Explore every episode of the podcast Beyond UX Design
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Belief Bias: Why Good Ideas Get Grilled and Bad Ones Sail Through | 02 Oct 2026 | 00:15:38 | |
This week we dig into belief bias, the reason your team grills the research it doesn’t like and waves through the stuff it already agrees with. Same evidence, two completely different levels of scrutiny.If you’ve ever won an argument at work, how sure are you that you made the better case and not just the more popular one?Belief bias is what happens when we judge an argument by whether we agree with where it lands instead of whether the logic actually holds up. If the conclusion sounds right, weak reasoning gets a pass. If it sounds wrong, suddenly everyone turns into a fact-checker. It’s one of the oldest reasoning errors on record, first noted back in 1928, but the study that set the template came in 1983 when Evans, Barston, and Pollard separated two things that usually travel together: whether an argument is valid and whether its conclusion is believable. People accepted believable conclusions about nine times out of ten, no matter whether the logic held.On a product team this shows up everywhere scrutiny is supposed to live. The design direction everyone already likes gets a thin rationale waved through, while the unexpected one gets picked apart. A sloppy study that confirms the roadmap is “directionally useful,” and a solid one that threatens it is suddenly “not statistically significant.” The same point lands when a senior person makes it and stalls when a junior person says the exact same thing. The fix isn’t to distrust your gut. It’s to grade the reasoning before you look at the conclusion, notice when the hard questions only come out for answers you don’t like, and slow things down when the stakes are real.Give it a listen and catch yourself before belief bias makes the call for you.Topics: • 00:00 - Same idea, two meetings • 03:45 - Two research studies, same afternoon • 05:05 - What belief bias actually is (and where it came from) • 06:00 - The 1983 study that proved it • 07:00 - Why it happens: fast belief vs slow logic • 08:10 - Belief bias is not confirmation bias • 08:40 - Where it shows up on product teams • 10:00 - Does group discussion fix it? • 11:20 - 5 ways to catch belief bias — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify • Subscribe on YouTube | |||
| We Cut Figma. Here's Why. // What Survives E02 | 24 Sep 2026 | 00:19:01 | |
It’s a regular Thursday sync until my manager cuts our Figma license and hands the whole product team one month to go fully AI. In this one I walk through who made that call, the surprisingly solid case for it, and the very selfish panic running through my head while I said nothing. When the tool you spent a decade mastering loses its market value in a single meeting, what exactly are you afraid of losing: your job, or your identity? This is the episode about the day the call actually came down. I’m at my kitchen counter with a fresh coffee, hopping on a normal weekly UX sync, when my manager announces the entire product team is moving to a 100% AI workflow by the end of the month. And by the way, the Figma license is getting cut. No debate, no “what does everyone think.” The decision was made in a room I wasn’t in, then delivered to a room full of designers who had about a month to deal with it. I do two things in this one. First, I try to be fair to the decision, because it deserves it. I get into the cost math leadership was staring at in early 2026, the pricing question Bob Baxley raised after I posted about the switch, and why ripping the band-aid off with a brutally short deadline was probably the right move and not the reckless one it felt like. Then I tell you the less flattering half: what was actually going through my head in that meeting. Spoiler, not one of those thoughts was about our users or the work. Every single one was about me, my title, and whether being “the person who knows Figma best” was ever a real skill to begin with. I also get into the part nobody sat us down to talk about, which is that these tools blur the lines between design, engineering, and product in every direction at once, and introduce the “in the loop, on the loop, out of the loop” question that runs through the rest of the season. If your company hasn’t had this meeting yet, I’d gently suggest not assuming it isn’t coming. Give this one a listen, then let me know about your own version of the kitchen counter moment. Topics: • 0:00 The day they cut our Figma license • 3:00 The cost play: why pay for two tools? • 4:05 Not my call: where I sit in the org • 4:50 Nobody said "adapt or quit" (the soft mandate) • 5:30 The fair case, and Bob Baxley's pricing question • 7:15 Ripping the Band-Aid: off the dock, into the boat • 8:40 What was really in my head: "just UI engineers now?" • 9:45 Kevin the plumber • 10:50 Watching a decade of skill depreciate • 11:50 How remote teams process shock • 13:10 Does engineering even want us in the code? • 14:00 Every role blurs at once • 15:10 The walk • 15:55 In the loop, on the loop, out of the loop • 17:10 Next time: what we traded away — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify • Subscribe on YouTube | |||
| Not Invented Here: When “We’re Different” Is Just an Excuse to Ignore Outside Work | 17 Sep 2026 | 00:16:53 | |
Ever notice an idea gets a cold reception the moment it comes from another team? That’s Not Invented Here. This week I dig into why our brains treat “not ours” as “not good,” what it cost teams I worked on at GE, and how to catch it early. When your team says an outside idea “won’t work for us,” are you evaluating the idea, or just the team it came from? Not Invented Here is the tendency to reject or undervalue ideas, tools, and research that come from outside your own team, while overvaluing the stuff you built yourselves. The catch is that it never announces itself. It feels like you have standards, or you know your users, when really the source of the idea is doing the evaluating for you in the background. The term goes back to a 1982 study by Ralph Katz and Thomas Allen at MIT, who tracked fifty R&D groups and found that the longer a team stayed together, the less it talked to the outside sources it most needed to hear from. Performance slid as a result. Later work from David Antons and Frank Piller reframed it as an attitude rather than a behavior, a standing negative feeling toward anything labeled “external,” whether that label comes from a different company, department, discipline, or just a different job title. On product teams, this shows up everywhere once you start looking. Engineers’ UX suggestions get waved off because usability is “our lane.” Agency research gets its methodology questioned the second it contradicts the team’s assumptions, while a single hallway conversation gets treated as solid evidence. Ten squads rebuild nearly the same component ten different ways because the shared version doesn’t quite work for us, and then nobody trusts the design system anymore. If your team has ever quietly shelved a good finding because it came from the wrong people, this one’s for you. Give it a listen. Topics: • 00:00 - The reflex that rejects an idea before you've even looked at it • 03:00 - The GE story: a mandate to adopt one design system called Cirrus • 04:00 - Every team pushes back with the same "that won't work for us" • 05:00 - Defining not invented here and the 1982 Katz and Allen study • 06:00 - Why long-tenured teams stop talking outward, and the shift from behavior to attitude • 07:00 - Why your brain does it: ownership, effort, identity, and the IKEA effect connection • 08:00 - The measurable cost, and Spolsky's defense of building in-house • 09:00 - How the bias hides behind "our context is different" • 10:00 - How it hits research and design systems, and where the IKEA effect sneaks in • 11:00 - Engineering rewrites, competitor patterns, and acquired teams • 12:00 - Turning the bias around with "proudly found elsewhere" • 13:00 - Separate the source from the substance, and watch your team's own boundaries • 14:00 - Give ownership before adoption, and treat build versus adopt as a real decision • 15:00 - Audit your outside input, and back to the Cirrus lesson — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify • Subscribe on YouTube • Subscribe on Stitcher | |||
| When Figma Was Just How We Worked // What Survives E01 | 09 Sep 2026 | 00:19:04 | |
A late-night DM from a listener named Chris asked me something I couldn’t answer: did I lose my identity as a designer? My team just went one hundred percent Cursor, no more Figma. This season, I figure out what AI actually changes about the work, and what it never touched. When the tool that defined your job for a decade disappears overnight, what part of “designer” actually leaves with it? This is the first solo season in the history of Beyond UX Design. No guests, no interviews, just me working through one question that landed in my DMs late one night from Chris, a listener I’ve known for years. He asked whether I felt like I’d lost my identity as a designer after my team dropped Figma and went fully into Cursor. My gut said no. Thirty seconds later, I realized I didn’t actually know. That question became this whole season. Episode one is about the world right before the change, back when Figma was just how we worked. I walk through what a normal design process looked like on my team, and then I get honest about something we don’t talk about enough: how much of “being a good designer” got quietly measured by tool fluency. Named layers, auto layout, clean files. None of that is capital-D design, but it stood in for it because it was the thing we could see, screenshot, and post about on LinkedIn I also take on a good question from the original LinkedIn thread that inspired this. If you could always design and build in code, why is this suddenly a big deal now? My answer comes down to opportunity cost, and it reframes what AI actually changed. Spoiler: it wasn’t the ability to code. It was the time. If any of this sounds familiar, whether your team already made the switch or you can feel it coming, hit play and come along for the season. Topics: • 00:00 – The DM from Chris: “Do you feel as if you lost your identity as a designer?” • 02:40 – The late-night LinkedIn message • 03:20 – Why the identity question never crossed my mind • 04:10 – 127 comments, and why they were almost all tactical • 05:30 – This isn’t just a designer problem: PMs and engineers too • 06:00 – What “normal” looked like: the old design-to-handoff process • 07:30 – How designers quietly ranked each other on tool fluency • 09:20 – Why tool skills got mistaken for design skills for a decade • 10:40 – Derek’s challenge: “We could always design in code, so why now?” • 11:20 – My front-end dev origin story and why it doesn’t settle the debate • 12:50 – The real answer: opportunity cost, not ability • 13:50 – What AI actually changed: collapsing the time to do both • 14:40 – Were there warning signs? The pilots I read as experiments • 16:00 – The real danger isn’t replacement, it’s belief • 16:30 – What survives so far: research, flows, judgment, taste • 17:10 – What still gets me, and a look ahead to episode two — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify | |||
| Source Confusion: Why Your Ideas Get Remembered Under Someone Else’s Name | 04 Sep 2026 | 00:14:27 | |
We remember what we learned but lose track of where it came from. I dig into source confusion, the memory quirk that quietly decides who gets credit on your team, whose research gets remembered, and why the person who repeats an idea usually beats the person who had it. Have you ever watched your idea come out of someone else’s mouth twenty minutes later and get all the applause you didn’t? Source confusion is the reason your team’s history gets rewritten without anyone meaning to do it. We hold onto what we learn and quietly lose the note about where it came from. Back in 1993, researchers Marcia Johnson, Shahin Hashtroudi, and Steven Lindsay laid this out as the source monitoring framework: memories don’t come with a tag saying where they originated. Every time you recall something, your brain rebuilds the source on the spot using clues like how vivid it feels or whether you remember thinking it through. And because the source gets rebuilt instead of retrieved, it can get rebuilt wrong. An idea you worked hard on feels like yours whether it was or not, and an idea that arrived easily in conversation leaves fewer clues behind, which makes it easy to lose track of who actually said it first. On a design team, this quietly reshapes who gets credit, and credit is the whole game. It decides who gets trusted with the next big project, who gets promoted, and whose voice carries weight in the next planning meeting. The person who develops ideas out loud and in writing piles up credit, while the person who seeds an idea quietly and moves on gets absorbed into someone else’s story. The good news is that this is predictable, and predictable things you can plan around. In this episode, I get into how to work with it: attribute out loud and in writing, capture ideas before the room talks, keep decision logs with names on them, and build your own paper trail because your org isn’t going to do it for you. Give it a listen and see where source confusion might be quietly rewriting your team’s history.Topics: • 00:37 - Why it isn’t stealing • 02:27 - Flipping the scene around: how you fall for this too • 03:24 - What source confusion actually is • 04:04 - The memory-as-filing-cabinet myth and the source monitoring framework • 04:40 - How your brain rebuilds a source from clues instead of retrieving it • 05:45 - The Brown and Murphy round-robin experiment and cryptomnesia • 06:55 - Schacter’s seven sins of memory: these are side effects, not bugs • 07:15 - How credit gets absorbed in critiques and research • 08:12 - How this quietly shapes who gets promoted • 08:45 - Using it to your advantage: be the last confident voice in the room • 09:15 - The defensive move: stop relying on anyone’s memory • 09:38 - Why your boss won’t track credit for you • 09:55 - What to actually do about it • 10:20 - Write ideas down before the room talks • 10:50 - Attribute out loud and in writing • 11:20 - Make your own contributions and leave a paper trail • 11:50 - Check the origin story before performance reviews — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify | |||
