Understanding Users: The UX Podcast
How can organisations ensure they’re building digital products and services with users in mind? What challenges and opportunities does user-centred design present? User Research Lead Mike Green chats candidly with UX design and research professionals around the world.
Episodes
Monday Mar 04, 2024
Monday Mar 04, 2024
Steve Portigal is an experienced user researcher who helps organisations to build more mature user research practices. He is principal of Portigal Consulting, and the author of two books: Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries and Interviewing Users, the second edition of which is now out. He’s also the host of the Dollars to Donuts podcast.
In this episode, Steve and I discuss the latest edition of his classic book 'Interviewing Users'.
Some highlights from this episode:
> 05:20 - How user research has evolved in the last 10 years and the genesis of the second edition of the book
> 11:00 - Remote research and the impact of COVID
> 17:22 - Developments in user research tooling
> 23:40 - Emergence of ResearchOps as a career path
> 31:40 - Navigating challenges in running user research
> 39:37 - Steve’s own key takeaway from the book
> 45:11 - Feedback loops and ways of building rapport with users
> 50:35 - The joy and privilege of researching and learning
> 57:25 - The impact of AI on research as a discipline
I hope you will find plenty here that's thought-provoking to consider in the context of your own work :)
And there's a SPECIAL LISTENER OFFER: until 4 March 2024, you can purchase Steve's new book with a 20% discount here with the code understandingusers. :)
Thanks for listening!
Mike Green @ Researchable
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
HIGHLIGHTS TRANSCRIPT
Thursday Jan 11, 2024
Thursday Jan 11, 2024
Julian Della Mattia is a UX Researcher specialised in Research Operations. He helps companies of all sizes build their user research practices from scratch.
In this episode he explains the ResearchOps function, when and how it can add value to product teams, and he shares his experiences of advising and working with organisations across Europe to elevate how they gather and action insights from their users.
I hope you find something thought-provoking here to consider in the context of your own work.
Thanks for listening.
Mike Green
Wednesday Dec 13, 2023
Wednesday Dec 13, 2023
This time I'm chatting with some of the attendees at UX Brighton 2023, themed around Creativity and Innovation. They share with me why they came to this year's event and what they have taken away from it.
I hope you enjoy the episode and find something thought-provoking here to consider in your own work.
Thanks for listening.
Mike Green
Wednesday Nov 15, 2023
Wednesday Nov 15, 2023
"I think because of the gravitas of what AI can bring to the world in terms of social impact leaders have to be extremely humble...As a leader in this space, you have to kind of understand that you're going to have to hire people who aren't the typical employee. The other thing too - it's very important to the leadership team to hire a diverse group of people and I really mean diverse, because if you're designing for essentially the whole world, you need to represent the whole world on the team."
Chris Reardon was formerly Head of Product Design, Responsible AI @ Meta and is now Design Director - AI Envisioning Studio, Technology & Society @ Google.
This is the final part of a series of four revealing AI-related conversations with Chris as he discusses his own career journey at the cutting edge of designing artificial intelligence products, his views on the impact of AI on design as a discipline, the roles and responsibilities that will be needed for design leadership in AI, how AI might influence individual design careers.
In this episode we talk about the role of leadership in AI product teams.
Chris is hugely experienced, impassioned and persuasive, and he shares plenty of nuggets of his hard-won wisdom that anyone in any organisation considering working in the AI space should reflect upon.
I hope you enjoy this episode and find something thought-provoking to consider in the context of your own work.
Thanks for listening.
Mike Green
Wednesday Nov 08, 2023
Wednesday Nov 08, 2023
“If I think about five years from now, I would say that UX as we know it today will be radically changed....Things that deal with rote tasks are definitely going to be something of the domain of AI in the future.... [but] I think the space that we [as designers] work in is around intuition, empathy, emotion, and that's much much harder for AI. You know, it's a scary time for everyone, right? Everybody's a little nervous. But the reality is that a lot of what we do already is still very valuable in this future world that's already here."
Chris Reardon was formerly Head of Product Design, Responsible AI @ Meta and is now Design Director - AI Envisioning Studio, Technology & Society @ Google.
This is the third of my series of four revealing AI-related conversations with Chris as he discusses his own career journey at the cutting edge of designing artificial intelligence products, his views on the impact of AI on design as a discipline, the roles and responsibilities that will be needed for design leadership in AI, how AI might influence individual design careers.
In this episode we talk about career planning for designers and researchers working on AI-based products.
Chris is hugely experienced, impassioned and persuasive, and he shares plenty of nuggets of his hard-won wisdom that anyone in any organisation considering working in the AI space should reflect upon.
I hope you enjoy this episode and find something thought-provoking to consider in the context of your own work.
Thanks for listening.
Mike Green
Wednesday Oct 25, 2023
Wednesday Oct 25, 2023
“Design is really going to be the practice of ethics in AI...Designers bring into reality these esoteric concepts, and so while an ethicist sitting next to you is helpful in the sense that they can help you think about these things, the designer's role is actually going to be how you implement those things..
