NN/G UX Podcast

Afleveringen

1. Specs Are The New Source Code (feat. Thomas Watkins, NN/G Guest Instructor)

   19 oktober 2026 · 41 min

   Afspelen
   AI has made building software easy. Deciding what to build is another story. When founders and product teams can vibe-code a working product in a weekend, where does design add value? In this episode, Therese Fessenden welcomes back design psychologist Thomas Watkins, founder of 3Leaf and NN/G guest instructor, to talk about why the bottleneck in product development has shifted from building to deciding, how specs are becoming the source of truth for AI-built products, and why taste and research matter more than ever. Lees meer

   About Thomas & 3Leaf: LinkedIn | 3Leaf

   The Design Psychologist Podcast: https://designpsychologist.buzzsprout.com/2395044

   Thomas's Previous Episode: 57. The Next Decade of UX: Why Psychology Matters More Than Ever

   Thomas's Course with NN/g: Writing Specs for AI-Built Products

   Other Related NN/g Articles & Courses:

   UX-Context Design: Using UX Knowledge to Inform AI-Generated Design

   Prompt to Design Interfaces: Why Vague Prompts Fail and How to Fix Them

   GenUI vs. Vibe Coding: Who's Designing?

   Good from Afar, But Far from Good: AI Prototyping in Real Design Contexts

   Context Architecture

   Context Libraries: How AI Power Users Manage Context Engineering

   TYXU5WMUAXAS8GTC

2. Stop Wasting Research (feat. Jake Burghardt & Laura Klein)

   16 september 2026 · 28 min

   Afspelen
   If you've ever wrapped up a great research study, delivered the readout, and then watched the insights vanish into a folder no one opens again, this one's for you. Laura Klein talks with Jake Burghardt, author of Stop Wasting Research, about why a repository alone never gets research used, how to treat insights as durable business assets instead of one-time reports, and where generative AI genuinely helps — and where it doesn't — when it comes to getting more value out of research your organization already has. Lees meer

   About Jake Burghardt & Integrating Research: LinkedIn | Medium | Integrating Research

   Jake's book: Stop Wasting Research: Maximize the Product Impact of Your Organization's Customer Insights (Rosenfeld Media) — get 20% off with code: swr-pod

   Related NN/G Articles & Courses:

   Why Research Repositories Fail and How to Get Them Right

   Research Repositories for Tracking UX Research and Growing Your ResearchOps

   ResearchOps 101

   Accelerating Research with AI

   Course: Usability Testing

   TYXU5WMUAXAS8GTC

3. Rejected to Hired: Surviving the UX Job Hunt

   12 augustus 2026 · 36 min

   Afspelen
   Job searching has always been harder than it looks, and if you've been searching for a while without much traction, there's a good chance your strategy is working against you. Guest host Laura Klein sits down with Sarah Doody, founder of the Career Strategy Lab, to talk about what UX practitioners get wrong when searching for work. Lees meer

   They cover:

   Why the DIY approach tanks your confidence over time

   How to treat yourself as a candidate-product — complete with features, benefits, and a roadmap

   The role of community in the job search

   what your LinkedIn is actually signaling to recruiters

   Why some of the best UX opportunities are hiding in industries you've never considered.

   About Sarah Doody | Bio | LinkedIn

   Career Strategy Lab (Website)

   Career Strategy Lab Podcast

   Follow Sarah on Instagram

   Related NN/G Articles & Episodes:

   EP 59 | Getting Hired in UX: What to Do When Apply-and-Wait Isn't Enough (with Evan Sunwall)

   EP 53 | Why You’re Not Getting Job Interviews (with Hang Xu)

   Ep 19 | Designing a UX Career (with Sarah Doody)

   UX Layoff Crisis: A Guide for Resilience and Recovery

   Templates and Tools for UX Job Seekers

   Growing in Your UX Career: Study Guide

   Try One of Our Courses

   Successful UX Job Searching (Self-Paced)

   Hiring UX Talent (Self-Paced)

   Becoming a UX Consultant: Launch Your Practice (Self-Paced)

   Storytelling to Present UX Work (Live Online)

   Don’t forget to like and subscribe! ❤️

   Follow Us On:

   Newsletter

   Instagram

   Linkedin

   📹 Post-production by

   Jackie Jones

   TYXU5WMUAXAS8GTC

4. Why Most Teams Get Goal-Setting Wrong (feat. Christina Wodtke) | EP 62

   8 juli 2026 · 28 min

   Afspelen
   OKRs are a popular choice to communicate team goals… but most teams do them wrong. In this episode, Laura Klein talks with Christina Wodtke, author of Radical Focus, about what actually makes objectives and key results work: the weekly and quarterly rituals that keep goals alive, why psychological safety matters more than making perfect predictions, and how strategy and vision have to exist before you can even set an OKR in the first place. Lees meer

   About Christina Wodtke: LinkedIn | Eleganthack (blog) | Books by Christina Wodtke

   Other Related NN/g Articles & Courses:

