Ep 36: Sometimes words just can't get you the research insights you need. This week we’re talking about alternative ways of gathering insights in user research, beyond just verbal and written communication. There are many circumstances when words just aren’t the best way for people to tell us what they’re thinking, feeling, or doing, so being able to use physical or tactile methods can really affect the insights you’re able to gather. My guest today is Anna Macaranas who is a Senior Design Strategist at Digitalist Group & Network, in Vancouver BC. Anna has some great insights and examples for how to get participants to express themselves if words aren’t working.Anna is an award-winning researcher and strategist at Digitalist, a customer experience innovation company. Forever curious, she loves diving into a complex problem and understanding the context and factors that bring the team closer to the ideal solution. She’s passionate about helping companies build stronger relationships with their customers through organizational change, internal capability building and inclusive processes.Twitter https://twitter.com/annajlm Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-macaranas/If you want to help UX Cake, follow us on twitter, and subscribe to the newsletter for updates and bonus content. Share this episode, or any of our episodes, with a friend. And we would love it if you would rate & review us on Apple Podcast!Listen Apple | Spotify | Google | WebsiteConnect with UX Cake!uxcake.co | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Linked InSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/uxcake. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For any experience you’re designing, you want to know what the current trends are, but if you’re looking for innovative solutions, you want to predict what future trends will affect your audiences' needs & motivations & obstacles so you can design for the future. Our topic this episode has a fairly unsexy name but is thoroughly intriguing — innovation-based trend forecasting. This isn’t currently a common methodology in UX today, but it’s something that could definitely be a game-changer for your organization.My guests are experts in trend forecasting: Lillian Pontius-Goldblatt is a senior strategist and brand storyteller at Carbone Smolan Agency, and Jennifer Passas is a brand strategist at Gensler. In this episode we’re talking about applying trend forecasting to your design practice. And this is not just focused on the design of a digital product though it can include that - but design as it applies to the larger human experience -- built environments, or workplace design, physical or organizational design, systems, services. And it includes all the roles that contribute to the creation of an experience, designers, researchers, PMs, developers and business leaders of all kinds.Lillian and Jennifer conducted a workshop at this year’s South by southwest about how individual’s and teams can incorporate the practice of innovation-based trend forecasting into their own process. They talk through the process in practice, as well as how they condensed the process into a workshop time-frame. Lillian will be presenting this process at this year's Radical Research Summit in Vancouver, BC, on Sept. 27th. This one-day conference focuses on UX research with a great line-up of speakers and diverse topics, and you can get a 20% discount if you use the promo code UXCAKE!FREE DOWNLOAD - Download Jennifer & Lillians 2-page guide & resources for creating a practice like this in your own team. Plus they have a list of resources to go to when you're looking for emerging trends!Lillian Pontius-Goldblatt is an adaptive, creative, and curious storyteller with proven skills in brand strategy, organizational culture, and research-based insights. She works as a senior strategist and brand storyteller at Carbone Smolan Agency where she leads brand projects for corporate and cultural clients, as well as the agency’s trend reporting practice.LinkedIn  Website - lillianpontiusgoldblatt.com/ Twitter - @Carbone_Smolan Medium - @lillianpontiusgoldblatt Agency website - carbonesmolan.comJennifer Passas is a brand and experience strategist from Vancouver, BC who currently lives in New York City. She has a BA in Art History from the University of Victoria and a Masters in Branding from the School of Visual Arts. Currently a Brand Strategy Lead at Gensler, Jennifer spends her days thinking of ways brands can come to life through analog and digital experiences in the built environment. She has expertise in naming, trend reporting and is a writer for PSFK.LinkedInAbout the Radical Research Summit The Radical Research Summit is an annual one-day event that brings together over 250 researchers, UX practitioners, ethnographers, product managers and businesses. Attendees will connect and learn from thought leaders in user experience research, emerging technology practitioners and world-class academic researchers. The day will provoke and inspire your team with new ideas while gaining practical and actionable insights to be more effective influencers and deliver research that has impact.Twitter - @radresearchvanFacebook - radresearchvan*****If you enjoy this podcast and if you think what we’re doing is useful and important, there are some really simple ways you can help us. You can follow us on twitter. You can like and reshare our posts. You can subscribe to the newsletter for updates and bonus content. And you can share this episode, or any of our episodes, with a friend. And we would love it if you would rate & review us on Apple Podcast!Listen on Apple | Spotify | Google | WebsiteConnect with UX Cake!Website: uxcake.co Facebook Twitter Instagram Subscribe to our newsletterDonate to UX Cake to keep the podcast going  Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/uxcake. