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 Feb 24, 2023
Lauren Sinreich on Systems Thinking and Applying Values to Design
Friday Feb 24, 2023
Friday Feb 24, 2023
“There's real value to exposing yourself to other forms of thought, theories, and ways of doing things,” says Lauren Sinreich. “That can help you start connecting the dots in ways that you hadn't understood.”
In this episode of Design Chats, guest host and Pragmatic Design instructor Shannon McGarity sits down with Lauren Sinreich, Principal of Design Research and Strategy at Coforma (and Pragmatic Design Advisory Board member). The two talk about how Lauren’s non-traditional design background in communications and environmental studies supported her later design roles, the power of systems thinking across design practices, showing design value in a consulting versus in-house environment, and the importance of honoring your values in your work.
The two also discuss…
How Lauren has applied her strategy, storytelling, and research skills in contexts like civic innovation projects, media and entertainment, and government
Hard and soft skills that enable designers to move fluidly among industries
The common mindset that runs through service design, design strategy, and systems design
The thing she does in all projects to get on the same page with stakeholders
Her advice for designers who want to pursue service or systems design
Find out more about Lauren on her website and LinkedIn.
Discover our offerings for designers who want to work more strategically, from Business Strategy & Design to Influence Through Storytelling, at PragmaticInstitute.com/Design.
Friday Feb 10, 2023
Maximizing Results Through an Outcome-Focused Approach, with Neil Pleasants
Friday Feb 10, 2023
Friday Feb 10, 2023
“Outcome-focused is aligning digital teams with the rest of the business. So we all work together to go in the same direction. Outcomes are the results of your activities. It’s where we test and learn. We move forward with continual improvement to solve the problem. The alternative to that is the feature factory.”
Host Rebecca Kalogeris interviews Neil Pleasants, head of digital product and design at Mindful Chef, about what it means to be outcome-focused and how to enhance collaboration.
Neil has a background in broadcast media and eventually shifted gears to work at Amazon, where he learned the basics of personalization. Neil has worked for several large UK companies in the food industry and has found his passion in the food space with Mindful Chef. As a digital leader, he develops digital strategies and roadmaps with a customer-centric, omnichannel mindset for long term growth and engagement.
Rebecca and Neil discuss:
How focusing on outcomes builds trust between design teams and other departments in the organization
How to measure if an outcome is achieved or if progress is made
Building alignment between product and design
How to start thinking about business outcomes not just customer outcomes
How to move toward an outcomes-focused model faster on your team and in your companies
Do You Want To Become An Outcome-Focused Designer?In 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
Friday Jan 27, 2023
Designing Your Career: Tips from Teresa Brazen
Friday Jan 27, 2023
Friday Jan 27, 2023
You'll make better choices about your career if you know who you are and what matters most to you.” - Teresa Brazen
In this episode, Rebecca Kalogeris interviews Pragmatic design instructor Teresa Brazen about career path opportunities in the design field. The conversation focuses on what it’s like to move into people management or become an expert in one's craft.
Teresa has spent over 15 years in the design industry and works as a consultant, educator, and coach. She has helped many well-known companies such as NASA, Cisco, Clorox, and Charles Schwab. Her mission now is to help professionals expand their potential and increase their impact.
Rebecca and Teresa discuss:
Design career trajectories
Why leadership skills should be taught earlier and to everyone (even those not pursuing management)
How to find your zone of genius
The four legs of effective leadership
How to approach management as a creative endeavor
Are You A Designer Who Wants to Contribute More Strategically?
The Business Strategy and Design course teaches designers how to confidently participate in strategic conversations by linking their design work to business outcomes.
It also covers how to measure and communicate the value of design in relation to business objectives and how to align user-centered design with business goals to show return on investment and improve cross-functional partnerships.Learn More
Friday Jan 13, 2023
Designing for Both Customer and Business Goals with Jane Austin
Friday Jan 13, 2023
Friday Jan 13, 2023
How can you lead teams that help clients achieve both customer and business goals, especially when those goals may seem at odds?
Jane Austin is the Chief Experience Officer at Digitas UK. She is an expert in zero-to-one product development, scaling startups globally, and the digital transformation of legacy businesses. She has a background in philosophy and has always been passionate about design's ability to solve problems for people and businesses.
