Design Chats Podcast
Design Chats is the newest podcast from Pragmatic Institute—a leading education partner for design, data, and product teams. At Design Chats, we sit down with design leaders, design practitioners and industry experts to discuss how to grow the strategic impact of design. Pragmatic Institute Vice President of Marketing & Product Strategy Rebecca Kalogeris serves as the main host.
Episodes
Friday Aug 11, 2023
Design Leadership and Impact: A Conversation with Vincent Matyi
Friday Aug 11, 2023
Friday Aug 11, 2023
"I believe design leadership is shining a light on what could be complex, gnarly challenges. It comes down to three things for me. I think it's about creating a safe and trusted space, aligning multiple people and not losing sight that we are in service to people." - Vincent Matyi
In this episode, Rebecca Kalogeris talks to Vincent Matyi, the global head of design for Onyx at JPMorgan Chase. Vincent shares his unique perspective on design leadership.
During this episode, they discuss:
Vincent's philosophy on design leadership and its three core principles
Strategies for leading design teams with trust and alignment
How to approach complex challenges and create impact through design
The importance of staying in service to people and harmonizing different stakeholders
Enhance Your Design Strategy with Pragmatic InstituteWant to align your design work with business outcomes and demonstrate its value? Enroll in Pragmatic Institute's Business Strategy & Design course.
Gain grounding in business strategy, learn the tools and vocabulary of key business stakeholders, and actively apply knowledge to contribute to strategic conversations. Discover how to demonstrate design's return on investment and advance key business objectives.
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Friday Jul 21, 2023
Power Skills For Designers with Rochelle Williams
Friday Jul 21, 2023
Friday Jul 21, 2023
“Technical skills are great up to a certain point in your career. However, When you're trying to do that jump from senior to lead or senior to manager, that is when you really need to be thinking about these power skills.” - Rochelle Williams, lead product designer at Elsewhen.
In this episode, Rebecca Kalogeris and Rochelle explore a variety of power skills, how to build them and demonstrate them daily. During this conversation, Rochelle not only provides an overview of her winding design career but also gives practical advice to both novice and experienced designers on how to grow their strategic impact and advance their careers.
During this episode, they discuss:
Why Rochelle urges people to use “power skills” instead of “soft skills” because they “aren’t a nice to have, they are a must-have.”
How to enable decision-making (aka facilitation)
Strategies to get more from design workshops
How to navigate conflict management and self-management
Ways to start building your power skills today
Learn How to Incorporate Business Strategy into Your Design Role
Discover how to align your design work with business outcomes and demonstrate its value to business objectives in Pragmatic’s Business Strategy & Design course, where you'll develop skills to participate in strategic conversations, improve cross-functional partnerships and show return on investment.Learn More
Friday Jul 07, 2023
Elevating the Impact of Design with Eddie Ishak
Friday Jul 07, 2023
Friday Jul 07, 2023
"Good leadership really comes down to one thing. Do people want to follow you? And you can't force people to follow you. So if no one's following, you're not a leader." - Eddie Ishak
In this episode of Design Chats, hosted by Rebecca Kalogeris, we delve into the world of design and its strategic impact.
Our special guest is Eddie Ishak, Managing Director of UX and Product Design at JP Morgan, sheds light on the essence of leadership in design and how it doesn't necessarily correlate with one's position in an organization.
Whether you are a seasoned designer or just starting, this episode is packed with insights and stories that will inspire you to think about design more strategically and consider the role of leadership in your career.
Eddie discusses:
What makes a good leader
Why it's so important to connect design to the business goals and how to do it
How design maturity will impact your effectiveness
Unlock Your Design Potential!Elevate the impact of your designs by enrolling in Pragmatic Institute's design courses. Our interactive and actionable courses will empower you to contribute strategically to your organization. Take advantage of this opportunity to transform your design skills.Explore Pragmatic Institute's Design Courses
Friday Jun 16, 2023
Cindy Brummer on B2B UX Design, the Problem with Personas, and More
Friday Jun 16, 2023
Friday Jun 16, 2023
Cindy Brummer is the CEO and Creative Director of Standard Beagle Studio, an award-winning UX agency for digital B2B products that she built from the ground up. With a career beginning in TV news, she moved into UX design as the field was burgeoning and went on to teach a UX/UI bootcamp at the University of Texas at Austin.
In a conversation with host Rebecca Kalogeris, Cindy talks about her winding career path, navigating interpersonal dynamics in a consulting environment, and the nuances of UX design in B2B projects – when the end user trying to complete a task might be a developer using a platform to set up an integration or a nurse completing a clinical trial.
