
Design Better
Design Better co-hosts Eli Woolery and Aarron Walter explore the intersection of design, technology, and the creative process through conversations with guests across many creative fields, helping you hone your craft, unlock your creativity, and learn the art of collaboration.Whether you’re design curious or a design pro, Design Better is guaranteed to inspire and inform. Vanity Fair calls Design Better, “sharp, to the point, and full of incredibly valuable information for anyone looking to better understand how to build a more innovative world.”
Latest episodes

Mar 31, 2020 • 54min
Richard Banfield and Alison Rand: Remote design sprints and design reviews
Show notes: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/richard-banfield-alison-randIn this bonus episode, we’re once more focused on remote teams, and more specifically on best practices for facilitating remote design sprints, building trust between teams in a remote environment, and running effective critiques and design reviews remotely.In the first half of the episode, we chat with Richard Banfield, VP of Design Transformation at InVision, and author of the book Enterprise Design Sprints, who gives us practical guidance on how to run a remote design sprint effectively. In the second half, Alison Rand, our Senior Director of Design Operations, will reveal the inner workings of how our own design teams perform design reviews remotely, and make sure that work is visible across teams.You’ll learn:
How to facilitate a remote design sprints and run effective design reviews
The virtuous cycle that you need to put in place to build trust with your remote teams
Why preparation is the most critical part of running a design sprint remotely
How our veteran distributed team at InVision runs remote design reviews
To discover more remote work resources from InVision, check out www.invisionapp.com/remote.

Mar 23, 2020 • 32min
Making remote teams work
Show notes: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/stephen-gates-jennifer-aldrichIn this bonus episode, we chat about balancing personal and professional demands in a remote environment, especially during these challenging times. Join special guests Jennifer Aldrich, Senior Manager of Design Community Partnerships, and Stephen Gates, Head Design Evangelist, at InVision, as we discuss best practices for remote communication and how to build trust within your remote teams. We hope this episode helps you and your teams as you transition to remote work during this time of change in the face of our current health crisis. You’ll learn:
How to set expectations for remote communication
Tips for creating boundaries between work and life
Establishing documentation and processes for team collaboration
The value of soft skills in remote leadership
Benefits of working from home in building trust and connection for teams

Mar 17, 2020 • 55min
Jehad Affoneh: VMWare’s head of design on being a business leader, not a design leader
VMWare's head of design, Jehad Affoneh, discusses aligning design and engineering goals, ensuring diverse voices on the team are heard, challenges faced in transitioning to virtual events, and the importance of seeking discomfort for career growth.

Mar 9, 2020 • 1h 4min
Joanna Peña-Bickley: Amazon Alexa's design leader on collaboration and diverse teams
Show notes: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/joanna-pena-bickleyJoanna Peña-Bickley has had an amazing arc to her design leadership career: from Chief Creative Officer at Matter Worldwide and IBM, to her current role as Head of Research and Design for Alexa Devices at Amazon, Joanna has always sought to design things that are “useful, usable, and magical.”In this interview, we talk with Joanna about working cross functionally with both software and hardware teams, and what she’s learned about building a more connected workflow. We also get Joanna’s take on speaking design in the language of business, and how she works to bring more diversity into leadership at the companies where she's worked.Takeaways:
How Joanna approaches building high-functioning teams.
What the opportunities and challenges are when designing for invisible interfaces.
How to create partnerships that will make your team successful.

Mar 2, 2020 • 40min
Natalya Shelburne: How designers and developers work together at The New York Times
Show notes: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/natalya-shelburneNatalya Shelburne, Tech Lead for Design Engineering at The New York Times, sits at a fascinating crossroad of design and development. She leads a team of front-end developers and brings her own experience as a designer and art director to her current role.We chat with Natalya about her move from design to front-end dev, and some of the fears she faced along the way. We also talk about her approach to bridging design and dev, and what she brings from her prior career as a teacher into product design.Takeaways:
Ways to approach the unnecessary dichotomy between designers and engineers
Why respect is key to developing good cross-functional partnerships
How to overcome fear of moving into a technical role as a designer