Throughout her career, Jane has worked in various sectors, including government, media, and healthcare, always striving to make a positive impact through evidence-led design, technology, and collaboration. Currently, Jane works at the intersection of design and product, "using design to uncover problems then using the product lens to solve them.”
Jane joins Design Chats with guest host Erin Thibeau for a conversation about the importance of understanding how businesses and organizations operate to contribute strategically as a designer. They discuss:
How to lead teams that help clients support both the user and business goals
What Jane has learned about change management from her work as an advisor
How designers and data teams can work more closely together
An ideal team structure and its impact on the final stage of product maturity
* * *
Are you a designer who wants to collaborate better with product partners and stakeholders?
Business Strategy and Design course teaches designers how to confidently participate in strategic conversations by linking their design work to business outcomes. It also covers how to measure and communicate the value of design in relation to business objectives and how to align user-centered design with business goals to show return on investment and improve cross-functional partnerships.Learn More
Friday Dec 16, 2022
Friday Dec 16, 2022
“Sometimes designers feel that they are in a fight, and they approach advocacy as a fight. But you’re never going to change minds by fighting.” — Adam Cutler
In this episode of Design Chats, Pragmatic Institute VP of marketing and product strategy Rebecca Kalogeris interviews Adam Cutler, a Distinguished Designer at IBM and a founding member of IBM Design. They talk about the evolution of design at IBM, how designers can better advocate for their work, and how to build influence in an organization where design might be misunderstood.
They also discuss:
A six-minute activity that changes the conversation about design in a room full of non-designers
IBM’s robust onboarding approach.
Designing for AI
Ethics in AI design
Additional Resources
Business Strategy & DesignThis course provides designers with a grounding in business strategy and the tools and vocabulary of key business stakeholders. Designers can use this knowledge to align their user-centered work to the advancement of key business objectives, demonstrate design’s return on investment and contribute to strategic conversations.>> learn more
Friday Dec 02, 2022
Jared Spool on What Makes a Great UX Leader
Friday Dec 02, 2022
Friday Dec 02, 2022
“When you start to look at UX work as empowering everyone else in the organization to achieve their goals, you now see it through a fundamentally different lens than ‘I am here to make the thing pretty.’”
Jared Spool is a UX design thought leader with more than 30 years’ experience. As Co-founder, Co-CEO, and Maker of Awesomeness at Center Centre-UIE, he and Leslie Jensen-Inman provide UX expertise with the mission of eliminating bad design.
On Design Chats, Jared tells host Rebecca Kalogeris about his passion for systems design and designing the very first personal computers for business. He delves into the difference between leaders and managers and how designers can “lead in the moment” to champion their vision for a better user experience.
The two also discuss:
A business case in user retention: Netflix’s two-pronged strategy for improving retention and revenue
The format for a UX outcome statement he teaches all UX leaders
Actionable tips for informing and facilitating the best UX decisions across the organization
How the sous vide is like a design system
Why it’s important to create a culture of continuous learning
Related Resources:
Read Lead Ujda’s guide, “2 Tools to Leverage UX Metrics for Internal Buy-in and Product Success”
Learn how to lead through influence and sell a design-driven vision to cross-functional teams in Pragmatic Institute’s Influence Through Storytelling course.
Friday Nov 11, 2022
Friday Nov 11, 2022
“It’s essential that whoever we work with—and in whatever way we work—we foster inclusion at every step. And when I say inclusion, accessibility is a tiny part of it…Inclusion has so many more dimensions.”
Aleksandra Melnikova is an experience designer, strategist, speaker, and co-founder of Cosmic Velocity—an inclusive research, UX and service design agency in London. She joins Design Chats with guest host Erin Thibeau for a conversation touching on everything from Holacratic governance to Buddhist philosophy.
Aleksandra talks about the values driving her agency’s work, the “beautiful and ever-changing” world of inclusive design and leadership as a service. Aleksandra also shares examples of activities she’s facilitated to build culture and foster diversity and inclusion—both in her team and in client engagements.
Listen as Aleksandra and Erin discuss:
Coming to a definition of inclusion by first discussing exclusion
Three ways that practitioners pursuing inclusive design and research can set themselves up for success
Why Cosmic Velocity partners with other agencies rather than pitching against each other
Leadership models, mindsets and frameworks that reject hierarchy
How she helps designers envision a different future by detaching from day-to-day tasks and entering a play environment
…and much more
Follow Aleksandra’s work on her LinkedIn page. For designers looking to contribute more strategically, drive value in their organizations, and build influence, explore Pragmatic Design’s courses.
