Design Untangled | A UX & design podcast in plain English

• Microsoft Inclusive Design Toolkit
• Kat Holmes - Mismatch

We’ve partnered with ProtoPie, the future of interactive product design, to help you navigate through uncertainty and overcome the challenges today's unprecedented conditions have brought to the industry. Join us for Season 2 - Designing for a new level of uncertainty.

Advertising and branding have been around as long as there have been things to sell. What new and innovative approaches can brands use to maximise their marketing impact and deliver solutions that satisfy today’s ever changing customer needs?

How do different cultures affect the approach for creating and marketing products and how does the marketing itself have to change to appeal to customers?

What techniques can be used to explore creative ideas that aren’t necessarily part of a brief provided by a client? How can this culture be embedded in an agency’s way of working?

Alex is the Chief Executive Officer, and founder of Zerotrillion, a global

creative agency that provides services to organisations in different continents, with very diverse cultures and approaches to marketing.

Alex has worked at a number of agencies during his career in Dubai, Amsterdam and Toronto. He brings a wealth of experience from his background in criminology and social psychology and applies this to creating experiences for well-known and upcoming brands.

• What do creatives do in an advertising agency?
  
• How can behavioural psychology be used to form part of a design or marketing approach?
  
• What is unique about brands and their customers in Dubai?
  
• How do you create brands for future looking brands and ideas like sustainability?
  
• How are you are brands and marketers adapting to the changes that have happened in consumer the landscape in 2020?
  

• Wally Olins - Brand Handbook
  
• Ben Horowitz - The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
  

We’ve partnered with ProtoPie, the future of interactive product design, to help you navigate through uncertainty and overcome the challenges today's unprecedented conditions have brought to the industry. Join us for Season 2 - Designing for a new level of uncertainty.

Design Sprints have been around for quite some time. It is a process that has been created by Google and adopted by many. It allows businesses to get answers to strategic questions quickly, using design thinking methods and tools.

The ZOO, Google's creative think tank for brands and agencies, has adopted and implemented Design Sprints as a way of helping brands quickly ideate, iterate, prototype and test creative ideas that then get implemented and launched.

During lockdown and due to people not being able to get together in a workshop environment, Design Sprint Masters have had to utilise different tools and methods of facilitation, and have had to change the process to fit with the new reality.

In this episode you’ll learn more about how they’re doing it at Google ZOO, what they’ve learnt in the process so far, what has worked and hasn’t worked as well as tips to make your remote sprints successful.

Jani runs Design Sprints to help brands and agency partners solve business problems through user insight, Google Technology (from Machine Learning and Voice Interfaces to YouTube Content and Data Driven Creative) and rapid prototyping.

• What problems do Design Sprints solve?
  
• What’s the best thing about Design Sprints?
  
• What are some of the challenges clients have implementing them?
  
• When shouldn’t you use a Design Sprint?
  
• What are the challenges in running Sprints remotely?
  
• What are some of the benefits of facilitating things remotely?
  
• What methods have had to change due to the pandemic?
  
• Are Design Sprints as effective when not done in person?
  
• How does prototyping work in a remote environment?
  
• How have Design Sprints evolved over time?
  

• About Google ZOO
  
• All about Design Sprints
  

We’ve partnered with ProtoPie, the future of interactive product design, to help you navigate through uncertainty and overcome the challenges today's unprecedented conditions have brought to the industry. Join us for Season 2 - Designing for a new level of uncertainty.

Design and the technology used to implement it, have always been two sides of the same coin. How can these two disciplines come together and utilise new technological tools like artificial intelligence, language processing and machine learning to deliver better experiences? Can these technologies help Designers make more informed decisions and mitigate risk?

Different cultures can also impact the challenges Designers and Technologists face. How is the Japanese digital landscape different to the UK and what opportunities does it bring for creativity?

From Costa Rica in South America to Japan, Anthony Baker has a very interesting and international trajectory. Currently, he is Executive Technology Director at R/GA. He was based in London and then moved to Japan, learnt the language and now manages teams and clients in the region.

• How does the design and business culture differ in Japan and what are the challenges?
  
• How can you overcome a culture of consensus and lack of risk taking to push boundaries?
  
• How can technology and design work together to create digital experiences that meet user needs?
  
• How can you get clients and stakeholders involved in prototyping?
  
• How can artificial intelligence and machine learning enhance the experiences we can build for customers?
  
• How does technology allow you to make better design decisions?
  
• Should design and user needs drive the technology we use or vice versa?
  
• What changes have there been around the digitisation of internal platforms in Japan to help ways of working during the pandemic?
  

