Creators and Guests
Host
John-Henry Forster
Former SVP of Product at User Interviews and long-time co-host (now at Skedda)
Appears in
135
episodes
Guest
Aazar Ali Shad
Aazar Shad is a growth marketing leader and founder of The Performers, a paid social mastermind group (at the time of our interview, he was Head of Growth at Userpilot). He is the host of the podcast Growth Marketing Stories
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Adam Sigel
Adam Sigel is VP of Product at Hometap. He once shared an elevator with Michael Keaton.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Alec Levin
Alec is the founder of The UXR Collective and Learners, a community and conference for user researchers.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Alexis McNutt Unis
Alexis is Staff UX Researcher at SoFi (at the time of our interview, she led UX research at Better)
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Alfonso de la Nuez
Alfonso de la Nuez is Co-Founder, CVO & BoD Member at UserZoom. He has over seventeen years of experience in various disciplines, including UX, digital marketing, eCommerce, web design, and user-centered design. He is also the author of The Digital Experience Company, co-founder and former CEO of Xperience Consulting, and former co-founder and CEO of Xperience Consulting.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Amanda Rosenburg
Amanda Rosenburg is Team Lead & Head of Google Classroom, where she leads a team whose work impacts close to 200 million students and educators on a daily basis globally.She comes from a background in education and research.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Amy Chess, PhD
Amy Chess is a UX research leader (formerly at Amazon, Walmart) and educator. She specializes in qualitative data collection techniques and the meaningful synthesis of qualitative and quantitative user data. Amy is intensely invested in developing new methodologies to evaluate integration efforts from a UX perspective, promoting the value of UX research amongst stakeholders, and pioneering approaches for UX practitioners, technical teams, and product management to collaborate and partner together.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Andrea Amorós
Andrea M. Amorós is the Associate Principal Researcher at ADP, a payroll solutions provider leader globally. She has always been a really deep thinker, curious about understanding human behavior and the unconscious mind. Her expertise lies in conducting strategic research and discovering patterns at scale to improve people's lives. She has a background in Design Engineering and has worked in various startups, consultancies and large-scale corporations.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Andrew Michael
Andrew Michael is the host of Churn.FM, Founding Member of Startup Cyprus, and former CEO at Avrio – a software development research platform. Andrew is also a teacher and speaker featured at the How to Web Conference 2022 and Advancing Research 2022. Before joining Avrio, Andrew worked at Hotjar, where he held leadership roles in marketing, management, and experience design.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Andrew Sandler
Andrew is a User Experience leader with a strong record of effectively crafting and communicating a compelling vision of the future for companies. He is the Director of Innovation and Experience Strategy at Adobe.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Andy Budd
Andy Budd is the co-founder of Clearleft, an agency that helps design leader, founding member of the Adobe Design Circle, Venture Partner at Seedcamp, and executive coach. He writes down some of his thoughts about UX and design on his blog, and is a big fan of nuance.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
A'verria Martin
A’verria is a daring, results-driven leader with nearly 20 years of research and operations experience in both academic and industry settings. Currently, she is the Director of Research Operations at ServiceNow in San Diego, California. In her early career, she spent 15 years in academics with a vast set of roles including study coordination, postdoctoral fellow, and ultimately Director of Geriatric Psychiatry.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Babz J.R. Hall
Babz is a sociologist and leader in leveraging ethnographic research methods for corporate UX, CX and product design. She is currently UX Research Manager at FanDuel. At the time of our interview, she was Principal User Experience Researcher at Variant, a driver-focused long-haul trucking company. There, she leads research operations and projects for driver-facing products and support with ethnographic methods.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Basel Fakhoury
Basel Fakhoury is the CEO and co-founder of User Interviews. User Interviews’ goal is to help companies make smarter decisions by connecting them with consumers who are interested in sharing their feedback on your products and ideas. The User Interviews platform simplifies the entire process of recruiting, vetting, and scheduling qualified participants for product tests and market research interviews.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Benjamin Humphrey
Benjamin Humphrey is the CEO and co-founder of Dovetail. Dovetail helps you store, analyze, and collaborate on user research in one place, making it easy to see patterns, discover insights, and decide what to do next. Thousands of researchers, designers, and product managers use Dovetail worldwide.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Benson Low
Benson is leading and scaling the UX Research practice as the Head of Design Capability at REA Group. For over 20 years, he's led design and UX teams throughout Australia, across the emerging web, games development, start-ups, design consultancies, and enterprise product design teams. He is also a board member of the ResearchOps community, organizing workshops and meetups, and has been part of other global projects.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Bob Saris
Bob Saris is the Co-founder and CTO of User Interviews and a member of the “pie is better than cake” club. When he’s not working with his team to improve our product and code base, Bob spends his time perfecting recipes for sourdough, water ice, and soft pretzels.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Brittany Rutherford
Brittany is an empathetic, PLG-certified product marketer and was the first Product Marketing Manager at User Interviews, where she worked on both researcher and participant experiences.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Caitria O’Neill
Caitria is aixed-methods research, creative facilitation, and the occasional musical PSA. She helps people measure and define their products from the user's perspective. She is Staff UX Researcher at Google (ex-Airbnb, ex-Facebook).
