UX Podcast

We’ve got an update for you about season 2 of UX podcast. After our 10-year long first season, we’re soon back for season 2. August 11th 2023 will see the first episode of the new season released.

We’ve got a little update for you about UX podcast. We’ve been publishing an episode every other Friday without fail for just over a decade since episode 33, which is absolutely insane. It’s a streak of 277 episodes. 554 weeks. We’ve quite recently actually surpassed 2.5 million downloads. What we’re going to do now is...

Power dynamics, egos, “I know best”. The ways in which we go about solving problems need to be challenged and changed. Anna Kirah joins us to help us facilitate that change and make a move from design thinking towards transdisciplinary thinking.

Episode 309 is a linkshow. James and Per discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention – we feature articles about container queries being available to use in all major browsers and how design thinking was supposed to fix the world. Where did it go wrong?

What is systems thinking and how can designers make use of it in their work? In her book Closing the loop, Sheryl Cababa lays out her answer and approach to this question. We talk to her and discuss some of the core definitions and concepts. 

In this conversation with Alex Schmidt, author of Deliberate Intervention, we discuss “policy” in relation to digital design and tech. We discuss how even though designers intend to do good and have a positive impact, harm can still happen as a result of our designs. We talk about how it is natural for systems to...

We are constantly simplifying the world around us and the people within it. This is a perfectly understandable reaction to the messy things we have to work with. But with every step back we are building a wall between the user and what it is to be human. We talk to Alastair about human centred design. How...

Episode 305 is a linkshow. James and Per discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention – we feature articles about designing for people with dyscalculia and low numeracy, and How ChatGPT is blowing Google out of the water: a UX breakdown.

Getting anything up and running takes both time and planing. Content strategist Natalie Marie Dunbar joins us to talk about her content strategy practice blueprint and how it can help you when building a practice. What to do in order to avoid being an unheard and unappreciated silo as you grow from being a solo...

We take a dive into neuroscience and metacognition. Thinking about thinking and thinking about other minds. We are joined by Professor Stephen Fleming, neuroscientist and author of the book Know Thyself to learn more about how our cognition works and the implications for our work as mind-creating creatives and in the development of AI.

We talk to Tom Greever about Articulating Design Decisions. How do we talk about our designs effectively with stakeholders? Every designer has to explain (and justify) their design decisions to non-designers but what are the skills tactics and methods that are needed to pull this off in a way that opens the door for your project to create...

Informed consent is a critical part of the research process. We talk to Kim Foulds and Joyce Rafla about how they made use of videos featuring Sesame Workshop muppets to make taking a consent decision more inclusive, accessible and informed.

We’ve been tacking jokes onto the end of our shows since Episode 138. So to celebrate Episode 300, we take a look at jokes and humour. We’re joined by Professor Delia Chiaro, who has spent decades researching humour to learn more about what makes things funny and if it’s safe for us to be humorous...

“Let’s find out what’s best practice and just run with that”. That’s something many of us will recognise and have experienced. But what actually is best practice? Is it something we should follow? And can we? Rich Brophy joins us to talk about best practice and to offer some advice about what might be even...

Episode 298 is a linkshow. Per and James discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention – we feature articles about how car culture colonised our thinking, and how Figma is making you a bad designer.

In this classic UX Podcast, Jonas Söderström joins us to talk about complexity. We like to think that we have made the world better through digitalisation, but perhaps all of the productivity gains were actually in the very early days of computing. 

How do you make an impact as an introvert without pretending to be an extrovert? Often designers find themselves as quiet people in a noisy world, struggling in silence and being frustrated at not being heard. Tim Yeo joins us to talk about how introverted designers and design leaders can work with their introversion and...

We need to ask the big hard questions at the beginning of the process so we can make good design decisions later. We talk to Dan Brown about the “discovery phase” or, as Dan suggests, the “discovery mindset”.

Episode 294 is a linkshow. Per and James discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention – we feature articles about designing the perfect button, and how sitemaps are an essential tool in web design.

We often find ourselves in stressful situations. Sometimes that’s expected, but sometimes it’s not.  The same can be said about the things we design. Sometimes we knowingly design for stressful situations, but sometimes our designs are used (unexpectedly to us) by people while under stress. Katie Swindler, Author of Life and Death Design joins us...

What is product management? And “product”? And product designers? We talk to Christian Crumlish, author of Product Management for UX People to learn more about how designers can collaboration and contribute in a product organisation. 

Lifts and elevators are things that we love to talk about in UX circles. Every elevator panel is capable of being the starting point for a user experience conversation. In this classic UX Podcast interview, we talk to Reetta Ranne and Jussi Hiltunen who, at the time of recording, were senior UX design specialists at...

Web3 is a term that’s getting a lot of attention, along with associated concepts such as blockchain, crypto, NFTs. There are a lot of concepts and phrases to understand, some of them quite technical, before we can get to the question of what benefits they can deliver. Laura Kalbag joins us to help us gain...

Diagrams are everywhere and used by many people in many professions. But what is a diagram? When are they useful? And what makes a good one? Information architect and author of “How To Make Sense of Any Mess” Abby Covert joins us to talk about diagrams and diagramming – which is the topic of her...

Episode 288 is a linkshow. Per and James discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention – we feature articles about the problems with, and the alternatives to, the term “users” plus the surprisingly complex world of emojis.

Joe’s first book “Ends”, back in 2017 was focused on why we don’t do endings, and how that links into consumerism. Joe’s second book, “Endineering” is about how to actively design endings, a ‘how-to’ book for improving how products, services and consumer relationships end. 

We get a reintroduction to information architecture with Donna Spencer. Donna shares with us some of the methods and tools she teaches as part of her workshops as well as look at some of the challenges that information projects can throw at you.

Why don’t we just brainstorm that? Brainstorming as a tool for ideation has a number of drawbacks, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be useful. Design leader and leadership coach Christopher McCann joins us to discuss how we can improve our innovation processes, and hold better and more inclusive creative sessions.

Episode 284 is a linkshow. Per and James discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention – we feature articles about additive bias and the current state of mobile UX.

Your own vital signs are your heart rate, temperature, breathing and blood pressure. These are used to help get an idea of your health, and give a “heads-up” that something is not as performing as it should be. Google has come up with its own set of web vitals to give you an idea of...

Carolyn Wilson-Nash together with Julie Tinson, both from Stirling University, published a research paper entitled ‘I am the master of my fate’: digital technology paradoxes and the coping strategies of older consumers. Carolyn joins us to talk more about her research and the impact technology has on older people’s lives.

We often think of trauma as something that individuals go through, but organisations can experience trauma too. Vivianne Castillo was part of producing a research-based report that reveals the ways that organisations respond to trauma. The report also puts forward a suggestion of how organisations can handling healing better.

Mass democratisation and access to AB test tooling has meant that hundreds of millions of experiments have been run on people, via digital products and services.  Although we are not running pharmaceutical trials and tests, these experiments still raise numerous ethical issues that are shared with research or experiments in a medical scenarios.  Craig Sullivan...

For a number of years Steve Portigal has been collecting user research war stories. The stories describe experiences researchers have had whilst doing fieldwork. Awkward, morally challenging, painful, unsuccessful.

Episode 278 is a linkshow. Per and James discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention – we feature articles about the era of design system in Russia and a status report on the toxicity in digital design.

As the covid pandemic struck and upended her art school project, Nathalie Nahai showed tremendous foresight when reflecting on the societal upheaval and its implications for sustainable business practice. In her newly released book, Business Unusual, she collects and elucidates important wisdom about how to ready your work for the unavoidable changes in consumer values,...

We talk to Denise Jacobs about how to banish our inner critic and remove the mental blocks that get in the way of creative thinking. We also talked about how you can improve focus and get your brain into a state where you can access creative ideas best.

Virtual reality has had its big breakthrough in the gaming world, but what applications for this technology are there in helping the wellbeing of people who are ill? Almira Osmanovic Thunström is a Business Developer and Doctoral Researcher at Sahlgrenska University Hospital. She has spent years conducting research within the fields of AI and VR...

Episode 274 is a linkshow. Per and James discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention – we feature articles about how designers should be aware of data privacy and laws, plus how causal loop diagrams are a useful tool for understanding.

“All humans are fully human, with many ways of being in the world”. Rather than study the process or solution, we should be studying humans. Indi Young, author of mental models and practical empathy, joins us to talk “purpose”.

