Lou talks with Whitney Hess as she discusses her vast career in UX design and transition into coaching. She breaks down the different methodologies and philosophies she utilizes with each client and how she embodies her work beyond her coaching. Together, Whitney and Lou discuss the different risks and leaps of faith she has had to take during her career and how that ultimately led her to be a more effective coach. Whitney recommends: Upperlimiting is a concept by Gay Hendricks from his book The Big Leap. Here's an article on the hidden barriers that get in the way of us moving from our Zone of Excellence to our Zone of Genius. https://experiencelife.lifetime.life/article/overcome-your-upper-limits/ Whitney Hess is a coach, writer, and designer on a mission to put humanity back into business. She believes empathy builds empires. Whitney helps creative leaders design their careers and accelerate their missions. Her techniques help people gain self-awareness, identify blind spots, navigate obstacles, and bring their whole selves to their work. For more than a decade, Whitney was a user experience consultant making technology easier and more pleasurable to use. She has been recognized for her work with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Foundation Center, Seamless, Boxee, and WNYC. She is named as a co-inventor on a U.S. patent with American Express. Whitney is a two-time graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, with a Master’s in Human-Computer Interaction and a Bachelor’s in Professional Writing and HCI. She is a Certified Integral Coach through New Ventures West and a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) with the International Coaching Federation. She writes on her blog Pleasure & Pain, co-hosts the podcast Designing Yourself, and speaks at conferences and corporations worldwide. A native New Yorker, Whitney lives in Maine with her partner Fredrick Selby. They are in the early stages of planning their circumnavigation.

Lou sits down with Kara Kane, one of the curators of the Civic Design Conference, to discuss her role in the public sector and how that’s changed over the years. They preview the narrative she and her team have put together for the conference as well as discuss the challenges and victories she has faced through her career that have left her with her current optimistic view on the growth of civic design in the public sector.

Lou sits down with Christian Crumlish, a product and UX leadership consultant at Design in Product, where he also hosts a product/UX community. Together they discuss the challenges that Design and Product traditionally have faced. They explore the intersection of these two functions and the need for a long overdue conversation: how Design and Product can be better partners. Christian is named as the curator of the newly announced Design in Product conference, hosted by Rosenfeld Media on December 6, 2022. They go on to discuss how this event will help designers and researchers better understand the challenges that product people face in order to improve their working relationship. https://rosenfeldmedia.com/events/futures/design-in-product/

Chelsea Mauldin, co-founder and executive director of the Public Policy Lab, dives into the intersection of design in the public sector, the struggles her nonprofit faces versus those in the private sector, and the growth of the civic design community. She also discusses government inefficiency, the role of taxes, funding sources for not-for-profit organizations, compensating highly skilled professionals in the public sector, the importance of values, and the power of poetry.

Lou sits down with Alex Schmidt, author of Deliberate Intervention: Using Policy and Design to Navigate the Harms of New Technology. They discuss the harms of modern technology, proactive approaches to counteract biases, and bringing design and policy closer together in the field.

Ahead of the 2022 DesignOps Summit, Lou speaks with guest Jon Fukuda, a co-founder of Limina where for 18 years he has been delivering UX and technical design to his clients. His focus is on facilitating the implementation of scalable research and design operations. Lou and John discuss the concept of digital transformation and explore what it looks like to walk a client through the difficult terrain of operationalizing their design processes, how to have those difficult conversations surrounding company culture, taking the lead as a change agent, and more. Jon is co-founder of Limina.co with 20+ years as a User Experience Specialist with a focus on UX Strategy, Design Thinking, and UI Design with experience leading human-centered requirements, strategy, interaction design, testing, and evaluation. Most recently, Jon has dedicated his efforts to Research & Design Operations facilitation for scalable/sustainable human-centered systems.

Lou sits down with Atlassian’s Design Enablement Coordinator, Jess Norris, to discuss her talk on ADHD that she’ll be presenting at this year’s Design Ops Summit. After being diagnosed with ADHD a little over a year ago, Jessica went on a journey to discover the secret superpowers that lie within everyone with a neurodivergent brain. She now urges managers to use these perspectives that team members may bring to the table to enhance their design ops work.

When it comes to design operations, it can be challenging to find the best method to provide the creative team with the tools they need that will eliminate some of their more mundane tasks to allow them more time to focus on their ideas and innovative work. Lou talks with Candace Myers, design operations leader with Netflix StudiosXD, about how she integrates technology and practices to optimize her efficiency in the creative and design fields. Candace will be speaking at the DesignOps Summit 2022 virtual conference, September 8-9. Candace recommends: I am obsessed with the Pivot Podcast with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway. It has EVERYTHING that ops professionals needs to consider- human intent & emotion, business conditions, what good and poor leadership looks like, and brand strategy. It's a must listen for anyone in tech, but especially generalists.

Lou sits down with the Head of Design for the Data Team at Amplitude, Courtney George, to discuss her talk “Scale Your Organization and Grow Your Designers” that she is giving at this year’s DesignOps Summit. What is a Design Leader’s role in providing stability for their team? How has that role changed over the course of the pandemic? Over the past few years, the security levels employees feel at their jobs have fluctuated drastically. Are there tools we are already using that can help our teams feel more confident in these uncertain times? Listen as Courtney and Lou touch on these topics, and more. Courtney Recommends: The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier Courtney Maya George is a design leader, mentor, mom of two, and a sketchnote hobbyist. She is currently the Head of Design for the Data team at Amplitude, where she’s building up a new product offering and growing the design organization. Prior to Amplitude, she spent nearly eight years at Adobe, where she built a design team from the ground up focused on the Developer Ecosystem. She believes in creating an inclusive design culture and thrives on building relationships, solving complex and ambiguous problems, and coaching designers to take control of their own career growth. Follow her on Twitter @courtneymaya and LinkedIn linkedin/in/courtneymayageorge

With the surge in popularity and need for hybrid and virtual events, Lou sits down with Intel’s Director of Accessibility, Darryl Adams, to discuss how technology can make in-person and virtual conferences more accessible and inclusive to speakers and audience members with disabilities. He also speaks to how accessible conference design can be improved and fine-tuned for speakers with disabilities, and help those without disabilities feel more comfortable presenting. What kind of accessibility principles and design factors should conference hosts consider for audience members with disabilities and those without disabilities when setting up for in-person and virtual events? How does this technology increase engagement and diversity in attendance? Listen as Darryl and Lou touch on all these topics, and more. Darryl Adams recommends: Demystifying Disability by Emily Ladau Darryl Adams is the Director of Accessibility at Intel. Darryl leads a team that works at the intersection of technology and human experience helping discover new ways for people with disabilities to work, interact, and thrive. Darryl’s mission is to connect his passion for technology innovation with Intel’s disability inclusion efforts to help make computing and access to digital information more accessible for everyone and to make Intel an employer of choice for employees with disabilities. For the full transcript: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/announcements/podcast-making-conferences-more-accessible-with-darryl-adams-intels-director-of-accessibility/