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Carlos Hernández Tellez
Carlos Tellez is a digital strategist, UX researcher, service designer, and education enthusiast. Currently, he is the UX Research Manager at Nubank. Much of his work is focused on creating effective research teams and advancing the field of UX research. Carlos has a Master's degree in Architecture from Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He also has a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies from Vassar College.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Cat Anderson
Cat Anderson is the UX Content Strategist at Ladder (formerly UX Writer at AP Intego). She has a background in anthropology, research, and UX design. She’s relentlessly curious, occasionally funny, and perpetually snuggling as many dogs as she can.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Cat Noone
Cat is a designer turned CEO with a love a flipping markets often seen as complicated or unattractive (read: underserved + forgotten) on their head. She firmly believes the solution to create a product that people can fall in love with is done by giving it character, opinion, and soul.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Chad Aldous
Chad is Head of Design and Co-Founder at Rentable, an apartment hunting site that connects renters and property managers in middle market U.S. cities through a next-generation apartment listing website.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Christianne Elliott
Christianne is Senior User Experience Researcher at Etsy (previously at Mailchimp). She studied Psychology and wanted to go into medicine, but fell in love with academic research and moved into that after school. She wanted a new challenge and found her way to UX Research at Mailchimp.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Chui Chui Tan
Chui Chui Tan is an international growth adviser, culturalisation strategy expert, author of International User Research, and the Founder of Beyō Global.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Cyd Harrell
Cyd Harrell is Chief Digital Services Officer for the City and County of San Francisco and on the Board of Directors for Technologists for Public Good. She has previously worked at Code for America, 18F, and Charles Schwab doing UX, research, and product work. She’s the author of A Civic Technologist’s Practice Guide. Her favorite tools are empathy and duct tape.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Dana Bishop
Dana Bishop, VP and Strategic Research Partner at UserZoom, has over twenty years of experience in UX research. After spending nine years at Keynote Systems, Dana worked at Key Lime Interactive until she joined UserZoom in 2017. Her work in UX research is primarily focused on competitive research and benchmarking. Currently, she is co-host of UXpeditious, a weekly podcast exploring the world of UX.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Danielle Smith
Danielle Smith is a user research leader, most recently Managing Director of Digital Inclusion & Research at Express Scripts. She became passionate about building an end-to-end experience team when she saw there was a gap in her team’s understanding of core analytics. She has previously worked on the User Research teams at Dell and Paypal.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Daniel Loewus-Deitch
Daniel Loewus-Deitch is the Assistant VP, User Experience at Unum. He has over 18 years of experience in UX, and has worked at companies like IBM and Microsoft. Daniel is interested in holistic wellness and technological harmony. 💻🎵.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Daniel Pidcock
Daniel is the co-creator of atomic UX research and founder at Glean.ly, a UX research repository platform used by some of the world’s largest brands. He has spoken about atomic research at several events, including the UX Brighton Conference and Atomic UX Research for agencies. Before founding Glean.ly, Daniel worked as a UX consultant at Neighbourly, JUST EAT, and ie Marketing Communications.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Danny Essner
Danny Essner is VP of Marketing at Chameleon, a SaaS platform that allows startups to create personalized and engaging experiences for their users. Danny has held executive marketing positions at Troops (acquired by Salesforce), Sisense, NuORDER by Lightspeed, and MediaMath. He is passionate about using technology to help businesses thrive and is committed to creating opportunities for underrepresented groups in tech.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Dave Chen
Dave Chen is the Senior Director, UX Foundations & Enablement at 1Password. Formerly, he was Director of Consumer Insights at Flipp where he was responsible for leading Market Research, UX Research and Customer Experience (CX) teams to drive customer-based insights for both B2C and B2B verticals. Before Flipp, he worked in research and consumer insights at General Mills, Nielsen, and Staples.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Derek Osgood
Derek is a product marketing specialist, entrepreneur, and Founder & CEO of Ignition, a platform that helps brands streamline go-to-market strategies. He has launched several products that have collectively generated over $1 billion in revenue. Before Ignition, Derek worked as Director of Product Marketing at Rippling, Director of Marketing and Growth at BBVA, and as a Product Manager at Playstation.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Devin Harold
Devin is the Director of UX Research at Capital One, where he leads a team dedicated to improving end-to-end experiences and touchpoints for one of the company’s primary business units. With over eleven years of experience in UX design and research, he has a deep understanding of research methodologies, leadership, strategy, frameworks, and interaction design. Devin’s expertise and leadership have been recognized with multiple awards, including the IDEA Award, Verizon Beyond Award, and Verizon Credo Award.
Appears in
2
episodes
Guest
Dr. Christelle Ngnoumen
Dr. Christelle Ngnoumen is Principal User Experience Designer at Headspace Health, where she leads internal and external research programs dedicated to the design of Headspace's evidence-based digital interventions. She is a behavioral scientist and user researcher with over ten years of experience in analyzing human decision-making and behavior. As a mentor, she is dedicated to helping people align attention with their intentions to deliver empowering experiences.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Eduardo Gomez Ruiz
Eduardo Gomez Ruiz is the Lead UX Research Manager at Miro, which develops cutting-edge collaboration software trusted by over forty million users. He has also served as a Design Thinking Associate Professor at IE Business School for nearly eight years. Since Eduardo joined Miro in 2020, he has been instrumental in the growth and development of the company’s UX research department. Prior to joining Miro, he held positions at Uber and several consulting agencies as a Global UX Researcher and UX Consultant
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Elsa Ho
Elsa is a mixed-methods and impact-driven research leader with 12 years of experience. She led strategic research for products, services, and businesses that serve millions of people around the globe. Currently a Staff Researcher at Doordash. Ex-Facebook, ex-Microsoft, ex-Uber (where she worked at the time of our interview).
