What is UX?

Marissa Louie is the Director of UX Design at SiriusXM Pandora, she leads a design organization that thoughtfully creates experiences for 100m+ users.

She also serves as the Chairwoman of Animoodles, and runs Designers Club and Designers Guild. Previously, she was a design leader at Apple, Expedia, Ness, and Yahoo.

It brings her joy to design delightful products, drive innovative visions with billion dollar results, and help others achieve their full creative potential.

In this episode, we talked about:

• How did Marissa get into design?
• Marissa’s career at Apple
• Working as a “Jill of all trades”
• Mentoring and speaking engagements
• Who is Marissa outside of her professional career
• Animoodles story
• Highlights and accomplishments of Animoodles
• Her role at SiriusXM Pandora
• And MUCH MORE!

Links and Resources:

https://karanarising.org/

https://www.thewaytomyheart.org/

https://www.theanimoodles.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/siriusxm/jobs

https://www.linkedin.com/in/malouie/

https://malouie.com/

@malouie

Pawel Bak is a strategic and passionate product/service designer with 12+ years of experience designing for mobile, wearables and IoT devices. Designs and helps develop high-performing design solutions and engaging customer experiences which drive business goals and user satisfaction for well-known brands. An innovative and hard-working leader who is both strong on ideation and implementation, as well as on enabling global agile teams to succeed. Mentors designers and manages established or growing design teams. Builds collaborations and establishes trust to engage and influence global stakeholders.

In this episode, we talked about:

• The transition from studying Computer Science to becoming a designer
• Pawel’s role at AbbVie
• How AbbVie serves people
• Pawel’s career at Nokia
• Memorable experiences in designing for Nokia
• Pawel’s career experience at Microsoft
• Transition from working at mobile companies to working on automotive company which is BMW
• Evolution of mobile design system
• And MUCH MORE!

Links:

http://www.abbvie.com/

Connect with Pawel

Sarah is currently the Experience Designer at Patagonia. She also worked with Google, Pinterest and Nike, leading strategy and UX in a highly collaborative work environment. Mentored junior staff. Participated in the hiring process, project casting and scoping.

She makes experiences by orchestrating cross-disciplinary teams of designers, writers, developers and content creators. Her passion and curiosity about people and how we interact with the world around us drive her to continuously explore and learn.

In this episode, we talked about:

• Sarah’s role at  Patagonia
• Patagonia’s product and e-comm side
• How Sarah started in design
• The transition from graphic design to UX design
• Agency work vs in-house work experience
• Sarah’s career as a design instructor
• Designing for a global audience
• And MUCH MORE!

Links and Resources:

https://baymard.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/uxhiggins/

https://www.patagonia.com/home/ 

Katie Swindler is a human-centered design strategist with 15 years of experience. Originally educated as a theatre director, her creative approach combines storytelling and technology, emotion and utility to enable brands to connect deeply with consumers and fulfill real human needs.

Author of the book Life & Death Design, published by Rosenfeld Media in January 2022, which looks at what life-saving technology can teach us about designing for the human stress response. She’s an experienced presenter who has spoken on UX topics internationally at industry events such as SXSW Interactive, IXDA, 4A’s and PUSH.

In this episode, we talked about:

• Katie’s role in Allstate
• Duties as a head of design strategy for the Innovation Department
• How did Katie start in design?
• The transition from theater to design career
• Katie’s book: Life & Death Design
• And MUCH MORE
  
  
  

Links and Resources:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/katieswindler 

http://www.katieswindler.com 

https://twitter.com/katieswindlerux 

https://www.lifeanddeathdesign.com 

Nicole Torgersen is Vice President of Design at Dialpad. She’s been working in digital design since the late '90s working with a range of industries including cloud collab and storage at Dropbox, retail at Gap, and recruiting at Monster Worldwide. A Design craftsperson by trade, Nicole has been a leader most of her career, building teams by way of leveraging empathy and vulnerability in the balance to find business impact while mentoring individuals.

In this episode, we talked about:

• Nicole’s role in Dialpad
• How did Nicole get into design?
• How to become a leader
• Her career at Monster Worldwide, Gap and Dropbox
• Hardest transitions in Nicole’s career
• Nicole’s learnings and insights in her career adjustments
• And MUCH MORE!