| What Survives: When AI Comes for Your Design Work (Season 1 Trailer) | 04 Sep 2026 | 00:01:34 | |
At the end of April, my design team dropped Figma. As of May first, we've been one hundred percent in Cursor. Then a friend asked me if I'd lost my identity as a designer, and I couldn't answer him. This season, eight solo episodes, is my answer. Starts September 08. If the tool that defined your career disappeared tomorrow, what part of being a designer would actually be left? This season is different. No guests, no interviews. Just me, telling you exactly what happened when my team lost the tool that, for a decade, basically defined what it meant to be a designer. At the end of April, our Figma license got cut. It wasn't our decision. By May first, we were doing everything in Cursor, and I've been sorting through what that means ever since. The whole thing kicked off with a DM from Chris, a longtime listener and a friend, who asked me a question I couldn't answer: do you feel as if you lost your identity as a designer? My first reaction was no, obviously not. My second reaction was that I didn't actually know. Across eight episodes, I'm going to work through it out loud. The day the call came down. What we traded away and what came back. Whether I lost something or just lost the story where the answer was easy. What's still mine when the robot does the pixel pushing. The economics nobody wants to say out loud. And the question that worries me most: if judgment is what survives, and judgment gets built by the exact work that's disappearing, who comes after us? I'm not selling a tool, and I'm not selling a course. I'm a design lead who's actually living this, and I've got a lot to say. If your team has made this switch, or you can feel it coming, this season is for you. Follow the show so the first episode lands in your feed on September 08. — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify • Subscribe on YouTube • Subscribe on Stitcher | |||
| Anchoring Effect: Stop Letting the First Draft Define the Whole Project | 25 Aug 2026 | 00:16:42 | |
Whoever puts the first number, the first draft, or the first design in front of the team quietly decides where everyone else ends up. This week I dig into why anchoring bias steers our estimates, redesigns, and negotiations more than we realize, and what we can do about it. Ever set out to redesign a feature and ended up with the same product wearing a fresh coat of paint? There’s a good chance you got anchored before the work even started.Anchoring bias is the tendency to lean too heavily on the first piece of information we encounter when making a decision. Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman named it back in 1974, and the effect is stubborn. Their famous Wheel of Fortune study showed that even a totally random number could pull people’s estimates toward it. Later research on experienced judges and real estate agents found the same pattern, even when the professionals swore the anchor hadn’t influenced them at all. That denial is a big part of what makes this one so tricky. On product teams, this shows up constantly. The first draft of a PRD sets the frame every reviewer edits around. The old design becomes the gravity for the new one, and a supposed redesign quietly turns into a reskin. The first estimate in a planning meeting drags everybody else’s numbers toward it. This week, on the Cognition Catalog, I walk through where anchoring comes from, why willpower and expertise barely help, and a handful of specific moves you can make to keep the first thing seen from automatically becoming the thing that wins. Give it a listen and let me know if you’ve caught yourself getting anchored lately. Topics: • 3:00 The Two-Week Estimate Trap • 4:45 What Is the Anchoring Effect? • 5:20 The Wheel of Fortune Experiment • 6:20 Why We Stop Adjusting Too Soon• 7:15 Even Experienced Judges Get Anchored • 8:10 The Real Estate Study• 9:00 How First Drafts Frame Everything • 9:35 Why Redesigns Turn Into Reskins • 9:55 The Status Quo Is an Anchor Nobody Chose • 10:30 Using Anchoring on Purpose • 11:25 Why Willpower Doesn’t Fix It • 12:00 Five Things to Try With Your Team • 14:30 The Bottom Line — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify • Subscribe on YouTube • Subscribe on Stitcher | |||
| What Reinventing Your Career (Twice) Actually Looks Like with Chris Nguyen | 14 Jul 2026 | 01:01:37 | |
Jeremy catches up with friend of the show, Chris Nguyen, who’s rebuilt his business twice since his last appearance. They talk about why designers can’t count on job security the way they used to, what it actually takes to build something of your own, and why the perfect plan is a myth worth abandoning early. If you can’t count on your job to protect you, what are you doing to protect yourself? Chris Nguyen has already rebuilt his business once since he last joined the show, and by the time this episode airs, he’ll be in the middle of doing it again. He built UX Playbook into a recognized education brand, tried a community project called Backlog that fizzled out, took several months off to recover, and landed on Rectangles: a live-stream and newsletter brand built around the design conversations he wishes he’d had years ago. None of it happened on a straight line, and that’s kind of the point. Jeremy and Chris talk candidly about why designers can’t afford to treat a single employer as their whole safety net anymore. Jeremy’s own team recently made a drastic tooling change that upended how designers on his team work day to day, and he connects that disruption directly to a bigger argument: if the ground can shift under you that fast, having something outside your job, whether it’s a side project, a creative outlet, or a small business, isn’t optional anymore. It’s how you stay steady. The conversation keeps circling back to a simple, unglamorous truth: nobody has the plan figured out in advance. Chris talks about sitting on the Rectangles idea for the better part of a year before finally committing to a two-week sprint to get it out the door, and admits he still doesn’t fully know what it’ll become. Jeremy pushes on that idea with his own reflections on burnout, reinvention, and why doing something just for yourself, outside of work entirely, might be the most stabilizing thing a designer can do right now. Give this one a listen if you’ve been sitting on an idea and waiting for the right moment. Topics: Helpful Links: — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify | |||
| Ambiguity Effect: The Hidden Reason Your Roadmap Keeps Playing It Safe | 27 Jun 2026 | 00:16:57 | |
Your team isn’t just avoiding risk, they’re avoiding the unknown. In this episode of the Cognition Catalog, I break down the ambiguity effect: the cognitive bias that makes unfamiliar ideas, tools, and people feel like threats before anyone’s even evaluated them on their merits. Have you ever watched a genuinely strong idea get quietly buried in a planning meeting? Not because anyone argued against it, but because nobody could fully picture how it would play out? The ambiguity effect is what happens when our brains treat “I don’t know” as “probably bad.” It’s not the same as avoiding risk. Risk is when you know the odds, and they might not be in your favor. Ambiguity is when you don’t even know the odds, and that uncertainty is what our brains treat as a genuine threat. The research goes back to economist Daniel Ellsberg in 1961, who ran a simple thought experiment with two jars of colored balls and predicted that people would almost always choose the jar they could see clearly, even when the hidden jar was, on average, an equally good bet. Decades of follow-up research confirmed he was right. In a UX or product context, this shows up constantly and quietly. It’s the familiar roadmap feature that beats out the bolder, fuzzier idea. It’s the proven engineering framework that wins over the newer tool that might actually be a better fit. It’s the new hire or new leader whose ideas get extra scrutiny, not because they’re weaker, but because you haven’t had enough time to read them yet. The bias doesn’t announce itself. It disguises itself as discipline and caution. In this episode, I walk through where the ambiguity effect comes from, how to spot it in your team’s decision-making, and a handful of practical ways to make sure your best ideas get a fair shot before the fog scares everyone off. Give it a listen.fds Topics: — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify | |||
| Build a Career That Outlasts Your Next Layoff with Frank Bach | 25 Jun 2026 | 00:56:56 | |
Your nine-to-five pays the bills, but it doesn’t define your career, and if you think it does, that might be the thing holding you back. This week, I sit down with a lead product designer, community builder, and all-around multi-hyphenate to talk about owning your career before someone else does. What happens to your sense of identity when the job goes away? Have you built anything outside of it that would survive? My guest this week is Frank Bach, a lead product designer who’s worked at places like Instagram, DoorDash, and Headspace. But honestly, the resume might be the least interesting thing about Frank. He also runs the LA Design and Dev community, teaches courses, fronts a hardcore band called Monk, and runs his own e-commerce shop, Sunshine Shop. Frank is someone who has clearly figured out that a career worth having doesn’t fit neatly inside one little box. We get into a lot in this conversation, like the danger of tying your self-worth to a company name, why “personal brand” feels so gross to so many designers, and what it actually looks like to cultivate what you’re known for without becoming a full-time content creator. Frank has a really practical way of thinking about all of this: treat your full-time job more like a freelance engagement, stay in “maintenance mode” when life demands it, and remember that your manager is thinking about their own promotion, not yours. We also talk about the other side of having a lot going on: how to decide when something’s run its course versus when you just need a breather, how to balance side projects without letting them eat your life, and why starting something messy is always better than waiting for the perfect moment. If you’ve ever felt like your career is just happening to you, this one’s worth a listen. Topics: Helpful Links: — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify | |||
| Illusory Correlation: The Bias That Turns Coincidence Into Conviction | 09 Jun 2026 | 00:15:53 | |
Your brain is wired to find patterns. That's mostly a good thing... until it's not. This episode breaks down illusory correlation: why your team sees connections that aren't there, and what you can do to stop making decisions based on a handful of vivid moments dressed up as a trend. Have you ever watched your team make a confident product decision based on a pattern that, when you actually look at the data, barely exists? Illusory correlation is the bias that turns coincidence into conviction. When two things happen close together -- even just once or twice -- our brains quietly file them as connected. The concept was first identified by psychologist Loren J. Chapman in 1967, who noticed that trained clinical professionals were reporting patient behavior patterns that statistically didn't exist. The problem isn't laziness or bad intent. It's just how human memory works. Rare or distinctive events get stored differently, and when two unusual things co-occur, the brain treats that pairing as meaningful -- even when it's pure chance. In product and design work, this plays out constantly and in ways that feel completely legitimate. A feature ships and traffic ticks up the next day, so the launch gets the credit -- even though a competitor was down and marketing ran a campaign. Six user interviews produce two mentions of a feature, and suddenly that feature defines the whole persona. A few support tickets from one customer segment, and that segment becomes "a tough audience." The misses get forgotten. The hits stack up. And the team ends up navigating by a pattern that was never really there. This episode breaks down how illusory correlation sneaks into your metrics, your research, and your team dynamics -- and gives you a few concrete habits to start catching it before it shapes your roadmap. Give it a listen. Topics: — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | |||