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Elyse Bogacz
Elyse is a product designer with a special love for storytelling and startups (currently VP of Product Design at NDVR). Her process is rooted in rapid iterations and customer-driven research practices that translate into useful, lovable products.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Eniola Abioye
Eniola is a User Experience Researcher (currently at Meta) and the founder of UX Outloud, a career coaching business focused on helping customer-centered professionals position their current skills to transition into tech UXR roles
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Erica Devine
Erica Devine is a practicing pharmacist with over sixteen years of experience building and overseeing teams. She is currently the Associate Director of Patient Experience Strategy at Otsuka Pharmaceutical Companies. Her work centers around business development and customer experience strategy, among other things. Erica has a Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the University of Pittsburgh, licensed to practice in NY and PA.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Erica Jorgensen
Erica Jorgensen is a staff content designer at Chewy.com and the author of Strategic Content Design: Tools and Research Techniques for Better UX, published in April 2023 by Rosenfeld Media. She's a content designer, content strategist, and team leader determined to bring greater respect to the content field. To that end, Erica speaks frequently at conferences including UXDX USA, UX Lisbon, Microsoft Design Week, the Web Directions Summit, and Button: The Content Design Conference, and on podcasts like The Content Strategy Podcast with Kristina Halvorson and Content Insights podcast with Larry Swanson. In addition to working in content roles for companies of all sizes, she has taught at the University of Washington and Seattle’s School of Visual Concepts. Erica earned her B.A. from the University of Connecticut and M.A. from the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism. In her free time, you can find her exploring Washington State’s wineries or hiking with her husband and rescue dog, Rufus.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Erika Hall
Erika Hall is the co-founder of Mule Design and the author of Just Enough Research. She loves design, getting to the bottom of things, and well-designed research.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Erika Spear
Erika has ten years of experience in qualitative and mixed-method research design and execution. She is currently a Research Manager at AnswerLab. Erika is also a freelance writer for UX Collective and has presented her original research publicly at ten international and national conferences. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Communication and Media Studies from The University of Kansas and is a member of the Golden Key Honors Society for academic excellence. Erika is passionate about emerging technology research and the insights they can provide to improve people's lives.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Ferdinand Goetzen
Ferdinand Goetzen is the CEO and Co-Founder at Reveall - a platform that allows product teams to better prioritize what to build next with the help of customer insights. He was previously the Director of Growth at Hubs.com and the Chief Growth Officer at Recruitee (both exited in 2021). He is passionate about customer-led product development and growth.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Fredrick Royster
Fredrick is an accomplished educator and UX/Web/Graphic Designer with over twenty years of experience in web design and front-end development. He has experience in a broad range of industries, with expertise in finance, educational toys, multimedia, e-commerce, and the nonprofit sector. Fredrick is passionate about causes related to special needs education and advocacy for adult ADHD.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Garrett Tsukada
Garett Tsukada is Head of Customer Connect UX Research Operations at Intuit. He leads a global Research Ops team to amplify the value and impact of connecting with customers at scale, drive operational impact, and foster a culture of innovation and customer obsession.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
George Whitfield
Lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management and CEO at FindOurView
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Gregg Bernstein
Gregg Bernstein is the Director of User Research at Hearst Magazines (formerly UX Research lead at Condé Nast), and he wrote the book "Research Practice: Perspectives from UX researchers in a changing field." He spends his days advocating for and practicing user-centered product development. Previously he managed innovative research practices at Vox Media and Mailchimp.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Hana Nagel
Hana (she/her) is a systems-centered designer and researcher specializing in agile enterprise, usability testing methodologies and digital strategy, particularly for enterprise and government services. She is passionate about helping teams reduce complexity, and has been at the forefront of Research Ops since 2018. Hana is Manager of Service Design at Deloitte, where she advocates for evidence-based design and is helping to transform the user experience through research, testing, and prototyping.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Hannah Shamji
Hannah Shamji is a Consumer Psychologist, formerly the Head of Research & Insights at Copyhackers. There, she helped clients create great, data-informed, copy and marketing strategies. She blends qualitative and quantitative research to tell client stories.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Harrison Wheeler
Harrison Wheeler is the Director of Product Design at LinkedIn and the host of the podcast Technically Speaking. He’s passionate about UX, design, and empowering everyone to tell great stories.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Helen Devine
Helen Devine, UX Research Manager at The Economist, is a user-focused research expert with experience in insight, ethnography, design, and user research across commercial, government, and non-profit sectors. Her current role involves telling user stories that uncover opportunities and inspire action across the organization’s portfolio of digital properties. Before joining The Economist, Helen has had an illustrious career involving positions at The Guardian, a housing and homeless charity shelter, Lloyds Banking Group, and Asda. Recently she spoke at the Insight Innovation Exchange 2023.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Holly Hester-Reilly
Holly Hester-Reilly is the Founder and CEO of H2R Product Science, as well as a Product Discovery Coach and Consultant for the company. She also serves as an Adjunct Professor at New York University, a Member of the Board of Advisors at Octane11, and a Product Advisor at Ergatta. Needless to say, Holly is an undisputed expert in her field, and we’re lucky to have her on the show!
