A Year In The Voice of Design

We heard you like podcasts

Coming to you from our secret headquarters in San Francisco, we are having the conversations about design we think more people need to have and recording them for you.

Mike Monteiro, Erika Hall, and Larisa Berger are your hosts.

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Episode 1: What Is the Job of a Designer?

Historically, designers have defined their jobs by the tools they use and the artifacts they produce. How do we make sense of our roles in the interconnected, interactive, and increasingly invisible present?

Episode 2: The Democratization of Design

Designer Khoi Vinh joins us to talk about his take on the job of a designer and his efforts to make the field more accessible.

Episode 3: The Learning Loop

Everyone got gamification wrong because they wanted an easy shortcut. Veteran game designer, author, and neuroscientist Amy Jo Kim explains Game Thinking and the virtues of being fiercely independent.

Episode 4: People Are the Problem

We sat down with Dan Brown to talk about maps, and fights, and what exactly is New England?

Episode 5: Design and the Triple Storyline

No guests. Just us chickens. We go deep on the responsibilities of designers to look at the whole problem.

Episode 6: Public Interest

Scratch a follower of Ayn Rand and you’ll find someone who looks to the government for help in a hurricane. Pragmatic design leader and public sector champion Cyd Harrell joins us to talk about the practice of designing systems for citizens.

Episode 7: Toward Civic Futures

Is the problem with systems design that we’ve forgotten how to make good compromises? Strategic designer and co-founder of Dash Marshall Bryan Boyer talks about his work thinking about the future from the vantage point of Detroit and formerly, Finland.

Episode 8: It’s All Practice

It’s a new season of VOD, and the theme is design practice. After contemplating the tyranny of seaside pumpkins, Erika and Larisa talk about the promise and pitfalls of various approaches to design in the delivery-focused organization.

Episode 9: Empathy for the Devil

Stephanie Lucas, Senior UX Designer at LinkedIn joins us to share how she incorporated principles from the Mule design ethics workshop into her practice. Inspired by a comment from another participant, Stephanie created a Red Team/Blue Team workshop to uncover how bad actors might wreak havoc on the platform. We talk about using an ethical framework to make better choices.

Episode 10: Humans Talk to Humans

We welcome Nate Bolt, the founder of Ethnio and author of Remote Research, to talk about talking to the right people, why so many businesses go about qualitative research the wrong way, and how powerful a simple conversation can be.