| You're Not the Center of the Corporate Universe with Andy Vitale | 28 May 2026 | 01:05:47 | |
There's a gap between how designers see themselves and how everyone else sees them, and that gap has consequences. In this episode, a seasoned design executive shares what it really means to be a good corporate citizen, why design isn't the center of the universe, and how to show up differently. What if the biggest thing holding your career back isn't your design skills? What if it's the way you think about your role inside the organization? My guest today has spent years leading design within large, complex organizations—places like Truist, 3M, and Rocket—where designers are easily outnumbered by scientists, engineers, marketers, and businesspeople. He's navigated financial realities most ICs never consider, managed situations that don't appear in any design curriculum, and had to advocate for design without assuming it's automatically the most important thing in the room. The conversation we had is one I've been wanting to have for a long time. We got into what it actually means to be a "good corporate citizen," not in a corporate buzzword kind of way, but in a real, practical sense. We talked about the perception gap between how designers see themselves and how the rest of the team experiences working with them, why designers are sometimes seen as a speed bump instead of an accelerant, and what it looks like when someone on your team finally gets it. We also got into design systems as a business asset, the realities of design leadership that ICs rarely see, and a concept I've been thinking about for years: followership. If you've ever walked out of a meeting frustrated, dissented in the Slack channel instead of raising your hand in the room, or wondered why your work isn't getting the traction it deserves, this episode is for you. Hit play. Topics: Helpful Links: Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | |||
| Social Desirability: Everyone Knew. Nobody Said It. | 22 May 2026 | 00:13:57 | |
We've all been in that meeting: the one where everyone nods along and nobody says the thing they're actually thinking. That's not a personality flaw. It's a bias. This episode of the Cognition Catalog breaks down social desirability and what it's quietly costing your team. Have you ever walked out of a meeting knowing you should have said something, and then watched the project stumble over the exact problem nobody brought up? This week on the Cognition Catalog, we're talking about social desirability bias, and no, this one isn't just about user research. It shows up in every standup, every retro, every meeting where somebody asks "any concerns?" and the room goes quiet. Most teams deal with this constantly. They just don't have a name for it.Social desirability bias operates through two mechanisms: impression management, the conscious effort to present yourself favorably when you feel like you're being evaluated, and self-deceptive enhancement, a subtler, largely unconscious tendency to give positively biased responses without even realizing it. The tricky part is that it doesn't feel like a bias when you're in it, it feels like reading the room. It feels like being a team player. The cost shows up later, usually in a missed dependency or a launch that underperforms for reasons everyone saw coming.This episode gets into why honest cultures aren't built through value statements, why the HiPPO effect makes all of this worse, and what you can actually do to start closing the gap between what your team thinks and what they're willing to say out loud. If you've ever left a meeting with more to say than you actually said, this one's for you. Give it a listen. Topics: • 03:36 - What social desirability looks like at the team level. • 04:32 - Why it doesn't feel like a bias when you're in it. • 05:19 - The two mechanisms: impression management and self-deceptive enhancement. • 05:50 - The research behind the bias (Edwards, Crown & Marlowe). • 06:24 - When self-presentation slides into self-deception. • 06:49 - How team norms shape what people say — and remember. • 07:57 - The HiPPO effect and why it makes everything worse. • 08:27 - How toxic environments turn up the pressure. • 09:02 - Why honest cultures aren't built through value statements. • 09:29 - Notice when your team is performing instead of communicating. • 10:01 - Build structures that reward honesty. • 10:29 - Notice when you're performing agreement yourself. • 10:55 - Push past the summary and into the specifics. • 11:20 - Lower the social cost of being wrong. — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | |||
| Yes, And... Now What? Improv Lessons for Navigating the Actual Job with Nikki Anderson | 15 May 2026 | 00:54:48 | |
Your tools are solid. Your process is tight. But when a stakeholder pushes back, a workshop goes sideways, or a PM challenges your work, none of that matters. What matters is how you respond. Nikki Anderson joins me to talk about improv, structured play, and how to stay sharp when the messy stuff hits. What if the most important skill in your UX career has nothing to do with design? Nikki Anderson is a UX research consultant, founder of Drop-In Research, and one of those rare people who can draw a straight line between improv comedy and stakeholder management, and actually make it land. She started doing improv around the same time she got into UX research, originally to overcome a lifelong fear of speaking on the spot. What she found was that the principles she was learning on stage translated almost perfectly into the conference room. In this conversation, we get into the specific places where UX professionals tend to flail, and it's not where most people think. It's not the research plan or the prototype. It's the high-stakes meeting where everything's riding on one presentation. It's the design critique that spirals into defensiveness. It's the moment a stakeholder blames you for something and your fight-or-flight kicks in before your brain does. Nikki breaks down how improv—and specifically the "yes, and" mindset—isn't about blind agreement. It's about accepting reality, staying curious, and choosing to investigate rather than argue. We also get into structured play, the idea that creativity doesn't just need freedom, it needs a container. Nikki makes the case that the most productive meetings, critiques, and workshops aren't the loose, open-ended ones. They're the ones with clear intention, playground rules, and maybe a little "draw a duck" warm-up before anyone starts giving feedback. If you've ever felt like the soft skills side of this job was something you were just supposed to figure out on your own, this one's for you. Listen in. Topics: • 04:00 - Nikki's improv origin story. • 07:12 - Where UX professionals flail: the high-stakes meeting trap. • 10:30 - The skepticism around "yes, and" — and what it actually means. • 13:50 - Structured play and why it matters at work. • 16:20 - Ambiguity and mismatched expectations: improv as a tool for dealing with them on the fly. • 17:21 - Live stakeholder blame scenario: the "yes, and + investigate" approach in action. • 22:45 - Applying improv to design critiques. • 23:31 - Renaming critiques, setting playground rules, and warm-up exercises. • 30:45 - Using improv to handle unexpected process changes. • 31:30 - Accepting reality: the "yes" before the question. • 35:55 - The control/no-control exercise for individual contributors. • 38:10 - Creativity needs structure, not just freedom. • 44:05 - Closing thoughts: take an improv class; nothing is an emergency. Helpful Links: — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | |||
| The Frequency Illusion: You Just Noticed It, but it Was Always There | 08 May 2026 | 00:12:30 | |
Your brain doesn't show you everything around you — it shows you what it's been told to look for. In this episode of the Cognition Catalog, we break down the frequency illusion and how this quirk of attention can quietly warp how product teams spot trends, prioritize problems, and build roadmaps. What if the trend your team keeps talking about isn't actually a trend — and your brain has been quietly manufacturing evidence for it this whole time? The frequency illusion is one of those cognitive biases that feels like insight right up until it isn't. You learn a new term, you spot a new pattern, and suddenly it seems like it's everywhere: in your product, in your competitors' apps, in research you've been staring at for weeks. The information was always there. Your attention just finally got the memo. In this episode of the Cognition Catalog, I break down how the frequency illusion works, where it came from (including the surprisingly colorful backstory behind the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon), and why it doesn't stop at UI patterns. The same mechanism that makes you see skeleton loaders everywhere after one design review is the same one that inflates a single customer complaint into what feels like a five-alarm fire on your roadmap. The tricky part? It feels exactly like professional growth. And when an entire team gets primed on the same idea at the same time, that individual bias can scale into something much harder to catch. If you want to get better at separating what you're noticing from what's actually happening, this episode is for you. Topics: • 03:00 - The Inter story: how a LinkedIn post changed everything I saw. • 04:00 - What the frequency illusion actually is. • 04:30 - The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon and how it got its name. • 05:00 - Arnold Zwicky coins "the frequency illusion" in 2005. • 05:30 - Selective attention and confirmation bias: the two engines behind it. • 06:30 - The recency illusion and how it compounds the problem. • 07:00 - How the frequency illusion shows up in design critiques.• 08:30 - What to actually do about it: attention is not neutral. • 08:50 - Watch for shared attention bias on your team. • 09:20 - Don't let air time substitute for evidence. • 09:45 - Create deliberate distance between discovery and decision. • 10:15 - Surface what you're not seeing. • 11:00 - Closing thoughts and listener question. — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts | |||
| The Execution Trap Nobody Warns You About with Cat Lo | 01 May 2026 | 01:08:51 | |
Cat Lo spent 20 years learning that execution excellence can actually hold you back. After burning out at Amazon doing beautiful work that nobody noticed, she distilled her hard-won lessons into five tenets, a framework that helped her shape billion-dollar opportunities and drive $218 million in impact. What if the very thing that made you a great designer is the reason you’re being left out of the decisions that matter most? Cat Lo’s career has taken a path most designers don’t follow, starting with a bus ticket to New York City and no job waiting, through agency work, entrepreneurship, and eventually to Amazon, where she designs how millions of new products find their first customers. She didn’t take the traditional route from corporate to “I need freedom.” She went the other direction, deliberately. And that choice gave her a perspective on craft, scale, and influence that’s pretty hard to find in most design conversations. In this episode, Cat breaks down why execution excellence, the thing that gets you hired and earns you trust, can quietly become a trap. The better you get at delivering, the more delivery lands on your plate. And the more delivery on your plate, the less you’re involved in deciding what gets built in the first place. The result is a framework of five tenets she uses every day: find the smallest testable truth, let customer data be the tiebreaker, ship to learn rather than waiting for perfection, align on the problem, not the solution, and look for the invisible problems nobody else is paying attention to. Cat also walks us through a real example from her work at Amazon — a $7.8 billion market opportunity hiding in plain sight that most people had written off as not important enough to solve. It’s a masterclass in how individual contributors without direct authority can still shape strategy, build conviction, and make work impossible to ignore. If you’ve ever felt like you’re doing great work that just isn’t landing, this one is for you. Go give it a listen. Topics: • 03:27 - Cat’s Origin story: a bus ticket, $20, and no job waiting in New York City. • 05:08 - Career arc: fine arts → art director → entrepreneurship → Amazon. • 07:41 - Your skills are knobs, not switches. Learn when to turn each one up or down. • 10:07 - Every company speaks a different design language; you have to learn to speak theirs. • 14:17 - How to handle vague direction: match your response to the altitude of the ask. • 18:00 - Tenet 1: find the smallest testable truth before going wide. • 25:52 - Tenet 2: customer truth is the only real tiebreaker when opinions are flying. • 30:36 -Tenet 3: achievable now beats perfect later. Ship to learn, not to finish. • 37:33 - Tenet 4: alignment means agreeing on the problem, not the solution. • 41:00 - The brand name generator story and the $7.8B opportunity nobody was solving. • 48:00 - Tenet 5: look around the corner for the invisible problems no one’s been assigned. • 53:15 - How to build influence without authority: state your opinion clearly and stay flexible. • 01:04:05 - Where to find Cat: faangforcorporate.com. Helpful Links: — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts | |||
