This year the Berliner Philharmoniker celebrates two anniversaries, with the online Digital Concert Hall turning 15, and the Berliner Philharmoniker label marking its first decade. Rob Cowan spoke to Olaf Maninger, who alongside a busy schedule as principal cellist with the orchestra, is General Manager of Berlin Phil Media GmbH, and has been one o…

Koji Pereira, Chief Design Officer for Brazilian fintech Neon, joins Peter and Jesse to talk about his career journey from Brazil to Silicon Valley and back again, finding the balance between speed and quality, and strategies for making the design team and the design process more inclusiveBy peterme

Vuokko Aro, VP of Design for the UK's popular digital-only bank Monzo, joins Peter and Jesse to talk about shifting your design approach as your company scales, building a true peer relationship with product leadership, and creating a sense of togetherness for remote and embedded teams.By peterme

Jesse and Peter grapple with the prevailing discourse around design leadership, the shift occurring from what design has been to what it is becoming, the ego death necessary for leaders to embrace their potential, and the opportunity for professionalism.By peterme

Christina Goldschmidt joins Peter and Jesse to reflect on her first 60 days on the job as the newly appointed VP of product design for the music industry giant Warner Music Group. She offers thoughts on getting up to speed and finding early success as an incoming leader, profiling your stakeholders as if they were users, the leadership power of per…

Aurelius Podcast - Episode 67 highlights with Janna Bastow:- Using UX research to inform product roadmaps- Stories about how to avoid major code and product rollbacks by simply conducting good UX research- Using customer needs to truly innovate and avoid building a better competitive copycat product - How to avoid building a Frankenstein product…

LEGO's Rebecca Nordstrom leads the team designing the software they use to produce those billions of little bricks. She joins us today to talk about bringing UX to the factory floor, measuring success when user adoption is mandatory, and the differences between leading design in North America and in Europe.…

Aurelius Podcast - Episode 66 highlights with Audrey Crane:- Defining Shadow Design and its potential impact on your organization- Audrey and her team’s research study on Shadow Design- Shadow IT and it’s correlation to Shadow Design- Risks and implications of Shadow Design in the product development process- How to uncover if Shadow Design is happ…

Peter and Jesse are joined by Cynthia Savard Saucier, co-author of the book Tragic Design and VP of UX for the Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify. We talk about what's worth fighting for and what's not, sharpening the business acumen of her teams, and the strategic value of kindness.By peterme

Violinist Francesca Dego kicks off the Busoni centenary celebrations with her new album, pairing his concerto with that of Brahms - a juxtaposition that might seem strange, until you realise (as Francesca describes) the deep connections between the two works, so much so that Busoni's concerto could even be seen as a direct homage to Brahms's. As we…

In this episode, "mission critical" takes on a whole new meaning when you're the Chief Experience Officer for the United States Air Force. The first person to take on that role, Colt Whittall, joins us to talk about getting things done when you have more influence than authority, finding meaning and purpose in government service, and taking risks i…

Aurelius Podcast - Episode 65 highlights with Ruby Pryor:- Defining the ROI of UX and UX Research- The case for building confidence in speaking about UX Research in terms of dollars- Understanding how certain recommendations you make impact the fundamental business model of where you work- Business models, understanding them and how UX Research wor…

Pianist Martin James Bartlett first came to many people’s attention in 2014, when he won the BBC Young Musician Award. A Proms debut followed the next year, and a recording contract with Warner Classics not long after. To date, both of Martin’s albums on Warner have been centred around a unifying core concept - recital-recordings with a clear and t…

Hardware design, software design, package design, experience design. Rajat Shail oversees all of it for home automation company Vivint. Rajat joins us to share what he's learned about managing design as a holistic function, the benefits and pitfalls of using design thinking training to engage executives, and what to do when your mandate is broader …

Aurelius Podcast - Episode 64 highlights with Ryan Glasgow:- The story of Sprig and the gap Ryan identified in user research and market research tools- Problems and challenges with typical surveys for product research- Effectiveness and application of in-context survey research- AI in UX research and the true value a human brings as a researcher- C…

As every opera-fan must surely be aware by now, December saw the centenary of Maria Callas’s birth, and Warner Classics marked the occasion by issuing the most comprehensive collection of her recordings ever released – clocking in at a whopping 131 CDs, La Divina offers the chance to experience Callas’s unique qualities in all 74 roles for which au…

Aurelius Podcast - Episode 63 highlights with Darren Hood:- UX Maturity: what UX maturity looks like at the organization and individual level- How UX maturity level impacts the planning and effectiveness of UX work- Tips for assessing your personal, team and organizational UX maturity- The impact of UX maturity on leadership and the hiring process-…

Although plenty of attention has been lavished on the four hundredth anniversary of the death of William Byrd, his contemporary Thomas Weelkes also died in 1623 - on the 30th of November - and has seen rather less in the way of commemoration. In addition to Weelkes being a composer of great gifts, his reputation also rests in part on his track reco…

Aurelius Podcast - Episode 62 highlights with Jesse James Garrett:- Discussing The Elements of User Experience and its impact- Defining and communicating the value proposition of design- What being a design executive and design leader actually looks like- Steps for success in a design leadership role- The importance relationship building in design …

The 'Schubert in English' series on Signum Classics sees its fourth instalment this year - following up Winter Journey, Swansong and The Fair Maid of the Mill with a wider-ranging collection of songs, sung by Roderick Williams and Rowan Pierce with Christopher Glynn at the piano. Front and centre, too, are the translations of Jeremy Sams, which at …