The two also discuss:
Why teaching UX is like chicken sexing
How Cindy builds alignment and trust with stakeholders, and brings them into decision-making, to ensure a project is successful
Her guidance for new grads entering UX design, from reading widely to being comfortable with ambiguity
Why she believes most personas are “total crap” and how she takes a behavior-first approach to creating personas
The implications of AI on UX roles
...and more
Are you a designer eager to level up your strategic impact? Pragmatic Institute's Business Strategy & Design course is tailored to empower designers with the tools and knowledge to align their user-centered work with key business objectives.Learn More
Unlock the power of storytelling in design. Engage teams, create alignment, and craft compelling narratives with Pragmatic Institute's Influence Through Storytelling course.Learn More
Friday May 26, 2023
6 Practices for Leading Empowered Teams with Brett Macfarlane
Friday May 26, 2023
Friday May 26, 2023
“Leadership is the act of driving change with others,” says Brett Macfarlane.
Brett Macfarlane is an organizational consultant who focuses on leadership development for innovation and change. Based in Vancouver, he works primarily with tech and creative organizations and counts Visa, Unilever, and Apple among his past clients. (Read his Apple Watch case study.)
On Design Chats, Brett goes deep on leadership as an act, not a position; his guiding principles of empathy, intent, and compassion; and insights from his work in leadership and culture development. With VP of Product Strategy Rebecca Kalogeris, Brett also discusses:
The nuances of leadership within innovation environments—which are high risk, high reward, high emotion situations
Brett’s six practices for leading empowered teams, from questioning critical assumptions to seeking different perspectives
The identity shift for a designer who gets that sought-after seat at the table
Switching between charismatic leadership (setting vision, inspiring teams) and architectural leadership (putting systems in place, delegating tasks)
How self-awareness is key to realizing change in your organization
…and much more
For more on leading from where you are and driving change through design, enroll in Business Strategy & Design. Learn how to tie design work to business value in this interactive, actionable course from Pragmatic Institute.
Learn More
Friday May 12, 2023
Jason Grigsby on Responsive Design and Its Future
Friday May 12, 2023
Friday May 12, 2023
Jason Grigsby is the co-founder of Cloud Four—a leading web design and development agency based in Portland, Oregon. He is also the author of Progressive Web Apps and the co-author of Head First Mobile Web. From tinkering on a Commodore 64 as a child to studying journalism in college before venturing into PR, advertising and design—and ultimately, co-founding his company—Jason’s path has led him to a deeper understanding of design principles, the needs of responsive design and how to overcome various design challenges.On Design Chats, Jason talks with host Rebecca Kalogeris about the innate complexities in responsive design and how designers and coders can collaborate to deliver optimally designed experiences for users. They also cover:
The value of designers who code and coders who design
Tools and techniques instrumental in responsive design
How his company uses responsive design sprints
“Mobile first” as a useful design constraint
The future of responsive design
How designers can get a seat at the decision-making table
Why prototypes and performance still matter
Friday Apr 28, 2023
How Designers Can Articulate Their Business Value with Venessa Bennett
Friday Apr 28, 2023
Friday Apr 28, 2023
“Designers need to have that commercial mindset and make sure that whatever we are doing, however we're designing, we can articulate how that ladders up to those business kinds of goals.” - Venessa Bennett
Rebecca Kalogeris, VP of product at Pragmatic Institute, interviews Venessa Bennett on elevating the role of UX in organizations.
Venessa Bennett is the head of user experience (internal systems) at Cazoo, a U.K. retail company in the motor vehicle industry, where she's built up and developed the UX design practice. Previously, she held product and UX design roles at eporta and Vodafone. Venessa is passionate about building inclusive and diverse teams, refining design processes, coaching individuals.
Venessa and Rebecca Discuss:
Why designers should leverage storytelling in their work
How to talk about design work in a way that connects to business goals
The power of partnering with product teams
Why you need diversity in design
Are you a designer eager to level up your career and demonstrate your value in strategic conversations? Pragmatic Institute's Business Strategy & Design course is tailored to empower designers like you with the tools and knowledge to align your user-centered work with key business objectives.Learn More
Unlock the power of storytelling in design with Pragmatic Institute's Influence Through Storytelling course. Elevate your design strategy, engage teams, and create alignment by mastering the art of crafting compelling narratives.Here’s what you’ll learn
Friday Apr 14, 2023
The Role of UX and UI in Gaming with Cait Goodale
Friday Apr 14, 2023
Friday Apr 14, 2023
“The job of UX in games tends to be like balancing the friction point. I like to say that it's making the easy things easy and the hard things hard.” - Cait Goodale
Rebecca Kalogeris, VP of marketing and product strategy at Pragmatic Institute, interviews Cait Goodale on the lessons designers can learn from the gaming industry. Cait is a dynamic and passionate UX design leader with a background that spans graphic design, fashion, gaming and product design. As the former head of UX at Drest, a gaming company focused on fashion and beauty, she has explored the intersection of different industries.