We talk to Krystal Higgins, author of Better Onboarding, about what onboarding actually is, how to recognise it needs improvement, and what kind improvements might work. 

Episode 271 is a slightly different linkshow based around a tweet and article by Stephen Anderson, and two related articles, discussing arcs, loops and terrain in the context of service design.

People will abuse our products and use them for harm. It’s not an “if”. People utilise the products we help make to  hurt others, to control, abuse, and stalk people in their lives.  Eva PenzeyMoog joins us to talk about how we can design for safety, prevent harm before it happens, and helping survivors of...

In this classic UX Podcast interview, we talk to Amber Case, author, researcher, designer and, at the time we talked to her, cyborg anthropologist. We chat about the ideas expressed in Amber’s popular TED talk “We are all cyborgs now” before turning our attention to the notion of calm technology.

Brad Frost joins us to talk about the nitty gritty of collaborating to create and manage design systems. We look back at the journey from responsive design to atomic design to design systems, and discuss the challenges with developing design systems and how important collaboration and culture are in order to succeed.

Are we all just putting on a show? A few years ago, Tanya Snook coined the phrase UX Theatre to describe when we are just acting like we’re doing user-centred design rather than actually doing it. 

From this summer, target size is going to become something we hear much more about. In this topic show, we look into what it is, what it means, why we’re going to start hearing more about it, and how this will impact design work (and design discussions). 

Back in 2015 we were lucky enough to meet up with Whitney Hess during her summer vacation in Sweden. In this classic episode we talk to Whitney about her journey from “producer of wireframes” to coaching UX-ers.

In the second part of our 10th anniversary interview with Don Norman, we discuss externalities, the environmental aspects of design, ethics, systems and changing design education.

In this 10th anniversary 2-part special, we are joined by Don Norman. We talk to Don about how design education needs to change so the designers of the future are better equipped to work at the crossroads of business, technology, people, society and culture.

We are joined by Kate Rutter, Kim Goodwin and Pamela Pavliscak to explore why tools, often software tools, are on everyone’s mind and how this may or may not preparing us for the demands of design in the future.

Scott Berkun joins us to talk about how design makes the world. Everything in your life has been designed by someone, and this insight is a powerful way to understand the world, and everything that happens in it.

Episode 260 is a linkshow. Per and James discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention – we feature articles about information architecture and following the principles that our brains expect from physical experiences, plus smart questions you should ask during job interviews.

We are joined by Rishma Hansil to look at Japanese design culture and how this impacts digital design in Japan. Originally from Trinidad and Tobago, Rishma has been living and working in Tokyo for the past 4 years.

We talk Closure experiences with Joe Macleod. The lack of endings was something that Joe kept noticing again and again. There are so many examples in the digital space where there wasn’t an end, or there was an expectation of controlled or ability to end – but the possibility of closure just doesn’t exist. The...

Old research can give new insights. Ben Kraal publishes a newsletter called “1992”. In it he takes research papers from 1992 and looks them from a modern-day perspective.

Episode 256 is a linkshow. Per and James discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention – We discuss dealing with shared and public touch screens plus the trend of publishing content as newsletters.

Do you trust brands? What created that trust and how is it maintained? We look at designing for trust together with content strategist Margot Bloomstein, author of Trustworthy. How does brand personality impact the user experience and how it influences our design decisions and content strategies.

A conversation with information architects Abby Covert and Andrew Hinton about dealing with digital change and how to make future changes better.

For years, accessibility was seen as the domain of the engineer. Fixing an accessibility would be about writing code. As a maturing industry, and as we understand people with different types of disabilities, we are starting to better understand and appreciate the role of design in accessibility. Accessibility legend Derek Featherstone joins us to talk...

Episode 252 is a linkshow. Per and James discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention – We discuss a number of serious issues that the design industry faces plus we take a look at “Stories” and their abundance.

Designing for multiple forms of input and output is no easy task. The dramatic rise in the number of microphones in devices has pushed multimodal design to new levels of complexity. Cheryl Platz joins us to talk about designing in this multimodal world.

Anna and the Gapminder foundation work to promote a fact-based worldview that everyone can understand. They want to help all of us move away from a dramatic worldview that is stressful, wrong and contributes to poor decision-making. “We realised people thought they knew what the world was like around them, but they were usually wrong.”

How will your design be used in 10,000 years? When we produce designs and create technical systems we rarely think in such time-frames, yet many of today’s technology includes ideas decades old, even hundreds. Anthropologist Genevieve Bell joins us to talk about digital anthropology, cyber physical systems, and the new educational needs that have arisen.

“This is about people. It’s about communication”, says Ola. The ways in which organisations are structured and managed are still in many ways rooted in the history of the industrial revolution. To evolve away from this requires care, being human centred and probably a disruptive event on a social level.

Cyd Harrell has been working with civic tech for over a decade, and has accumulated a wealth of knowledge and experience during that time. She’s gathered that experience and knowledge and created a friendly guide for those of us who work, or want to work with technology in the public sector.

Episode 246 is a link show. James and Per discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention – We discuss developer experience and even “internal” developer experience plus mobile interface testing and the challenges of multi-device, multi-browser testing generally.

We all have cognitive biases, flaws in our reasoning and judgement due to our personal beliefs and hidden pattens that we’ve subconsciously adopted over time. David Dylan Thomas joins us to discuss cognitive bias and how we can design for it and work with it.

In this topic show dedicated to icons Per and James look at what icons are, why we, as designers, make use of them and what we can do to make them more understandable and accessible.

Form and survey specialist and author Caroline Jarrett joins us on this classic episode of UX Podcast. Unsurprisingly we chat about surveys and forms beginning with the subject’s roots in data capture and motion studies.

What does it mean to understand something? How do we take information and create understanding? We talk to with Stephen Anderson and Karl Fast and do our best to Figure It Out.

Episode 241 is a link show. James and Per discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention – this time the articles are about “privacy privilege” and the gulf between other professionals and web development plus how design systems haven’t perhaps delivered on the expectation to improve collaboration.

In this classic UX Podcast interview we talk to Lisa Welchman about our responsibility as designers and creators of digital products, services and information.

Everything is a story. Every product experience is a story. Anna Dahlström, author of Storytelling in design joins us to talk about how we can manage, choreograph and narrate that story.

Tim Kariotis talks to us about privacy. What is privacy? How do we go about embedding privacy into design and understanding the privacy and social norms around information?

Mar Murube joins us to talk about the experience of interviewing vulnerable people during the Covid-19 pandemic and what we can do to help ourselves and those being interviewed.

Episode 236 is a link show. James and Per discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention – this time the articles cover why “designisms” are a problem and how to write user research insights.

What makes you anxious when using the internet? We talk to David Swallow about the ways in which websites can make us stressed, irritated and cause serious problems for people with panic and anxiety disorders.

Eva-Lotta Lamm joins us to talk about sketching, visualising and using visualisations for uncovering and exploring problems.

Richard Whitehand has been working hands on with usability testing for decades. He’s spent more hours than anyone we know in a usability lab testing with users. He joins us to talk about the benefits of usability testing, which are more than just discovering issues with your design.

Amy Bucher, author of Engaged – designing for behaviour change, joins us to talk about how psychology can influence the design of digital products.

Designing with words – writing is designing. We talk to Andy Welfle and Michael Metts about how you can go about applying a design methodology to your words.

What is growth marketing? We were curious so we asked Swedish digital marketing expert Sara Öhman to join us and explain what is it and share some of the methods and processes she has in her toolbox.

Six years have passed since Erika Hall published Just Enough Research. Recently she’s released an updated second edition. We took the opportunity to talk to her about her book and research.

Episode 228 is a link show. James and Per discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention – this time the articles are: The Aesthetic-Accessibility Paradox and Three Principles for Designing Machine Learning-Powered Products.

In this classic interview from 2015, we talk to Lori Cavallucci and Amy Silvers to learn more about imposter syndrome – what is it and how it effects us. Why does our branch in particular seem to suffer from it? What can we do to deal with it and can it be a good thing...

How is improvisation, or improv as it’s known, be relevant to those of us working with UX? Mike Gorgone joins us for an entertaining look into how it’s useful and how you can practice it.

Nir Eyal joins us to discuss some of the ideas and topics covered in his two books, Hooked and Indistractable.

