage to get better insights to create better products for the users and even uncover problems that may have been hiding from other methods of research.

Alec speaks with Lucy Denton, Head of Design at Dovetail. They chat about her story joining Dovetail and how the team took a design-led approach to growing the company and setting goals for their new products. Lucy thinks wireframing is an underutilized skill that can help as much outside product design as inside, and outlines some of the fun and powerful experiences using wireframing to map out product growth, onboard new employees, and more.

Alec speaks with Liam Thurston, Senior Director of User Experience at Loblaw. They chat about how important it is think through how every design decision you make has the capacity to harm others. He shares a story of how his fondness for old cartoons almost led him down a bad path, and how key supports he put in place helped him avoid a less than optimal situation. At DesignConf, he's going to share his suggestions for how to avoid harmful design decisions, and previews that talk in this conversation.

Alec speaks with Fonz Morris, Lead Product Designer, Global Conversion at Netflix. They chat about the struggle of finding your place in the design world and the lack of support for early career designers. Fonz says it is important for design leaders to give back to the community and help these new generation of designers become better, he hops to inspire other leaders to thinking about how they can support newcomes to the field.

Alec speaks with Ashley Lagaron, a Staff Quantitative Researcher and Lucas Puente, Director of Survey Science and Quantitative Research at Slack. They chat about how survey malpractice has led to many researchers not taking surveys seriously, when in fact they can play a fundamental role in gathering insights. They also cover how it’s the researchers’ job to do pre-work before deciding to conduct a survey, and the importance of using other methods of gathering the data before the survey if possible. That and a lot more about surveys in this episode of the podcast.

Alec speaks with Dean Broadley, Head of Product Design at Yoco. They chat about how he got his start in design and the importance of keeping the talent funnel as wide as possible when looking for new hires. They also cover how creating the space for new hires to develop is critical for building teams with diverse skills and perspectives, and how Dean helps designers see that the metaphorical 'map' of career growth is not necessarily the route you need to take.

Alec speaks with Patrick Hertzog, a Co-Founder and User Experience Officer at Nexthink. They chat about the importance of design teams to not only understand design and research, but also the business context of the problem they’re trying to solve. Patrick established a framework for designers to have a better business reference point and better understand the perspectives of people in leadership positions, which has given their team more confidence to ship a better product and meet user needs.

Alec speaks with Ashley Graham and Alexandra Hornsby, User Research Managers at Spotify. They share the story of a key research project they did at Spotify focusing internally on employees (rather than users during) the Black Lives Matter movement after the murder of George Floyd. They talk about how the skills they've developed as researchers can do much more than study users and can make researchers a key agent of change at any organization.

Alec speaks with Nova Nicole, a Senior Leadership Development Facilitator at Shopify. They chat about how her journey that comes from experiencing feelings of depression and anxiety herself into helping people cope with them, especially now that the pace of life is going quicker each time and is filled with voices, noise and notifications. She shares how creative workers and people in general experience a lack of relational awareness, since all of the sudden they were out of their comfort zone and didn’t need to cope with feelings in public, and the importance of self-reflection and intentional solitude to hear yourself first so you can get your work done without the cost of one self.

Alec speaks with Brandi Luedeman, a Head of User Research and Consumer Insights at Opendoor. They chat about the lack of understanding of what growth looks like in research and the tension that it creates for seniors when there’s lack of clarity of the growth path ahead. Brandi is going to share her journey to developing growth plans for researchers at Opendoor at UXRConf, and gives us a preview into what that journey has been like for her.