The Funsize Show – Details, episodes & analysis

Their conversation begins with a discussion about how remote work is changing the rhythms of design teams and what it really means to connect intentionally and build culture across distance, diving into moments when collaboration drives creative breakthroughs—and when solo deep work reigns. Then they turn to tough questions: what does brand experience mean in a world where endless content and AI risk draining our creativity, and how much does a company’s personality shape purchasing decisions in this climate? 

Don't miss the final hot debates: is Figma actually slowing design innovation and a rapid-fire round that challenges and redefines what design truly is.

To watch the video version of this podcast, head over to our YouTube channel here

----

Check out more exciting episodes on the Funsize Show Website.

Web: www.funsize.co. |  Linkedin: Funsize Design  |  Instagram: @funsizeco

On this episode of The Fold, hosts Tony Sanchez and Anthony Armendariz are joined by Ben Hernandez. Ben shares his perspective on how designers can help drive real product elevation—not just polish—by collaborating more closely with product managers, whose evolving role now involves shaping vision and championing value across disciplines.

Ben also shares his personal philosophy on self-advocacy. He introduces the idea of a “user manual for working with me,” offering practical advice to anyone aiming for smoother collaboration in creative settings.

To watch the video version of this podcast, head over to our YouTube channel here

----

Check out more exciting episodes on the Funsize Show Website.

Web: www.funsize.co. |  Linkedin: Funsize Design  |  Instagram: @funsizeco  |  X: @funsize 

Tony, Anthony, and Brian have spent years in the trenches together, building products, solving tough problems, and growing as leaders who care deeply about people and craft. In this conversation, they unpack what it means to create moments of real delight for users and the teams behind the work. From early design sparks to final handoffs, it's a look at how trust, collaboration, and shared history can turn good ideas into unforgettable experiences.

----

Check out more exciting episodes on the Funsize Show Website.

Web: www.funsize.co. |  Linkedin: Funsize Design  |  Instagram: @funsizeco  |  X: @funsize 

Linkedin: Funsize Design

Brandon Breitenbach is the Co-Founder and CEO of Pare Booking, a kick ass digital product that’s changing the way musicians and artists book shows and get paid. Recently, Brandon stopped by the studio while visiting Funsize to discuss the history of our working relationship, how we made decisions, the process and tools we used and what the ideal client and design agency relationship can look and feel like.

2:00
Introduction to the Pare Booking's product and user experience. Pare Booking modernizes the process for musicians and artists to book shows, manage contracts, and get paid.

4:00
Brandon’s share's his music and music booking industry background.

4:47
How Funsize met Pare Booking. Brandon and Anthony talk about the history of how Pare Booking and Funsize found each other and how quickly we were able to get started.

6:25
Why Pare Booking chose to work with Funsize. Brandon talks about what it feels like to hire a design and development vendors. Joel Beukelman recommended they work with Funsize and Brandon trusted his friend and moved forward. You can usually tell at the first conversation if there’s a match between a client and an agency. You gotta follow your gut!

8:20
Phi talks about how awesome it is to be held accountable but also to have the breathing room and trust to move forward in making design decisions.

9:00
Brandon discusses his experience working relationship with Funsize. Phi shares how we used Sketch and Marvel, two completely new tools on this project, to maximize our effort and time, and how we crafted a unique design process to be able to design the MVP app in a very short period of time.

10:50
Clients are subject matter experts. Sometimes designers don’t always know “what’s best”.

11:40
A dream client is one that that has good taste.

12:30
We discuss conceptual design, atomic design, and how they were applied in the Pare Booking project. For Pare Booking, Funsize presented multiple concepts as screen designs supplemented with mood boards/style tiles to expand on the concepts voice, feel, and visual language. This is a good way to explore and create the personality of the brand or product, outside of just focusing on what it can look like. For Pare, this lets them see the scope of the “why” behind each concept.

15:19
“We didn’t have a brand or identity when we started this project...”

16:09
Brandon mentioned that 3 concepts was just the right amount. If we had delivered any more it would have been overwhelming for him. Brandon was playing golf (and left at the 16th hole!) when he reviewed our concepts for the first time.