Jeanne Liedtka, author of multiple books around design thinking and organic growth, was visiting Stockholm and we had the opportunity to talk to her in person about design thinking and the business value of design.

Becki Hyde, Design Practice Lead at Pivotal, joins us to talk about how to make “Magic with Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration”. Collaborating by actually working together and creating a balanced team with design, product Management and developers.

Josh Seiden and Jeff Gothelf have together written the books Lean UX and Sense and Respond. We learn how they used their own methods to develop their second book based on the feedback from their first.

Kim Goodwin, three-time guest on UX Podcast and a person we have huge amounts of respect for joins us at From Business To Buttons to talk about decision systems – Design systems are often a good investment, but do they give the highest rate of return? No says Kim, changing how we make decisions gives...

Episode 220 is a link show. James and Per discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention – this time the articles are: version 2 of the Lean UX Canvas, and how a positive user experience could increase conversions.

How do i facilitate someone’s discovery? Stephen Anderson has a passion for learning, teaching and facilitating and helps us in this episode think about how we can help both ourselves and others along their journey as a designer. 

The Feedback loop – it’s not just about giving, but also about asking, receiving and acting on the feedback you’ve been given. Claire Lew joins us to share how we can create a culture of feedback. 

Chris Noessel, UX veteran and many-time UX Podcast guest, joins us at From Business To Buttons to talk about randomness – a broad philosophical topic with a rich history and some interesting applications for creativity and design.

In this classic episode, Nathan Shedroff and Christopher Noessel, authors of Make It So, join us to talk about interaction design lessons from science fiction. For a number of years Nathan and Chris have been collecting and investigating interfaces seen and used in science fiction, that research has now made it into book form.

People worry that machines are going to get too smart. The bigger problem right now is that they aren’t smart enough. Daryl Weir, mathematician and data scientist joins us to talk about machine learning and AI.

Episode 214 is a link show. James and Per discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention – this time they’re a research paper about a large scale accessment of dark patterns used on shopping websites, and the story of a health platform roll-out in Denmark.

Lindsey Aitchison, spacesuit designer at NASA, joins us at From Business To Buttons to talk about the challenges and process of designing the equipment astronauts need to wear in order to survive and work in space and other extra-terrestrial environments.

How can we stay up-to-date in a world constantly in flux? Kate Rutter, designer, teacher and co-host of What Is Wrong With UX joins us to talk about how to embrace continious learning and personal growth.

Laura Kalbag, author of Accessibility for Everyone, joins us at From Business To Buttons to talk about accessibility and also disruptive design patterns.

Marc Stickdorn, co-author of This Is Service Design and This Is Service Design doing, joins us at From Business To Buttons to talk about how to get service design truly embedded in organisations.

In April 2019 the Interaction Design Foundation tweeted an article from their archives about rapid prototyping. Attached to the tweet was a short video of someone demonstrating a paper prototype. The response, mainly to the video clip, divided the design world in two. It was either “waste of time!” or “fantastic!”.

Preparing for your next job is like saving for retirement says Jessica Ivins. Start putting yourself out there ahead of time, thinking about what you would like your next job to be and do a little bit to prepare on a regular basis.

We have high expectations for voice interfaces, after all we’ve been talking since birth. It’s natural and nuanced. Ben Sauer joins us to help us navigate the complex world of designing for voice.

The build trap is something many organisations fall into. Building features for the sake of building them. Melissa Perri, author of Escaping the build trap joins us to talk about what organisations and product managers can do to avoid it.

Episode 205 is a link show. James and Jonas discuss three articles that have grabbed their attention – this time they’re about how lying can make you creative and when (and how) to do user research.

Designing sound – or perhaps designing with sound. Sound is part of the user experience and can be added and removed, and in both situations sound needs to be considered and designed. James and Danwei extract some wisdom from audio experience designer Aaron Day, co-author of Designing With Sound along with Amber Case.

The #10yearchallenge involves posting a photo of yourself from 2009 along with a present day photo. We have our own UX Podcast version for you. We look back to UX in 2009 and look forward to what the state of UX could be in 2029. To help look back and speculate, Per and James are...

Physical places and digital places. Together with Jorge Arango Lisa and James discuss concepts from the physical world of architecture and buildings and apply them to the world of digital design.  

Episode 201 is a link show. James and Per discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention – this time they’re about Consistency in design and polarity mapping.

200 Episodes! Almost 5 days of podcast content recorded over 7 and a half years. To celebrate this milestone, Lisa Welchman and Anna Dahlström host this special episode of UX Podcast. Their guests in Episode 200 are podcasters, designers and web geeks James Royal-Lawson and Per Axbom.

Prototyping doesn’t need to be limited to screens and pages. Making physical prototypes with electronics isn’t as complicated as it perhaps sounds. Kathryn McElroy joins us to talk about being a multi-modal designer, bridging the gap between physical and digital, you can think beyond the screen and consider the experience from a broader perspective.

Given the benefits of producing content first, why do we still usually leave it to last? Carrie Hane ,co-author of Designing Connected Content, joins us to talk about how we can work smarter and better with producing – designing – content.

Mental health is something that isn’t discussed openly at the workplace. The tech industry has a higher rate of mental health issues than many other industries. Stress, burn-out, bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety. We talked to Jennifer Akullian, psychologist, coach and former mental health practitioner.

Accessibility and inclusive design is something we’ve regularly mentioned during the years, but we’ve never had a dedicated show about accessibility in general.  We talk about what accessibility means for UX designers and what you can, and should do to make the websites and apps you design more accessible and inclusive.

Imagine you could just draw a concept on a whiteboard and everyone just got it and got on with it. That’s what a design infused organisation looks like. Jared Spool joins us to talk about the growth stages understanding and the growth states of UX in organisations.  Our job as design leaders is to help...

Cyd Harrell has done all kinds of user research. At the beginning of this episode Cyd tells us of the time she live streamed a user interview from a vehicle while the participant was using a mobile device whilst driving. There are times where a user researcher really does need to be fearless.

“Voting in American is hard. There are far more steps than people realise” said Dana Chisnell. We talk to Dana about democracy as a design problem. We look at how the design of civic engagement impacts on both registration and participation and how that impact varies for burdened and privileged voters.

Organisational culture – or values – is our design medium rather than pixels or code. Kim Goodwin joins us on the back of her UXLx 2018 talk “Values are the experience” to discuss how we can enable organisations to make the decisions that allow great UX to happen.

By and large our focus in recent times has been on websites and apps, but increasingly we are going to be asked to design things in physical contexts; terminals, IoT devices, lifts. We talk to Kevin Cannon about ergonomics and UX design – The meeting point of traditional UX and industrial design.

Episode 190 is a link show. James and Per discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention.

Namrata Mehta is a design researcher and innovation consultant, focused on bringing user-centered approaches to public service delivery in emerging economy contexts. We talk to Namrata about the challenges of working with UX within the context of a country with vast social inequality.

Lifts and elevators are things that we love to talk about in UX circles. Every lift seems able to become the starting point for a user experience conversation. To answer all the questions we have about elevators we talk to Reetta Ranne and Jussi Hiltunen who are senior UX design specialists at KONE in Finland.

Jobs to be done is a tool that comes up regularly in UX circles. But exactly what is it? We talk to Tony Ulwick, author of Jobs to be Done: Theory to practice. The framework helps to break down the job that customers want to get done into discrete steps, then help develop ways to...

In the summer of 2016, Boon Sheridan started noticing people gathering outside his home, staring at their phones. Pokemon Go had launched and Boon’s converted church was a Gym. This was Boon’s introduction to the game and how it made use of Augmented Reality.

Kellee Santiago said that when making Journey they wanted to “make a game that creates a renewed sense of faith in humanity”. They wanted to make a game that was inclusive and was appealing to people who perhaps didn’t normally play video games.

“If it sounds like I am saying that design is not a profession, then yes – that is exactly what I am saying. We are not. Without a code of ethics and a body to enforce it, we’re barely even a trade. Maybe less – most trades have accreditation or at least licensing.” Zoe Rose joins...

“When I first joined the workforce, I was unprepared for how much of my work would be dependent upon the success or failure within meetings”. Kevin Hoffman has been both fascinated and frustrated by meetings throughout his career. Meetings are part of your job, like it or not.