| Survivorship Bias: Success Theater and the Data You Never See | 23 Apr 2026 | 00:14:36 | |
We've built our careers on case studies, portfolios, and success stories, but what if we're only ever seeing a fraction of the full picture? This week, we dig into survivorship bias and how it quietly shapes the decisions your product team makes every day. What if every case study and "here's how we did it" success story you've ever learned from was missing the most important part of the story? Every startup founder story sounds the same. Crazy idea. Doubters everywhere. Bet on themselves. Changed everything. It's a great narrative, but it's a narrative written entirely by the people who made it through. For every founder who ignored the critics and won, thousands did the exact same thing and quietly disappeared. It may sound like pessimism, but that's the math we've been ignoring. This week's Cognition Catalog episode breaks down survivorship bias: why we instinctively focus on the outcomes we can see while the failures stay invisible. It shows up everywhere; in the startup mythology we've absorbed, in the portfolios we scroll through on LinkedIn, and in the way product teams anchor their planning on the projects that shipped rather than the ones that got quietly shelved. The good news is that this isn't a bias you're stuck with. There are practical ways to build better habits into how your team makes decisions, and it starts by asking a different question. Give this one a listen if you've ever wondered why your career feels like it doesn't quite measure up to everyone else's highlight reel. Topics: • 00:00 - The startup founder myth and why we only hear from the survivors. • 01:23 - Welcome to the Cognition Catalog. • 02:45 - The small business failure numbers that most people never talk about. • 04:23 - What survivorship bias actually is and why it matters. • 04:35 - Why portfolio case studies only show the work that succeeded. • 05:35 - Why your career probably looks worse than everyone else's, and why that's an illusion.• 08:16 - How the college dropout mythology turns exceptions into templates. • 08:40 - How survivorship bias quietly shapes product team decisions. • 09:02 - Why your active user research is a filtered sample. • 09:28 - How survivorship bias shows up in team culture. • 10:09 - Five practical ways to fight survivorship bias on your team. • 12:11 - The one question you should always be asking about success stories. — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts | |||
| Democratize Without Destroying: The Case for Research Charters with Ned Dwyer | 31 Mar 2026 | 00:42:17 | |
AI is making it easier than ever to run research, but faster doesn't always mean better. In this episode, we dig into what it really means to democratize research responsibly, and why your team probably needs a charter before someone does something they can't take back. Your team is already running research without you. So the real question is: are you going to help them do it well, or just hope for the best? Ned Dwyer is the co-founder and CEO of Great Question, an all-in-one UX research platform built to bring research to everyone in an organization. Not just the people with "researcher" in their title. He's spent years thinking about how teams can democratize access to customer insights without turning research into a free-for-all, and his talk at UX Con is what first put him on my radar. In this conversation, we dig into one of the more divisive topics in our industry right now: research democratization. Ned makes a pretty compelling case that it's not the all-or-nothing argument a lot of people make it out to be. It's a spectrum, and where your organization should land on that spectrum depends on who you're researching, what decisions are being made, and how much risk is on the table. We also get into AI's role in all of this, from AI-moderated interviews to synthesized insights, and where teams tend to get themselves into trouble when they hand over too much to the machine without any real governance in place. The thing I found most useful in this conversation is Ned's concept of a democratization charter, a practical framework for defining who should be doing what kind of research, with which populations, and under what guardrails. It's something I honestly hadn't thought much about before meeting Ned, and I think it's one of the most actionable ideas we've talked about on the show. If your team is already using AI research tools (and let's be honest, they probably are), this conversation is worth your time. Topics: • 01:45 - Ned's origin story and why he built Great Question • 04:10 - The pressure to move fast, and what gets lost when speed wins • 06:11 - The 80/20 rule: how to use AI without publishing slop • 09:45 - Democratization is a spectrum, not a binary • 12:35 - Where guardrails matter most: vulnerable populations and one-way-door decisions • 13:12 - The case for a democratization charter • 19:00 - AI moderation demystified: closer to a talking survey than a human interviewer • 23:00 - Ned's GoDaddy confession: how rogue research goes wrong • 27:00 - Participant fatigue and insight overload: the new risks AI introduces • 31:45 - Rogue research will happen regardless... your job is to make it safer • 43:28 - The Will Smith spaghetti analogy and where AI tools are headed — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify | |||
| Expectation Bias: Your Prediction Is Showing | 19 Mar 2026 | 00:13:06 | |
Have you ever walked out of a usability session completely confident in your findings, only to ship something that quietly missed the mark? What if the signal was there the whole time, and your brain just decided it wasn't worth logging? This week on the Cognition Catalog, we tackle The Expectation Bias. This bias shapes what you notice before you've even decided what to think about it. Your brain has already generated a prediction before the first participant clicks a button or a teammate presents their work, and that prediction quietly shapes what registers as a signal and what gets explained away before you've made a single conscious decision about what any of it actually means. We get into the science behind why this happens, and trace the research back to psychologist Robert Rosenthal's work in the early 1960s. His experiments, including the landmark Pygmalion in the Classroom study with Lenore Jacobson, showed that expectations don't just color our perceptions; they can actually change outcomes. That's a sobering thought when you consider how many design decisions are built on research we assumed was neutral. We also dig into where this plays out on real teams: in usability sessions where hesitations get logged as "minor," in design reviews where leadership-championed features get a generous read while quietly doubted projects get interrogated at every turn, and in how we evaluate colleagues whose reputations have already done the evaluating for us. If any of that sounds familiar, this episode offers five concrete habits to help you catch the filter before it's already done its job. Give it a listen. Topics: • 00:00 - Perception is prediction • 02:04 - A UX research cautionary tale • 03:23 - Defining expectation bias • 03:42 - Prediction errors explained • 04:31 - Pygmalion effect origins • 06:03 - Expectation vs confirmation • 06:30 - How it warps team decisions • 08:31 - Habits to reduce bias • 10:47 - Wrap up and next steps — | |||
| Party of One: Building a Practice When You're Alone in the Room with Julian Della Mattia | 12 Mar 2026 | 01:06:30 | |
What does it actually take to be the first, or only, designer or researcher on a team? Spoiler: it’s not just about doing great work. This week, we get into the unglamorous, under-discussed side of the solo role: building systems, managing up, and earning trust before you’ve even shipped anything. What happens when you’re really good at the craft, but nobody around you understands what you do, why it matters, or how to support you? Julian Della Mattia has spent his career doing one of the hardest things in UX: showing up first. As a researcher who has repeatedly been the founding or solo practitioner inside organizations, Julian has learned, mostly the hard way, that being great at research is only a fraction of the actual job. He’s also the host of Finders to Builders, a podcast built specifically for researchers navigating this exact challenge. In this conversation, we dig into what Julian calls the “finder to builder” mindset shift: moving from someone who just surfaces insights to someone who builds the infrastructure, earns the trust, and creates the conditions for research (and design) to actually matter inside an organization. We talk about how to manage up when your manager doesn’t fully understand your work, how to know when your efforts are starting to gain traction, and what the invisible job description of a solo or founding designer really looks like. If you’ve ever landed a solo design or research role and felt the gap between what you prepared for and what the job actually demanded, this one’s for you. Julian brings a grounded, practical perspective that goes well beyond frameworks, because, as he puts it, in this context, frameworks rarely fly out of the box. Hit play. Helpful Links: Topics: • 02:25 – Meet Julian Della Mattia • 03:48 – From PM to first researcher • 06:06 – Agency advice for juniors • 10:54 – Accidental in-house research role • 14:28 – Finder to builder mindset • 18:51 – Time triage and playmaker mode • 24:53 – Invisible work and org dynamics • 27:49 – Managing up and selling research • 32:23 – Signals and metrics that it’s working • 36:48 – Measuring research impact • 38:35 – Skip the framework trap • 39:02 – Managing up tactics • 40:16 – Aligning with business goals • 43:37 – Just ask your boss • 44:43 – When to start hiring • 46:32 – Recap and teamwork • 48:37 – Parting advice for firsts • 60:39 – Where to find Julian — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify • Subscribe on YouTube • Subscribe on Stitcher | |||
| Anecdotal Fallacy: A Data Point of One Is Not Evidence | 05 Mar 2026 | 00:12:27 | |
Why does one vivid customer story outweigh months of research? This week on the Cognition Catalog, we break down the anecdotal fallacy — our tendency to let a single experience override real evidence. Learn why stories hijack decisions, how this shows up on product teams, and what you can do about it. Have you ever watched weeks of solid research get sidelined by one person saying, "Yeah, but I talked to a customer who hated it"? We've all been in that meeting. The team has done the work—research is solid, the data points in a clear direction—and then someone shares a single story that shifts the entire conversation. A stakeholder mentions one piece of feedback from a sales call, or an engineer pushes back on a technology choice because of a bad experience three jobs ago. Suddenly, the energy in the room changes, and the data fades into the background. That's the anecdotal fallacy at work, and it's one of the quietest ways teams get pulled off course. In this episode of the Cognition Catalog, I'm breaking down why our brains are wired to favor stories over statistics, and how this bias shows up constantly on product teams, from design critiques to sprint planning to roadmap discussions. We'll look at the research behind why personal narratives outperform aggregate data in persuasion (hint: it's not because people reject evidence, it's because stories are just easier to process and remember). And we'll talk about the HiPPO effect — when the highest paid person's opinion carries disproportionate weight simply because of who's telling the story. But here's the thing... the goal isn't to eliminate anecdotes. Stories surface edge cases, highlight blind spots, and humanize insights. The key is learning to treat them as hypotheses, not proof. I'm sharing five practical takeaways your team can start using right away to keep one person's experience from becoming the whole team's strategy. Give it a listen. Topics: • 01:50 - When one story derails the team • 03:49 - What the Anecdotal Fallacy is • 04:21 - Why stories feel true • 06:03 - How it hurts our team • 07:36 - Fixes and team habits — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify • Subscribe on YouTube • Subscribe on Stitcher | |||
