Design Life
Charli Prangley, Femke Van Schoonhoven
Design Life is a podcast about design and side projects for motivated creators. It was born after your hosts, two serial side project addicts, saw a gap in the podcast market for a conversational show about design and the issues young creatives face, that was hosted by two females.
This show aims to tackle the big issues designers face like getting paid, overcoming a creative block or managing time, to name a few. We want to open up discussion about things we wish we heard people talk about when we were studying, and we want to chat to you about the joys and the frustrations of working in the tech industry by day, and on our passion projects in the rest of our waking hours. We hope that by doing so, Design Life will give you a dose of motivation or inspiration when you need it.
This show aims to tackle the big issues designers face like getting paid, overcoming a creative block or managing time, to name a few. We want to open up discussion about things we wish we heard people talk about when we were studying, and we want to chat to you about the joys and the frustrations of working in the tech industry by day, and on our passion projects in the rest of our waking hours. We hope that by doing so, Design Life will give you a dose of motivation or inspiration when you need it.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Apr 29, 2019 • 32min
157: Project retrospectives
In today’s episode we discuss running project retrospectives. Retros give the whole team the chance to reflect on what went well, what didn’t go well and any areas of opportunity to improve upon next time. Find out why we think that not running a project retrospective is a missed opportunity to give your next project the best chance to succeed.
Apr 17, 2019 • 31min
156: Creating effective design documentation
Design documentation might not be the most exciting part of the design process but its importance cannot be underestimated. Unfortunately the people we work with cannot read our minds, which is why documenting our designs is crucial. Communicating the ‘how and why’ of our design’s functionality allows questions to be answered quickly and efficiently. Today we talk about how we document our designs and the tools we use daily.
Flowkit library
Apr 9, 2019 • 31min
155: Done is better than perfect
In this week’s episode we get a little bit philosophical as we discuss the concept of done being better than perfect. This week’s episode comes by way of a listener comment, despite knowing that their design will only really come together in the end stage, they have a nagging doubt in their head that the project should look perfect at every step of the way. We discuss how we have overcome this doubt ourselves in the past and how done is better than perfect can often be good enough.
Join the community!
Apr 2, 2019 • 34min
154: Goal Setting and OKR's
What is an OKR? How can you best set and achieve goals at work? Join us for today’s episode, as we dive into the topic of goal setting and explore the process we use to help us achieve our goals.
Mar 18, 2019 • 28min
153: Creating Design Principles
What are design principles and how do they differ from design systems? In this episode we answer your questions about design principles and offer some direction as to how you can begin to define them for yourself.
Mar 12, 2019 • 28min
152: Navigating office politics
Dealing with office politics? This episode of Design Life has you covered. We’re taking a break this week from our recent design focused episodes to answer a listener query - how best to deal with office politics. It can be tricky to keep a clear head when your work is impacted by factors outside of your control but doing so can make all the difference to your productivity.
Mar 4, 2019 • 31min
151: Running Design Sprints
In this episode of Design Life, we discuss running design sprints. In the Product/UX community for the last couple of years, design sprints have been growing in popularity. As a UX designer herself, Femke has run a couple of mini design sprints at Uber and found them useful. We talk about the what, why and how of design sprints and give you the steps you need to introduce them at your workplace.
AJ & Smart
Sprint - The Design Sprint Book
Femke's Youtube Channel
Charli's series about Ecommerce with Webflow
Feb 18, 2019 • 33min
150: Working with design systems
Today we are talking about the a hot topic in the design industry - Design Systems. In today’s episode we share our experience of working with design systems, their benefits and how using an efficient design system can help your team.
Join the community!
Skillshare: Digital Product Design: Build a Flexible Design System That Lasts
How to build your design system in Figma
Complete guide to designing a site using a collaborative and powerful design system
Design Systems at Deliveroo
Jan 22, 2019 • 34min
149: Weekly Planning
In this week’s episode we talk about something which is pretty on-brand for us - weekly planning. We cover how to plan your week, how to stay motivated and how to get things done. We share what works for us and how we plan to update our scheduling routines this year.
Jan 14, 2019 • 35min
148: Getting the best start at a new job
Many people will start a new job this year, but how can you make sure you get off on the right foot? In this week’s episode of Design Life we answer a question from a listener about getting the best start at a new job. We share our experiences of our first week in a new role, how we’ve helped new members of our teams to get off to a good start and how you can too.