17:10
Brandon and Anthony talk about what’s it’s like working together in an agile design engagement. What worked was the amount of communication and transparency Pare and Funsize had throughout the project. This resulted in a high amount of trust. Both companies did their part in getting each other what the other needed to be successful.

19:45
How Funsize uses [Pivotal Tracker to manage design sprints and transparency with our team, clients, and stakeholders. Keeping your team's best interest in mind while estimating design sprint stories will help create the best work possible. Pare has now adopted Pivotal Tracker as their internal product management tool. We recall [Hustle Season 1, Episode 7: "Death to Time Tracking", where we talked about how Funsize stopped time tracking and how Pivotal Tracker has been critical in allowing the client and agency relationship to flourish.

22:50
Pare Booking was the first project in which Funsize used Sketch 100% through the duration of the project from wireframes to finished design. Phi talks about the advantages of Sketch and how it helped meet our project objectives and save time.

25:00
Whether you use Photoshop or Sketch, having a system in place to dynamically design empowers the designer to make a change in the overall design without having to worry about accumulating unnecessary design debt.

26:19
“I will use Funsize as long as I possibly can.”

26:30
Pare’s iPhone app is launching in the Apple App store between August and September 2015. If you’re a touring musician, artist, or speaker, please check out www.parebooking.com and sign up for early access!

27:00
Check out Funsize's Pare Booking Dribble Collection to see what the Pare Booking design will look like. Also feel free to demo the Pare Marvel Prototype for a hands-on experience with the app's design and user experience.

27:40
Rick announces the wrap-up of Season 1 of the Hustle Podcast and what to expect in the upcoming second season of the podcast.

• Pare Booking's Web Site
• Pare Booking's Twitter
• Funsize's Pare Booking Dribbble Collection
• Funsize's Clickable Marvel Prototype
• Sketch for Screen Designers
• Photoshop now has multiple canvases!
• Marvel App for Prototyping
• Pivotal Tracker
• Thanks Joel Beukelman!

Visit the Funsize website
Subscribe to The Funsize Digest
Check out Funsize on Instagram

• 0:55 Rick is back from paternity leave. His new son is awesome.
• 1:11 Joining us on this episode is the Senior Director of Design at Jawbone, friend of Funsize, and a hugely inspirational designer, Mr. Peter Merholz.
• 1:30 Anthony chronicles Peter's background with the international consulting firm, Adaptive Path, which is perhaps best known for championing "User Experience."
• 1:50 Fun Peter Merholz facts: Peter hired Funsize while at Groupon and was Funsize's first client. Thanks, Peter! He also coined the term 'blog'.
• 3:44 Fun fact about the new Up4 from Jawbone is that it can do NFC payments!
• 4:00 The theme for this episode was conceived following Peter's blog post "There's no such thing as UX design."
• 5:20 Don Norman, credited with the coining the term User Experience in the early 90s, created the User Experience Architect's office at Apple.
• 6:25 Initially, Adaptive Path considered themselves a user experience consultancy because no one else was talking about user experience at the time. The term "design" was an avoided term because designers were not involved in product strategy, often reduced to pixel pushers and production workers.
• 8:40 "User experience is an outcome, not a practice." - Peter Merholz. There are many contributing factors to good or bad user experience, but design is only one part of the whole.
• 9:32 User experience designers were actually interaction designers, information architects, or other designers cloaking themselves with the phrase because it sounded good.
• 11:11 Picking apart the concept of the "User Experience Designer." A litmus test for the viability of the "User Experience Designer" career path: How would one grow as a UX designer? What's that path or evolution look like?
• 14:20 The thing that we call "User Experience design" may fit in two buckets: 1) Product Management & 2) Design Execution.
• 15:00 A historic lapse in balanced Product Management may have generated "User Experience Design."
• 17:00 Product designers began to create a set of user research & persona development practices in order to ensure product strategy would not forget to acknowledge the user.
• 18:20 Strategically-minded designers can lead products as well as strategically-minded engineers or business persons.
• 21:55 If we do call "User Experience Designer" a profession, it would be best compared to a film director.
• 25:00 Anyone who tells you they've figured out how the formula for the perfect product team is lying to you.
• 25:50 Peter eventually left consulting because he found the relationship they had with clients wasn't leveraging his agency enough impact on final products. Peter effortlessly flips the interview around on Funsize to discuss how we ensure impact with clients and products.
• 28:00 Funsize discusses our team structures and project pacing.
• 29:25 We share about a tactical program we run called Special Ops, in which designers may do work that can help steer the product in the direction we believe it should go. Special Ops often strengthens our impact within the client organization.
• 32:00 We discuss pairing design teams with clients and the importance spreading out designer's velocity across more than one project at a time. No designer works alone!
• 33:45 We talk about the problems with in-house designers at product companies and how to avoid driving designers insane.
• 35:00 Peter discusses tactical hiring decisions and team formation at Groupon, to which he gives credit for stronger impact of designers and decisions.
• 38:30 We recall our discussion with our friends at Adobe, where we learned that there's two designers to 60+ engineers at Photoshop.
• 39:00 Peter recalls hiring outside design support while at Groupon.
• 42:15 We note how, for consultancies, it's becoming just as important to help the people and companies you work with hiring internal teams as it is to help them with needed design work.
• 43:00 Design teams in an organization are very different from other types of teams, and they shouldn't be structured or managed as though they were just another flavor of engineer, lest you want frustrated designers.
• 45:45 We're excited to meet up at Front Conference in Utah, coming up this summer.