Feb 24, 2020 • 50min
Kristin Wisnewski: More women in tech leadership roles
Show notes: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/kristin-wisnewskiIn the tech world, it's rare these days to spend more than a few years at one company. So we were curious to learn more about Kristin Wisnewski after hearing she’d been at IBM for 18 years. In her words, she “basically grew up at IBM,” and made a rapid transition from an individual contributor role to a leadership position in 2016, where she now leads an award-winning design team.We got to know the story of that career transformation, and what it took to get there. We also spoke with Kristin about clearing roadblocks for better work, and how to bring women into more leadership roles at technology companies.Takeaways:
How to remain authentic to yourself as a leader
The keys to peak team performance
The way DesignOps works at IBM

Feb 17, 2020 • 1h 12min
Nancy Douyon: Ethical and inclusive design
Show notes: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/nancy-douyonNancy Douyon has a remarkable story that lead her into a career in technology. From her childhood in Haiti, to moving to Boston and taking part in an MIT program as a kid, to running away from home and then teaching as a teenager, and on to design roles at Google and Uber, Nancy’s unconventional path gives her a unique perspective on how to approach product design for an audience that includes everyone.We chat with Nancy about her initial reluctance to enter a technical field despite her talent, how she thinks about making sure research represents a diverse set of users, and understanding global perspectives in product design.
Takeaways:
Approach hiring by looking at someone’s story
Tips for making user research more representative
How to tackle ethical product design
Quick episode summary:
2:03 Roundtable discussion
35:39 Interview with Nancy Douyon

Feb 12, 2020 • 4min
Season 4 Preview Episode
https://www.designbetterpodcast.comNext week we'll be launching our fourth season of the Design Better Podcast by InVision. Listen now for a special preview of the new season and get ready for new episodes coming to you weekly starting February 18th. In this new season we’re taking a closer look at how teams can work better together for greater impact across design, engineering, business, and product.We speak with Joanna Peña-Bickley about bringing more diversity into leadership, the head of cloud engineering at Atlassian, Steve Deasy, about psychological safety and the keys to high velocity teams, and Kristin Wisnewski of IBM discusses how to inspire teams to go farther and empower managers to build trust and vulnerability. Jehad Affoneh from VMWare shares his philosophy on how empathy for his colleagues and assuming good intention helps him create the best experiences possible for customers. And Marty Cagan from Silicon Valley Product Group shares his behind-the-scenes lessons on the differences between product teams and feature teams, and why product management is often misunderstood.Hear from the people shaping design and engineering transformation at The New York Times, Uber, Amazon, Pinterest, IBM, and even NASA. And you'll learn more about how to communicate the business impact of design at your company and how teams are leveling up their design maturity for even greater influence at work.

Feb 4, 2020 • 50min
Rewind: David Kelley, Founder of IDEO and the Stanford d.school, on Creative Confidence and Aligning Teams
Show notes: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/david-kelley-creative-confidenceTo celebrate 1 million listens to the Design Better Podcast, we're rewinding to our episode with David Kelley, Founder of IDEO and the Stanford d.school, in honor of David just receiving the Edison Award for Innovation. And we're sending a special thanks to YOU for listening and helping us reach this 1 million milestone. We're tremendously grateful to you, your friends, and colleagues for tuning in and joining the journey with us.David Kelley doesn’t like to claim to have come up with the term design thinking, even though most people would say he did. But regardless of who coined it, as founder of IDEO and the Stanford d.school he has been one of the most influential proponents of design thinking, and human-centered design in general.When it comes to bringing together engineering, product, and design teams early in the design process, and aligning those teams towards a common goal, design thinking has few equals, and should be part of the toolkit for every product driven company.In this episode, Eli and Aarron speak with David about what it takes to bring designers and engineers together, how our workspace influences our work, and how we can encourage creative confidence in our companies.Enjoy the chat and cheers to 1 million listens to the Design Better Podcast. Thank you so much for listening.

5 snips
Dec 19, 2019 • 56min
Stephen Gates: Hiring and retaining the best design talent
Stephen Gates, Head Design Evangelist at InVision, discusses his findings on hiring and employment in the design field. The podcast also includes a roundtable discussion on design topics and explores the significance of intentional communication in meetings. They highlight the inclusive nature of critique for creating psychological safety and discuss the importance of involving diverse perspectives in the design process. The speakers also explore the difference between leadership and management and discuss the evolving nature of design portfolios.