• Disrupting Japan podcast
  
• The Happiness Lab
  

We’ve partnered with ProtoPie, the future of interactive product design, to help you navigate through uncertainty and overcome the challenges today's unprecedented conditions have brought to the industry. Join us for Season 2 - Designing for a new level of uncertainty.

If you are a digital designer you may be used to designing experiences for existing hardware your customers may use, such as a smartphone or tablet.

But how do you approach designing for an entirely new device?

How do you ensure both new hardware and the software on it meet customer needs and work together as a seamless experience? And how do you test this experience that’s been designed in the hands of real customers in the middle of a global pandemic?

Eduardo is a Senior Product Designer at Microsoft and was most recently involved in the development of the new Surface Duo and had to come up with different ways to respond to new customer needs due to the Coronavirus pandemic.

The Surface team sits at the interjection between software and hardware and involves both hardware and software engineers and designers. Eduardo talks to us about how these disciplines come together to create unified experiences for customers.

• How do hardware and software come together to form new experiences?
  
• How do you prototype experiences that involve hardware and software elements?
  
• What techniques can you use to test both hardware and software when there is limited access to users for usability testing given the Covid-19 restrictions?
  
• What teams and skill sets do you need to create these combined experiences?
  
• What challenges are there in testing hardware with customers during a pandemic and what research approaches can you use?
  
• How have customer needs around personal technology and home tech changed as a result of the increased time we are spending at home?
  
• How does a hardware and software team come together to make design decisions around the hardware itself?
  
• What things can you learn from users only when a product is post-release?
  
• How do you test for human factors such as neurology or ergonomics during the design process?
  

• Finish: Give yourself the gift of done - John Acuff
  

We’ve partnered with ProtoPie, the future of interactive product design, to help you navigate through uncertainty and overcome the challenges today's unprecedented conditions have brought to the industry. Join us for Season 2 - Designing for a new level of uncertainty.

Design Thinking has been used for many years as a framework to solve all kinds of problems. Is this methodology still valid, when customers, organisations and the society are facing a completely new and unprecedented set of conditions?

Kieron Leppard shares his experience working with different clients during the pandemic, talks about the challenges they’re facing and gives his point of view on Design Thinking and how designers can help make change rather than just being part of it.

He also highlights the accelerated importance of "Society Centered Design” and how this should be part of everything designers and organisations are delivering during this time. Kieron believes Design Thinking is still the right methodology to deliver value, but he encourages Designers to focus on real solutions rather than just deliverables.

Speculative design processes and constant prototyping and testing are some of the techniques that Kieron thinks Designers should keep utilising in order to respond to this new level of uncertainty.

Kieron is the Vice President Experience Design at HUGE. Apart from juggling family during two lockdowns in the UK, Kieron has also been helping his clients respond quickly to their digital needs.

Kieron is an Interaction Designer at heart.This means he designs how people interact with brands, products, services and experiences to get something done. How they look, how they behave, how they feel. He is always. He always gives a fresh perspective on design and provides tangible and practical advice.

• How has Covid-19 impacted what businesses are asking from designers
  
• How can designers help clients navigate this new level of uncertainty
  
• What can designers do to help companies unlock existing value rather than looking for new products or services
  
• What is society centered design and how do you apply it
  
• How can designers help with change and not just to be part of it
  
• Is our responsibility as designers to help define the new normal
  

• Rethinking Design Thinking
  
• Design will grow up
  
• Society Centered Design 
  

We’ve partnered with ProtoPie, the future of interactive product design, to help you navigate through uncertainty and overcome the challenges today's unprecedented conditions have brought to the industry. Join us for Season 2 - Designing for a new level of uncertainty.

How can diversity in the design process help organisation future proof products and services in this unpredictable world we live in? Abbie Walsh talks about her diversity journey and how she’s helped organisations identify and overcome the biggest barriers to create an inclusive working culture using service design as a methodology.

Abbie talks about her experience as a gay woman in the design industry and how she overcame difficult challenges during her personal and professional life. She discusses the importance of creating spaces in organisations for people from minorities to have a voice and talks about the power of having diversity in design teams.

She also talks about a service design methodology called Living Business. A practical way to identify organisational blockers for change and a process to become truly flexible in these uncertain times.

We talk with Abbie Walsh, Chief Design Officer at Accenture Interactive (former Fjord) and recently recognised as one of the women who have shaped the Digital Industry in the UK by The Drum.

Abbie has a strong voice for diversity within the industry, which she believes is a good step towards tackling unconscious bias in design. Before joining Accenture, she was at the BBC where she worked on the BBC iPlayer.

• How can diversity be a tool to help designers and organisations to face what Covid-19 has brought to the world?
  
• What are the common problems organisations have about diversity and inclusion and how can service design help?
  
• What benefits does diversity bring in the design process?
  