###Links:

• There's no such thing as UX design" by Peter Merholz
• Peter on Twitter
• Peter's Blog

Visit the Funsize website
Subscribe to The Funsize Digest
Check out Funsize on Instagram

It’s a wonderful time to be a product designer. There's more design and prototyping tools available to us than ever before (and more and more keep popping up). It’s safe to say we’ll all be using these tools in various ways to achieve the specific results we need. Keynote is a fantastic low-barrier-of-entry tool that allows product managers, designers, and marketing professionals to achieve product success while maximizing time

In this special SXSW '15 Hustle/Balance Podcast cross-over episode, Joel Beukelman and Ted Boda talk about how Keynote has allowed cross discipline teams at Google, Nest, and Netflix to work quickly and efficiently together to craft great products.

• 0:45 Drinking bourbon and opening up the show
• 1:30 Joel talks about his new job at Google working on Android Auto, how he and Ted started working with Keynote for prototyping at Netflix, and the inspiration of the Balance Podcast.
• 3:30 Ted introduces himself and his experience working on the Keynote team at Apple, Nest, and his new exciting projects.
• 4:55 “Keynote is my entire design tool.” - Joel
• 4:55 Keynote has all the features you need to plan, design, build consensus, track changes, present and spec your entire product; and can maximize valuable time.
• 9:50 Keynote does everything you need to do 80-90% really well in one tool.
• 10:50 Ted talks about presenting Design to Steve Jobs.
• 13:27 There are sooo many prototyping tools available today.
• 20:00 Just show me the damn thing! Oh that’s the thing!
• 23:40 Pixel pretty damn perfect. Your mock doesn’t matter. Even if your design is perfect the engineer isn’t going to necessarily make it perfect.
• 24:22 You’re at an advantage if you're working on a project with an established visual identity.
• 32:58 When you’re at a big product company it’s all about money and conversion and testing. The last 25% is the polish that happens in implementation.
• 34:00 You have to know the voice of your product and Keynote makes it easy for writers to hop in and do their work.
• 37:30 Details matter. When you’re doing something wrong for the driving context people could die.
• 39:00 Use the tools that works best for you. Joel and Ted prefer tools that save time.
• 41:25 Get ted and Joel to do a workshop at your company at www.keynote.com
• 43:23 Joel runs out of Bourbon.

###Links:

• Joel on Twitter
• Ted on Twitter
• Balance Podcast
• I Love Keynote

Visit the Funsize website
Subscribe to The Funsize Digest
Check out Funsize on Instagram

It's SXSW '15 and we had the awesome opportunity to hang out with Photoshop product designers before our epic high-five hour party. Anthony and Danielle set out to tackle a controversial topic.

