What is UX?

Jason Ogle has been designing for Tim Berners-Lee’s “World Wide Web” via CRT monitors, 2400bps modems, and 216 colors since 1996. He is also a highly innovative and strategic design leader who is passionate about the user defender.

He is an influential podcaster who uses the enchanting magic of audio to inspire and equip an audience of hungry and ambitious designers. His podcast “The User Defender Podcast” is an avenue to inspire, enlighten and entertain people passionate about making a difference in their work. While staying hungry and inspired in UX design.

In this episode, we talked about:

• Jason Ogle’s passion and journey in UX growth
• What is Jason’s vision as a designer?
• Blast from the past: Jason Ogle’s Myspace journey
• About The User Defender Podcast

Get in touch with Jason

• Visit Jason's website:

https://userdefenders.com/

• Listen to “The User Defender Podcast”:

https://userdefenders.com/podcast/

Books Mentioned

• “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success” by Dr. Carol Dweck

Michael Ernst is a multidisciplinary designer and cross-functional manager who works with executive teams to drive customer loyalty in business and convert them to results. He has 20 years of experience as a product designer, creative director, brand designer, and illustrator for various companies in the tech industry.

He started his journey with Yelp in 2004. He became the lead designer and designed Yelp’s overall brand identity. In 2009, Michael led the UX design on a product that grew from an unknown site to 20 million page views and 6 million reviews. In 2012, he rejoined Yelp as a product designer. In addition to his work experience in Yelp, Michael also was the Lead Designer at Soothe, Fountain, and Giftly.

Today, Michael focuses on leadership and management, product strategy, process, and user experience design as the Lead Designer at Daylight.

In this episode, we talked about:

• What is Yelp’s design process?
• The Benefits of Yelp elite member
• Developing a good visual language and framework for Yelp
• What is Yelp for Business Owners?
• Michael’s personal story and some of the dark side of the startup lifestyle

Get in touch with Michael

• Michael's LinkedIn profile:

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

• Visit Daylight:

https://www.daylight.video/

Koji Pereira is the Head of Design for Lyft Business. He creates products for organizations, companies, healthcare systems for employees, collaborators to get rides for their employees.

Koji grew up in a poor family of five siblings, one mother, and had no father figure. He was the first among all of his siblings to go to have studied for college. For a college program, Koji took up Fine Arts, which soon led him to Graphic Design. 

Since then, he has worked in Google and led Design for Files by Google from 0 to 1/2 billion MAU, and launched many products- including Camera Go, Android TV Data Saver, and Google Spaces. He also taught Design around the world in schools like Harbour. Space in Spain and PUC Minas in Brazil.

Today, Koji has over 20 years of experience in the Design field. He leads a team of designers, building new products for business transportation. Koji also hosts Cells and Pixels Podcast with Product and Design leaders.

In this episode, we talked about:

⦁         What is Lyft Pass?

⦁         Koji's background: Growing up in Brazil

⦁         What does it mean to focus on the discovery side of a new product?

⦁         About the Google brand and work experience

⦁         Koji shares his learning and insights for designing

⦁         About diversity and the Latin community

Get in touch with Koji:

·       Koji's LinkedIn:

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

·       Listen to Koji's Podcast:

https://anchor.fm/cellsandpixels/

Howard Pinksy is the Senior XD Evangelist at Adobe and creates educational videos for Adobe. He shares UI/UX knowledge and experiences with the design community through video, live streams, at creative events, focusing on the process Adobe XD application. 

His journey first started in 2006, when YouTube was just a new website. Howard first started posting Photoshop videos, and immediately, his videos took off, became a YouTube partner, and his hobby became a career.

Today, Howard has a Youtube channel of 466K subscribers. He regularly creates videos of his loyal designer community.

In this episode, we talked about:

·                  Howard's journey

·                  An experience being part of the YouTube Partner Program

·                  What is a design evangelist's goal?

·                  Some expert tips when creating videos and thumbnails

·                  Why are user experience and good design so important?

·                  About Howard's LinkedIn Learning Program

Get in touch with Howard:

·       Visit his YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48fSJKMFBka3Zl0u7DGf0A

·       Howard's LinkedIn:

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

James Helms is the Vice President of design a product at Intuit. A global technology platform that helps the customers and communities we serve overcome their financial challenges.

He is a graduate of the Visual Communications program at the University of Delaware. Today, James has been with Intuit for 7 years now. Performing and delivering strategic Identity and Financial data experiences for Quickbooks, Turbo Tax, and Mint.

He’s passionate about creating and improving design teams, coaching design leaders, and mentoring early career designers to use their design skills to shape their careers. James has worked with third-party apps, financial institutions, governments, and educational institutions. His mission, along with Intuit, is to drive a full spectrum of customer benefit to prosperity and power around the world.

In this episode, we talked about:

⦁    The core of human-centered design

⦁    About product experiences, empathy, and understanding consumers

⦁    Testing consumer behavior through lightweight prototypes

⦁    What is knowledge engineering?

⦁    Role of personalization

⦁    What is adopt a small business?

Get in touch with James

Visit his website:

·       https://www.intuit.com/

James LinkedIn profile:

·   https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameshelmsad/

Sarkis Buniatyan is the founder of Meraki Ventures, Mirai Biotechnology, and more. He is an entrepreneur by day and a product designer by night.

Sarkis creates hyper-realistic prototypes, develops MVPs, turns them into successful products, and teaches makers how to launch their vision. He invests in the 1% of ideas that can challenge the status quo through Meraki Ventures and restores Earth’s natural balance through Mirai Biotechnology by developing hyprobiotics that transform the way food is manufactured and consumed.