Episode 182 is a link show. James and Per discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention.

“Product strategy is a product of product vision” says Richard Banfield. In this show Richard shares his thoughts on product strategy, the sharing of language and culture within a team, the importance of psychological safe space, product team challenges, distributed teams, and the value of making mistakes.

What frustrates people when using mobile sites? Lina Hansson is a conversion specialist at Google. Recently Google has tested almost 500 websites in retail, travel and finance verticals across Europe, the Middle East and Africa on mobile. Lina talk to us about what they discovered and what we can do make mobile sites less frustrating...

“NPS is the KFC of satisfaction scores – it’s everywhere and not good for you”. Jared Spool isn’t a fan of Net Promoter Scores. They are a poor metric, weirdly calculated and easily gamed. Jared says we need to stop using NPS and pay attention, proper attention to our customers.

Game UX – doing research for video games. It’s a relatively young field, coming to the forefront of the gaming industry during the last 5-10 years. We talk to former psychologist Veronica Zammitto who is now the Director of UX research at gaming giant EA.

On May 25, 2018, GDPR comes into effect throughout the EU. Heather Burns joins us to help us understand the implications.

Episode 176 is a link show. James and Per discuss two articles that have grabbed their attention.

We are constantly simplifying the world around us and the people within it. This is a perfectly understandable reaction to the messy things we have to work with. But with every step back we are building a wall between the user and what it is to be human. We talk to Alastair about human centred...

UX Podcast Panel game. Inspired by the legendary panel game devised by Ian Messiter we bring you a UX Podcast Christmas Special. We try to speak uninterrupted for 60 seconds about a given UX related subject.

Alissa Briggs has mastered design leadership. We talked to her during EuroIA in Stockholm where she had held a presentation entitled Race to the Top: Building Skyscrapers & Design Teams that Soar.  In this interview Alissa shares her experiences of – and processes for – running, building and managing a design team.

After over 6 years, UX Podcast is re-branding. Updating or changing your brand doesn’t happen in a vacuum, it impacts everything, including the user experience – but that impact is, in our experience, often overlooked or underplayed. We talk to Jon Bergsman, founder of WDW Creative who have been working with us and our new...

IA, IxD, SEO – all of these and more come under the canopy of UX. “I don’t think any of us can truly call ourselves UX designers, although that’s a very convenient title” said Eric Reiss towards the beginning of our conversation. The environment we work in and the way in which we communicate what...

We need to ask the big hard questions at the beginning of the process so we can make good design decisions later. We talk to Dan Brown about the discovery phase or perhaps as Dan suggests the discovery mindset.

We get a reintroduction to information architecture with Donna Spencer. Donna shares with us some of the methods and tools she teaches as part of her workshops as well as look at some of the challenges that information projects can throw at you.

2 years since Tom’s book Articulating Design Decisions was released we catch up with him again and ask what he’s learnt – is there anything he would now do differently? What have readers of the book found challenging?

Episode 167 is a link show. James and Per discuss three articles that have grabbed their attention.

Per recently launched a service called DickPicLocator to highlight not only the bullying and abuse many people face through digital media, but also the amount of data that we are (often unwittingly) sharing.

Donna Lichaw returns to UX Podcast for another chat, this time we focus on how stories could be used when working with Enterprise UX. Donna is the author of The User’s Journey. In the book Donna explains the idea of storymapping. How, when, and why to use narrative structure in your design work.

Through his own tragic experience after the death of his young daughter Rebecca to cancer, Eric Meyer explains to us how the ideal outcome we design for isn’t the only outcome. We need to use our design skills to humanise the web.

Jina Anne joins us to talk design systems. Jina has for a number of years worked as the lead designer with the Lightning Design System at Salesforce and has been working with style guides since 2004. We dive right in and ask what a design system. How do you make sure people stick to the...

Katie Dill, Director of Experience Design at Airbnb, joined us in the Green Room at From Business To Buttons. A journey is both offline and online. It all comes together in the user experience – but what happens when you, as a UX designer, can’t control it all?

Susan and Guthrie Weinschenk work together as The Team W. They like to take behavioural economics, neuroscience and behavioural psychology; combine them, and apply them to design. We chatted to them after the Stockholm leg of their “How to get people to take action” workshop tour.

Episode 160 is a link show. James and Per discuss three articles that have grabbed their attention. Article one is Emojis: Tools for Emotions Communicating affect in text messages by Monica Riordan “Being unbound by linguistic rules, they engage a user in considering the vast potential emojis have in communication.” The second article we discuss is...

We locked Mike Monteiro in a room at From Business To Buttons here in Stockholm and had a chat. “So, do you want to talk about design or politics?” That was the question that Mike posed to the audience at the start of his presentation earlier in the day. So we asked Mike the same....

Jaime Levy, author of UX Strategy joined us in the green room at From Business To Buttons. We talked about Jaime’s Hyperloop study – the personal journey that led her there and why. Andy Warhol, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk. We talk about the importance of having mentors and heroes no matter where you are on...

James, Per and Danwei were gathered in Studio Axbom to take questions from you, the listeners, in the 9th UX Podcast Listener phone-in.  This is part 2 of the highlights we’ve extracted the 2-hour live session.

James, Per and Danwei were gathered in Studio Axbom to take questions from you, the listeners, in the 9th UX Podcast Listener phone-in.  This is part 1 of the highlights we’ve extracted the 2-hour live session.

How are designers tackling the idea of ethics? We start the episode with Alan using politics and democracy as a vehicle for highlighting the importance of ethics in our work as digital practitioners and the massive impact our work has on the world. We are the creators of the channels of misinformation and we can...

We talk Closure experiences with Joe Macleod. The lack of endings was something that Joe kept noticing again and again. There are so many examples in the digital space where there wasn’t an end, or there was an expectation of controlled or ability to end – but the possibility of closure just doesn’t exist. The...

Episode 153 is a link show. James and Per discuss three articles that have grabbed their attention.

We take a deep dive into Keyboard shortcuts, or hotkeys in this topic show. We dig into how to decide and design what keyboard shortcuts to have in your web app. What are keyboard shortcuts? Are they the same thing as Accesskeys? What standards and conventions are there to follow? What are shortcut no-nos we...

Dave Gray wants to change the way you think. By changing the way you think you can achieve the change you want says Dave. His latest book Liminal Thinking gives you a set of principles and practices to follow. Liminal Thinking is “the art of creating change by understanding, shaping, and reframing beliefs”. We talk...

Harry Brignull joins us to talk about “dark patterns”. Harry coined the phrase back in 2010 to describe the design patterns used on websites to deliberately trick us into doing something.

For a number of years Steve Portigal has been collecting user research war stories. The stories describe experiences researchers have had whilst doing fieldwork. Awkward, morally challenging, painful, unsuccessful.

Episode 148 is a link show. James and Per discuss three articles that have grabbed their attention. The first article is Decision Frames: How Cognitive Biases Affect UX Practitioners.  Kathryn Whitenton explains how we are all vulnerable to cognitive biases and the way in which we frame our problems can bias our design decisions. Article...

This is part 2 of highlights from our 8th UX Podcast Listener phone-in.  On a dark December afternoon James, Per and Danwei gathered in Studio Axbom to chat and take calls from you, the listeners for a 2-hour live show. We discuss living in a VR world, chatbots and suicide prevention, mentoring and getting into...

James, Per and Danwei open the video channels for the 8th UX Podcast Listener phone-in. On a dark December afternoon gathered in Studio Axbom to chat and take calls from you, the listeners. This is part 1 of the highlights we’ve extracted the 2-hour live session. We discuss sketching for unusual environments, working backwards, designing...

Jonas Söderström joins us to talk about complexity. We like to think that we have make the world better through digitalisation, but perhaps all of the productivity gains were actually in the very early days of computing. We hear of the Productivity paradox, the tendency for Feature creep and how we should be pulling down...

Sarah Doody joined us to talk about anticipatory design. What if we didn’t need to find and search through information to help us make decisions. What if instead, information came to us at the right time and with the right context? Professor Andrea Resmini discusses mapping cross-channel ecosystems. We asked Andrea to explain what cross-channel ecosystems...

In a chat based world, the words are the UI. Rather than tapping or clicking, we’re writing and responding. Daniel Harvey talked to us about chatbots and AI and how we are heading for a future where appstores are going to be replaced by botstores.