As "the classiest brass ensemble in Britain" turns 30, Onyx Brass's trombonist Amos Miller looks back over three decades of brass quintet music-making, with an eye on exploring contemporary repertoire. We discuss the group's latest album, 'The sun is free to flow with the sea', and some of the works featured on it, as well as touching on questions …

Aurelius Podcast - Episode 61 highlights with Debbie Levitt:- Differences and similarities between CX and UX- How the UX industry has shifted and where it’s going- Tips for opening conversations with cross functional teams about UX Research- How to handle conversations where people mislabel terms in UX- How does UX fit into the Agile process…

Aurelius Podcast - Episode 60 highlights with Cheryl Platz:- What is AI, Machine Learning and how will it impact UX Research- What AI is currently good at and how it really works- Surprising ways you’re probably already using AI for UX Research today- Ethical considerations in the application of AI for UX Research- The impact of AI on the current U…

A discussion of the OUP's recently-published collection of sacred and secular choral works by Black composers, with its editor Dr Marques Garrett - taking in Vicente Lusitano, Undine Smith Moore, R Nathaniel Dett (Dr Garrett's own particular labour of love) and more. Presto Music All things musical... on your doorstep! Visit our website: www.presto…

Aurelius Podcast - Episode 59 highlights with Joe Natoli:- The importance of getting personal to influence decisions - Getting buy in for UX Research from stakeholders and other teams- Soft skills for making a bigger impact with research and insights- How new UX Researchers can bridge the gap in the disconnect between the learning environment and r…

Aurelius Podcast - Episode 58 highlights with Ari Zelmanow:- Being a strategic researcher and what that means- Learning how businesses work to speak that language and connect UX research to what matters across the organization- UX Research Democratization and Ari's thoughts about it- The role of UX research, how it's evolving and thoughts about how…

Arthur Bliss was one of the most important British musicians of his age. Having served with distinction in the Great War, in which he was both injured and gassed, he subsequently became the most performed British composer abroad. He served as Director of Music at the BBC from 1942-44, and was appointed Master of the Queen’s Music in 1953. Bliss was…

The great Russian Romantic composer Sergei Rachmaninoff declared that his music was "the product of his temperament, therefore Russian", but he spent the final 26 years of life in exile after fleeing Russia in 1917. While in exile he composed his late masterpieces including the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and the Symphonic Dances, while also pr…

Earlier this year we saw the release of not one, but two box sets dedicated to recordings by the Minnesota Orchestra under their Hungarian conductor Antal Doráti, recordings made by the Mercury Record Company in the 1950's. To discuss the artistic and sonic legacy of these Mono and Stereo box sets I was privileged to be joined not only by record cr…

Some "concept" albums can seem a little contrived – with themes not so much neatly interwoven as crudely welded onto one another. Not so Emmanuel Despax's new album Après un rêve, which draws together its three main ideas so naturally that it seems as if the album must have sprung from Despax's mind fully formed. A poetic legacy from his music-lovi…

Over the nearly twenty years since its formation, Vox Luminis has appeared in our metaphorical pages plenty of times – the Belgian early music ensemble consistently combines original and exploratory programming with impeccable musicianship. Every album Lionel Meunier and his musicians release can be relied on to be not just a feast for the ears but…

In this episode, Peter and Jesse reflect on the conversations they had with senior design leaders, the themes that emerged, the challenges facing design leaders today, and our hope for a brighter future.By peterme

Robert Levin set out to record a complete set of Mozart's works for keyboard and orchestra. After several highly successful and critically-acclaimed volumes over the following decade, fate eventually intervened to force the project into the deep freeze, and on that unsatisfying note the story might have ended. Happily, though, circumstances have no…

n this episode, Peter and Jesse speak with Tim Allen, Global Head of Design and Research for Instacart, about his craft-forward approach to design leadership, how psychological safety enables innovation, partnering with strong operations leaders, and how growing up Black in Japan proved formative in his lifelong advocacy for inclusion in design.…

2023 sees the quadricentennials of the deaths of both William Byrd - sacred polyphonist, virginalist and recusant Catholic - and Thomas Weelkes, remembered especially for his madrigals, his verse services and his repeated tellings-off by his bosses at Chichester Cathedral for what might delicately be termed rowdiness. Among various groups with albu…

Founded by four ambitious teenagers in Middlesbrough in 1972, the Brodsky Quartet’s extraordinary fifty-year career has encompassed collaborations with musicians including Sting, Björk and Sir Paul McCartney as well as a whole host of superb recordings of core repertoire from Mozart to Bartók. It was a great pleasure to be joined by cellist and fou…

In this episode, Peter and Jesse speak with Che Douglas, who has shifted from VP of Design to VP of Product for Booking.com, the world's leading travel website. Che talks about the cultural and functional relationship between product and design, what it's like to lead both as an integrated team, and the necessity of driving alignment in order to dr…

In this episode, Peter and Jesse speak with Jehad Affoneh, Chief Design Officer of Toast, on topics ranging from the what it means to be an executive, how accountability is shared across functions, the importance of aiming metrics at organizational maturity, developing an experience strategy, working with Founder-CEOs, and the differences in workin…

One of the most keenly anticipated music biographies in 2023 has been 'Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World' a wonderfully vivid account of the lives, times and music of 4 extraordinarily talented composers from the late 19th and 20th Centuries. Guiding me through the fascinating world of Dame Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howel…

Discover the unique user experience path that Peter Horvath, UX & Design Lead at Whitespace, Co-Founder of 24 Hours of UX, and Lecturer at Lucerne University, followed in this twelfth episode of Season 2.