Christian Hertlein is a head of design at N26, the mobile bank startup with over 1 million customers across 17 European markets. A year ago, Christian took over a team of designers in super fast growing startup and started integrating design across different departments and promoting design as an important part of the culture. We discussed: how is the design team structured and organized within the N26, how to get a seat at the table by proactively shaping what the design team works on rather than passively waits for project briefs, and what are design consultants naive about when they work with clients.   Show notes: 1:40 How did Christian get into design? 6:05 What are consultants naive about when working with clients? 14:15 What are the responsibilities of a head of design? 16:45 Why is investing in design research important? 24:55 The importance of proactiveness 27:40 How is design team structured at N26? 30:50 The importance and advantage of tangibility 34:25 What KPIs does the design team use at N26? 36:50 The role of design as a driver of trust 46:00 Future plans for the N26’s design team

Raffaela Rein is a cofounder of the Berlin-based educational startup CareerFoundry, which offers online courses on UX, UI, and web development. Career Foundry is one of the biggest players in this field with more than 10.000 students each year. Raffaela is also recognized as top 50 women in tech by Forbes (congrats!!) and a great guest for this podcast as she is a business leader with a big focus on design. We spoke about: her organizational design experiments, changing the culture of CareerFoundry, why and how every employee (even non-designers) have UX as KPI in their performance review, and what you can say to your boss to convince her to invest more in design.   Show notes: 2:20 How CareerFoundry started. 6:30 What is special about CareerFoundry’s curriculum? 10:25 How to convince your boss to invest in design? 15:40 How a UX designer helped CareerFoundry to go from 10 to 100 customers per month 21:50 New skills and disciplines that will be relevant for designers who want to advance their careers 27:00 How CareerFoundry experimented with a flat hierarchy 33:30 How CareerFoundry improve culture by 500% in 7 months 37:10 UX key performance indicator (KPI) that CareerFoundry uses for all employees

Amy Bonsall is a head of venture design at IDEO. She currently works in the Palo Alto studio, leading a team of seven business designers. She is also an instructor in the recent IDEO’s course Designing a Business, which teaches venture design. In the episode we covered: what is venture design and how it is different to lean startup, what is Amy looking in business design candidates, and how you can create prototypes that will give answers decrease uncertainty in your business or product team.   Show notes: 2:20 How did Amy get into design? 5:30 How do you get a job as a business designer (at IDEO)? 13:20 What skills do business designers need? 21:40 What is venture design? 28:00 How is venture design different from Lean Startup approach? 31:15 Behavioral vs attitudinal prototypes 35:10 How do you know you are making progress? 43:40 A good example of venture design 45:45 One thing about design Amy has changed her mind about

Taig Mac Carthy is a graphic designer who decided to become an entrepreneur to realize his creative vision. As many designers, he wasn't fond of business but changed his mind once he started to get more into entrepreneurship. After reading the Blue Ocean Strategy, he came up with the idea for blue wine GIK and Hola Plate, which are today very successful products.   In the episode we covered: why is Taig focusing on providing meaning instead of solutions, how to test your product idea with a press release, and why did Taig decide to attend a business school. Show notes: 2:35 How did Taig start his first business  5:10 How Taig developed a distaste for business and how he turned that around 6:35 Why is Taig focusing on providing meaning instead of solutions 13:35 Entrepreneur as a cultural provocateur 15:15 Where does the idea for blue wine come from? 16:35 The pricing exercise from the book Blue Ocean Strategy 20:40 The pricing strategy of GIK  23:20 How did Taig validate the idea before spending two years developing the wine 29:10 How did Taig test his 20 business ideas 31:30 The launch of Hola Plate with the PR strategy 34:15 How to test your product idea with a press release? 39:30 The importance of profit margins 42:35 Challenges that designers face when trying to become entrepreneurs 44:30 Why did Taig decide to attend a business school 48:35 How does blue wine sustain competitive advantage? 

