Every year more people start studying UX design, or begin transitioning to a career within UX. We’ve created a podcast playlist to go along with your new journey.
We’ve gone through 10 years worth of UX Podcast episodes and hand-picked episodes that we feel are suitable for people who are learning or studying UX design to listen along to.
Learn with UX Podcast
The playlist had been placed in an order that we feel has a logical progression.
We start with episodes focusing on research, then more on to episodes that help you when communicating your findings (or designs).
There is then a set of episodes looking at the design process; from design thinking (or doing as Don says) to storytelling and ultimately off-boarding.
We follow that with a number of episodes focusing on design methods and tools as well as very practical aspects of design before heading into a collection of shows where we look at design ethics, psychology and dark patterns.
Finally we have a few episodes loosely around self-care and career paths.
Spotify playlist
You can listen to all the episodes as a Spotify playlist.
Episodes
29 selected episodes of UX Podcast.
Research and ideation
#229 Just enough research with Erika Hall
What exactly is research and how do we know we’ve done enough of it? We talk about making sure you’ve got clear business goals before doing any research. We also talk about critical thinking and surveys.
#194 Research on the fly with Cyd Harrell
During the show, Cyd tells us the key things for successful user research including what you should have in your kit bag and how you can organise your note taking to speed up synthesis afterwards. We also get some excellent tips on how to approach people for interviews.
#93 James & Per & Kim plan their journey
We dive into the merits of journey mapping. What it is and how it can be useful. We also chat about UX principles, adoption and leadership. How to evolve processes into principles, getting UX adopted in your organisation, and if you’ve already got a UX team, how to lead it.
#234 Visual thinking with Eva-Lotta Lamm
Eva-Lotta Lamm joins us to talk about sketching, visualising and using visualisations for uncovering and exploring problems. We also talk about giving people permission to do rubbish drawings – to get over not being good enough, how to make your visualisations more robust, and how to draw straight lines.
#183 Meeting design with Kevin Hoffman
We talk to Kevin about what are the various roles in a meeting, dealing with combining multiple roles, the benefits of fascination, approaching meetings in an inclusive way, coping with being a participant, and of course designing meetings.
#119 Articulating design decisions with Tom Greever
How do we talk about our designs effectively with stakeholders? Every designer has to explain (and justify) their design decisions to non-designers but what are the skills tactics and methods that are needed to pull this off in a way that opens the door for your project to create or improve the user experience?
Design process
#125 Design doing with Don Norman (Part 1)
Don produced some of the earliest literature about human-centered design within the digital space – he also coined the term “user experience” whilst at Apple. In part 1 of our conversation with Don, we talk about virtual and augmented reality, design thinking, radical innovations and “user experience”.
#126 Design doing with Don Norman (Part 2)
In part 2 of our conversation with Don, we talk about whether technology is making us dumber or smarter, living with complexity, as well as AI, agents and their role in the future of healthcare. Don also ponders our “Heptascale challenge” questions.
#88 James & Per & Jared leave sheep alone
Inspired by a tweet we asked Jared Spool to join us to dive a little deeper. We had a fun filled chat with some enlightening conversations around UX strategy and tactics, the need for user research and judging when you’ve done enough.
#188 Designing elevators with Reetta Ranne and Jussi Hiltunen
In this episode we learn more about the design process for elevators and the broader topic of people flow in urban environments. We talk about the timelines and lifecycles of the solutions, and the cultural challenges of bringing elevators from ideas to buildings.
#89 James & Per want a car not a skateboard
we talk to Russ Unger, Stephen Anderson and Jeff Gothelf about what MVP is, what it isn’t. Does it cause more confusion than add value? What are we trying to learn and validate? We get some hangups off our chests, and discuss how you and your product team can avoid some of the MVP pitfalls.
#140 Storymapping with Donna Lichaw
How, when, and why to use narrative structure in your design work. During our chat we learn more about narrative structure, storymapping, “origin stories” and how brand stories and storymapping are connected.
#154 Closure experiences with Joe Macleod
There are so many examples in the digital space where there wasn’t an end, or there was an expectation of controlled or ability to end – but the possibility of closure just doesn’t exist. We look at death, loss aversion, off-boarding, customer acquisition. Can we improve the experience for customers and even profitability by designing better leaving experiences?