Cait's journey began in graphic design, and she quickly found her niche in the overlap between the fashion and gaming worlds. Her career includes stints at major companies like Microsoft, where she worked on augmented reality projects, and King, the mobile games company behind the wildly popular Candy Crush. She also has a talent for writing; she shares her insights with the design community as the author of the Thrifted Design Leadership blog.
Cait and Rebecca Discuss:
The role of UX and UI at gaming companies and how those roles may change depending on company size
The role of data in game design
Segmentation in entertainment products
How friction impacts the gaming experience
What "re-onboarding" is and why it’s essential to have long-term thinking about users
Learn How to Integrate Business Strategy and Your Design RoleDiscover how to align your design work with business outcomes and demonstrate its value to business objectives in Pragmatic’s Business Strategy & Design course, where you'll develop skills to participate in strategic conversations, improve cross-functional partnerships and show return on investment.Learn More
Friday Mar 24, 2023
Navigating Your Organization’s UX Maturity Journey with Lori Landesman
Friday Mar 24, 2023
Friday Mar 24, 2023
“The thing about UX maturity is, as much as I love it, it’s so complicated. And even when you look at an organization, it’s hard to characterize a full organization. Different parts of the organization will have achieved different levels of maturity. But it’s a good tool to use at almost any elevation to help you understand where are we and where could we be going.” - Lori Landesman
Rebecca Kalogeris, VP of marketing and product strategy at Pragmatic Institute, interviews Lori Landesman, a VP of user experience at Salsify, about design careers, advocacy, and UX maturity scales.
Lori started her career in instructional technology. She fell into the usability world while working for Netscape, which saw its websites as instructional devices, and became a usability practitioner. Lori's career evolved as user experience design emerged, and she has since become an expert in UX design and research. She is particularly interested in UX maturity, and how it has evolved throughout her career and in organizations she has worked with.
During this episode, Rebecca and Lori discuss:
What the UX maturity journey might look like at a company
How different designers might thrive in companies depending on the UX maturity levels
Why UX professionals need to empathize with their colleagues as much as they empathize with users
Leveraging data in design
Learn How to Communicate the Value of Design
In Business Strategy & Design, you’ll learn how to align your design work with business outcomes and measure the value of design to business objectives. Gain the skills and confidence to participate in strategic conversations, improve cross-functional partnerships, and demonstrate return on investment.
Friday Mar 10, 2023
Designing for People, Not for Theory: A Conversation with Giles Airey
Friday Mar 10, 2023
Friday Mar 10, 2023
This podcast has some strong language, so if you've got any little ones around, you might want to pop in some headphones.
“Not everyone needs to hear all the language or the terminology—all the fun stuff that we think makes us sound cool. They need to hear what they can relate to, and they can feel that they're not excluded. We are people designing for people. We're not people designing by theory and then trying to make it out that we're really intelligent and clever.” - Giles Airey
Rebecca Kalogeris, VP of marketing and product strategy at Pragmatic Institute, interviews Giles Airey, Principal UX Designer at Evri, about convincing people that UX is how we change the world.
Giles Airey is a passionate and talented designer with a background in architecture, graphic design, advertising, and UX. Throughout his career, Giles has been dedicated to understanding his clients' needs and creating compelling messages that drive action.
During this episode, Rebecca and Giles discuss:
Why moving from “how might we” to “what if” energizes design teams and sparks creativity
While the user is the center of any project, why you should still think about the project by putting stakeholders first.
Being excellent in your design role starts with authenticity—knowing who you are, what you’re good at and your values.
A few books that aren’t related to design but might make you a better designer
Enhance Your Ability to Connect Design Work to Business StrategyIn Business Strategy & Design, you’ll learn how to align your design work with business outcomes and measure the value of design in relation to business objectives. Gain the skills and confidence to participate in strategic conversations, improve cross-functional partnerships, and demonstrate return on investment.Learn More
Pragmatic Design
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