Links and Resources: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ntorgersen/ 

How to Win Friends & Influence People

Making Ideas Happen

Tara Brach

Ryan Tauss is the leading product design for Tide Cleaners. The past almost 4 years, along with a talented crew have greenfield an entire suite of applications that help run operations, customer service, and improve the guest experience making laundry as convenient as just using your thumb. Before that, he worked at America's largest church, Life.Church. It was at this time in his career he made a switch from graphic design to product design. He went from art directing and brand creation to contributing to just about every digital space of Life.Church. He understands agency life and how fun and exciting it can be. He’s even had the opportunity to return to his alma mater and teach a design course. All these experiences have built on the other and he feels very grateful to have experienced each one. Lastly, He’s just tipped his toe into mentoring through ADP, and the first few connections have been warm and authentic. 

In this episode, we talked about:

• What is Tide Cleaners?
• Tide Cleaners relation to Press Box?
• Tide Cleaners “personas”
• How did Ryan get into design?
• Transition from graphic designer to UX designer
• Tide Cleaners design team
• Values and why are they important
• How can design help create a better organization?
• How does Ryan’s cultural background affect his career
• And MUCH MORE!

Links and Resources:

Product Leadership, by Richard Banfield, Martin Erickson, and Nate Walkingshaw

Michael Bierut

Paul Rand

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryantauss

Sumier Phalake is Head of Design, Next Billion Users at Google, which focuses on products that bring connectivity to users in emerging markets. He has over 15 years of experience across both consumer and enterprise products.

Episode highlights:

• What is “Next Billion Users” (Google) and how it benefits people?
• Files by Google - file management that helps mobile freeing up space
• Files by Google success and its million users around the world
• Sumier cited more of their products
• Sumier on working on tools to make Googlers more productive and more beneficial to Google users
• How did Sumier get into design?
• How did Sumier get to work at Google?
• And MUCH MORE!

Links and Resources:

Digital Confidence Toolkit

https://nextbillionusers.google/tools/ 

Connect with Sumier

https://twitter.com/sumierflake 

Tessa Rodes joined the very first cohort of IBM Design Bootcamp in 2013, and since then has seen the design organization and company grow and evolve into a truly design-led system. She has reviewed 100s of portfolio applications in the 8.5 years of IBM Design, and has strong opinions about both what makes a great portfolio and what NOT to bother with. She launched the initial version of the product IBM Cloud and has worked to ensure quality, consistency and differentiating features ever since.

In this episode, we talked about:

• How did Tessa get into design
• IBM design Bootcamp
• Tessa’s role at IBM Cloud
• Tips on what makes a good portfolio?
• Importance of cover letter in the application process
• IBM’s interview and hiring process
• How pandemic affects IBM operation and current workplace environment
• And much MORE!

Links:

https://www.ibm.com/design/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tessarodes/ 

Ryan has spoken all over the world at schools, and organizations sharing his story and inspiring others to live their dreams. Ryan is a father, husband, mentor, motivational speaker, and designer.

His current role, leading product design at Rocket Homes. He is an experienced User Interface Designer with a demonstrated history of working in the financial services industry. Skilled in App Design, User Experience (UX), E-commerce, and Leadership.

In this episode, we talked about:

• Motivational story of Ryan who was born without arms and legs
• How Ryan designs
• Ryan’s early journey and how did he started in design
• Design tools he’s using
• Ryan’s role in Rocket Homes
• How should people think about accessibility?
• Ryan’s past role in Ford Motor
• Ryan as a motivational speaker
• Look Mom No Hands – The Story of Ryan Hudson-Peralta
• And MUCH MORE!

Links:

Connect with Ryan

https://lookmomnohands.com/

Tiktok: lookworldnohands

https://twitter.com/hudsonperalta

https://dribbble.com/hudsonperalta 

Jared Spool is the founding principal of User Interface Engineering (UIE), a research, training, and consulting firm that specializes in website and product usability, He is also the Maker of Awesomeness at @CenterCentre/@UIE. Helping designers everywhere help their organizations deliver well-designed products and services. 

In this episode, we talked about:

• How did Jared started his business Center Centre-UIE
• More about running a successful 30 year old company
• Jared’s early design research work
• How experienced designers can still make bad designs and design decisions
• Why large organizations can have bad design
• Why design so important?
• And MUCH MORE!

Links:

Jared Spool Twitter

Jared Spool Articles

Center Centre

UIE

UX Centered Careers