42. Icons that Work (feat Kate Kaplan, Insights Architect @ NN/g)

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. 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

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. 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

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. 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.

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. 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

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. 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.