Appears in
2
episodes
Guest
Indi Young
Indi is a renowned researcher with over 25 years of experience who coaches, writes, and teaches about inclusive product strategy. Her work is rooted in the problem space where the focus is on people, not users. Indi pioneered opportunity maps, mental model diagrams, and thinking styles. Indi has written two books, Practical Empathy and Mental Models. She was also one of the founders of Adaptive Path, the pioneering UX agency.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Izzy Nichols
Imani “Izzy” Nichols is the Founder & Principal Researcher at Yzzi Research. There, she uses her research skills to help businesses understand her customers. She also coaches aspiring UX researchers to help them break into UXR and has her own podcast. She has also worked at WeWork and Octane.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Jaclyn Perrone
Jaclyn Perrone is a Senior Product Designer at Groups Recover Together, an opioid addiction treatment solution. Formerly, she was Design Director at thoughtbot, where she hosted a podcast at centered around digital product design.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
James Aylward
James Aylward is GM and Chief Product Officer at PerkSpot (at the time of our interview, James was SVP and Head of Data Product at Pluralsight). He’s passionate about identifying customer needs and rapidly designing and developing products that offer solutions. He has 10 years of experience managing products and nearly 20 years of experience in the field.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Jane Portman
Jane Portman is the CEO & co-founder of Userlist and the host of the UI Breakfast podcast. She's passionate about helping founders connect with their customers and learning more about their stories.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Joel Klettke
Joel, the founder of Case Study Buddy, has almost a decade of experience writing killer conversion copy for clients like Hubspot, Scott's Cheap Flights, and WP Engine. His first piece of advice?
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Joe Stubenrauch
Joe is a former professor of British history at Baylor University, and the author of a prize-winning book published by Oxford University Press. During the height of the pandemic, he walked away from tenure and joined a big tech company in order to redesign his life. Now as a UX Researcher at AWS, Joe has found unexpected similarities between his work as Victorianist and his work in the cloud. He also writes regularly about the transition from academia to industry and is obsessed with how people can reinvent their lives and careers.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Joey Encarnacion
Joey Encarnacion is a Research Operations leader (Twitch, Slack, Airbnb). He has been working in research operations since 2017. He’s a black belt cat herder and loves bringing organization to chaos.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
John Cutler
John is a product development nut who loves wrangling complex problems and answering the why with qual/quant data. Currently the Senior Director, Product Enablement at Toast, he previously led product education at Amplitude.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Jonathan Anderson
Jonathan is the CEO & Founder of Candu, the no-code solution for product and growth teams.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Jonathan Widawski
Jonathan Widawski is the Founder and CEO at Maze. He’s a veteran Product Designer & former UX teacher. As a UX lead working with clients like McKinsey, Rocket Internet & PSG, he saw first-hand how hard it is for product teams to get the data, insights, and feedback they need to make confident design decisions. Now he’s co-founded Maze, the continuous product discovery platform for user-centric teams.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Jonathon Hensley
Jonathon Hensley is the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Emerge, which offers digital product transformation for technology companies seeking to improve their customer experience and operational agility.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Jon MacDonald
Jon is the CEO & Founder of The Good, an advisory that optimizes digital experiences with user-centered insights and data-driven roadmaps for product marketing and ecommerce teams.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Karen VanHouten
Karen VanHouten has over 20 years of experience as a UX professional and strategist, with a focus on B2B & SaaS. She uses human-centered design principles to build useful & accessible digital products and healthy and impactful product teams. Karen is currently the UX Practice Lead at TMG.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Kate Kalcevich
Kate is Head of Accessibility and Innovation at Fable, a platform for people of all abilities, where she works on democratizing design and accessibility. Prior to her work at Fable, Kate held senior positions at Canada Post, the Ontario Ministry for Seniors and Accessibility, the Ontario Ministry of Government and Consumer Services, and Ontario Digital Service. When she's not busy teaching and speaking at events such as UXCon Vienna and UXInsight Festival, she advocates for the rights of people with disabilities.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Katelyn Bourgoin
Katelyn Bourgoin is a growth strategist, marketer, and 4x founder. She's founded 4 startups and has learned a lot about growing your business through customer feedback. Her specialty is helping growth-hungry teams figure out what triggers customers to buy so they can market smarter. Katelyn has been called an "influential entrepreneur" by Forbes and named as one of the "top 20 wonder women of SaaS marketing and growth."