We don’t generally have a problem considering objects from the past. Speculating about what they are and how they might have been used. We could look at artefacts from the future in a similar manner. We talk to Leo Frishberg about presumptive design and how you can use that as a provocative design research tool.

Episode 141 is a link show. James and Per discuss three articles that have grabbed their attention. Design standards, form validation, and prototyping with chatbots.

Donna Lichaw is the author of The User’s Journey. In the book Donna explains the idea of storymapping. How, when, and why to use narrative structure in your design work. During our chat we learn more about narrative structure, storymapping, “origin stories” and how brand stories and storymapping are connected.

In part 2 of our two part chat with Melissa Perri and Evgenia Grinblo about education and leadership, we ask why are we doing all this stuff? The importance of metrics, incentives and leadership. Caring about your team and keeping them on track.

We found ourselves talking separately to Melissa Perri and Evgenia Grinblo about education within the UX and design industry. So we brought them both into the same room and pressed record.

We talk to Andy Budd about design leadership. As our relatively young industry matures and expands, many people are moving from being UX practitioners to being UX leaders, or design leaders.

“Unfold your brain – Skyrocket your creative ability” was the title of Denise Jacobs’s highly interactive workshop at UXLx this spring. We talked to Denise about how to banish our inner critic and the mental blocks that get in the way of creative thinking. We also talked about how you can improve focus and get your brain into a...

We live in a bit of a western-world UX-bubble. Stephanie Rieger joined us in the first half of this episode to give us a glimpse into how things are in Asia. Amongst other things we talk about social media as an eCommerce platform and the dominance of marketplaces.

Since its launch in 2014, Google’s design framework – Material Design has been gathering momentum and spreading beyond its original focus of mobile applications.

At UXLx James and Per both attended Val Head’s workshop to learn more about animation in online interfaces. The workshop gave us some excellent examples and Val had us experiment with prototyping animation. In this interview we learn a bit more about animation best practices and how animation for example can help with spatial orientation, feedback...

James, Per and Danwei open the video channels for the 7th UX Podcast Listener phone-in. On a warm Friday afternoon in June we took questions and calls from listeners. We’ve extracted some highlights from the 2-hour live session and condensed them into this regular 30 minute episode. The topics covered in this listener phone-in were: Guerrilla research, ridiculous...

Alan Cooper was the closing keynote on the speaker day at UXLx 2016. Alan, the creator of visual basic and co-founder of design agency Cooper, hasn’t made so many public appearances in recent years. Instead he’s been concentrating on running Monkey Ranch – his farmstead in the hills of Petaluma, California. In part two of our two-part interview, Alan discusses...

Alan Cooper was the closing keynote on the speaker day at UXLx 2016. Alan, the creator of visual basic and co-founder of design agency Cooper, hasn’t made so many public appearances in recent years. Instead he’s been concentrating on running Monkey Ranch – his farmstead in the hills of Petaluma, California. His keynote took us all a bit...

We talk to Lou Rosenfeld about the 4th edition of Information Architecture (“The Polar Bear book”) and how the fields of IA and UX have evolved over the years since the book first came out. We also talk about going beyond user research and the importance of combining your research with other data points.

In our listener survey we ask the question: What is the biggest occupational challenge facing you right now? Over the past few surveys we’ve gather quite a number of responses to that question. In this episode we take a look at some of the challenges you say that you face, and even try to give some...

A linkshow. James and Per discuss three articles that have grabbed their attention. The first article is Users always choose the path of least resistance by Paul Boag. Paul says that users will always take the easy option so to maintain a competitive advantage, we need to focus on simplicity. The second article is Transitions...

Don Norman is without a doubt one of the most influential voices within the UX and design industry and also the cognitive sciences. Don produced some of the earliest literature about human-centered design within the digital space – he also coined the term “user experience” whilst working at Apple. In part 2 of our conversation with...

Don Norman is without a doubt one of the most influential voices within the UX and design industry and also the cognitive sciences. Don produced some of the earliest literature about human-centered design within the digital space – he also coined the term “user experience” whilst at Apple.

James, Per and Danwei open the video channels for the 6th UX Podcast Listener phone-in. We’ve pulled out the highlights from the live session and made them into 2 separate episodes.

James, Per and Danwei open the video channels for the 6th UX Podcast Listener phone-in. On a Friday afternoon in March we took questions and calls from listeners. We’ve pulled out the highlights from the live session and made them into 2 separate episodes. The topics covered in part 1 of this two-part phone-in are AI,...

We talk to Amber Case, cyborg anthropologist and UX designer. We chat about the ideas expressed in Amber’s popular TED talk “We are all cyborgs now” before turning our attention to the notion of calm technology.

Spawned from his keen interest in sci-fi interfaces Chris Noessel is passionate about the concept of agentive technology; computers doing things on our behalf. Computers may do things we don’t want to do or ourselves, things we don’t know how how to do or things we’ve never done before. The trick of course is for...

Melissa Perri has a background as both a product manager and a UX-er. We learn more about the overlap between the two disciplines and discuss some of the issues surrounding their convergence. Melissa also shared some advice about applying lean methodologies to your organisation including working with hypotheses and building to learn.

We talk to Tom Greever about Articulating Design Decisions. How do we talk about our designs effectively with stakeholders? Every designer has to explain (and justify) their design decisions to non-designers but what are the skills tactics and methods that are needed to pull this off in a way that opens the door for your project to...

Sometimes we just run on auto-pilot. Male and Female. Two genders. His and Hers. A simple, polarised, view. When gender is implemented this way in websites and apps, it can not only lead to individuals feeling excluded but also cause emotional distress. We talk to Sara Lerén about being inclusive – how we can kick old...

It’s so easy to add a little rectangle to a wireframe, but what are the consequences of adding an image to your design? Are images good or bad for UX? How can we improve our design processes so that we take the impact of images properly into account? In this topic show Per and James look into...

James, Per and Danwei Tran Luciani open the video channels for the 5th UX Podcast Listener phone-in. The theme for this phone-in is The Demise of UX. Our guests in this Christmas phone-in ended up being James Mole McConnell, Craig Sullivan and Mike Atherton.

A linkshow. James and Per discuss three articles that have grabbed their attention.

One of the problems with user interfaces is that it often feels like we’re serving the machines rather than them serving us. They demand so much care and need so much attention. We are joined by Andy Goodman to talk about Zero UI and the challenges that lie ahead for us in regard to user interfaces. The movement...

The second of our two shows featuring interviews from Interact London 2015. We talk to Jim Kalbach, Vanessa Kirby, Craig Sullivan and Sofia Hussain.

Our first of two shows featuring interviews from Interact London 2015 has a bit of a brain-related theme to it. We talk to Steve Portigal about mindfulness, self-insight and presence and how these impact on your work as a designer.

A linkshow.  James and Per discuss three articles that have caught their attention. The first article is Who Needs UX Strategy by Paul Bryan. Secondly we look at 7 things that make it harder to manage your multinational websites by Lise Bissonnette Janody. Last but not least we discuss Meta-moments, thoughtfulness by design by Andrew Grimes...

We were lucky enough to meet up with Whitney Hess during her summer vacation in Sweden. We talk to Whitney about her journey from “producer of wireframes” to coaching UX-ers. How to you design yourself? How do you give yourself permission to do your best work? “You need to stop doing the things you don’t want...

Simon Norris, CEO of Nomensa joins us to chat about UX strategy. We look back over how digital has matured during the last 15 years and how the world today is so utterly different to how we thought it would be back then. Simon differentiates between micro and macro UX and explains how UX by...

“Thank you for ginning us!” In the style of a radio phone-in, James and Per open the door and invite in you, the listener. Our guests in our fourth listener phone-in ended up being Heather Burns, Simon Kemp, and Artem Pereverzev.

Lisa Welchman was the opening speaker on the conference day of UXLx 2015. She posed the question Are we Architecting the Information Age? We talk to her about our responsibility as designers and creators of digital products, services and information. We discuss the need to take a holistic view and have the confidence to stand up for what we...

Many of us suffer from imposter syndrome. Everyone else is better than me. This was just luck. Good timing. Soon they’re going to find out that I’m faking it. We talk to Lori Cavallucci and Amy Silvers to learn more about what is it and how it effects us. Why does our branch in particular...

