The Learners Podcast

The majority of the time, UX research sits within the context of a for-profit business, often a corporation. So, it stands to reason that if you want to be a good partner in your role as a researcher, you need to know a little bit about the business.In this talk, Alec shares his cheat sheet for understanding the basics of how companies are structured and what matters within them.

As designers, we wireframe products... but, what about wireframing companies? Can we take the same ideas we use to conceptualize new experiences for customers, and use them to design companies for growth?Join Lucy, Head of Design at Dovetail, as she talks about how they've designed both their product and company for breakout growth.

We all know that designers can make amazing founders, just look at mega-prolific companies like Airbnb. But, even though we see the archetypical design founder on the rise, the process for raising capital as a designer might feel more than a little mysterious.In this talk, join Rachel Renock, a designer turned CEO, as she sits down with investor Konval Matin to talk about the fundraising environment for designer-led companies.

As designers, the "business side of things" can feel a bit arbitrary, confusing, and, sometimes, just downright unpleasant. But, having a solid understanding of your companies economics can be incredibly helpful when making design decisions.In this talk, Patrick provides a few heuristics for designers on how to understand what matters most to your business.

As far as design systems go, the Gov.UK design system is about as famous as it gets. However, the creators of this particular design system are concerned with it's popularity, and that some folks could be missing the forest for the trees.In this talk, join Tom as he explains that the real takeaway from building the Gov.UK design system is not actually the output, but the method of building it.

As creative professionals, we're often putting a lot of ourselves into our work. And usually that's great! Until it's not.Pressure from team members, the influence of stakeholders, being pulling in many different directions at once... all of this can feel particularly overwhelming for creatives. Join Nova as she outlines how we can take better care of ourselves, so we be more successful in our work over the long term.

Most researchers have a keen eye and ear, able to sense how people around them feel. Those abilities are clearly a positive for our jobs, but they come with some serious drawbacks.Deirdre leads research at Toast, and is here to talk about not just how wonderful our superpowers are, but also the costs associated with having them.

Often when we think of the outcomes from our work, it's focused on insights. Insights for PMs, insights for designers, insights for leadership. Danny has a different point of view.What if instead of outputting insights, we thought of ourselves as setting standards. As researchers, we have the ability to set mental models for what's 'good' or 'efficient' or any other metrics that are important to our teams. If you're interested in hearing about this major research reframe, take a listen to Danny's talk.

Many of our research methods have roots in academic fields of social science, like ethnography, anthropology, HCI, and more. But, what about behavioural science? What can we learn from that field of research?Christelle is a behavioural scientist applying methods learned during her PhD to help design interventions in products that lead to better user choices. She's here to tell us how behavioural science methods might provide you with the next big method you add to your toolkit.

We hear a lot about population diversity across many areas: income, geography, interests, age, gender, and more. But, there's one that's rarely ever talked about: faith.Out of the 7 billion people on the planet, there are billions of people who look to religion to inform their values, key decisions and behaviours. In this talk, Zoe gives us a primer on faith and how it should be understood in the context of our UX research practices.