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Kate Moran
Kate is VP of Research & Content at Neilsen Norman Group and leads UX teams to better benchmarking, teaches newbies how to get started, and explains this complicated subject with clarity.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Kate Towsey
Kate Towsey is a ResearchOps thought leader and advisor and founder of the Cha Cha Club—a members' club for ResearchOps professionals. Previously Research Operations Manager at Atlassian. You may know her as the person who started the ResearchOps Slack community in March of 2018.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Katryna Balboni
Katryna is a marketer by day, thankless servant to cats Elaine Benes and Mr. Maxwell Sheffield by night. Loves to travel, has a terrible sense of direction. Bakes a mean chocolate tart, makes a mediocre cup of coffee. She is leads Creative Content & Special Projects at User Interviews.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Kat Zhou
Kat Zhou is a product developer and designer who focuses on integrating ethics into the design of AI systems. Currently, she is the Senior Product Designer at Epidemic Sound. Before that, Kat was the Creator of the project, a Member Of The Board Of Advisors at The YX Foundation, and a Product Designer at Spotify and IBM. Kat is also a strong advocate for more inclusive and privacy-friendly approaches to AI.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Kevin Kelly
Kevin Kelly is an accomplished author, speaker, and “evergreen optimist,” known for his work on technology, innovation, and the future. As the founding executive editor of Wired, Kevin has been instrumental in shaping discussions around technology and its implications on society. He has authored several influential books, including "The Inevitable," which delves into the technological forces that will impact our future. Currently, Kevin is working on a project envisioning a desirable 100-year future.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Khalida Nicole Sebree
Khalida is a UX Researcher (currently at LinkedIn) with a multi-discipline perspective, honed from years in research, education, design and technology. She mentors UX'ers at UX Coffee Hours. She studied Psychology in order to understand the human mind and researched in an award-winning Neuropsychology Lab.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Kim Salazar
Kim Salazar is a Senior User Experience Specialist with Nielsen Norman Group. Kim combines her background as a developer and education in Computer Science and HCI with her user experience expertise, particularly around complex applications, to bring well-rounded insights to her work.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Laura Klein
Laura Klein is the Principal at Users Know and the author of UX for Lean Startups and Build Better Products. She hosted her own popular UX podcast with Kate Rutter, What is Wrong with UX?, which goes best with cocktails.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Laura Powell
Laura is a self-proclaimed Specialized Generalist who helps companies get it together. She's worked on everything from user research to marketing strategy to organizational process and all of the fun in between. Clients include Appcues, MIT Media Lab, VETTA, Bow Market Somerville, Metaplane.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Leia Atkinson
Leia is a mixed-methods researcher and applied anthropologist with demonstrated impact on product experience and go-to-market strategy. She is Staff Researcher at Shopify, where she has been conducting research since 2017.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Leo Smith
Leo Smith is the Director of UX Research at SS&C Technologies. He has over 20 years of experience in UXR, and has worked for companies of all shapes and sizes in roles ranging from research to design. Leo is also a certified Hatha Yoga Instructor 🧘.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Linus Lee
Linus Lee is a Research Engineer at Notion, prototyping new software interfaces for augmenting our collaborative work and creativity with AI. He has spent the last few years experimenting with AI-augmented tools for thinking, like a canvas for exploring the latent space of neural networks and writing tools where ideas connect themselves. Before Notion, Linus spent a year as an independent researcher in New York City.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Lisanne Norman
Dr. Lisanne Norman is the Director of the Walter J. Crain Fellowship at the Hotchkiss School (formerly UX Research Lead at Gusto). She’s also a founder of Black UX Austin. She’s an advocate for creating more inclusive environments in tech and passionate about uncovering insights and trends that translate into creating inclusive digital products that anyone can use.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Loic Alix-Brown
Loic Alix-Brown is the Co-Founder of Flick, a SaaS solution to help entrepreneurs, content creators and small businesses find the best hashtags to reach their target audience on Instagram.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Lucy Denton
Lucy Denton is the Head of Design at Dovetail. She leads the team’s design and research efforts. Before joining Dovetail, Lucy was a designer at Atlassian for over five years. At Atlassian, she led user-centered design projects, a multidisciplinary team, and contributed to strategic design decisions.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Luke Fraser
Luke Fraser is Founder & CEO of Stepwise Innovation (formerly Paper Ventures). They work with insurance innovation and product development teams to get products to market faster. Before starting Stepwise Innovation, Luke worked at IDEO's Design Lab and Liberty Mutual Insurance as a Product Manager.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Maggie Crowley
Maggie Crowley is VP of Product at Toast (formerly Director of Product Management at Drift). She has her own podcast, Build, about all things product. She competed in the 2006 Winter Olympics as a speed skater and can confirm wearing spandex in front of the whole world is just as uncomfortable as it sounds.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Maria Guidice
For three decades, creative teams and business leaders have sought the provocative vision and mentorship of Maria Giudice, GEW DEECE. After founding the pioneering experience design firm Hot Studio and leading global teams at Facebook and Autodesk, Maria’s mission today is to build the next generation of creative leaders. Through one-on-one coaching, group coaching, and team-building workshops, Maria unlocks the potential hidden in executives and the people they lead. A popular speaker at design and business conferences, Maria is also the author of four design books, including Rise of the DEO: Leadership by Design, and most recently Changemakers: How Leaders Can Design Change in an Insanely Complex World.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Maria Rosala
Maria Rosala is the Director of Research at Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g). Previously, she led user research at the UK Home Office.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Marieke McCloskey
Marieke McCloskey is the Director of UX Research at LinkedIn. For over a decade, she has worked as a UX researcher and consultant with the world’s most innovative companies, including Nielsen Norman Group and the NFL. She completed her undergraduate degree in Neuroscience at the University College Utrecht and earned a MA in Cognitive Science at John Hopkins University.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Marsha Acker
Marsha Acker, CPF, CPCC, PCC, is the author of Build Your Model for Leading Change: A guided workbook to catalyze clarity and confidence in leading yourself and others, available now. She is the founder and CEO of TeamCatapult, a leadership development firm that equips leaders at all levels to facilitate and lead sustainable behavioral change. She is also the author of The Art and Science of Facilitation: How to Lead Effective Collaboration with Agile Teams and the host of the Defining Moments of Leadership podcast.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Matthew Morrison
Matthew Morrison is a UX Research Manager at Braze. Before Braze, he worked on the research teams at Etsy and WillowTree. He’s excited by the challenge of B2B recruitment and is looking forward to continuing to improve his practice.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Megan McLean
Megan McLean is a User Research Manager at Spotify. Before Spotify, Megan received a Masters in Anthropology, worked in academia, and on UX research teams at places like Ipsos.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Meg Pullis Roebling
Meg is the Director, CitiDirect User Experience at Citi (previously Head of CX Research at BNY Mellon)
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Michele Ronsen
Michele Ronsen is the founder of Curiosity Tank, a consulting and education firm specializing in human-centered research, design development, and hands-on learning programs. Her clients include Slack, Zillow, Facebook, Microsoft, and others. Michele is also an Instructor, Content Creator, and Workshop Facilitator at General Assembly. Previously, she worked at Wells Fargo as the Vice President and Creative Director and the Senior Vice President and Creative Director and held two positions at the Bank of America.