Design methodology and tools
#50 James & Per begin with words
We start, as the article itself prescribes, by discussing content, words in particular. We then dovetail into Atomic Design; using chemistry as a conceptual metaphor for web design. Finally we look at persuasion profiling and how the psychology of persuasion could be used in our work with websites.
#231 Writing is designing with Michael Metts and Andy Welfle
Designing with words – writing is designing. We talk to Andy Welfle and Michael Metts about how you can go about applying a design methodology to your words. We learn how to be intentional about content, to have the courage to ask questions, the importance of context – and we even get some specific tips on designing error messages.
#209 Paper prototypes
A short video was circulating of someone demonstrating a paper prototype. The response to the video clip divided the design world in two. It was either “waste of time!” or “fantastic!”. The video was not credited, so James and Per turn detectives for this episode and hunted down the source of the video clip, discover the back story and context plus discuss the benefits of low fidelity prototyping and rapid learning.
#238 Embedding privacy with Tim Kariotis
Tim Kariotis talks to us about privacy. What is privacy? How do we go about embedding privacy into design and understanding the privacy and social norms around information?
#196 Accessibility for designers
We talk about what accessibility means for UX designers and what you can, and should do to make the websites and apps you design more accessible and inclusive.
#117 Designing with Images
It’s so easy to add a little rectangle to a wireframe, but what are the consequences of adding an image to your design? Are images good or bad for UX? How can we improve our design processes so that we take the impact of images properly into account?
#244 Icons
Per and James take a look at what icons are, why we are designers make use of them and what we can do to make them more understandable and accessible.
#163 Design systems with Jina Anne
What is a design system? How do you make sure people stick to it? How flexible or rigid should it be?
Design ethics and psychology
#150 Dark Patterns with Harry Brignull
Harry coined the phrase dark patterns back in 2010 to describe the design patterns used on websites to deliberately trick us into doing something. We discuss some examples as well as the ethics behind implementing them and ask if “light patterns” exist.
#211 Disruptive design patterns with Laura Kalbag
Talk to Laura about accessibility and also disruptive design patterns. We discuss accessibility by default, data collection and business models as well as using the web for good.
#225 Indistractable with Nir Eyal
In this interview Nir Eyal describes both how he considers Hooked to provide companies with a tool for exercising primarily benevolent influence, and how his other book Indistractable is now needed to help people manage the abundance of detrimental influence we are subjected to every day.
#232 Design psychology with Amy Bucher
We talk with Amy about the difference between behaviours and attitudes, motivation and goals, persuasion, moments and journeys, and how sometimes a moment of reflection is important.
Feedback, care and careers
#218 Feedback with Claire Lew
One of the main benefits of receiving feedback is that it fills in the blindspots. But why don’t people speak up? Fear and futility. Fear of people with power in your organisation, and the feeling that giving feedback is futile – nothing will change. We learn how you can ask for feedback, how to be better at giving and receiving feedback, and how to make sure that the giver doesn’t feel it’s pointless.
#227 Imposter syndrome with Amy Silvers & Lori Cavallucci
we talk to Lori Cavallucci and Amy Silvers to learn more about imposter syndrome – what is it and how it effects us. Why does our branch in particular seem to suffer from it? What can we do to deal with it and can it be a good thing in any way?
#197 Mental health with Jennifer Akullian
Mental health is something that isn’t discussed openly at the workplace. How can we reduce the stigma? How can we be more understanding and inclusive with colleagues who are managing mental heath issues? Can we help prevent burn-out?
#212 Continuous learning with Kate Rutter
How can we stay up-to-date in a world constantly in flux? Kate Rutter, designer, teacher and co-host of What Is Wrong With UX joins us to talk about how to embrace continious learning and personal growth.
What should you do before applying for jobs? Should you have a portfolio? How should you present your portfolio? How can we use storytelling during our interviews? How do you make best use of social media? What design tools do you really need to know about?
Grow!
Hopefully you will find these episodes useful while you are studying or transitioning career – and don’t be afraid to listen to more episodes; as your understanding and confidence grows (and as you gain more practical experience) plenty of other episodes will be very relevant for you!
Don’t forget to subscribe to/follow/add us If you haven’t already 🙂
Have fun, and good luck!
Best,
/Per and James
Image credit: Eric Wüstenhagen (CC BY-SA 2.0)