We will also start to build UX AI tools that will help us iterate at a much larger scale...So imagine being able to create numerous scenarios where you can test your model against them in real-time, iterate and fine-tune...”
Chris Reardon was formerly Head of Product Design, Responsible AI @ Meta and is now Design Director - AI Envisioning Studio, Technology & Society @ Google.
This is the second of my short series of revealing AI-related conversations with Chris as he discusses his own career journey at the cutting edge of designing artificial intelligence products, his views on the impact of AI on design as a discipline, the roles and responsibilities that will be needed for design leadership in AI, how AI might influence individual design careers.
In this episode we talk about the importance of ethics in building AI-based products and services.
Chris is hugely experienced, impassioned and persuasive, and he shares plenty of nuggets of his hard-won wisdom that anyone in any organisation considering working in the AI space should reflect upon.
I hope you enjoy this episode and find something thought-provoking to consider in the context of your own work.
Thanks for listening.
Mike Green
Friday Oct 20, 2023
Friday Oct 20, 2023
“I think the biggest thing is that with AI, you are definitely going to create net new roles in the in the team that you had never thought of before. And there's not going to be a playbook for that, and the HR person and the recruiter is not going to know how to help you with that and you're gonna have to figure those things out together as a team…Design will be less about UI in the future and more about different methods of communicating…”
Chris Reardon was formerly Head of Product Design, Responsible AI @ Meta and is now Design Director - AI Envisioning Studio, Technology & Society @ Google.
Over the course of the next four episodes I talk to Chris about his own career journey at the cutting edge of designing artificial intelligence products, his views on the impact of AI on design as a discipline, the roles and responsibilities that will be needed for design leadership in AI, how AI might influence individual design careers.
In this episode we talk about his career and how AI is likely to impact the makeup of product teams.
Chris is hugely experienced, impassioned and persuasive, and he shares plenty of nuggets of his hard-won wisdom that anyone in any organisation considering working in the AI space should reflect upon.
I hope you enjoy this episode and find something thought-provoking to consider in the context of your own work.
Thanks for listening.
Mike Green
Friday Oct 13, 2023
Friday Oct 13, 2023
"Something that's colliding is definitely that sense of artificial intelligence and particularly generative AI, and what that means for creativity... I'm much more in the kind of William Morris view of the world, I think we need more thinkers and crafts people. And my positive view of AI is that it will get rid of some of the drudge work we do and it will free up time for people to be more imaginative and more creative. As a result of that we can spend more time with the people we're trying to solve problems for, coming up with more imaginative ideas.."
This time I'm chatting with some of the speakers at UX Brighton 2023 in advance of the event. They talk to me about what insights they plan to share, what they hope the audience will take away and share their views how creativity, innovation and artificial intelligence are starting to intersect.
My thanks to:
Elizabeth Churchill
Alice Helliwell
Stefanie Posavec
Chris How
Tricky Bassett
and Tom Kerwin.
Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoy the episode and find something thought-provoking here to consider in your own work.
Mike Green
Wednesday Oct 04, 2023
Wednesday Oct 04, 2023
"Speak to your users directly and ask them specifically what their challenges are. That was that was probably the biggest takeaway [from today] for me.... I think, certainly in my [small business] sector we tend to assume rather than ask, and I think asking directly what users have feedback about, or reviewing how they how they use services or how they don't use services specifically, is really [important]."
"I'm just really enjoying being around other digital professionals and being able to talk about a lot of the things that are affecting us in our industry."
This is the final episode in a three part mini-series about the Lion+Mason event at the Leeds Digital Festival 2023.
Recorded on the day, you'll hear from a variety of event attendees as they they reflect on what they learned from the sessions and what practical tips they plan to take away to use in their own organisations.
My thanks to all the attendees who agreed to share their thoughts, and to Alisha Moran and Jana Petrova from Lion+Mason for doing the recordings for me.
Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.
Mike Green
Wednesday Sep 27, 2023
Wednesday Sep 27, 2023
Danny Hope is a Product Strategy Consultant and Founder of UX Brighton, a long-running annual one-day UX conference on the south coast of the UK.
The theme of this year's event is Creativity and Innovation, and in this episode I chat with Danny about the kinds of talks attendees can expect and what learnings they can hope to take away to try out in their own work.
"I've seen time and again the damaging effects on teams where innovation and creativity aren't recognised as important. I've seen the limiting effect that that can have on the quality of the output of those teams - and to some extent the happiness of the individuals contributing. Creativity and innovation are such important concepts, but the terms are so misused. I'd like to ask people to be able to talk about these things comfortably, and with a kind of sound framework of understanding..."
Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the episode.
Mike Green
About the host
Mike Green MBPsS is an award-nominated freelance user researcher, podcast host and digital consultant based in the UK.
His clients range from start-ups to UK Government departments and FTSE100 companies.
He is a passionate believer in the power of user-centred design and has interviewed hundreds of research participants in the course of his career to help ensure product teams build digital services that really meet user needs.
He holds a Master's degree in Psychology from the University of Bristol and has lived and worked in more than seven countries.
Find out more about his work at Researchable UX.