NN/G UX Podcast

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

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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

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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.

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)

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📹 Post-production by
Jackie Jones

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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.

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)

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📹 Post-production by
Tiago Pedro (Design Assistant)
Megan Brown (Social Media Lead)