Appears in
2
episodes
Guest
Mike Adams
Mike Adams is the CEO and Co-Founder of Grain, a communication platform for teams that helps capture video snippets with ease. Self-describing as a three-time founder with over ten years of experience building skills for job education software programs, Mike is a pioneer for fully immersive cohort-based education. His current mission with Grain is to help teams to share more understanding with each other and the people they work together to serve, thus creating a more cohesive working environment. Mike has authored several useful articles, including “The Founder’s Guide to Actually Understanding Users”.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Mike Oren
Mike Oren, Head of Design Research at Klaviyo, a technology company that provides an automated email marketing and SMS marketing platform. He is also the Founder of Societech, an Adjunct Professor at Illinois Institute of Technology’s Institute of Design, and an independent UX Research Consultant. Mike holds a Ph.D. and a Master’s degree in Human-Computer Interaction and Sociology from Iowa State University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and English Writing from DePauw University.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Nicholas Aramouni
Nicholas is a Senior Communications Manager and UX Researcher at Userlytics who specializes in global UX practices. Nicholas has experience in various industries, including music, entertainment, media, and e-commerce. He is passionate about humanities, holds a B.Ed. in Social Studies from Mount Royal University, and was the former co-host of Mindspark. A learning podcast focused on K-12 education.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Nick Baum
Nick Baum is the Co-founder and CEO of Tremendous, a payouts platform enabling businesses to send money, pre-paid cards, and gift cards to people around the world. Before Tremendous, Nick was the Co-founder and CEO of GiftRocket and the Quantitative Equity Analyst of MDT Advisers.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Nicola Rushton
Nicola is a product designer with 12 years experience with UX/UI design, research, and helping teams ship useful & usable software. As the Senior/Principal Product Designer at Supertourist, she works with a variety of clients on design, research, and product process.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Nikki Anderson-Stanie
Nikki is Founder & Managing Director of User Research Academy, a company that offers coaching, mentoring, and remote courses on UX Research. Nikki is also the author of Dealing with Burnout as a User Researcher and Research Practice: Perspectives from UX Researchers in a Changing Field. She has spoken at events worldwide, including UXCon Vienna and SparkSummit 2021. Nikki is passionate about helping others and is an avid fan of Pokémon.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Noam Segal
Noam Segal is a UX, business, and career coach and the Senior Research Manager at Upwork (at the time of our interview, he was Director of User Research at Wealthfront). When creating magical experiences, he strives to see the same look on users’ faces as he saw on his daughter’s face the first time she saw a real live fish.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Norah Abokhodair, PhD
Norah Abokhodair is a product manager and UX leader focused on global, ethical, and inclusive tech. At the time of our interview, Norah was a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft where she led UX research planning and strategy for Microsoft Learning Innovation Studio including projects focused on machine learning, personalization, and AI fairness. Prior to Microsoft, Norah received her PhD at the University of Washington, where her research focused on social media in Arabic cultures.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Page Laubheimer
Page Laubheimer is a Senior User Experience Specialist at Nielsen Norman Group. His background in library and information science helps him create usable and organized interfaces. At NN/g he performs independent research, leads courses and seminars, and works with clients to create well organized UX.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Paul Derby
Paul is a SR. Manager of UX Research at ServiceNow. Paul is also the founder of Paul Derby Coaching, LLC, where he provides 1:1 coaching to UX researchers who want to establish their personal style of leadership. Before starting his own coaching business, Paul worked as a Manager of User Experience Research at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative for five and a half years. Paul holds a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology with a focus on Human Factors from Texas Tech University.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Pejman Mirza-Babaei
Pejman Mirza-Babaei is a UX research consultant, author, and professor. His latest book, The Game Designer's Playbook, was published in September 2022. He also co-edited the Games User Research book (2018), a compendium of insights from over 40 experts on UX research in games. He has over 15 years of experience doing UXR and interaction design on various applications, from mobile apps to VR games and everything in between streaming content, console, PC games, and even delivery robots! He worked as the UX Research Director at Execution Labs (Montréal, Canada) from 2015 to 2017 and was a UX Researcher at Vertical Slice and Player Research (UK) from 2009 to 2013.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Prayag Narula
Prayag Narula is an entrepreneur and trained researcher with a passion for building technology he always wished for when conducting user research. He is currently the Co-Founder and CEO of Marvin, a qualitative data analysis platform and research repository for user-centric teams across the globe. He is further the Co-Founder and a Board Member for LeadGenius, a demand generation automation company automating and accelerating outbound sales and marketing for mid-marketing and enterprise companies across the world.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Pulkit Agrawal
Pulkit Agrawal is the Co-founder and CEO of Chameleon, a product adoption platform for SaaS that helps companies create better user onboarding. He is also an Angel Investor at product-led startups and a part-time featured speaker at Product School. Before founding Chameleon, Pulkit was the UX and User Onboarding Mentor at 500 Startups.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Rachel Miles