| From Iran to China to the US: A real-life VUCA Story with Mahnaz Hajesmaeili | 27 Feb 2026 | 00:49:43 | |
Mahnaz has lived with volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity in ways most product teams never will. In this episode, we talk about what happens when VUCA isn’t theoretical, how to avoid becoming an order taker, and how courage, empathy, and initiative can reshape your role as a designer. What if the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity you’re facing at work feel overwhelming only because you’ve never had to live through it in your everyday life? I throw the word VUCA around like it’s a trendy framework. Volatility. Uncertainty. Complexity. Ambiguity. But for Mahnaz Hajesmaeili, those aren’t abstract concepts; they’re lived experience. Originally from Iran, before becoming a product designer, she built a life in China, knowing she could never fully belong there. When COVID hit, borders closed, savings ran out, and the life she had carefully constructed disappeared almost overnight. She returned to Iran, started over, taught herself UX, and eventually rebuilt her career in the United States. That’s not “roadmap volatility.” That’s real volatility. This week, I chat with Mahnaz to explore how living through that level of instability reshaped her approach to work. Why rejected designs don’t shake her. Why unclear strategy doesn’t rattle her and why she doesn’t default to being an order taker. If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by shifting priorities or frustrated by leaders who “don’t know what they want,” this episode offers perspective—and practical lessons. Give it a listen. It might change how you define uncertainty. Helpful Links: — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify | |||
| The Testing Effect: Why nodding along doesn’t mean alignment | 23 Jan 2026 | 00:12:14 | |
You can have clear meetings, clean decks, and unanimous nods and still walk away misaligned. In this episode of the Cognition Catalog, we break down the testing effect and why teams confuse exposure with learning. We’ll look at how recall, not agreement, is what actually creates alignment. If everyone was in the same meeting… why does everyone remember it differently? You’ve probably experienced this before: a meeting ends with clear action items, apparent alignment, and a general sense that things are settled, only for confusion to resurface weeks later. Different assumptions. Different memories. Same meeting. This episode unpacks why that gap happens and why alignment without recall is basically an illusion. This week, we walk through the testing effect and how it explains a common team failure mode: mistaking discussion, documentation, and agreement for learning. From onboarding to retrospectives to roadmap reviews, teams overload people with information and assume that exposure equals understanding. It doesn’t. Without retrieval, memory fades, rationales drift, and alignment quietly decays. We’ll also look at what it actually takes to apply the testing effect at work, without quizzes or formal tests. Simple changes to how meetings end, how onboarding is structured, and how teams normalize recall can reduce rework, friction, and those “wait, when did that change?” moments. If you want decisions to stick, this episode is for you. Topics: • 00:00 - Introduction: The Meeting Dilemma • 01:35 - The Illusion of Learning in Teams • 03:48 - Understanding the Testing Effect • 07:43 - Applying the Testing Effect in Teams To explore more about the Testing Effect, don’t miss the full article @ cognitioncatalog.com — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify • Subscribe on YouTube • Subscribe on Stitcher | |||
| How Healthy Conflict Creates Better Design Decisions With Yaprak Gültay Davison | 15 Jan 2026 | 00:57:08 | |
Most teams treat conflict as something to avoid. In this episode, I sit down with Yaprak Gültay Davison to talk about why that instinct backfires. We explore how healthy disagreement builds trust, improves decision-making, and helps teams move faster... without blowing things up. What if the tension you’re trying to avoid at work is actually the thing your team needs most? Most design teams say they value collaboration, empathy, and alignment, but rarely talk about disagreement. In this conversation, I sat down with Yaprak Davison, Head of Design at Goodnotes and former design leader at Spotify, to unpack why conflict isn’t a threat to good teams. It’s often the foundation of trust. Yaprak shares how designers are trained to optimize for harmony, and how that instinct can quietly erode clarity, slow teams down, and lead to decisions being made without the right people in the room. We talk about the real signals of unaddressed conflict—delayed replies, passive agreement, quiet misalignment—and why silence often causes more damage than open disagreement ever could. We also dig into what it actually looks like to lead through conflict: naming tension early, separating facts from the stories we tell ourselves, and turning disagreement into a co-design moment rather than a power struggle. If you’ve ever felt stuck “keeping the peace” while things quietly fall apart, this episode will change how you think about conflict and your role in it. Helpful Links: Topics: — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify | |||
| The Hidden Cost of Being the Dependable Designer With Vivianne Castillo | 08 Jan 2026 | 01:01:19 | |
Design was supposed to be creative work. For a lot of designers, it’s turned into endurance. In this episode, I’m joined by Vivianne Castillo to unpack how corporate design culture quietly rewards burnout, why endurance gets mistaken for professionalism, and how designers can start reclaiming creativity, agency, and choice. What if the behaviors that made you successful in design are the same ones slowly disconnecting you from yourself? Design culture loves to celebrate resilience, but too often what’s really being rewarded is endurance: tolerating vague feedback, late pivots, constant urgency, and emotional labor without complaint. In this conversation, Vivianne Castillo shares why so many designers feel drained, disconnected, and quietly shrinking inside roles that were supposed to be creative and human-centered. Vivianne draws on her background in trauma counseling, psychology, and design to explain how corporate UX environments often reward unhealed coping patterns—people-pleasing, hyper-vigilance, over-responsibility, and self-silencing—while calling it “professionalism.” The work still gets done, praise still comes, but the cost is creativity, curiosity, and a sense of agency. We also talk about what it actually looks like to take that agency back. Not through dramatic exits or rage-quitting, but through small, intentional experiments: setting boundaries, asking better questions, redefining security, and exploring entrepreneurial paths without burning everything down. If your design job feels more like survival than creation, this episode is for you. Topics: Helpful Links: — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify | |||
| What hundreds of designer interviews reveal about growth with Jayneil Dalal | 19 Dec 2025 | 01:14:30 | |
We love talking about growth mindset, but curiosity without action doesn’t move your career forward. In this episode, Jayneil Dalal shares what he’s learned from interviewing hundreds of designers—and why the people who actually ship, share, and care about craft are the ones who keep growing. What if the fastest way to grow your career isn’t asking for a promotion—but becoming the designer everyone trusts? In this episode, I sit down with Jayneil Dalal to talk less about career ladders and more about what actually earns trust inside organizations. After interviewing hundreds of designers on Design MBA and Sneak Peek, Jayneil has seen the same patterns repeat across teams, companies, and seniority levels. The designers who advance aren’t the loudest or the most credentialed. They’re the ones who care deeply about their work—clean files, thoughtful handoffs, clear communication, and sharing what they learn with others. No one tells them to do this. They do it because they give a damn, and that care compounds into credibility. We also unpack the idea of “internal brand,” why chasing credit often backfires, and how being generous with your knowledge can quietly change team culture. If you’ve ever felt invisible at work or unsure how to stand out without self-promotion, this conversation reframes what influence really looks like. Topics: • 04:54 - Early Curiosity and Interviewing Journey • 06:17 - The Birth of a Podcast Idea • 07:23 - Launching Design MBA • 09:53 - The Value of Execution • 12:21 - Challenges and Realizations • 15:36 - Content Creation and Audience Fit • 19:35 - Learning from Top Designers • 22:49 - The Importance of Craft and Mentorship • 38:04 - Advocating for Yourself • 41:58 - Navigating Internal Branding • 46:34 - The Importance of Communication Skills • 48:10 - Balancing Multiple Projects • 51:36 - Effective Use of AI in Design • 53:21 - Public Speaking and Presentation Tips — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify | |||
| When Up Isn’t an Option: Stop Climbing the Career Ladder with Ran Liu | 12 Dec 2025 | 01:02:21 | |
Most designers hit senior level and suddenly there’s no obvious next step. In this episode, Ran Liu breaks down why the smartest career move may not be straight up, but diagonal. We unpack how to recognize stagnation, build visibility, stretch your skills, and create the kind of opportunities your company can’t (or won’t) give you. What if the fastest way to grow your design career isn’t a promotion? What if it's a diagonal move into work that stretches your range and makes you harder to replace? Every designer eventually hits that moment: you’ve earned trust, you’re doing great work, you’ve reached senior… and then the ladder suddenly disappears. No clear next step. No path to promotion. And maybe no manager who even understands your craft well enough to help. In this episode, I talk with product designer and Ran Talks Design host Ran Liu about why this happens so often—and why the smartest career move isn’t always upward. Ran shares how she discovered the idea of the diagonal move: a strategic shift that increases your scope, title, or company maturity all at once. She opens up about the moment she realized she was stuck—after years of impact, only to hear “you’re almost there” during promotion season. We walk through how to identify when your environment can’t (or won’t) support your growth: unclear leveling, lack of ownership, inconsistent feedback, and a ceiling that never seems to move. We also explore the kind of work you need before you make a diagonal move—building the right experience, designing your portfolio strategically, navigating “visibility guilt,” and reframing self-promotion as sharing what you’ve learned instead of bragging. Ran also breaks down practical ways to expand your influence inside your company, build a network that remembers you, and create opportunities even when no one is handing them out. If you’ve ever felt stuck at senior, this episode will show you how to take the wheel again. Give it a listen—you’ll walk away with a new way to think about your career. Topics: • 02:59 - The Career Plateau: What's Next? • 03:14 - Guest Introduction: Ran Liu • 04:08 - Understanding the Diagonal Move • 06:22 - Challenges in Career Growth • 13:28 - Taking Control of Your Career • 22:48 - Strategic Career Planning • 32:05 - The Shocking Pay Disparity Revelation • 32:34 - The Importance of Visibility in Career Growth • 33:20 - Building Confidence and Visibility • 34:59 - Leveraging LinkedIn for Networking • 36:40 - The Power of Community Engagement • 39:49 - Navigating Internal Visibility for Promotions • 44:03 - Sharing Failures and Learning from Them • 46:11 - Daily Habits for Career Momentum Helpful Links: • — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts | |||
| Zero Sum Bias: Escaping the “If They Win, I Lose” Trap | 04 Dec 2025 | 00:09:11 | |