A triple set of interviews with Nicole Fenton, Alastair Somerville and Mike Atherton recorded at UXLx 2015.  Nicole is an editor, writer, content strategist. Alastair is a specialist in sensory cognition and accessibility. Mike is a user experience designer and information architect.

A conversation with Abby Covert and Andrew Hinton about dealing with digital change. Recorded at UXLx 2015. Abby is an independent information architect and author of How to Make Sense of Any Mess. Andrew is also an information architect and author of Understanding Context.

A Linkshow. James and Per discuss three recent articles they have found on their digital travels. Our first article is Designing with Analytics by one of our previous guests Pamela Pavliscak. Hands on advice for using web analytics for research. Our second article is What is Zero UI? John Brownlee’s Coverage of Andy Goodman‘s talk...

Interviews with Adrian Howard and Mike Beasley recorded at UXLx 2015. Adrian regularly teaches and speaks on integrating Lean, UX and Agile methods and Mike is the author of Practical Web Analytics for User Experience.

An interview with Josh Clark and Stephen Hay recorded at UXLx 2015. Josh is the man behind Big Medium, formally Globalmoxie, and was the closing keynote speaker at UXLx. Stephen Hay is the author of Responsive Design Workflow, designer, developer and magician.

Happy 4th Birthday UX Podcast! We happen to turn 4 at the same time as reaching the milestone of 100 episodes. In this birthday special we really do sing happy birthday, then we invite you to join us on a trip down memory lane.

Three articles stumbled upon recently by James and Per are up for discussion in this Link Show. First up – Why It’s Totally Okay to Use a Hamburger Icon. Or rather, why you should support top tasks with your designs. Second – Content first design. Using content prototypes to perfect your content. Third and finally –...

UX Podcast attended the biggest UX conference in Sweden to date with over 850 attendees. “From Business To Buttons” was held on 21 April 2015. We managed to talk to three of the speakers on the day: Pamela Pavliscak, Cindy Alvarez and Mike Monteiro. To round up the day we were joined by Ben Sauer, UX Designer at Clearleft.

We talk to Joe Leech about psychology for designers and bullshit science. We debunk some myths and “rules” that come across as truths.

Episode 96 is a linkshow. James and Per discuss three articles they’ve stumbled upon whilst roaming the internet.

The father of the term Responsive Web Design, Ethan Marcotte, joins us for a chat. We talk, naturally, about responsive web design. How it came about, where it is today and where it’s heading.

In the style of a radio phone-in, James and Per open the door and invite in you, the listener. Our guests in our third listener phone-in ended up being James Buller, Jesper Bylund, Dan Turner, and Tim Wright.

We’re joined by Kim Goodwin author of Designing for the digital age and UX executive at both PatientsLikeMe and Cooper. We dive into the merits of journey mapping. What it is and how it can be useful.

Lisa Welchman, from Active Standards, joins us to talk about digital governance. How to manage the chaos and put a digital governance framework in place.

Automated marketing. The marketeer’s dream. What is it, and how does this impact UX? Aimee Ravacon from Specopssoft shares her experiences after successfully implementing marketing automation into her organisations’ digital marketing.

Episode 90 is a link show. James and Per discuss three articles they’ve stumbled upon whilst roaming the internet. First – Under-resourced and isolate: who would be a digital marketing manager? It’s complex and get more complex by the day. Second – The Seven Most Important UI and UX ideas of 2014. A retrospective look back...

How do you build a minimum viable product? Inspired by a Twitter conversation, we talk to Russ Unger, Stephen Anderson and Jeff Gothelf about what MVP is, what it isn’t. Does it cause more confusion than add value? What are we trying to learn and validate? We get some hangups off our chests, and discuss...

We’re joined by usability grandmaster Jared Spool. Inspired by a tweet we asked Jared to join us to dive a little deeper.

In the style of a radio phone-in, James and Per open up the communication channels and talk to you the listener. Our guests in our second listener phone-in show ended up being Wedge Black, Tim Wright, Heather Burns and James Mole McConnell.

UX Podcast was lucky enough to take part in the first ever Redesigning Star Wars workshop run by Chris Noessel. Chris is the co-author of Make It So, the main guy behind scifiinterfaces.com and design fellow at Cooper.

When Bart, James and Per start talking, they just don’t stop. This is an extended and thought-provoking interview with Bart Schutz that we recorded at Conversion Jam 4.

UX Podcast attended one of the biggest conversion optimisation conferences in the world, Conversion Jam 4, organised by Conversionista. We grabbed interviews with 4 of the keynote speakers. There was a definite psychology-theme to our interviews .

Hot on the heels of the launch of the iPhone 6 with it’s NFC chip and Apple Pay, we talk to Skip Allum, the author of Designing Mobile Payment Experiences. We learn about the different types of solutions, talk about barriers to use, what hasn’t worked, what could work and ponder the future of paying with our phones....

On June 13th 2014 the Consumer Rights Directive came into force across Europe. This law has a direct impact on the way we design our websites within Europe and bans the use of certain dark patterns. We talk to Heather Burns, author of The web designer’s guide to the consumer rights directive, to find out more.

Touring UX, design and dev conference Hybridconf landed in Stockholm this year. We were there for both days to listen, learn and most importantly to interview some of the speakers. We managed to chat to four of this year’s speakers. Dan Rubin opened day 1 with his silo-busting talk “We don’t talk anymore”. Natasha Irizarry...

Episode 80 is a link show. James and Per discuss three articles they’ve stumbled upon whilst dredging the internets. First – Everything is broken. Really, everything is broken. Can we fix it? Do we care enough to fix it? Second – UX without user research is not UX. Isn’t it? Does it matter?  And lastly...

With Facebook moving messaging to a separate app, unbundling has really hit the big time. What is app unbundling? Should you be adopting it as a strategy for your app/product? Piece of cake to pull off or hideous nightmare? We are joined by Alissa Briggs, Senior UX Manager at Intuit, to talk our way through the...

In the style of a radio phone-in, James and Per open up the communication channels and talk to you the listener. We took calls live and blind not knowing who was going to ring and what we were going to talk about.

Form and survey specialist and author Caroline Jarrett joins us on this episode of UX Podcast. Unsurprisingly we chat about surveys and forms beginning with the subject’s roots in data capture and motion studies. Amongst other things we talk about the four steps involved in answering a question and problems such as non-response error and coverage...

Episode 76 is a link show. James and Per discuss three articles they’ve discovered on their digital travels. First – 45 days to plan a Tweet? Just a bit of bad press, deliberate PR? How do we know what’s true anymore? Second – Thank you for signing up! Pay attention to your thank you pages. And finally...

Dave Gray of Gamestorming fame joined us in Stockholm to share some stories around principles of agility. Patterns to guide you rather than dogma to rule you. Does your organisation have a culture that’s capable of being agile?  How do you survive in an agile environment and within connected teams?

James and Per jumped on the early morning train from Stockholm and headed down to Gothenburg for the international day of Intranätverk 2014, a conference focusing on intranets and the digital workplace. Recent years have seen quite a change in the intranet scene, user centric design methods are increasingly common place in intranet projects. We found...

James and Per are joined by Russ Unger to talk about workshops. How do you plan and create a workshop? How do you become an awesome facilitator?

An accessible, user-centered comment system? How has no one managed to do that before? UX Podcast is joined by Malin Crona from The Centre for Easy-to-Read and Mikael Zackrisson from Ziggy Creative Colony to talk about the c4all commenting system.

James and Per are joined in this episode by Jens Wedin to talk about design research. When should you do research? Why should you do it? How should you do it? How much is enough? Our discussion also goes into ways of working as a UX practitioner and we share a fair few tips. How...

UX Podcast attended the launch of Vimla, a new mobile network developed start-up style by Telenor here  in Sweden that aims to be simple, open, and community driven.

UX Podcast in Sweden stretches across 6000km of Atlantic ocean to join up with The Dirt Show in Boston for a crossover show. James and Per from UX Podcast along with Steve, Mark and Tim from The Dirt Show quiz each other about how UX and web development in the US and Europe.

Are you in it for the money or in it for the UX? James and Per reflect on Facebook’s $19bn purchase of Whatsapp, the history and future of messaging and personal correspondence as well as how the start-up ideology you adopt can affect your approach to UX. (Listening time: 38 minutes) Episode 68: @axbom &...

UX deliverables with Anna Dahlström. We look at the problem with UX deliverables, explore being tactical and adapting what you produce to the situation, dabble with mentoring and find time for a “fika”.