Rachel Miles, UX Research Lead at IBM, is a user experience researcher and strategist. A self-proclaimed nerd of all trades, she loves to learn about everything that crosses her path. In her spare time, you might catch her reading, drawing, traveling, or working on her blog where she talks about where technology meets wellness.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Rajesh Nerlikar
Rajesh Nerlikar is the VP of Product at Regrow Ag and Partner & Co-Founder at Prodify. He’s an experienced product advisor, coach, and consultant who applies best practices from 15+ years of hands-on startup and enterprise product management to help companies accelerate the creation of customer and shareholder value.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Randy Duke
Randy is a User Researcher & Designer, currently at Toast. At the time of our interview, he was Senior Research & Design Strategist at Cantina.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Roberta Dombrowski
Roberta is a Research Partner at Maze (formerly VP of User Research at User Interviews). She is also an ICF certified Coach & Mindfulness Teacher, Level II Reiki Practitioner, and Predictive Index (PI) Certified Talent Optimization Leader. Roberta has been instrumental in creating and shaping cultures of learning at User Interviews, edX, Predictive Index, and Year Up.
Appears in
8
episodes
Guest
Roy Opata Olende
Roy has been involved in user research and service design for nearly a decade. He is currently the Head of UX Research at Zapier, where he launched the company’s Research Operations practice to support user research across the entire company and accelerate product development.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Ryan Glasgow
Ryan is the Founder and CEO at Sprig (formerly UserLeap), a research platform that provides advanced usability testing and in-product survey capabilities to companies such as Dropbox, Loom, and Shift. He is the author of The Customer‑Obsessed Product Manager's Playbook and current host of the People Driven Products Podcasts. Ryan has a strong background in product management. Prior to founding Sprig, he was the Group Product Manager at Weebly, Product Manager at Vurb, and Product Designer at Extrabux.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Samuel Proulx
Samuel (he/him) is the Accessibility Evangelist at Fable, a leading accessibility platform powered by people with disabilities. As a blind individual, Sam knows and values the importance of accessibility in all aspects of life and is a strong advocate for the inclusion of people with disabilities in the digital world. Sam brings his previous experience as Fable’s community manager, plus life-long advocacy for himself and others, to his role as Evangelist.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Sarah Doody
Sarah Doody is the Founder and CEO of Career Strategy Lab, a job search accelerator and UX recruiting agency for UX and Product professionals. In 2017, she founded The UX Portfolio Formula, a UX career accelerator that helps UX professionals create, cultivate, and achieve their career goals.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Sheryl Cababa
Sheryl Cababa, Chief Strategy Officer at Substantial and Author of “Closing the Loop - Systems Thinking for Designers,” is a multi-disciplinary director with over two decades of experience in product design and consultancy, mainly focusing on systems thinking and evidence-based design. Her current role at Substantial, a design and software development consultancy, involves conducting research, developing design strategies, and advocating for human-centric outcomes. In her book, “Closing the Loop - Systems Thinking for Designers,” Sheryl introduces readers to a powerful systems thinking mindset.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Shipra Kayan
Shipra Kayan worked on UX design and research at Upwork for over 10 years. She is now an Evangelist at Miro and runs her own consultancy, helping teams create amazing research-driven UX.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Sonya Badigian
Sonya Badigian is Staff UX Researcher at Procore Technologies (previously UX and Content Specialist at Marketade). She has Masters in Human Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon. After graduating and taking a remote research job, she was surprised to learn how powerful remote research can be.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Steve Bromley
Steve Bromley specializes in establishing new user research teams and in user research for video games. He wrote Building User Research Teams and How to Be A Game User Researcher. He works with mobile studios, indie teams, AAA teams and VR studios to help them run playtests and integrate user research into the production process. Prior to this, he was a lead user researcher for the PlayStation VR headset.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Susan Rice
Susan Rice is VP, User Experience at Workiva. She previously led Product Design and Research at Toast, where she built and scaled the UX function 500% in 1.5 years to create right-sized product teams focused on solving customer needs across mobile, web, hardware, and services platforms
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Sylvana Rochet
Sylvana is the Founder and Principal Coach at Elan Vital, a leadership coaching and personal development company that helps founders and executives tap into their full potential and achieve their goals. Before founding Elan Vital, she worked as a Partner and Executive Coach at Evolution, a leading coaching, consulting, and investment firm that specializes in working with high-growth companies.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Ted Harrington
Ted Harrington is the author of HACKABLE: How to Do Application Security Right and the Executive Partner at Independent Security Evaluators (ISE), the company of ethical hackers famous for hacking cars, medical devices, and password managers. He’s helped hundreds of companies fix tens of thousands of security vulnerabilities, including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, and more.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Teresa Torres
Teresa is a product discovery coach, author of Continuous Discovery Habits, and founder of Product Talk, where she works with teams of all shapes and sizes to help them build better stuff.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Therese Fessenden