We talk about collaboration, but our brains often treat work like a win-lose game. In this episode, I break down Zero-Sum Bias, the belief that someone else’s win automatically means your loss, where it comes from, how it quietly shapes team dynamics, and what you can do to build more win-win outcomes at work. What if your brain has been keeping score at work this whole time? And the game it thinks you’re playing doesn’t actually exist? We repeat lines like, “If a stakeholder wins, designers lose,” or “If the PM wins, users lose,” so often that they start to feel like facts. In this episode of the Cognition Catalog, we unpack Zero-Sum Bias, the belief that someone else’s gain must come at your expense, and how that thinking quietly turns collaboration into a contest. I walk through where this bias comes from, starting with early economic and game theory models like zero-sum games, where wins and losses truly do net out to zero, and how that maps onto our evolutionary history of genuine scarcity. Food, safety, and resources really were limited, so one person’s gain often did mean someone else’s loss. The problem is that our brains still carry that wiring into modern workplaces that are full of shared goals, interdependence, and cross-functional teams. From design vs. product vs. engineering “tensions” to resourcing, prioritization, and recognition, I break down how zero-sum thinking shows up in everyday UX work—and what changes when you stop assuming only one side can win. We’ll talk about practical ways to spot the bias, shift toward non-zero-sum thinking, and design team habits that reward collaboration over quiet competition. If you’ve ever caught yourself thinking, “If they win, I lose,” this episode will help you reset the scoreboard and build healthier ways of working together. Topics: • 02:08 Debunking Zero Sum Thinking • 03:13 Origins and Evolution of Zero Sum Bias • 04:09 Impact of Zero Sum Bias on Teams • 06:18 Strategies to Combat Zero-Sum Bias To explore more about the Naive Cynicism, don’t miss the full article @ cognitioncatalog.com — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify • Subscribe on YouTube • Subscribe on Stitcher | |||
| The Product of You: Design, Market, & Sell with Sarah Doody | 20 Nov 2025 | 01:06:19 | |
This week, I sit down with Sarah Doody to talk about why so many designers feel stuck, and why it has nothing to do with talent. We explore how designers can apply their own UX process to their careers, create clarity through “compass statements,” and build a roadmap that actually leads somewhere. What would happen if you stopped treating your portfolio like the product—and started treating yourself like the product? This week, I’m joined by UX researcher, product designer, and career strategist Sarah Doody to unpack a hard truth: most designers aren’t broken; they’re just not applying their own process to their careers. After years of helping teams build the right products, Sarah noticed the same patterns designers use at work rarely show up in their job search. That gap is exactly what inspired her to start Career Strategy Lab. In our conversation, we dig into the symptoms of “identity fog,” why so many designers struggle to articulate their own value, and how the industry’s obsession with FANG feeds unrealistic expectations. Sarah breaks down her “Product of You” framework—designing yourself, marketing yourself, and selling yourself—and shows how a single compass statement can influence everything from what projects you showcase to which jobs you apply for. We also talk about experimentation, metrics, tailoring your materials, and the surprising reasons why designers waste months tweaking their portfolios without improving their outcomes. If you’ve ever felt stuck, lost, or unsure how to stand out in a crowded market, this episode will give you the clarity and the next steps you’ve been missing. Give it a listen. You might walk away with a completely new way to think about your career. Topics: Helpful Links: — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts | |||
| Occam's Razor: When Simple Explanations Save Your Sanity | 14 Nov 2025 | 00:10:15 | |
This week, we break down Occam’s Razor as a practical tool for faster, cleaner decision-making. From troubleshooting bugs to interpreting teammate behavior, we explore why starting with the simplest explanation first prevents stalled projects, wasted cycles, and unnecessary team friction. What would happen if your team stopped jumping to complex explanations and started solving problems from the simplest point forward? This week on the Cognition Catalog, we explore Occam’s Razor through a lens most teams rarely consider: operational clarity. We all talk about avoiding assumptions, but the truth is that most slowdowns in cross-functional work happen because we add assumptions instead of stripping them away. Occam’s Razor gives us a mental model to prevent that. I share a real example of how one missed Friday message spiraled into a completely avoidable narrative—all because I skipped the simplest explanation. But this isn’t just about communication. The same thing happens in product reviews, sprint planning, bug triage, data interpretation, and even strategic debates. The more complexity we add early, the harder it becomes to make good decisions. We dig into how starting simple doesn’t make you naive, it makes you fast. It helps reduce noise, focus conversations, and unlock the clarity teams need to move forward. If you want a smoother workflow, fewer misunderstandings, and fewer dramatic leaps in logic, give this one a listen. Topics: • 00:00 - Introduction: Overthinking Simple Problems • 00:50 - Welcome to Cognition Catalog • 01:18 - Sponsor Shoutout: Mobbin • 02:03 - A Personal Story of Overcomplication • 02:57 - Understanding Occam's Razor • 04:50 - Applying Occam's Razor in Team Dynamics • 06:51 - Practical Takeaways from Occam's Razor To explore more about the Naive Cynicism, don’t miss the full article @ cognitioncatalog.com — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify • Subscribe on YouTube • Subscribe on Stitcher | |||
| The Many Ways to Slice a Watermelon: A Design Journey with Vitaly Friedman | 06 Nov 2025 | 01:12:12 | |
What can slicing a watermelon teach us about design? Turns out… quite a lot. This week, I chat with Vitaly Friedman, founder of Smashing Magazine, to explore curiosity, inefficiency, and why the best designers obsess over process, not perfection. What if your next design breakthrough came not from a book or a course, but from learning to slice a watermelon? Vitaly Friedman has spent decades shaping how designers think about the web. But in this conversation, we go beyond pixels and patterns to talk about something much more profound: how curiosity itself becomes a design tool. From choosing the perfect watermelon to mastering the art of ironing, Vitaly reveals how everyday obsessions can teach us how to think, learn, and design better. We explore how designers can reclaim joy and curiosity in their work, especially in environments where efficiency and productivity often come at the expense of creativity. Vitaly’s take? It’s not about finding the perfect way to do something—it’s about exploring many ways and discovering meaning in the process. From grilled watermelons to enterprise UX, we connect the dots between experimentation, self-learning, and the messy human side of design. If you’ve ever felt stuck chasing “best practices” or trying to find the “right” answer, this episode will remind you that sometimes, the most valuable thing you can do is play. Topics: Helpful Links: — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts | |||
| DesignByte: The Infinite Usability Test | 30 Oct 2025 | 00:15:39 | |
In this special Halloween episode, we follow Evelyn—a weary UX researcher trapped in a testing loop that refuses to end. Each new participant looks strangely familiar. Each test begins the same way. And no matter what she changes, they all say the same thing: “I can’t find the button.” The real horror? It’s not the prototype that’s broken… It’s her process. Today, we’re trading our usual interviews for a Halloween story straight out of every designer’s worst nightmare: The Infinite Usability Test. Meet Evelyn—a mid-level UX researcher running a morning of user tests that won’t quit. Every time she adjusts the design, another “Alex” walks in and repeats the same fateful words: “I can’t find the button.” As the day unravels, Evelyn realizes she’s stuck in more than a bad sprint—she’s caught in a validation loop. Each fix only pulls her deeper into the same mistakes, and each round of testing brings her face-to-face with the one insight she’s been avoiding all along. Because sometimes, the scariest thing in UX isn’t user feedback… It’s hearing something you didn’t expect. Join us for a hauntingly familiar tale about deadlines, doubt, and the difference between proving you’re right and learning that you’re not. Will Evelyn escape the room—or will she keep testing until the end of time? Tune in to find out… if you dare. --- Featuring Actress and UX Designer extraordinaire, Stephanie Terrero If you enjoyed this spooky UX Design scary story, check out our previous episodes: • The Tale of the Cursed Prototype • A Cautionary Tale of Deceptive UX Patterns
— Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts | |||
| Craft, Vision, and Influence: The Staff Designer’s Playbook with Catt Small | 23 Oct 2025 | 01:15:42 | |
If you’ve ever wondered why you’re still “senior” after years of great work, this episode is for you. Catt Small joins me to unpack what it actually takes to step into a staff designer role—the skills, mindset shifts, and invisible work no one tells you about. You’ve nailed the craft, shipped great work, and mentored others. So why are you still stuck at senior? Getting promoted isn’t always about skill gaps. Sometimes it’s about visibility, influence, and how you show up. In this episode, I sit down with Catt Small, Staff Product Designer, developer, and author of The Staff Designer, to explore what separates a strong senior designer from a true staff-level one. Catt shares the lessons that inspired her book: the moments of frustration, the confusion around “influence,” and the realization that being good at your craft isn’t enough. We talk about the transition from execution to strategy, how to set a vision, navigate organizational politics, and build the kind of social capital that makes people listen when you speak. If you’re wondering what’s next after senior, or how to stop spinning your wheels, this episode breaks down the hidden skills that actually move your career forward. It’s a candid look at how to lead without managing, earn trust across disciplines, and find meaning in the messy middle of your career. Topics: • 04:19 - Cat Small's Journey in Design • 09:39 - Understanding the Transition from Senior to Staff • 12:02 - The Role of Influence in Career Growth • 14:14 - Navigating Titles and Organizational Structures • 30:31 - The Importance of Vision in Design • 36:22 - Enhancing User Experience with Prototypes • 38:01 - Inspiring Vision and Influence • 39:12 - Negotiating and Planning for Vision Execution • 41:55 - Building Cross-Functional Collaboration • 46:41 - Balancing Craft and Soft Skills • 50:57 - Delegation and Accountability in Design • 57:34 - Promoting Your Work and Final Thoughts Helpful Links: • Connect with Catt on LinkedIn • Staff Designer: Influence & Lead as an Individual Contributor — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. | |||
| Naive Cynicism: The Bias That Turns Collaboration Into Competition | 17 Oct 2025 | 00:10:29 | |
Naive cynicism makes collaboration feel like competition. In this episode, we unpack the subtle bias that convinces us we’re objective while hidden motives drive everyone else, and explore how that thinking slowly erodes trust and teamwork. What happens when you stop seeing your teammates as collaborators and start seeing them as competitors with hidden motives? Ever had a PM question your design and immediately thought, “They just care about their roadmap”? That instinctive thought isn’t insight, it’s naive cynicism, the quiet bias that makes us assume we’re objective while everyone else is playing politics. In this episode, we dig into the research from Lee Ross, Emily Pronin, Justin Krueger, and Thomas Gilovich to uncover how this bias takes root in teams. From design critiques and sprint reviews to roadmap discussions and leadership dynamics, naive cynicism distorts collaboration by replacing curiosity with suspicion. You’ll learn how this bias shows up in everyday team interactions and what you can do to stop it. We’ll explore how to recognize your own illusion of objectivity, make reasoning visible, and rebuild trust through transparency and generosity. Because collaboration only works when we give each other the benefit of the doubt. Topics: • 01:48 - Recognizing Naive Cynicism in Teams • 03:01 - Understanding the Roots of Naive Cynicism • 04:45 - Impact of Naive Cynicism on Team Dynamics • 07:11 - Strategies to Counter Naive Cynicism To explore more about the Naive Cynicism, don’t miss the full article @ cognitioncatalog.com — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify • Subscribe on YouTube • Subscribe on Stitcher | |||
| The Planning Fallacy: Why We Underestimate Time and How to Avoid It | 02 Oct 2025 | 00:10:53 | |