A Link show. James and Per discuss three recent articles found during their digital travels. Has information architecture been hindered by the rise of user experience? What is user experience? and finally how do you make sure that users don’t accidentally delete things?

We’re joined by The Web Psychologist Nathalie Nahai to talk dirty. We discuss sex and UX. Is everything connected to sex, even online?

A Link show to start the year. Per and James discuss three recent articles that they’ve found during their digital travels. With font-face now widely supported how much thought do you need to put into your font-stack? How do you go about adding personality to your website or product? Finally we take a look at...

Whilst sat around an open fire drinking sherry and wearing Santa hats, James and Per record a podcast about podcasts. In this meta-show we explain how podcasts help us in our work. What is it that makes us like a podcast? What kind of challenges do podcaster face in producing awesome shows? Finally we recommend...

In this linkshow James and Per discuss 3 articles they’ve found during their digital travels. We start off by discussing customer experience landmines – things (from the experiences of a non-uxer) that can be hurdles for your customers. In the middle of the show we get delightful and discuss  adding delight to your ux. Finally...

Costas Papaikonomou is The Grumpy Innovator and author of Thoughts from a Grumpy Innovator as well as one of the founding partners of the Happen group that specialises in helping organisations transform their innovation success rate.

Web forms and form analytics. We’re joined (once he’d found the right garden!) by Jonas Arnklint from Stockholm-based start-up Revrise to talk about web forms.

Why do we produce so much content, and so many websites and apps, that people don’t want or need? We take a look at the problem of bloat that so many information rich (non-transactional) sites have. How did our sites end up this fat and irrelevant?

We meet up with Mattias Beijmo, founder of Duma and course leader for Web Management at Berghs School of Communication for a chat about beards. After the facial hair chat out of the way we ask Mattias how, back in the 90s, he got into the web branch.

Episode 57 of UX Podcast is a link show. James and Per discuss three articles found during their digital travels. We start off with some satire and discuss a humorous article about top carousels, a conversation that evolves into a reflective discussion about culture and native languages. The middle article focuses on navigation design patterns for...

Conversion Jam 3 was held recently here in Stockholm. Conversion Jam is a conference for online marketing/ecommerce managers, optimizers and analysts. About 350 people gathered together to spend a day listening to international speakers and a number of interesting cases. We managed to interview four of the speakers – Craig Sullivan, Ton Wesseling, Brian Massey...

On Obama-day here in Stockholm we were joined by Stephen Early, owner of Individual Pubs in the UK and, earlier this year, became the first pubs in the UK to offer Bitcoin as a payment option.

A Link show. James and Per discuss three articles found during their digital travels. We begin by talking about Deception and when does persuasive design become evil? Ethnographical research gets a run-through – too achedemic, or value for money? Finally we tackle the question: should designers code? Do we become pegasuses or unicorns? (Listening time:...

James and Per are both fans of quantified self. In this show we take a look at what quantified self and life logging are. We chat about some of the potential benefits plus some of the challenges that surface from a UX and user perspective. Is quantified self ready for mainstream, or is it still...

Inspired by a question Bruno Figueiredo posted to Facebook, James and Per try to answer the question – How do you decide what resolution to design for? We talk about screen resolutions, viewports, typography, whitespace, languages, statistics. To finish off, we even try to provide an answer to the question… (Listening time 44 minutes) Designing for...

We’re joined in Episode 51 by mobile web strategist and front-end designer Brad Frost. Brad’s blog posts have featured in a number of UX Podcast link shows, and he’s a bit of an ideological soul-mate of James and Per. We talk about breaking down silos, standing up and doing things “right”, the importance of consistency, the...

Separated by a hundred million square kilometres of Atlantic Ocean, James and Per bring you a link show featuring three articles we’ve found during our digital travels. We start, as the article itself prescribes, by discussing content, words in particular. We then dovetail into Atomic Design and using chemistry as a conceptual metaphor for web...

On the back of the NSA Prism revelations, we’re joined by Pär Lannerö to talk about internet privacy and the complicated world of terms and conditions. How can we make them more simple and manageable? How can we tip the balance back in favour of the individual? Unknown to us, Per’s microphone was broken. So at...

After returning from Intranätverk, an intranet conference recently held in Sweden, James shares some reflections. We also talk about user centered design for the digital workplace and how intranets are the “poorer brother” of the world of web. Has the world of intranets finally started to catch up?

That’s it. it’s all over. Time to board the aeroplane and head back to Stockholm. It’s been a fun and intensive 3 days of conferencing, including 6 podcasts recorded on location. In this final show from UXLx we chat a bit about the conference day yesterday and also look back on the conference as a...

In the bar of the Tryp Oriente at the end of day 2 of  UXLx 2013 we settle down with a  beer and reflect on the conference so far together with Chris McCann. What themes have we noticed? how were the 4th workshops? and how did Per’s Eliminate Design lightning talk go down?

It’s just before lunch on day 2 of UXLx 2013 and we were lucky enough to grab a few minutes of Luke Wroblewski‘s time right after his morning workshop Organizing Mobile Web Experiences. We chat about device proliferation, device ergonomics and some of the other challenges heading our way. (Listening time 13 minutes) References: Luke’s presentaton:...

It’s the end of the first day of UXLx 2013 and we grab a few minutes just before they lock up the venue for the night to chat to Mr Lean UX, Jeff Gothelf. We had a little problem with the sound during this show, some echo and hiss appeared from nowhere. Sorry! (Listening time 12...

The first morning of the conference is over and we’re straight out of our first workshops. James attended Better Meetings by Design with Kevin Hoffman and Per attended Lean Ethnography with Kelly Goto.

We are in Lisbon, Portugal for UXLx 2013. Today we travelled down from Stockholm via Frankfurt and spent the pre-conference evening tasting some wine and mingling with other delegates. To finish off the day, we were joined by Bruno Figueiredo, the organiser and curator of UXLx. We talk to him about the conference and about the...

It’s time to pack our bags and head off to Lisbon, Portugal for UXLx 2013. In this show we talk about the things you should think about and prepare before attending a conference in order to get the most out of it. We also look at the programme for UXLx 2013, chat about the workshops...

Spring has finally arrived in Stockholm. In this link-show James and Per discuss three articles they’ve recently stumbled upon. We discuss… the important of cognitive load when making simple products, websites and services. Why every start up needs a UX advisor – or why everyone needs a UX advisor. Finally we chat about Google’s new...

Jesper Åström joined us in Episode 39 for a chat at Clarion Sign Hotel in Stockholm. Jesper is is currently writing a series of 100 guest blog posts in 100 days. A crazy challenge. One of the posts so far was about “workers, commentators and spectators” where Jesper outlined the 1-9-90 method and gave some...

Once James has finished talking about gardening and pruning apple trees, we get on with a link show. We discuss three recent articles we’ve found on our travels. Google does some pruning of its own and sunsets Google Reader. Econsultancy published a list of 14 lousy web trends that are making a come back. Finally...

Brett King, banking disruptor and founder of mobile-based Moven bank joins us for a chat from a restaurant in Santa Monica, California. Retail banking is about to be disrupted. There no way of avoiding of stopping that. Can existing banks survice? Can new banks establish themselves? and big a role will UX will play in...

Two giggly old men begin this episode of UX Podcast by corpsing. Once we had composed ourselves, the topic was misunderstanding the term UX.  What is UX? Can it be definied? Can you be a “UX-er”? Is the phrase “UX” needed or are we just unnecessarily compliating things? (Listening time: 36 minutes) References: White rabbits...

Many people and families share login details and profiles for various digital services. Why are so many of these services failing from a UX perspective in such common user scenarios? Netflix, Spotify, Facebook, even the iPad itself all suffer from these problems. In Episode 35 James and Per dive into the topic, discuss some examples...

Recorded at Web Service Award 2013 in Stockholm, Sweden. We talk to Judith Wolst, course co-ordinator for Interactive Communication at Bergs School of Communication, about educating the digital stars of the future. We also grabbed a few minutes with one of this year’s students, Diago Fria, who gives an insight into what they are learning...

In the first show of 2013, James and Per host a link show… with a single link. We talk our way through a recent blog post by Gannon Burgett where he lays out 13 design trends for 2013. We turn into grumpy old men about some of them, but find that we like and agree with some...