   Aligning UX Metrics with Organizational Goals: A Workshop Guide

   Crossfunctional Collaboration: Challenges and Strategies for Success

   Project Postmortems for UX Teams: Learning from Success and Failure

   Lean UX & Agile: Study Guide

   Psychology for UX: Study Guide

   Course: Lean UX and Agile

   Course: Leading Highly Effective UX Teams

5. Incorruptible: How Great Companies Stay Great with Eric Ries

   26 mei 2026 · 38 min

   Afspelen
   Most UX practitioners have spent their careers fighting for the user — pushing back against dark patterns, advocating for quality, and insisting that making things better for people is also better for the business. Eric Ries would say that instinct is exactly right. And that it's not enough. Lees meer

   In this episode, host Laura Klein talks with Eric Ries — New York Times Best Selling Author of The Lean Startup and founder of the Long Term Stock Exchange — about his new book, Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad...and How Great Companies Stay Great. Eric makes the case that most of today's business best practices are actively value-destroying, and that the builders, designers, and makers who already believe product quality matters are more revolutionary than they realize — they just lack the tools to protect that belief inside their organizations.

   They dig into the history of shareholder primacy, why corporate governance is something every practitioner should understand, and the very specific questions you can ask in a job interview to find out whether a company is genuinely mission-driven or just mission-hopeful.

   About Eric Ries | Linkedin

   The Eric Ries Show

   Incorruptible (New Book) - Available Now!

   The Lean Start Up (Book)

   Related NN/G Articles & Videos

   UX Stakeholder Engagement 101

   Deceptive Patterns in UX: How to Recognize and Avoid Them

   Four Factors in UX Maturity

   UX Maturity Is a Living System, Not a Ladder

   UXers Need to Think Like Product Leaders

   Try One of Our Courses

   → Becoming a UX Strategist (Live Online)→ Successful Stakeholder Relationships (Live Online)→ Lean UX and Agile (Live Online)→ Demonstrating UX Value (Self-Paced)→ UX Maturity: Elevating Organizational UX Practices (Self-Paced)

   Don’t forget to like and subscribe! ❤️

   Follow Us On:

   Newsletter

   Instagram

   Threads

   Linkedin

   Bluesky

   X

   📹 Post-production by

   Tiago Pedro (Design Assistant)

   Megan Brown (Social Media Lead)

6. 60. Conversational Design and UI: Why Language Matters More Than Ever

   29 april 2026 · 45 min

   Afspelen
   What does it actually mean to design conversationally? Not "add a chatbot" — but genuinely apply the principles of human conversation to the systems we build? Lees meer

   In this episode, host Laura Klein sits down with Erika Hall, author of Conversational Design and Just Enough Research, to re-visit a topic that's only gotten more relevant since her book came out in 2018. They dig into why language has always been an important part of any interface, what the cooperative principle of conversation can teach us about interaction design, and how the current AI moment is muddying what "conversational" even means.

   Erika also makes a sharp distinction between AI that solves real problems and AI that performs work — and offers a theory about why so many people are reaching for answer machines right now. Plus: why the best consulting advice is often just "you have to talk to each other," the role of domain expertise in getting anything useful out of an LLM, and what painting chickens has to do with learning to see.

   About Erika Hall | LinkedIn | Bluesky

   Her Studio - Mule Design

   Conversational Design

   Just Enough Research

   Related NN/G Articles:

   AI Chatbots Discourage Error Checking

   Designing AI Products and Features: Study Guide

   Sycophancy in Generative-AI Chatbots

   AI Features Must Solve Real User Problems

   Try One of Our Courses

   → Designing AI Experiences (Live Online)

   → The Human Mind and Usability (Live Online)

   → Understanding LLMs (Self-Paced)

   → Informative Microcopy (Self-Paced)

   Don’t forget to like and subscribe! ❤️

   Follow Us On:

   Newsletter

   Instagram

   Threads

   Linkedin

   📹 Post-production by

   Tiago Pedro (Design Assistant)

   Megan Brown (Social Media Lead)

   TYXU5WMUAXAS8GTC

7. 59. Getting Hired in UX: What to Do When Apply-and-Wait Isn't Enough

   1 april 2026 · 38 min

   Afspelen
   Navigating the UX job market has always had its ups and downs, especially with AI reshaping the industry. In this episode, host Laura Klein sits down with Evan Sunwall, NN/G's Director of Self-Paced Training, to share candid advice for UX practitioners trying to actively job search or level up in today's competitive market. With nearly 19 years in the field as both a designer and a hiring manager, he has a lot to say about where the field is headed — no matter what stage you're at in your career. Lees meer

   That experience is also what shaped Evan's self-paced course on getting a job in UX, part of NN/G's new and growing library of practical, pre-recorded courses built around real skill gaps. Evan was one of the first to help develop the format — running experiments and prototypes to figure out what actually works for self-directed learners.

   Evan also previews a companion course aimed at hiring managers and shares that he's looking for sharp instructors to help expand the library into new topics across research, design, and AI.

   Check out our NEW Self-Paced Courses!