• What is unconscious bias and how does it affect the design process?
  
• How can organisations become flexible enough to be able to respond to fast changes and challenges?
  
• How can companies keep being a people oriented organisation in the middle of a pandemic?
  

• 25 From 25: women who have shaped the digital industry
  
• Living Business: Rewiring your organization to unlock your people’s potential
  

We speak to Andy Lester, founder and Creative Director at Childish Design about setting up his branding agency during COVID-19 and talk about what exactly a Brand Designer is.

A Brand Designer is critical in bringing brands to life and creating their identity. They help brands define how to talk to their customers and position themselves based on their values. But how are they different to Visual Designers or Copywriters?

We discuss:

• Packaging design
• Teaching the next generation of Designers
• Setting up an agency during COVID-19
• How brands are thinking about sustainability

• What is the difference between Interior Design and decorating?
• How do Interior Designers work with clients?
• How do brand and values feed into the design process?
• What are the elements of good Interior Design?
• How do digital elements form part of a space?
• How has Coronavirus changed the way spaces and buildings are being designed?
• How do you measure the effectiveness of a design?

Show notes

• A Pattern Language - Christopher Alexander
• Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things - Don Norman

ProtoPie is a rich and powerful prototyping tool straight out of South Korea. ProtoPie is used by companies such as Microsoft and Google. It can be used to prototype everything from mobile apps to in-car systems.

Chris and Carla chat to Chief Strategy Officer, Jenna Yim about her experiences in both Canadian and South Korean tech culture. We also talk about her experiences being a woman in leadership.

What is it like to get a company ready for Series A funding? What impact do investors have on the product roadmap?

What is unique about ProtoPie and what are interaction recipes?

• Video on interaction recipes
• UX Researcher position

Coming soon.

Chris sits down with Sandra Gonzalez - Product Design Director at Not on the High Street and Founder at UX for Change - an organisation that seeks to match the human challenges faced by the nonprofit sector with volunteering opportunities for the user experience (UX) design community.

We talk about how you can move beyond NPS to start to understand the impacts your designs have on people and their communities.

We also dive into how you can start to bring this impact to life within your organisation.

Show notes

• UX for Change
• Digital Impact Framework

Watch on YouTube

Receipts eh? Annoying bits of paper you get when you shop that often just go in the bin – an environmental problem that London startup Flux is trying to solve by integrating receipts with your bank.

Chris speaks to Filippo Corti, Product Designer at Flux to learn how he designs a product that lives within another product.

Give yourself time – there are many things from which you can choose from to disconnect your mind from design issues such as doing yoga, exercising, listening to music, take on hobbies or meditation – doing something you love. You can train yourself to create that space for your mind to breath, and find those things that make yourself happy outside of work. Have and make the time for switching off – do things that you like. Life is more important than a wireframe! And remember you’re not alone. You can always ask tips and help from others in the community.

You can check out more and learn how to become a volunteer at https://designclub.org.uk

The D&AD New Blood awards are for students, grads, and aspiring creatives between 18 and 24.

Real briefs, set by real clients, judged by top creatives.

Carla interviews two fellow judges from the DNDA awards – Sila Nur Isik and Daniel Hirschmann.

They discuss new technology trends, advice for young designers and recommendations for the next generation of entrants.

They come in all shapes and sizes so join Chris and Carla and special recruit Liam Harberd as they untangle these jargon filled beasts.

You can learn more at #IamRemarkable.

We get to grips with the Stock market with James Storer – Head of Design at Freetrade.

Freetrade is a new London-based startup aiming to disrupt the stock market old guard and make investing affordable and understandable to the masses.

We talk about scaling, product approach, designing inclusively and the problem with the title ‘Junior Designer’.

We speak to Dan Harvey from The Dots about the challenges facing our design community now and in the future.

Brexit, diversity, the glass ceiling – what does it all mean for us as designers?

You can also join Chris and Carla on a nice walk around London.

Over the past year we have pumped out 27 episodes, covered topics from UX portfolios to Jobs to be done, interviewed some amazing Designers and Researchers and had a whole lot of fun doing it.

In fact, we’ve had so much fun we’re willing to  give away a free Design Untangled t-shirt!

Listen for more details on how to enter.

Chris and Carla speak to Zander Brade – Product Designer at Monzo Bank.

Monzo is a startup challenger bank here in the UK offering a mainly app based service and has been built from the ground up. They are known for their transparency, innovative features and mission to make banking better.

You can also check out Chris’ interview with Zander from a year ago over on The UX Review.

As Chris and Carla didn’t prepare properly for this episode we are going to go through and answer some of your questions from the uxmentor.me Slack channel and call it a special. It’s also a day late – enjoy!