James and Per bring you episode 32 of UX Podcast from a bar in Stockholm. We’re are joined by Jonas Söderström, author of Jävla skitsystem (Stupid bloody system) and “the Swede that comes closest to the title of web usability guru”. We talk about poorly designed digital systems and the work related stress this causes....

In episode 31 of UX Podcast James and Per are joined by Derek Featherstone from Simply Accessible to talk about infographics and how we can make them more accessible. We say “everything that needs to be said” and cover some of the challenges, types of accessibility problems, downsides of making infographics accessible, and share some...

A linkshow – In episode 30 of UXPodcast James Royal-Lawson and Per Axbom have a discussion based around two recent articles that they’ve found during their digital travels. This show’s topics are (roughly)… Detecting the iPad Mini Practical issues with cloud services (Listening time: 30 minutes) References: Mission: Impossible – iPad mini detection for HTML5...

This episode comes “live” from Conversion Jam 2 in Stockholm Sweden. A conference about conversion optimisation. In this episode we have a chat with Mårten Angner who held a presentation about the (lack of) effectiveness of top carousels (or “sliding banners”) (Listening time 16 minutes) References: Will front page carousels improve your conversion rate? Mårten’s...

This episode comes “live” from Conversion Jam 2 in Stockholm Sweden. A conference about conversion optimisation. In this episode we have a chat with Annelie Näs who worked with Swedish mobile operator Halebop to create their responsive e-commerce site. (Listening time 10 minutes) References: Halebop Annelies presentation on slideshare Other UX Podcast episodes from Conversion...

This episode comes “live” from Conversion Jam 2 in Stockholm Sweden. A conference about conversion optimisation. In this episode we have a chat with Brian Clifton, author of Avanced Web Metrics one of the presenters this morning with a talked called “What the hell should we use all this web data for?”

This episode comes “live” from Conversion Jam 2 in Stockholm Sweden. A conference about conversion optimisation. We share our expectations for the day and have a chat with the first keynote speaker of the day, Craig Sullivan an optimisation rock-star (and DJ). We previously chatted with Craig in Episode 11 of UX Podcast about mobile optmisation.

In this show James and Per were joined by Nathan Shedroff and Christopher Noessel authors of Make It So, interaction design lessons from science fiction. For a number of years Nathan and Chris have been collecting and investigating interfaces seen and used in science fiction, that research has now made it into book form.

Sara Andersson from Search Integration joins James and Per in Episode 24 to discuss search and No Ketchup. We talk to Sara about her long background in search and marketing, her passion for search and the “no ketchup” blog – doing honest work for clients, pulling the lid on sugar coated fluffy offers that deliver...

This time James and Per discuss usability rules and recommendations. Jakob Nielsen earlier this year updated his web design recommendation, saying that you should now design for around 1440 pixels wide. With this as a starting point we cover browser viewports, research,  recommendations, responsive web design and mobile web sites. Phew, all that and a...

In this show James and Per discuss web management. We take 3 recent examples where organisations have undertaken major changes to their web presence and investigate how it all went. What did they do well? what went wrong? what should they have done? (Listening time 39 minutes, including 2 minutes of comedy intro) References: Namnbyte...

In this episode James and Per talk about Sweden Social Web Camp. A yearly unconference held on an island off the south coast of Sweden. Per was there, James watched from afar. We discuss what the conference is about, how it works and what the whole experience is like – we even throw in few...

A linkshow – In episode 20 of UXPodcast James Royal-Lawson and Per Axbom discuss three recent articles that they’ve found during their digital travels, discuss them and swear a little. This episode’s topics are… Social media marketing – Barclay’s Facebook Debacle The agency model – It’s f*cked Visual marketing – adding images to your content...

In this episode of UXPodcast James Royal-Lawson and Per Axbom take three recent articles that they’ve stumbled upon during their digital travels and discuss them.

In this show we sat down at Kulturhuset in Stockholm together with Martin Christensen, user experience designer and agile coach, to talk about agile and how you apply it to multiple disciplines, including UX. Martin promised to give us a “silver bullet” solution for handling agile ux. Let’s listen and find out what it is… (Listening...

Three jam-packed days of UXLx have whizzed by. 4 workshops, 4 lightning events, 10 conference talks, fair few glasses of wine and beer, an incredible number of conversations with a whole load of really smart people. In this 6th and last podcast from Lisbon at UXLx we give you a quick roundup of our favourite...

It’s the end of day 2 here at UXLx and that means that we’ve finished the workshop part of the conference. This afternoons workshops were We’ve done all this research, now what? with Steve Portigal and Accessibillity for UX Designers with Derek Featherstone. (Listening time: 13 minutes)

During the lunch break of day 2 here at UXLx 2012 Per and James talked to Dave Gray, one of the co-authors of Gamestorming and one of the workshop holders here yesterday morning. As well as talking to Dave about his workshop and preparation for it, we also got a few tips of gamestorming techniques...

The afternoon of the first day of UXLx has included 2 lightning talks followed by a three hour workshop lecture. James and Per give you a quick run down and also talk about how workshops should be workshops. (Listening time: 12 minutes) @beantin and @axbom caught in the act: creating the infamous #uxpodcast pic.twitter.com/Gaj7F641 — Alissa...

It’s the end of the first morning here at #uxlx and we’ve got our first workshops under out belts. James took part in David Gray’s Gamestorming session whilst Per took part in Peter Morville’s Cross-Channel Strategy workshop. Here’s our initial thoughts from right after lunch… (Listening time 9 minutes)

This week we are recording from UXLx in Lisbon Portugal. We are planning to record a number of podcasts and cover both the workshops on Wednesday and Thursday and then the conference day on Friday. Episode 12 comes from James and Per’s hotel room at the Trip Oriente. We had quite a fight with Garageband...

Craig Sullivan, optimiseordie on Twitter, joins us in episode 11 of UXPodcast to talk about the best way to go about creating a mobile site.

In Episode 9 of UXPodcast one of the topics we discussed was simulated eye tracking. In this episode, James and Per dedicate the entire show to discussing attention simulation tools. These are tools that use algorithms to analyse your website (or other visual media) to work out which part may attract attention. After one failed...

In this month’s episode of UXPodcast James Royal-Lawson and Per Axbom take four recent finds from their digital travels and discuss them.

In this month’s episode of UXPodcast James Royal-Lawson and Per Axbom take four recent finds from their digital travels and discuss them. This month’s topics are… UX and the EU cookie law Responsive content Mobile app versus web app “Clear” (Listening time: 32 minutes) References: Backup för en lathund – eller tvärtom (in Swedish) EU...

In this month’s episode of UX Podcast James Royal-Lawson and Per Axbom talk about the darling of 2011 – responsive web design – what is it? what are the benefits? What are the pitfalls? Is responsive web design the ultimate solution to web design? or is it, in many ways, a step backwards? (Listening time: 21...

In this month’s episode of UXPodcast James Royal-Lawson and Per Axbom are joined by Christopher McCann to talk about the UX Community – or lack of it. What is UX? What is it that UXers do? Why does nobody understand us? How can we make UX more understood? Where is the silver bullet? The ride...

In this month’s episode of UXPodcast James Royal-Lawson and Per Axbom are joined by Jesper Bylund to talk about gamification. What is gamification? is it a buzzword, or just marketing? Can anything be gamified? Can a podcast be gamified?

This month’s episode of UXPodcast with James Royal-Lawson and Per Axbom discusses the quality of websites and digital activities – Why do so many end up being below par? Why do some end up being great? What can we do raise the quality of the web stuff we make and run?

This month’s episode of UXPodcast with James Royal-Lawson and Per Axbom talks about when offline meets online – stories and examples highlighting how attempts at connecting the two often fail as well as suggestions as to how to improve your chances of succeeding.

This month’s episode of UXPodcast with James Royal-Lawson and Per Axbom talks about Search – its complexity and shortcomings, its evolution, and how we can deal with that evolution. In part one – Does search work? With the introduction of social and blended search, It’s become more complex than ever to comprehend. We take a...

In this the first ever episode of UXPodcast with James Royal-Lawson and Per Axbom we talk about User Experience Lisbon 2011. Which was a UX conference held in Portugal between the 10th and the 13th May 2011.

Hosted by James Royal-Lawson and Per Axbom. UX Podcast has been Breaking down silos, boosting your confidence, and sharing knowledge since 2011.