Fabricio Teixeira is a design director at the digital product agency Work & Co and the founder of the UX Collective, one of the best resources for blog posts, links, and resources for UX designers. In The State of UX in 2018 report, UX Collective editors wrote that "The UX designers of 2018 will need to understand more about business". So, I reached out to Fabricio to learn more about the backstory of this statement and how did his path to becoming more business-savvy look like. In this episode we spoke about: the simple exercise UX designers can use to start building their business muscle, how sharing knowledge is the best way to learn and advance the career,  and how can we recognize future trends in the UX community?  Show notes: 2:20 How did Fabricio get into design?  6:20 How Fabricio teaches UX design through simplification 10:30 How and why Fabricio started UX Collective 12:50 How sharing knowledge is the best way to learn  17:05 How to recognize big trends and important patterns in the UX community?  19:35 Why is learning about business important for designers 24:35 How did Fabricio learn business 27:25 The exercise Fabricio uses with his team to develop business empathy  35:05 The question that uncovers business goals behind a design project

Taco Carlier is a co-founder and CEO of VanMoof, an Amsterdam-based company that design and manufactures awesome commuter bikes. Taco is an industrial designer who turned his love for bikes, design, and business into a successful company, which is disrupting the bike industry. The company has recently launched VanMoof+, a subscription service for bikes, disrupting its own business model.  In the episode we talked: how VanMoof prepared its business for a launch of a subscription service, how the company introduced an innovative Bike Hunter service that helps their customers when their bikes are stolen, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of a closed design system (VanMoof design all bike parts in-house)

François is senior product designer at Headspace. In 2017 he was asked to design a new cancellation process for Headspace users who decided they no longer want to use the service. At first, François thought this will be a boring task but it quickly turned into his pet project. In the end, he published an article on Medium, describing his process and providing guidance to other designers who want to design cancellation process too.  In this a great example of a project that needs a careful balance of user focus and business knowledge because one needs to balance users' wish to unsubscribe and business' goal to retain users. How do you reconcile the two? Well, that's what we covered with frank.    Show notes: 1:50 How did François get into design? 6:50 How did François survive the financial crisis as a designer freelancer?  8:30 Why did François leave agency work and join Headspace?  12:40 Headspace reached 1 million subscribers 14:10 The premise of François' article on cancelation process 20:10 How did François approach the challenge of designing cancelation process 25:30 Design principles of a good cancellation experience 29:00 Does being user-centered in a cancellation process drive business results? 34:00 The value of talking to non-designers in your organization  35:25 Hacking Growth book 38:40 Growth tactics used at Headspace 41:45 What is the Headspace culture really like? 

Jonathan Courtney is a co-founder of AJ&Smart, a design sprint agency based in Berlin, which has worked with companies like Lufthansa, Slack, Google, Lyft, Bose etc.  He is a host of The Product Breakfast Club podcast with Jake Knapp, author of Design Sprint. In one of the podcasts, Jonathan explained why he thinks the golden age of UX is over and what designers should do to stay relevant. Answer: learn business, of course.  In this episode we spoke about: three business skills that designers have to learn to design better (and get ahead in career) why Jonathan loves panic learning,  how AJ&Smart launched online course on design sprint and generated €60k in pre-orders.    Show notes: 2:15 How did Jonathan get into design?  7:20 Jonathan's panic learning 9:55 How AJ&Smart started?  14:00 The golden age of UX is over 18:50 Three business skills important for designers to master (product strategy, growth, marketing) 27:00 How can fluency in "growth" help designers on projects? 32:50 How do designers do good for business and users?  38:20 How does Jonathan learn about client's business?  40:30 AJ&Smart's online course on design sprints and how it generated €60.000 in pre-orders 

Ben Burns is an award-winning designer, a digital director at Blind, brand strategy design consultancy, and COO at The Futur (business education for designers). Ben has a fascinating story that took him from charging 50$ a logo to 100$ an hour and that ultimately changed his career.  In the episode, we talked about topics related to running a creative business such as : why you should not look for more clients but better clients, what to say to your clients when you try to raise your rates,  and how to sell brand work at the premium rates (5 or 6 figures). 

Kate Rutter, a phenomenal UX designer with a background in arts, talks about measuring design, finding the right design metric, and connecting design metrics to business value. She shares her journey from art to design, the transformative intranet development project, and the importance of user-centered design. Kate also discusses choosing the right metric, measuring physical product benefits, and promoting her online platforms.