The dilemma is that there is a lot of great-looking design on the web at sites like Behance and Dribbble and also in a great many designers portfolios. Sometimes you see something that looks incredible aesthetically on the screen but then you find out that it was either unsolicited by the “client” (example: how many times have see someone redesign Instagram on Behance?) or that carries the footnote something like “rejected concept.” It might look amazing, but why didn’t it ship?

• 00:00 Introductions
• 05:30 It’s important to play, but there’s serious constraints with a 25 year old project
• 07:45 It’s fun to be wrong
• 09:18 It discounts the hard work a product team has put in
• 11:05 Let’s you think big and you need that to live!
• 10:20 A benefit is the “What if” which pushes the design
• 12:00 Project Recess, a new photoshop experience.
• 14:00 Scenario: 100% honesty, which designer would you hire?
• 29:00 Hire strong opinions, loosely held
• 30:00 Teams need both types to even each other out
• 32:44 “lovingly curating” keeping teams on a rotation to keep roles complimentary
• 35:08 Experimental projects in a product that don’t ship are still worth the lesson you learn
• 37:00 The best work may be conceptual stuff you can’t show
• 39:50 Understanding how a design vision can be rolled out over time
• 43:00 Some quick descriptions of Photoshop’s team structure

Visit the Funsize website
Subscribe to The Funsize Digest
Check out Funsize on Instagram

Do you know your product and how to get exposure for it? Jordan Menashy VP of Marketing and Co-Founder of Bench.co talks to us about marketing a product. Rick and Danielle from Funsize ask questions from a non-expert perspective.

• 00:00 Introductions
• 05:41 Activating a marketing engine
• 08:00 Determining product market fit can only be accomplished by launching
• 09:25 Launching: Store up some "big reveals" when rolling out to keep the momentum going for the first few months
• 15:10 Approach a mentor and don't waste their time, have questions ready!
• 19:00 Use google analytics, there is no secret tool, just hard-work and good analysis
• 23:29 R&D vs Engine
• 25:30 Good marketing is about good methodology not false promises
• 27:00 You need to allow for failure so you can learn how to make it work
• 28:00 Getting started: Get a target customer acquisition cost (CAC) and find a channel that works for you. That channel can be converted into an engine, then you want to refine that engine with R&D
• 35:00 Get your engines running and check against your business metrics
• 36:35 Rick misunderstands marketing...
• 37:11 Examples of engines that work and don't work for Bench.co
• 39:00 How do you get started with no experience and little marketing budget?

###Links

• Jordan on twitter
• Bench.co

Visit the Funsize website
Subscribe to The Funsize Digest
Check out Funsize on Instagram

Agencies, studios, in-house at a large companies, designer on a product team, and, now, working from home at an online retailer with a distributed team. Phil has worked in almost every type of environment a designer might find themselves in.

In this episode, we get a unique view from his perspective about working with humility, discipline, and honing your craft.

###Show Notes

• 00:00 Introductions
• 01:36 Current definition of what Phil does: "Digital Designer"
• 06:56 Who is Phil Coffman?
• 11:30 Small studio, humble beginnings
• 13:43 Working in-house at a large oil company
• 18:35 Web design moonlighting
• 19:20 Springbox: Client services at an agency, working with large brands
• 24:15 Element: Starting a new design studio
• 26:30 Establishing a design voice for a company and building a team
• 31:05 Spacecraft: Merger with Element, and designing on a product team
• 36:00 The itch to work on just one product
• 38:45 PC Part Picker: Design lead with a distributed team
• 42:30 Setting boundaries for working at home
• 43:45 Working with a distributed team

###Links

• Phil on Twitter
• Phil on Dribbble
• PC PartPicker

Visit the Funsize website
Subscribe to The Funsize Digest
Check out Funsize on Instagram

Visit the Funsize website
Subscribe to The Funsize Digest
Check out Funsize on Instagram