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ep #34: Today’s episode is a conversation with Melanie Polkosky who is a UX Psychologist with a PhD in cognitive psychology and a long history in tech. After Melanie left a 13-year career at IBM, she wrote a book called Uncovering Truffles, a book about the scarcity and value of Women in Stem. And something she wrote about in her book stood out to me as really relevant to many people UX, across genders. In researching her book, Melanie found that certain cognitive styles can make it more difficult to get ahead in tech and leadership, and that contributes to holding many women back in STEM fields.And here’s the interesting connection to UX. Thinking styles that are more thoughtful, observational, perhaps more empathetic... the people with these cognitive styles can have a hard time fitting into tech teams, and in leadership roles especially. And, ironically, these cognitive styles — largely intuitive, an interest in people and behavior, and highly empathetic, are a common denominator in the discipline of UX, as I mentioned, across genders. So that’s what we’re digging into today - what can someone do if they find themselves in this place - a place where they feel like to they don’t fit in, or they feel undervalued or misunderstood? Fortunately for us, Melanie has great experience and some great advice.Melanie is a social-cognitive psychologist, a UX executive, and an author. She has deep expertise in speech technology, artificial intelligence and mixed method user research. She also holds the Associate Certified Coach (ACC) credential from the International Coach Federation. Her coaching practice focuses on career and life coaching. Currently, Melanie leads design and UX as the SVP Customer Experience at Sweepr. Follow Melanie on Quora: Early Career UXBuy Melanie's bookUncovering Truffles: The Scarcity and Value of Women in STEM*****If you enjoy this podcast and if you think what we’re doing is useful and important, there are some really simple ways you can help us. You can follow us on twitter. You can like and reshare our posts. You can subscribe to the newsletter for updates and bonus content. And you can share this episode, or any of our episodes, with a friend. And we would love it if you would rate & review us on Apple Podcast!Listen on Apple | Spotify | Google | WebsiteConnect with UX Cake!Website: uxcake.co Facebook Twitter Instagram Subscribe to our newsletterDonate to UX Cake to keep the podcast going  Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/uxcake. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ep. #14 (re-run) Much of the work in UX and in our careers requires convincing others, about our ideas, our work, or our ability to do the work we want to do. My guest is Fiz Yazdi, a managing director at cxpartners in London and Bristol, UK. Fiz developed an approach to selling based on what’s called a ‘consultative’ model which Fiz adapted into a simple framework she uses in her own UX practice and has begun sharing it with others. ​​More about Fiz YazdiFiz is an enthusiastic design leader. She’s been consulting since the year 2000, tooling-up people, teams and organisations for success. She’s been on a journey from UX consultant to MD at cxpartners, helping it grow to one of the world’s leading independent innovation design consultancies. She's just started mentoring high growth, high tech start-ups too. Fiz always starts with people, and combines that with a deep respect for culture, business and technology to drive damn good work.Download Fiz Yazdi's Guide to Getting The Work You Want to Do www.cxpartners.co.ukTwitter: @cxpartners Connect with UX Cake!Website: uxcake.co Facebook Twitter Instagram  Subscribe to our newsletterDonate to UX Cake to keep the podcast going  Podcast music by hip-hop band Eaters (song Cruziero, album Simian Samba) Visit their page on Facebook to find more musicSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/uxcake. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ep #33: This week I’m talking with Torrey Podmajersky about her new book, Strategic Writing for UX - how to drive engagement, conversion, and retention with every word. Torrey is not only an expert at UX Writing, she’s an expert at getting the right words into the experience — which is half the challenge sometimes, even if you’ve determined what the right thing to say where is, getting the rest of the team to see the value can be harder than it should be. So of course, we talk about that. Her book has so many great tips and techniques and tools to help you determine the right words for your experience. We talked about how to incorporate that into your or your team’s process, how to measure the effectiveness of that, and how to prove out the value of effective UX writing to your stakeholders.This topic is so important for anyone who is involved with creating user experiences, because so many people in a team contribute to the words that a user sees.About Torrey Podmajersky:Torrey Podmajersky uses UX content to help teams meet business and customer goals. She speaks and teaches about UX writing, and she wrote Strategic Writing for UX (O’Reilly Media, 2019). Torrey has written UX content for Google, OfferUp, Xbox, and Microsoft. She teaches at Seattle’s School of Visual Concepts (SVC). She teaches teams and conference attendees how to write UX that solves problems for their organization and for the people who will use those organizations’ products and experiences.Connect and follow TorreyLinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/torreybird/Website - torreypodmajersky.comSocial mediaTwitter - @torreybirdMedium - @torreypTHE BOOK YOU NEED TO BUYStrategic Writing for UX: Drive Engagement, Conversion, and Retention with Every Wordby Torrey PodmajerskyTHE EVENTS YOU NEED TO GO TOContent Strategy Meetup: Strategic Writing for UXAugust 8, 2019 - SeattleSeattle Interactive Conference Oct 17 & 18 - SeattleUX New Zealand October 30, 2019 - Wellington, NZTHE BAKERY YOU NEED TO VISITBorracchini's BakerySeattle's historic Italian bakery, tracing our roots back to our founding in 1922.Open 7 days a week2307 Rainier Ave SSeattle, WA 98144If you enjoy this podcast and if you think what we’re doing is useful and important, there are some really simple ways you can help us. You can follow us on twitter. You can like and reshare our posts. You can subscribe to the newsletter for updates and bonus content. And you can share this episode, or any of our episodes, with a friend. And we would love it if you would rate & review us on Apple Podcast!Listen on Apple | Spotify | Google | WebsiteConnect with UX Cake!Website: uxcake.co Facebook Twitter Instagram Subscribe to our newsletterDonate to UX Cake to keep the podcast going  Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/uxcake. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ep #32: Welcome back to UX Cake! We took a short break and now we're back on our regular publishing schedule. In this episode I talked with Tamara Adlin, a UX strategy expert, speaker, and author, who was a guest in season 1, episode 10, talking about creating alignment personas. This time we're talking about a really important topic that plagues many of us and that she is really passionate about, she’s been sharing her wisdom in meetups and conferences in Seattle, and I wanted to make this available to the larger UX community. Negotiating a salary or title in UX in in general is not easy, a lot of people struggle with translating their value in UX into business metrics. So it can be challenging for anyone, but many women especially have other internal hurdles to jump. Research has shown that women are much more likely to discount their own experience and value when it comes to salaries and titles. Tamara has some really great, specific and actionable advice for you, and although we’re talking about women in UX primarily, a lot of this is applicable to anyone who feels they aren’t great at negotiating.In this episode we talk about how to find your superpower and assign a value to it, how to prepare for a successful negotiation, and a few key steps to remember when you’re going through the negotiation process. Also some really great advice if you're asking for a raise or promotion.​​About Tamara Adlin Tamara Adlin is the President of Adlin, Inc, a one-woman Customer Experience Strategy consulting company in Seattle, WA. She works with early-stage startups, and big companies trying to act like startups, to bring customer focus to the business teams and business savvy to the design teams. She has written several books on Personas, including her latest website on Alignment Personas. She has also developed a reputation as an un-boring speaker and teacher on everything from personas to the art of negotiating as a UX professional (especially if you are a woman.)Linked In Twitter @tamaraadlin Read Tamara’s article: Elation/Deflation: The Responsibility of Being an Experienced Woman in Tech (or any business)Check out Tamara’s Office HoursCheck out the Ladies Get Paid WebsiteYou’ll find articles, webinars, events, lots of great resources for you there.  If you enjoy this podcast and if you think what we’re doing is useful and important, there are some really simple ways you can help us. You can follow us on twitter. You can like and reshare our posts. You can subscribe to the newsletter for updates and bonus content. And you can share this episode, or any of our episodes, with a friend. And we would love it if you would rate & review us on Apple Podcast! Connect with UX Cake!Website: uxcake.co Facebook Twitter Instagram Subscribe to our newsletterDonate to UX Cake to keep the podcast going Podcast music by hip-hop band Eaters (song Cruziero, album Simian Samba)Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/uxcake. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week's episode was a live recording at the ConveyUX conference in early March with a panel of UX pros talking about Influencing without authority, which is such an important topic and clearly very relevant based on the turn-out - it was standing room only. This episode is almost twice as long as our normal episodes — but you won’t want to miss the second half, where we turned it over to audience members to ask advice about their own situations, kind of mini-mentoring sessions, on a variety of things, from getting stakeholders to respect your quantitative research, to dealing with others’ biases that undermine your authority. We had a real diversity of experience in the panel which made for such an amazing conversation, and the audience was great — really engaged. This is really what UX Cake is about, that synergy that can happen when we come together as a community so I love doing live recordings.If you enjoy this podcast, join the UX Cake community by following us on social media - twitter, FB, Instagram… and if you like this episode, share it with a colleague or two, send them a link to this episode. Those are the ways we’re growing UX Cake, where our mission is to strengthen the UX community by helping ux pros become more effective in their work and careers. It only takes a moment, and it helps us so much!Connect with UX Cake!Website: uxcake.co Facebook Twitter Instagram Subscribe to our newsletterDonate to UX Cake to keep the podcast going Subscribe to UX Cake: iTunes| Stitcher  | EmailUX Cake Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/uxcakeiTunes | Google Podcast | Stitcher | TuneInSubscribe in iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/ux-cake/id1350595015?mt=2Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/uxcake. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we’re talking about incorporating UX into an Agile product development process. It’s been a common complaint for the past couple of decades most agile processes don’t allow time for ux research and design. Teams that want the best human-centered design outcomes have to be intentional about that and it means adjusting their agile processes in some way, so they can use ux resources more effectively. But many teams don’t even know they need to do this, or if they do know they have issues with their UX, they don’t know how or what to change. Today we’re talking with Shayna Atkins who is an agile expert and a big proponent of incorporating UX into Agile.Shayna is an agile coach and founder of Atkco Inc in Chicago. she's worked with organizations large and small, from corporations and startups to universities and non-profits, and she has success stories that prove that the most successful agile framework is one that incorporates UX research and design in the process from the start, where it brings high value. She’s got great examples of what this approach looks like and techniques to accomplish it. and She also has some great ideas about how anyone in an organization can advocate for these kind of changes, to see more effective outcomes.Oh, and if you enjoy this content, please, take just a moment to rate and review us in iTunes or apple podcast, it would mean so much to us. And thank you SVC, the school of visual concepts here in Seattle, for leaving a nice review and also for recommending us to your students! The feeling is mutual - and That’s how our community grows. OK let’s talk about getting more effective and agile.Shayna is a founder, product manager, and Agile coach. A product development expert,  Shayna Atkins has managed and coached multi-million dollar IT transformations for 8 years. The brains of Agile operations, she most recently stood up an Agile Release Train for a fortune 500 Financial Services company.@shaynaatkinsatkcoinc.com/joinSpotify FrameworkScaled Agile FrameworkConnect with UX Cake!Website: uxcake.co Facebook Twitter Instagram Subscribe to our newsletterDonate to UX Cake to keep the podcast going Subscribe to UX Cake: iTunes | Google Podcast | Stitcher | TuneInSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/uxcake. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Are you committed to doing user research in order to design and build products and services that work well, solve real needs, and create engaging experiences? Chances are pretty good that if you produce user research in your work, at some point you will feel like your research is just not making the impact it should be. Or you may have trouble making a case for doing more research — and the number one way to get your organization on board with doing more research is to make sure the research that IS done is super effective. So, how can you get more effective?We spoke with expert researcher Danyell Jones, and she’s got a recipe for making research more effective for in-house teams. Danyell is a User Experience Research Lead at ZS Associates, a management consulting firm in Chicago, and she’s giving a talk at the upcoming Convey UX conference called A Recipe for In-house Research. We caught up with her recently where she was working from home while Chicago was in the middle of the Polar Vortex. Danyell Jones oversees and conducts research across 5 different verticals in the Software Development group at ZS Associates. Danyell works with teams to develop reusable and efficient processes for conducting and analyzing research while increasing the visibility of the research practice and user experience team. In addition to working in user research, Danyell teaches graduate-level classes in the HCI program at DePaul University as well as at the Illinois Institute of Art in the Web Design and Interactive Media department. She is also a runner, an avid reader, a Whovian, and a video game lover.Follow Danyell on Twitter @danyelljonesWondering how to ask better questions to avoid the mistakes we talked about? We recommend this book for every level of experience: Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights by Steve Portigal Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/uxcake. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A UX Cake Pop is like a bite-sized piece of UX Cake. In this Cake Pop, we're talking about being more effective through getting buy-in early. We interviewed a few UX pros who were attending the Interaction19 conference while we were there, and got lots of great responses to our question: What's the biggest challenge you've been dealing with in your work lately? We got a great response from Marie Williams, who’s the founder and CEO of Dream Networks CIC in London, about both the difficulty and the importance of getting buy in. This is something that’s often at the root of why something might be either a success or a failure, and it’s also something that can be easy to forget about when we’re in the throws of a project and trying to move quickly and maybe not thinking about who we need to bring along. So if you’ve struggled with how to get buy-in, know that you are not alone.We’ve at least touched on it in many UX Cake episodes, because it’s so core to getting anything important done. And there’s not a one-size-fits-all answer for how to get buy in, but, there has been a lot of great advice from the pros I’ve talked with on UX Cake. Way back in episode 2 I talked with long-time executive Eva Manolis about getting buy-in for UX, and she shared how her teams got buy-in for design & research at Amazon. Then in episode 10 Tamara Adlin shared her technique of creating personas with executives, which creates alignment up-front but also brings those executives into the process of defining who you’re solving problems for, and what their needs and motivations are. And most recently in episode 28, Marty Neumeier talked about a framework which puts everyone together in framing the problem and identifying solutions, which is crucial for getting buy in from the team and from each decision maker. If you’re having trouble getting buy-in, you might also check out episode #14 with Fiz Yazdi - she created an approach to selling your ideas that’s based on a consulting selling strategy — and has a lot to do with understanding what those you want to “sell” to are motivated by, and what their objective is.TQWQvZv54Ev5vW2a7L7uConnect with UX Cake!Website: uxcake.co Facebook Twitter Instagram Subscribe to our newsletterDonate to UX Cake to keep the podcast going Subscribe to UX Cake: iTunes| Stitcher  | EmailSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/uxcake. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.