Technically Speaking with Harrison Wheeler

Harrison Wheeler reflects on the first year of the Technically Speaking podcast; from software, hardware, post production, guest selection and whats next. 

Todays guest is Principle Designer and Executive Director of the Inneract Project that is now 16 years running strong Maurice Woods.

We discuss the origins of the Inneract project and its mission to empower underrepresented youth through design education and opportunities to explore design in career and life.

During the show we reflect on how his professional basketball career played Brought on the duality of existing in different spaces and how the mentorship of the prolific Seattle based music and design pioneer Tony Gable kept him on the right track.

"You learn a lot when you're around a lot of different people from different perspectives and see the world differently when you have, you know, existed in all these various different spaces in places."

Lily Konings and I have a wide ranging conversation about the importance of empowerment.

Back in December Lily played a major role as the founder of the Lift Her Wealth conference which touch on financial literacy across personal finance, retirement, investing and more. It all started out of a viral tweet that resulted in 15 speakers, and more than 4,300 sign ups. We'll dive into some her learnings throughout the process and what's next.  

Later in the show, we talk about the importance of advocating for yourself when it comes to career growth, her concept of an ideal product organization and some of the struggles that she had with burnout back in 2020.

You thought I was only dropping one After Hours segment on you. No, I've got to, you know, in this one, it's one of my favorite guests on the show. It's Theresa slate. She's a design lead at Northern Trust in Chicago.

So this segment is an extension of episode 12, around Enterprising Innovation. And in that discussion, we sent her around building out of legacy systems, enterprise experiences, and the challenges associated with that.  

Our discussion naturally touches on three areas.  The first being around design ethics and what that means, especially in 2021. What does accountability look like? And finally, Theresa reframes the phrase, "getting a seat at the table" to "blowing up the table". So you don't want to miss what she means by that.  

We are back for our third installment of After Hours. If you all aren't familiar with the concept of after hours, it is essentially an extension of episodes that we've recorded throughout our past seasons. In this case is a continuation of my conversation with Farai Madzima on the Craft of Management. 

We reflect a bit on my journey into design and management. And the importance of paving the way for underrepresented groups into careers of design. As always, If anything comes to mind, you have any thoughts, questions, or comments. Feel free to hit me up on Twitter @hmwheele or the Technically Speaking @gettechnicalpod. Enjoy!   

My guest is Theresa slate and she is a multidisciplinary designer in diversity and inclusion consultant. Who's been crafting meaningful experience. In a range of industries, including consumer electronics, retail, and healthcare. She supported organizations, both in-house and outside as a consultant, which we'll get into. 

She'll take us from school in Cincinnati to Seattle, Palo Alto and Chicago where she is currently a design lead at Northern Trust.  We dive into designing systems at scale and the challenges associated with that, and what innovation means when working at a large legacy companies. 

I have the pleasure of speaking with Farai Madzima. He is a design manager at Shopify and the founder of South Africa's premier design conference, PixelUp!. 

Today's theme. The craft of management. 

Farai takes us in his meandering path to becoming a user experience designer as well as his transition into management with some helpful tips. I'm sure folks that are going into a leadership pathway are sure to take some value out of

But don't take my word for it. Here's him in his own words. 

"When we build trust, if you and I are working together on a team, And when we built trust, that is beyond trusting in our work skills, but trust that is based on us having spent time, no, each other's individuals.

And what's important to you. What is Harrison, you know, working towards this organization and what am I working towards? Harrison has felt comfortable to share with me, you know, the areas that he's developing. And he said, you know what, I'm really, you know, I'm not good at this yet. I'm trying to work on this when you, and I feel comfortable to say, you know, you're better than me at this.

Can you teach me how to do that? When we have that kind of trust where I can say that we work entirely differently, because then we can have the conversations that really help you and I grow. And when you scale that up and you've got, you know, a team of eight 16 people doing that, um, you can have much more vulnerable conversations that allow the team to grow that where mistakes are allowed to be made."

Welcome to another segment of After Hours on Technically Speaking. In this segment, I have a Q&A with executive coach and founder of Merging Path Coaching, Brooke's Elliot Scott. During the Q&A, we touch on authentic vulnerability, giving your manager feedback, and building better connections with your team. 

Now, this was recorded back in the early days of a shelter in place. And when everyone was getting ready to work from home. It's fascinating how many of the topics we covered still hold true today. 

Hey everybody happy new year. Hopefully you started 2021 off on a good foot. I'm excited because I'm recording from my new studio. And. It's all decked out. I'm excited for the next season of Technically Speaking. But before then I'll be dropping a few of these after hour segments. The whole idea around this is to give you all a bit of additional listening experiences from, surplus recordings. For this specific segment, I'm with Regina Gilbert. Author of 'Inclusive Design for a Digital World', Where are we'll be fielding, a Q&A from our live audience. Now if you haven't already, you can listen to the full episode on season one, episode three.

Want to have a conversation that goes deeper than pixels? Look no further. I'm Harrison Wheeler, host of the podcast, Technically Speaking. I've built design teams over the past decade. And one constant thing is that growth does not happen without perspective. I sit down with the movers and shakers within the design and technology industry to talk about current issues, their passions, and the stories behind their journeys. Simply put, it's a podcast about the human experience. To find out more, head to http://gettechnical.io. 

I sit down with Angelica McKinley, who is currently a Creative Director at Google. She has such an array of experiences that go from design and writing for the New York Times, coding, and communication design. In this episode, we’ll talk about what equity in illustration means and the important role it plays as brands need to have a point of view on social issues and set courses of action to address them. 

In this episode, I speak Ron Bronson about Consequence Design. Ron says as “All designed interactions have consequences. Whether it's someone getting stuck buying a train ticket from a kiosk, hidden menus inside of web applications, or card-only convenience stores. In an "always-on" world, an increased constellation of digital tools can bring both significant benefits, but also harm with every notification, menu, or poorly researched interaction. ”

In this episode, I sit down with Andre Wright to discuss his Humanize My Hoodie endeavor, fashion activism, and the role that it has played throughout the Black Lives Matter movement.

Harrison sits down with Regine Gilbert, designer, educator, and author of Inclusive Design for a Digital World. The discussion covers a variety of topics on accessibility and inclusion, and they cover the most burning question of them all “where to start? “

What does it mean to manage in times like these? In this episode, I speak with Brooks Scott, founder, owner, and executive coach of Merging Path Coaching. We’ll talk about how to drive meaningful connections by deep listening, speaking honest truths, and asking the right questions.

Harrison sits down with Noah Bond, a User Experience Researcher at LinkedIn. The duo fields questions from aspiring UX designers on topics around job hunting, design tools, and superpowers those have when making a career pivot.