Therese Fessenden is a Senior User Experience Specialist with Nielsen Norman Group, host of the NN/g UX Podcast, and manager of the 1-Hour Talk program. Her research focuses on understanding human behaviors, attitudes, and expectations in order to better orchestrate system and service design strategies.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Thomas Watkins
Thomas Watkins is UX architect and Principal and Founder of 3Leaf. He is a life-long learner who has a passion for bringing greater clarity to the world. Thomas has made it his career’s focus to combine technology with design psychology in order to drive business success. He specializes in helping his business partners bring their own brilliant ideas to life, by translating complexity into simplicity. The scope of his work has included interface design for mobile, SaaS system architecture, usability research, and data visualization.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Tiffany Eaton
Tiffany is a talented and creative self-employed graphic designer with expertise in logos, cover art, graphic design, children's illustration, and children's book illustration. In addition to her work, Tiffany is passionate about using her skills to support causes that improve the lives of children. She volunteers her time and talent to create designs for nonprofit organizations that work with children. When not working, Tiffany enjoys painting and exploring new art techniques.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Tiffany Mura
Human-centered design specialist Tiffany Mura is a senior-level brand marketing strategist with a range of experience in multiple healthcare sectors. She is currently the Strategic Lead of Healthcare at Stone Mantel (formerly Senior Vice President, Health Practice Lead at Mad*Pow). She has a Master’s degree in Business Administration and a Bachelor of Science in Sociology from Penn State University.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Tony Turner
Tony Turner is a Senior Product Designer at Paramount (formerly Meta). At the time of our interview he was Lead UX Researcher at Progressive Insurance where he led all kinds of user research, like usability testing, contextual inquiries, card sorts, tree studies, first click studies, surveys and interviews. He's interested in HCI and studied Cognitive Science during undergrad.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Vanessa Whatley
Vanessa Whatley is the UX Director - Research & Documentation at Twilio (previously at Google). Her background in Anthropology has inspired her to think about ways in which companies can prioritize user/customer needs when building products and executing business strategy. She seeks to promote humanistic/people based solutions to the challenges that institutions and individuals face.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Varun Murugesan
Varun Murugesan is the Co-Founder of Apple and Banana, a UXR training and development company helping to build better products through fruitful research. He is also the author of Fruitful, an online UX research library and toolkit of resources for researchers and UX teams aimed at conducting user experience research that drives impact. He is also the Senior UK Researcher of SeatGeek, a mobile ticketing marketplace. Before these positions, Varun worked in UXR roles at Best Buy and Facebook. An entrepreneur, author, and researcher, Varun has spent his career immersed in psychology, technology, and design, and has been featured on a various media platforms sharing fruitful research and his personal UXR career journey.
Appears in
2
episodes
Guest
Vicki Tollemache
Vicki is the Director of UX Research at BlackRock. Previously, she led user experience research at Grubhub where she started their Parts Unknown research practice to involve everyone in researching emerging markets and exploring new ideas within their product.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Vivianne Castillo
Vivianne (she/her) is the Founder and CEO of HmntyCntrd, an award-winning professional growth community supporting UX and Tech professionals in transforming the status quo of what it means to be human-centered in their professional and personal lives through courses, community, and consulting. HmntyCntrd was named one of FastCompany’s top 10 most innovative design companies in 2021. Typically, this is an award you have to apply for, but the HmntyCntrd was noticed and nominated by merit alone, an accomplishment in which Vivianne takes incredible pride.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Wendy Johansson
Wendy Johansson is a global product experience leader and entrepreneur focused on the intersection of product and user experience and on scaling up high-performing global teams. She is the Co-Founder and Chief Product Experience Officer of MiSalud Health and an advisor for companies like Cerby, adplist.org, and Wizeline. Wendy has a background in design and product, focuses on building equitable teams and products, and supports underrepresented people in tech.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Yuval Keshtcher
Yuval Keshtcher is the founder of the UX Writing Hub. UX Writing Hub is an online education platform for all things UX writing. The UX Writing Hub has helped hundreds of professionals transition into UX writing and content design. He also hosts the Writers in Tech podcast.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Zach Schendel
Zach Schendel is the Head of Research at Doordash. There, he leads the product and UX research teams and partners with design, engineering, product management, strategy and operations, and data science to innovate on the consumer, driver, and merchant experiences. Before Doordash, Zach led research teams at Netflix and Unilever.
Appears in
1
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Guest
Zack Naylor
Zack Naylor is the CEO and Co-Founder of Aurelius. He’s helped organizations from startups to Fortune 500s build and establish user experience design practices to deliver valuable products and services.
Appears in
1
episode
Guest
Zoë Glas
Zoë is a Senior UX Researcher at Google. She specializes in gathering and triangulating qualitative and quantitative data to improve amazing products. She has a Master’s degree in Natural Resource Social Science from Purdue University and a Bachelor’s degree in Wildlife Biology from the University of Montana. Zoe has been published extensively in several international journals, including Sage journals, Society & Natural Resources, and Human Dimensions of Wildlife.
Appears in
1
episode