Friday Oct 28, 2022
Tackling Ambiguous Design Problems with Diana Deibel
Friday Oct 28, 2022
Friday Oct 28, 2022
"The key is connecting things back to the people that you're talking to, knowing what they care about, and making sure that whatever you are asking of them or sharing with them directly connects to the things that they care about so that they can understand in the way that you understand."
In this episode of Design Chats, Rebecca Kalogeris, VP of marketing for Pragmatic Institute, interviews Diana Deibel, Chief Design Officer at Grand Studio about how to approach big ambiguous problems.
Diana leads teams tasked with designing human-centered products and services. She specializes in challenging problems like service design on a global scale and conversation design for behavior change. She is also the co-author of Conversations with Things: UX Design for Chat and Voice
They discuss:
Strategies to better collaborate with stakeholders during the design process
The importance of Identifying all the groups impacted by design research to capture broad buy-in to prevent roadblocks from internal politics
Factors that contribute to the timeline for solving big ambiguous problems
How internal design teams can advocate for their work to other stakeholders in the company
Strategies for internal design teams to incorporate big design projects when most of their time is spent
Why discovery work makes all the difference
Increase Your Strategic Impact as a Designer with Pragmatic Course: Business Strategy & Design
This course teaches you to confidently contribute to strategy conversations by tying your design work to business outcomes and ensuring you can measure and communicate how design fits into the strategic landscape.
Learn More
Friday Oct 14, 2022
José Coronado on Design Ops as a Critical Business Function
Friday Oct 14, 2022
Friday Oct 14, 2022
“We have to use the same tools that we use to solve problems to create strong relationships with our partners."
José Coronado is head of Design Operations at JPMorgan Chase & Co., one of the largest financial institutions in the world. Although the world of banking isn’t typically known for its design prowess, JPMorgan Chase employs more designers (around 2,000) than most of the top creative agencies globally. In building up JP Morgan's design operations practice, José has focused on creating the programs, products and services that designers need to be effective and engaged in their everyday work.
On Design Chats, José talks with host Rebecca Kalogeris about design leadership, how design ops is a critical business function, and how design teams can ensure their work is integral to the bottom line. They also cover:
Using design skills like empathy to improve cross-functional partnerships
Why it's essential to hire entry-level designers and create professional development opportunities for them
How José learned from failure in his first year on the job
How design ops can take a page from the product management handbook
Applying the flexible recognition model as a design leader
How designers can better understand the business impact of their work
Friday Jul 22, 2022
Kenya Oduor on Leveraging the UX Toolkit to Show Value
Friday Jul 22, 2022
Friday Jul 22, 2022
“Our clients recognize the value of UX goes beyond pixels on a page…Whether you're inside an organization or partnering, that's all you can hope for.”
Dr. Kenya Oduor is a human-centered researcher, strategist, and solution designer. She is the founder and CEO of Lean Geeks, a company offering consulting, staffing, and coaching in user research and design. Trained in human factors, experimental psychology and industrial engineering, Kenya previously held roles from User Experience Engineer at IBM to Director of User Experience at LexisNexis.
On Design Chats, Kenya talks with host Rebecca Kalogeris about her passion for designing solutions that are intuitive, effective, and useful. She shares how, as she advanced from a design practitioner to the founder of a consultancy, she applied her UX skills to managing teams and storytelling with clients and stakeholders. The two also discuss:
Using the practitioner and strategic level lenses she’d developed to consulting organizations at different levels of design maturity
Four core capabilities she looks for to build a strong UX team
The best ways to show your cross-functional partners how to leverage the value of UX
Challenges and opportunities of being a black woman in IT and tech, and how she advises people of color who she coaches
Design practitioners and researchers looking to demonstrate the value of their design work, communicate effectively with cross-functional partners, and advance in their careers should enroll in Pragmatic Institute’s new course, Business Strategy & Design.
Lean Geeks
Lean Geeks - Solution Strategy + Design
Pragmatic Institute
Business Strategy & Design
Pragmatic Design
Pragmatic Institute’s Design Practice offers courses—with a focus on interactive learning and practical application—for designers who want to increase their influence, strengthen partnerships, and uncover new opportunities to create value. Explore our training at