   About Evan Sunwall | Bio | Linkedin

   Successful UX Job Searching (Course)

   Hiring UX Talent (Course)

   Free NN/G Articles:

   How to Apply and Secure a UX Job

   Advice for Approaching a UX Job Search

   Templates and Tools for UX Job Seekers

   Preparation Tactics for a Tough UX Job Market

   Growing in Your UX Career: Study Guide

   Don’t forget to like and subscribe! ❤️

   Follow Us On:

   Newsletter

   Instagram

   Threads

   Linkedin

   Bluesky

   X

   📹 Post-production by

   Tiago Pedro (Design Assistant)

   Megan Brown (Social Media Lead)

   TYXU5WMUAXAS8GTC

8. 58. The Truth About Lean & Agile (Feat. Principal Experience Specialist, Laura Klein)

   25 februari 2026 · 42 min

   Afspelen
   If you work in UX, you’ve probably heard the terms lean, Agile, and MVP more times than you can count. But knowing the terms doesn’t mean knowing how to make them work. Lees meer

   In this episode, Laura Klein, Principal Experience Specialist at NN/G, joins Therese Fessenden to talk about what Lean UX was really meant to accomplish — and how teams today can apply its principles without falling into common traps.

   Listen as they discuss how Lean UX came about, the skill of zooming between product vision and interaction details, and why growing companies struggle to balance speed and consistency. Whether you’re working at a startup or inside a large enterprise, this episode offers a grounded look at how to design thoughtfully in fast-moving environments.

   We’re also excited to have Laura join as the newest co-host of the NN/G UX Podcast. And many congratulations to the Fessenden family as they welcome a new addition to their family.

   About Laura Klein | Bio | Linkedin | Bluesky | Usersknow.com

   What is Wrong With UX (Podcast)

   Build Better Products (Book)

   UX for Lean Startups (Book)

   NN/G Live Online Courses Taught by Laura

   Lean UX and Agile

   Product & UX: Building Partnerships for Better Outcomes

   All Our Live Courses

   Free NN/G Articles & Videos

   Lean UX & Agile: Study Guide

   Lean UX & Agile Glossary

   What is Lean UX?

   Accounting for User Research in Agile

   Why Organizations Don’t Do User Research and How to Change That

   Why Most Product Teams Aren't Really Empowered

   Don’t forget to like and subscribe! ❤️

   Follow Us On:

   Newsletter

   Instagram

   Threads

   Linkedin

   Bluesky

   X

   📹 Post-production by

   Tiago Pedro (Design Assistant)

   Megan Brown (Social Media Lead)

   TYXU5WMUAXAS8GTC

9. 57. The Next Decade of UX: Why Psychology Matters More Than Ever (Feat. Thomas Watkins, Founder & Principal UX Architect at 3Leaf)

   28 januari 2026 · 50 min

   Afspelen
   Therese Fessenden talks with design psychologist and product strategist Thomas Watkins (host of The Design Psychologist and Product-Led Growth Leaders) about why understanding the human mind is still a true superpower for designers, researchers, and product teams. They explore how products subtly shape our behavior and identity, why over-relying on templates and patterns can flatten experiences instead of differentiating them, the risks of personifying AI tools, and the practical ways practitioners can use psychology and AI together to automate the tedious parts of work while staying human-centered and creating products that truly fit into people’s lives. Lees meer

   About Thomas Watkins: Bio | LinkedIn

   The Design Psychologist Podcast

   Product-Led Growth Leaders Podcast

   3Leaf Consulting (Thomas’ Design Team)

   Related Live Online Training: The Human Mind & Usability

   Free NN/g Study Guides & Articles:

   Psychology Study Guide

   Humanizing AI Is a Trap

   The ELIZA Effect: Why We Love AI

   The 4 Degrees of Anthropomorphism of Generative AI

10. 56. AI for UX Analysis: How Accurate Is It? (feat. Christian Holst & Jamie Holst, Baymard Institute)

    19 december 2025 · 1 uur 6 min

    Afspelen
    As AI-powered tools flood the market promising quick evaluations and audits, the conversation zeroes in on a critical issue: the reliability of these tools. In this episode, co-hosts Therese Fessenden and NN/G VP Kate Moran sit down with Jamie Holst and Christian Holst, the co-founders of Baymard Institute, to examine the growing role of AI in UX analysis. The group discusses the risks of over-relying on AI—particularly for junior UX practitioners—and the deeper implications for professionalism in the field. Lees meer

    About the speakers:

    Christian Holst (Co-founder & Research Director, Baymard Institute)

    Jamie Holst (Co-founder & CTO, Baymard Institute)

    Kate Moran (VP, NN/G)

    Links Referenced in the Episode:

    Try UX Ray for Free: https://baymard.com/product/ux-ray

    Read their article on AI accuracy: https://baymard.com/blog/ai-heuristic-evaluations

    Related NN/G Courses:

    Accelerating Research with AI

    AI for Design Workflows

    Designing AI Experiences

    AI Product Strategy

    Check out ALL of our courses at nngroup.com/learning

    Related NN/G Articles:

    AI Hallucinations: What Designers Need to Know

    AI-Powered Tools for UX Research: Issues and Limitations

    AI as a UX Assistant

    AI Chatbots Discourage Error Checking

Alle 68 afleveringen →