Another is Meraki Ventures which values vision. In Meraki ventures, your world is a canvas to invest your ideas and shape them. Sarkis' third business is Nocode Rumble, the first live accelerator that brings together talented makers from around the world to create impactful products and put their skills to the ultimate test.

In this episode, we talked about:

⦁   What is today's definition of products?

⦁   Creating ideas and making prototypes

⦁   What are the possibilities of an idea?

⦁   More about Mirai Biotechnology and Meraki Ventures

⦁   Going in-depth with product design

⦁   His restaurant business

⦁   Thinking about Gary Vaynerchuk

Get in touch with Sarkis

Visit Meraki Ventures:

·       https://www.meraki.vc/

Visit Mirai Biotechnology:

·       https://www.mirai.am/

Sarkis LinkedIn profile:

·   https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarkisbuniatyan/

Resources Mentioned

Webflow

·   https://webflow.com/

JJ Moi has been raised most of his life in Thailand and did his undergrad in industrial design there, majored in furniture design. Then back to San Francisco to do his masters in data visualization and worked as a UX designer for the past decade, mostly in startups, but also had a fair share in the public sector.

Currently, he is working as VC design partner at Prime Movers Lab investing and working with startups that create breakthroughs in science that impact billions of lives such as in the areas of space transportation and autonomous vehicles, solar & nuclear energy, robotics & semiconductors, neuroscience & longevity, engineered food & automated agriculture.

Tune in as he discusses his role, he cites some innovative products that he’d helped bring to market, design systems, work for the government, work directly with the founders and executives who are amazing scientists, and what are his roles? It includes but not limited to:

• Design playbooks to create the right set of beliefs and design principles
• Design review and pay extra attention to design details that the engineering and science teams might overlook
• User research to validating user needs
• reducing waste and unwanted features
• Prototyping new ideas for analyzing ideas and user testing
• Creating a delightful user experience to support customer journeys
• Create brand strategy and identity that presents a lovable brand
• Help with recruiting and hiring for top design roles

Links:

Connect with JJ

https://jjmoi.com/ 

Isabela Freire is a Luso-Brazilian digital designer & art director driven by technology and art. She is currently the Design Team Leader at Arduino, the world’s leading open-source hardware and software ecosystem. The Company offers a range of software tools, hardware platforms and documentation enabling almost anybody to be creative with technology.  Isabela believes in design as a lifestyle. 

Episode highlights: 

• Isabela’s background
• Some of the most impressive stats of Arduino
• Big companies and enterprises using Arduino
• Isabela’s role in Arduino there and what are some of the products she works on
• Isabela on leading a team of 10 designers
• Isabela on working and living in Italy
• Where's the revenue coming from?
• What are some of the best practices in designing for Arduino?
• Designing tools for interface designers
• Pek asks Isabel: What are some of the Arduino devices in Isabela’s home that she’s using to control something?
• What Isabela loves the most in working with Arduino?
• How Isabel navigated her career and ended up working in Arduino?
• And much MORE!

Links:

Connect with Isabela

https://www.isabelafreire.com/ 

https://www.arduino.cc/ 

Instagram: @isabela.fre

Twitter: @1sabelafreire

Here are some books Isabela suggest for designers who are starting:

• AlfaBeta by Aldo Novarese (recently re-edited by the Turim based Archivio Tipografico) for a historic overview and deep dive into Italian type
• Type: A Visual History of Typefaces and Graphic Styles collection from Taschen. A thorough archive and eye candy book
• Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton is a must for anyone who wants to approach typography
• Ruined by Design by Mike Monteiro, fellow Portuguese designer who puts into perspective our responsibility as designers and ethics
• Susan Kare

Here are some of the Arduino products they've talked about:

• Arduino Starter Kit: for the first approach to Arduino and programming
• Arduino Opla IoT Kit: everything you need to create an IoT project very quickly
• Arduino Cloud: our cloud-based platform to control the world around you by creating Things and dashboards and code online

Premika is the UX Lead at GovTech Singapore, one of her primary goals is crafting ‘moments of delight' through innovative and user-focused customer experience design. This is achieved by solving complex problems through user research, expert analysis, prototyping and iterative collaborative design with users and stakeholders. 

In this episode, we talked about:

• GovTech in Singapore and how it serves people
• Number of UX designers in GovTech
• Who do they serve/design?
• GovTech on designing web apps, mobile apps and other digital solutions
• Premika shared a little bit of her life journey
• Premika on her agency/career background
• Her learning experience - as per Premika, each client was a completely different product, a different perspective, different countries, different ways of working different tech
• What a good design looks like at GovTech
• Advice to some small agency or SME
• And much MORE!

Links:

Connect with Premika

https://www.tech.gov.sg/ 

Christina Brodbeck was one of the earliest team members at the start of YouTube, she was the company’s first designer and the lead designer for YouTube mobile. In her last two years at YouTube, she led UX Design for YouTube Mobile and was responsible for creating an interface that brought YouTube to cell phones. Her passion for innovation in education led her to work on and launch YouTube EDU as a 20% side project while at the company. She was the co-founder of TheIceBreak, a Q&A service to help committed couples strengthen their relationships. As a seasoned angel investor, Christina has invested in approximately 20 companies. She is currently a co-founder and partner at Rivet Ventures.

In this episode, Christina takes us back to the early days of Youtube, its system design back then, what was her role and what kind of stuff she designed, also she talks about her venture firm - Rivet Venture and her journey on how she got into design.

Resources and Links:

Connect with Christina

http://www.rivetventures.com/ 

Connect with us: http://whatisux.co/