We underestimate how long projects will take—even when experience tells us otherwise. In this episode, I break down the planning fallacy: why it happens, how it derails projects, and what you can do to protect your team from unrealistic deadlines. Why do we keep convincing ourselves that this time the project will be different, when it almost never is? Every designer has been there: a bold timeline handed down from leadership, optimism in the air, and a quiet voice inside whispering, there’s no way this is going to happen. That voice is usually right, and it’s the planning fallacy at work. In this episode, I share a real-world story of a global team tasked with rebuilding a massive legacy app on an impossible one-year deadline. The result? Chaos, delays, and missed expectations—classic symptoms of the planning fallacy. Along the way, I connect this to famous examples like the Sydney Opera House project and explain why even seasoned experts fall into the same trap. Most importantly, I walk through practical strategies for beating the bias: using reference class forecasting, building in buffers, involving cross-functional teams in estimation, and learning from past outcomes. Because if we can see the planning fallacy for what it is, we can start making more realistic commitments—and protect our teams from burnout and broken trust. Want to keep exploring cognitive biases that impact design teams? Subscribe to the Cognition Catalog newsletter and get a new bias in your inbox every week. Topics: • 01:57 The Planning Fallacy in Action • 03:54 Understanding the Planning Fallacy • 05:50 Consequences of the Planning Fallacy• 07:30 Strategies to Combat the Planning Fallacy To explore more about the Bike-Shedding Effect, don’t miss the full article @ cognitioncatalog.com | |||
| Your Career Multiplier Isn’t What You Think: Designers Who Write, Win With Thijs Kraan | 25 Sep 2025 | 00:53:35 | |
What if the most powerful skill you could develop as a designer has nothing to do with Figma or AI? In this episode, we explore why writing is the ultimate meta-skill—sharpening your thinking, influencing decisions, and accelerating your career in unexpected ways. Is writing the most underrated design skill of all time? We spend a lot of time talking about design skills like prototyping, facilitation, and AI tools. But what if the skill that strengthens all of those is the one designers most often ignore? In this episode, I sit down with Thijs Kraan, a designer-turned-growth partner, who makes the case that writing is the ultimate meta-skill. For Thijs, writing every day didn’t just sharpen his thinking; it multiplied his impact. From running a 30-day challenge to publishing daily posts, writing became the catalyst for everything else in his career. We talk about the difference between business writing, expert writing, and copywriting, why clear writing equals clear thinking, and how documentation can protect your career when tough decisions come back months later. We also tackle the elephant in the room: AI. Should you let ChatGPT do your writing, or will that shortcut make you worse in the long run? Whether you’re trying to influence stakeholders, sharpen your thinking, or just get better at your day-to-day communication, this conversation will show you why writing might just be the most important design skill you haven’t been practicing. Tune in and see why it’s time to pick up the pen (or keyboard). Topics: Helpful Links: — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify • Subscribe on YouTube | |||
| Don’t Wait for Permission To Level Up with Yao Adantor | 18 Sep 2025 | 00:56:29 | |
Too many designers wait for their companies to approve conferences or courses before investing in themselves. This week, we unpack why that’s a career-limiting mistake and how taking ownership of your education builds leadership, confidence, and community. What if the biggest career mistake you’re making is waiting for your company to invest in you? This week, I sit down with Yao Adantor, a UX professional, educator, founder of UX Con and User Experience University. Yao has built a career across Fortune 500s, startups, and government, while also teaching at Johns Hopkins and MICA. At the heart of his story is one simple belief: don’t wait for permission to grow. In our conversation, Yao shares why investing in your own education is less about buying a certificate and more about building confidence, networks, and opportunities that pay dividends for years. We talk about the “entrepreneurial mindset” of learning—how approaching your growth like a founder changes the way you show up in your job. We also dig into the hidden ROI of conferences, courses, and communities. Beyond the talks, it’s the connections, the ideas, and the confidence you bring back to your team that make the investment worth it. Whether you’re a junior designer or a seasoned leader, this episode will challenge how you think about your growth. If you’ve ever hesitated to spend your own money or time on learning, this conversation is for you. Give it a listen and rethink how you approach your education and career. Topics: Helpful Links: — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify • Subscribe on YouTube | |||
| You Can’t Figma Your Way out of Complexity With Jen Briselli | 11 Sep 2025 | 01:11:35 | |
Design isn’t a straight road. It’s more like a maze with moving walls. In this episode, strategist Jen Briselli shows us why learning, relationships, and hidden networks matter more than best practices when navigating complex organizations. How do you thrive as a designer when the org around you is unpredictable, political, and constantly changing? Most designers hit a wall at some point in their career: their skills are strong, but the system they’re working in feels impossible to navigate. Best practices don’t seem to work, processes break down, and “design maturity” feels like a buzzword no one can actually define. That’s where Jen Briselli comes in. With a background in physics, teaching, and design strategy, Jen helps teams understand what complexity really means and why learning is the only way through it. In our conversation, she explains how complicated and complex are not the same thing, how informal networks drive influence more than org charts, and why the real work of design is creating the conditions for growth rather than forcing outcomes. If you’ve ever felt stuck in a low-maturity team, frustrated by org politics, or burned out by chasing “best practices,” this episode will reframe how you see your role. Thriving in complexity and ambiguity is not about having all the answers. Instead, it’s about learning how to sense, adapt, and build the great relationships that make great software possible. Take a listen to learn how to stop fighting complexity and start working with it. Topics:• 02:41 – Understanding Complexity in Product Design• 04:06 – Jen Belli’s Journey into Complexity Science• 04:41 – Exploring Complexity Science in Design• 11:55 – The Difference Between Complex and Complicated Systems• 16:56 – Navigating Complex Systems in UX Design• 30:56 – The Role of Learning in Complex Systems• 34:58 – Formal and Informal Networks in Organizations• 40:57 – Understanding the Metaphor of Soil, Seeds, and Sunlight• 41:54 – Exploring Design Maturity and Emergent Properties• 43:33 – Creating Conditions for Psychological Safety and Design Maturity• 44:46 – The Role of Affordances in Design Maturity• 45:06 – Nurturing Growth in Unpredictable Environments• 50:00 – Balancing Work and Mental Health• 54:18 – The Importance of Identity and Letting Go• 57:33 – Final Thoughts on Complexity and Learning Helpful Links: — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify • Subscribe on YouTube | |||
| The Toxic Myth of the Seat at the Table With Rashmi Lopez | 04 Sep 2025 | 01:04:12 | |
Designers are told to climb ladders and fight for influence, but what’s the cost? Rashmi Lopez shares why she walked away from the corporate chase, how burnout stole her joy, and why community, creativity, and mental health are better markers of success than any leadership title. What if climbing the ladder to a “seat at the table” comes at the expense of your health, joy, and sense of purpose? Would you still want it? Corporate design culture pushes us toward one version of success: titles, promotions, and that coveted “seat at the table.” But for many, that seat comes with exhaustion, burnout, and a nagging question—why doesn’t this feel like success? In this episode, I talk with Rashmi Lopez, a designer who hit that wall, realized the cost, and chose another path. After years of grinding in tech and reaching leadership roles, Rashmi found herself drained and disconnected. A layoff became her turning point, leading her to step back, heal, and refocus on helping small businesses tell their stories with design. We explore how to rethink career success beyond titles, why boundaries and mental health are non-negotiable, and how community can give you more influence and fulfillment than any corporate ladder. If you’ve ever felt trapped in the cycle of overwork and chasing validation, this conversation will give you permission to define success on your own terms. — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify • Subscribe on YouTube | |||
| Effort Over Time: Why Story Points Are a Better Way To Plan UX Work Naresh Shan | 28 Aug 2025 | 01:07:25 | |
Estimating design work in hours sets teams up to fail. But story points help designers earn trust, align with product managers, and keep creative space intact. This week, we unpack how adopting story points can shift the way your team plans and communicates. What if the secret to better collaboration wasn’t a new tool or process, but a number? For years, UX teams have struggled with estimation. Say something will take ten hours, and suddenly you’re locked into a number that doesn’t account for iteration, alignment, or even creativity. The result? Broken trust and unrealistic expectations. This week, I chat with Naresh Shan, a design leader who’s built global UX teams and proven that story points, not hours, are the secret to bridging the gap between design, engineering, and product management. By shifting estimation from time to effort, Naresh shows how design teams can protect creativity while building credibility with stakeholders. We explore what story points are, what it looks like when designers adopt them, why this shared language breaks down silos, and how it transforms team dynamics. If you’ve ever felt sidelined in sprint planning or struggled to explain your workload, this episode will give you practical ways to earn trust and plan smarter. Topics: Helpful Links: — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify | |||
| Control, chaos, and the future of UX: Why AI is exposing the truth about UX with Dennis Lenard | 21 Aug 2025 | 01:08:52 | |
AI isn’t killing design. It’s reminding us what design really is. In this episode, we talk about the illusion of control, why designers often feel powerless, and how the real work has always been about making meaning and managing systems, not just making screens. What if AI isn’t changing design at all, but finally showing us what design has really been about this whole time? It’s tempting to think AI is rewriting the rules of design. But maybe the truth is simpler: it’s exposing what design was always about. In this conversation with Dennis Lenard, founder of Creative Navy, we explore how AI is pushing designers to confront the illusion of control, the limits of pixel pushing, and the bigger role of meaning-making. Dennis brings over 20 years of experience working in UX, teaching design, and writing on interface design for high-stakes industries like healthcare. His perspective? The anxieties we’re feeling aren’t new; they’re just harder to ignore now. We cover why prioritization matters more than production, why empathy should extend to your team as much as your users, and how to reframe design as managing the system, not just the interface. If you’ve ever felt like AI is destabilizing your role, this episode will help you see it as a mirror, not a threat. Topics: Helpful Links: — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify | |||
| Why smart teams argue about the wrong things: Unpacking the Bike-Shedding Effect | 14 Aug 2025 | 00:11:07 | |
We’ve all been there an hour into a meeting and somehow still debating button alignment. In this episode, we unpack the Bikeshedding Effect, why it derails teams, and how to keep your focus where it matters most. Why do smart teams waste so much time on trivial details while the big, critical decisions gather dust? If you’ve ever walked out of a meeting wondering how the last hour disappeared into debating something barely worth deciding, you’ve experienced the Bikeshedding Effect. Also known as the Law of Triviality, this bias pushes teams toward the easy-to-understand, low-stakes topics, while the truly strategic ones get sidelined. In this episode, I share my own war stories from fluorescent-lit conference rooms and design critiques gone off the rails. We look at how Parkinson’s satirical observation about bike shed designs still plays out today—in agile ceremonies, leadership meetings, and design reviews. It’s not laziness, it’s our natural pull toward comfort and away from complexity. You’ll learn how to spot the signs, structure meetings to avoid the trap, and shift your team’s culture toward tackling the work that actually moves the needle. Whether you’re leading a project or just trying to survive another round of pixel debates, this one’s for you. Topics: To explore more about the Bike-Shedding Effect, don’t miss the full article @ cognitioncatalog.com | |||
| Why first impressions outlast the truth: The Continued Influence Effect | 08 Aug 2025 | 00:11:44 | |
We unpack the continued influence effect—why wrong ideas and early takes often outlast the truth—and how it can quietly shape your team’s decisions long after the facts are corrected. Why do people still believe a story even after it’s been proven wrong? If you’ve ever run an A/B test that “failed” only to see the wrong lesson stick around for months, you’ve felt the continued influence effect in action. It’s that pesky bias where the first version of a story, whether true or not, keeps shaping behavior long after it’s been corrected. In this episode, I share a story from my own work where a redesign underperformed in testing. Even though we learned valuable lessons and built a better version, the dominant narrative became “the test failed.” From planning sessions to hallway chatter, that early interpretation continued to influence how we thought and acted. We’ll dig into the research behind this bias, how it shows up in everyday team dynamics, and practical steps you can take to keep outdated or misleading narratives from derailing your work. Listen in and learn how to replace sticky misinformation with better, more accurate stories your team will actually remember. Topics: • 00:00 - The Test Failed: A Case Study • 01:38 - The Continued Influence Effect Explained • 02:04 - A Familiar Story of Misinterpretation • 04:12 - The Psychology Behind the Continued Influence Effect • 05:40 - Real-World Implications and Examples • 07:53 - Strategies to Combat the Continued Influence Effect To explore more about the Continued Influence Effect, don’t miss the full article @ cognitioncatalog.com | |||
| PMs Are People Too: Stakeholders Are Not the Enemy With Thomas Stokes & Lawton Pybus | 29 Jul 2025 | 01:12:18 | |
Designers love talking about empathy… Just not for the people they work with. This week, we talk about why empathy has to extend beyond users and how you can apply familiar UX research techniques to better understand your teammates, PMs, and stakeholders. If empathy is such a core UX skill, why are so many designers bad at applying it to the people they work with? Designers love talking about empathy for users. But if your research findings are getting ignored or your design recommendations keep getting watered down, it might be time to turn that empathy inward. Thomas and Lawton join me from Drillbit Labs. They both have PhDs in human factors, and they help product teams make smarter decisions with less drama. This week, they make a pretty compelling case: if you’re not applying your research mindset to the people you work with, you’re not doing your job. We talk about how to use stakeholder interviews, power mapping, one-on-ones, and intentional relationship-building to get unstuck—and what to do when your best ideas are still getting shot down. If you’re tired of saying “they just don’t get it,” this episode is for you. Topics: Helpful Links: — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify | |||
| Unpacking Hidden Prejudices: The Subtle Bias in Team Dynamics | 17 Jul 2025 | 00:12:15 | |
Not all prejudice is loud or obvious. In this episode, we explore the quiet kind: the one that hides behind gut feelings and culture fit. We'll break down how implicit bias shapes team dynamics, hiring decisions, and everyday interactions, even in well-meaning workplaces. What if the biggest barrier to equity on your team isn’t hate, but habit? In this episode of the Cognition Catalog, we dig into the subtleties of prejudice that often hide in plain sight. These aren't the overt acts of hostility we usually associate with bias, but the quiet, unnoticed attitudes and assumptions that shape who gets hired, heard, and left behind. We'll explore the nature of implicit prejudice, its impact on team dynamics, and how we can challenge and change these hidden biases to create fairer and more inclusive workplaces. Tune in to learn actionable steps to recognize and interrupt these biases, ensuring we all contribute to a more equitable environment. Topics: • 02:25 - A Personal Anecdote on Bias • 03:21 - Understanding Implicit Prejudice • 06:13 - The Science Behind Implicit Bias • 08:54 - Addressing and Mitigating Bias To explore more about Prejudice, don’t miss the full article on the Cognition Catalog! Don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter to be the first to know when new episodes drop! Join me every week for insights on a new cognitive bias! | |||
| Grit Over Glam: The Ugly Bits Between the Pretty Work | 11 Jul 2025 | 01:00:21 | |
Think all you need is a polished portfolio and perfect case study to land your next job? Trevor Alexander says otherwise. In this episode, we challenge the traditional career advice designers are given, and talk about what actually leads to long-term success, resilience, and trust. What if everything you’ve been told about how to build a successful design career was wrong? If you’re still clinging to the idea that a polished portfolio and deep Figma skills are your best bet for success in UX, this episode is going to challenge that—hard. I sat down with Trevor Alexander, author of An Ugly Design Career, to talk about why those things might actually be distractions. We cover everything from the myth of the “pretty” career to the real-world power of trust, communication, and grit. Trevor shares how he’s thrived in UX without a portfolio or job applications, because people keep bringing him along for the ride. Not because of fancy job titles, but because of how he shows up. From improv classes and Toastmasters to lifestyle creep and living in a founder’s basement, Trevor drops wisdom that hits different in today’s job market. Whether you’re new to UX or 15 years in, this episode is a gut check on what really matters. Give it a listen, and maybe rethink what “better” looks like. Topics: Helpful Links: — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify | |||
| THROWBACK: User First, But Not You Last: Prioritizing Your Preservation with Jason Ogle | 03 Jul 2025 | 01:10:27 | |
In this throwback episode, I chat with Jason Ogle from the User Defenders Podcast about something we don’t talk about enough: self-care for UX designers. We explore how taking care of ourselves is essential to be truly empathetic. Could self-care be the most overlooked tool in a UX designer’s toolkit? How can we expect to fill our users’ cups if our own is empty? What if taking care of yourself is the most user-centric design choice you can make? This week, I got a chance to talk with with Jason Ogle of the famed User Defenders Podcast. We peel back the layers of UX design to discuss a foundational aspect that’s often neglected: the designer’s self-care. Jason shares his insights on how self-care is intrinsically linked to our capacity to care for and understand our users. He makes a compelling case for why designers must prioritize their well-being to truly excel in their work. We discuss the inherently altruistic nature of design and how this high calling to solve problems for others begins with solving our own problem of neglecting self-care. He highlighted the simple yet powerful concept: “We can’t fill someone else’s cup if our cup is empty,” emphasizing the need for designers to ensure they’re mentally and physically prepared to tackle the challenges of UX design. We also touched on the critical mind-body connection and how physical well-being directly impacts our creative and empathetic abilities. Jason shared personal strategies for making time for self-care, including the importance of sleep and how it significantly influences the following day’s mood, energy levels, and productivity. Jason’s approach to saying “no” and the freedom it brings to focus on what truly matters served as a powerful lesson in setting boundaries for personal and professional growth. Topics: Helpful Links: | |||
| Working With People Is the Real Challenge: From “Us vs. Them” to “We’ve Got This” With Guy Segal | 26 Jun 2025 | 00:59:03 | |
What’s stopping your work from shipping? It’s probably not the design itself. This week, I chat with Guy Segal about the soft skills that make the biggest difference—giving feedback, earning trust, and aligning with your team when things get tough. What if the biggest reason your designs aren’t making it to production has nothing to do with design? You know your work is solid. You’ve put in the hours, iterated on the flow, and covered every edge case. But when it comes time to hand it off or get sign-off, something breaks. It stalls, gets picked apart, or falls flat. Sound familiar? In this episode, I sit down with Guy Segal—design leader and host of Design Downtime—to talk about why “soft skills” are the hardest part of UX, and how improving them can be the difference between your designs shipping or collecting dust. We cover how to give better feedback, how to handle misalignment without blowing things up, and what it actually means to be someone your team wants to work with. This conversation is a must-listen if you’ve ever felt like good design work wasn’t enough. Because it isn’t. The way you show up—how you talk to people, how you build trust, how you respond to tension—is what moves the work forward. Topics: Helpful Links: — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Subscribe on Spotify | |||
| The Designer’s Guide To Power and Politics: Organizational Theory and Design With Thomas Wilson | 19 Jun 2025 | 01:05:09 | |
Understanding how power works might be the most underrated UX skill. Thomas Wilson shares ways to navigate power, bridge generational gaps, and influence decisions, even when you don’t have direct control.
You can’t influence what you don’t understand. In this conversation, I sit down with Thomas Wilson to discuss the invisible structures that shape what gets built, who gets heard, and why some designers consistently seem to gain traction, even without a fancy title. We unpack what it means to navigate power inside organizations, how to build trust with people who don’t think like you, and what “pushing back” looks like when done with empathy and strategy. Thomas also challenges the notion that power is something to be avoided or rejected. Instead, he frames it as a neutral force—one you can learn to work with instead of around. If you’ve ever felt stuck, sidelined, or frustrated by decisions that don’t make sense, this episode will help you rethink how you operate—and show you that power, used well, can actually be a designer’s ally. Topics: • 03:51 Understanding Power Dynamics in Organizations • 05:44 Types of Power in Business • 08:22 Strategies for Leveraging Power • 19:39 Tools for Influencing and Negotiation • 28:12 Power Mapping and Stakeholder Management • 36:47 Influence and Interest Matrix • 37:43 Generational Dynamics in the Workplace • 38:57 Diversity of Thought and Communication Styles • 41:34 Building Relationships and Trust • 43:41 Handling Workplace Conflicts • 48:48 Resources for Understanding Power Helpful Links: — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Check out our website • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | |||
| Freelancing Without the Frenzy: One Tool, One Niche, No Drama With Maciej Konarzewski | 05 Jun 2025 | 00:51:39 | |
Freelancing doesn't have to mean chaos and burnout. In this episode, we explore how to scale your freelance business without hiring a team by getting smarter with tools, strategy, and specialization. What if you could scale your freelance business without hiring a team, just by using the right tools? Most freelancers hit the same wall: they think going solo means doing it all. But today’s guest, Maciej Konarzewski, shares how that belief almost held him back, and how flipping the script helped him build a successful one-person business that runs on his terms. In this episode, Maciej shares how he went from building his first site for his wife’s cleaning business to becoming a certified Wix Studio partner and full-time business owner. We talk about ditching the hustle mindset, building smart systems, and saying no to distractions (and even clients) in order to say yes to better work. If you’re a designer trying to escape the 9–5 grind or scale your freelance business without burning out, this episode is for you. We dig into tools, pricing, niching down, and how community and relationships can unlock opportunities you didn’t even know were possible. Tune in and learn how to build a thriving freelance business—without hiring a single employee.
Helpful Links: — Thanks for listening! We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear. • Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show • Support the show on Patreon • Check out show transcripts • Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | |||