Jorge Arango Podcasts

Jorge Arango is an Information architect, author, and educator, and he’s written a new book, Duly Noted, about the age-old practice of notetaking. If you’re like me, you’ve been taking notes since your school days. Back then, we used notebooks, a Trapper Keeper, and sticky notes – anything that could help us ace a test, remember important tidbits, …

Steve Portigal is an independent user research consultant. He is the author of Interviewing Users and Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries. Steve was previously on the show last year, talking about research skills. This conversation is a bit different: both of us have written new books, and we thought it’d be fun to compare notes about the process…

Audrey Crane is the Head of Growth at DesignMap, a product and strategy design firm. She’s also the author of What CEOs Need to Know About Design, a book that helps leaders understand and tap into the power of design in their organizations. In this, Audrey’s second appearance on the show, we focused on how organizations can ensure they’re getting t…

Have you ever felt like the product people want to move too fast? You realize that speed is important, but the quality of the product is going to suffer and the results are going to disappoint.Or have you ever wished you had a seat at the table during the initial strategy sessions of a new project, rather than being brought in mid-stream?Do you fee…

Nate Davis is an independent information architecture consultant and a longtime contributor to the global IA community. In this conversation, we discuss his ideas about IA sub-disciplines that influence the construction of digital user interfaces. Show notes Nathaniel Davis - LinkedIn Methodbrain Four Information Architecture Disciplines Every Team…

Today’s interview is just a taste of what you’ll learn at Rosenfeld’s upcoming Design in Product conference—featuring John Cutler’s closing keynote. John is the senior director of product management at Toast, a doodler, a former band member, a UX researcher, and business analyst. He’s also the prolific writer behind “The Beautiful Mess, a Substack …

While we’ve been developing design systems for years, we’re only just now learning how to create systems that are successful and sustainable. Dan Mall is the author of the soon-to-be released Design That Scales: Creating a Sustainable Design System Practice, which explores the cultural elements that contribute to sustainable design systems. Not sur…

Karl Voit describes himself as “a life hacker trying to make deliberate decisions on every aspect of life.” Among these are the tools he uses to manage his personal information. In particular, Karl is an avid user of Org Mode in Emacs, which is the focus of this conversation. Show notes public voit - Homepage of Karl Voit Karl Voit on Mastodon (@pu…

Believe it or not, Steve Portigal’s UX research classic Interviewing Users came out ten years ago, back in 2013. A few things about user research have changed since then, to put it mildly, so we at Rosenfeld did two things: we convinced Steve to write a second edition (coming out October 17), and to join us on the Rosenfeld Review to discuss all th…

Karl Fast is an independent scholar, information architect, and futurist. He’s the co-author with Stephen Anderson of Figure It Out: Getting From Information to Understanding. Karl is one of the most avid readers I know, and in this conversation, we compare our reading practices. We discussed this subject in preparation for a personal knowledge man…

Jenae Cohn is the Executive Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at UC Berkeley. Along with Michael Greer, Jenae recently published Design for Learning, a book about how to teach better using technology, and what online teachers and instructors can learn from UX designers. Show notes Jenae Cohn Jenae Cohn, PhD - LinkedIn Design for Lear…

Sönke Ahrens is an independent researcher and coach. He is best known as the author of How to Take Smart Notes, a popular book on the zettelkasten method of note-taking. In this conversation, we discuss the role of notes in thinking and learning, with a focus on zettelkasten-inspired note-taking. Show notes Sönke Ahrens How to Take Smart Notes by S…

Sahibzada Mayed and Lauren Lin will be speakers at the upcoming DesignOps Summit on October 2-4, 2023. Their talk, “Cultivating Design Ecologies of Care, Community, and Collaboration,” will showcase the intersection of care-centeredness and design operations. Lauren has wanted to be a designer since she was in third grade. What kind of designer? An…

Zariah Cameron is Co-Director of Community + Research and the founder of AEI – Advocate, Educate, Innovate Black Design. She will be a speaker at October’s DesignOps Summit on streamlining an inclusive design practice. Many companies and corporations have good intentions when it comes to inclusive design. But too often that’s where things both star…

Chiara Ogan is a former UX designer and information architect. She recently left that career to become a mental health therapist. Chiara’s background is in library science, and in this conversation, we discuss how she organizes her personal book collection — which she just did in preparation for this major life change. Show notes Chiara Ogan Chiara…

Jay Bustamante has always been about conserving time and resources by building tight processes to create efficiencies in his life and work. In all the jobs and positions he’s held, he would notice gaps, consult with stakeholders, find solutions, and fill those gaps. Eventually he learned there is a name for this type of work: DesignOps. Today Jay i…

Alex Wright is the Head of User Experience at Google News. He’s also an author, and his most recent book, Informatica, is the second edition of Glut, his deep history of the information age. In this conversation, we discuss the history of information technologies and why learning about it matters to people who work in tech. Show notes Alex Wright A…

Aidan Helfant is a college student who’s using personal knowledge management (PKM) to improve his learning. He’s also sharing his methods and tools to help other college students succeed. In this conversation, we unpack Aidan’s approach to note-taking for learning. Show notes Aidan Helfant Aidan Helfant - YouTube Aidan’s newsletter Aidan’s blog Aid…

Jenae Cohn is executive director at the Center for Teaching and Learning at UC Berkeley and, along with Michael Greer, author of the new book Design for Learning: User Experience in Online Teaching and Learning. Jenae and Michael’s book helps designers create compelling educational content. Think of it as required reading for anyone designing an on…

Maggie Appleton is a product designer at Ought, an AI research lab that’s working on ways to scale open-ended thinking with machine learning. She’s also an advocate of sharing personal knowledge online. She publishes one of the best digital gardens I’ve seen, located at maggieappleton.com. In this conversation, we discuss the what, why, and how of …

Bob Kasenchak is a taxonomist and information architect at Factor. This is the second of two episodes with Bob that focus on what information architects can learn from music. The first conversation, which you can find in episode 116, focused on the structure of music itself. Today’s conversation focuses on how we can make music more findable — but …

Bob Kasenchak is a taxonomist and information architect at Factor. Bob’s background is in music, and this conversation delves into what information architects can learn from studying music. We recorded two conversations on the subject: this one focuses on the structure of music itself, and the second covers how we can make music more findable. Look…

Are Halland has worked in digital product development, strategy, design, and communication for over a quarter of a century. During that time, he created the core model, a tool for designing websites and products that align business goals and user needs. He has now written a book about the core model, which is due to be published later this year. In…

Dan Russell spent 17 years working at Google, with a significant part of that tenure as a Search Anthropologist: “someone who tries to understand how people search, what kinds of things they seek, and how their tools influence their search process.” Dan is the author of The Joy of Search, which is the focus of our conversation today. Show notes Dan…

Not too long ago, Donna Lichaw, author of The User’s Journey, was helping companies solve product problems by organizing the experience of a product or service into a narrative arc where the user is the hero. Then she ran into a question that she couldn’t shake — a question that, once answered, would morph her business from product development to l…

Sheryl Cababa is the Chief Strategy Officer of Substantial, an experience design consultancy based in Seattle. She’s the author of Closing the Loop, a new book about systems thinking in design. The book emphasizes the role designers can play as catalysts for social change, and that is the focus of our conversation. Show notes Sheryl Cababa - Linked…

Boon Yew Chew is senior principal UX designer at Elsevier and an IxDA local leader and board alumn. He will be a speaker at the upcoming 2023 Enterprise UX Conference on June 6th and 7th, delivering a session on “Making Sense of Systems – and Using Systems to Make Sense of the Enterprise.”Systems thinking can seem abstract and theoretical, but Boon…

Jerry Michalski helps organizations become more trustworthy by exploring their language, processes, and intentions. That’s fascinating in itself — but I wanted to talk with him primarily because he curates an online resource called Jerry’s Brain, a deep repository of interconnected thoughts. He’s worked on Jerry’s Brain for a quarter of a century, …

Ren Pope has a passion for all things data, information, and knowledge, and he strives to make them more accessible, organized, and enduring. You may be surprised that this conversation about information architecture takes us back to classic Greek philosophy, specifically ontology, which is concerned with the nature of being—that is, what is real a…

Erica Jorgensen is one of Rosenfeld Media’s newest authors with the publication of her book, Strategic Content Design: Tools and Research Techniques for Better UX. ( https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/strategic-content-design/ ) With a background in journalism, her book draws on her experiences as a content designer with the likes of Chewy, Microsoft…

Andy Fitzgerald is an information architecture and content strategy consultant. He works with mission-driven organizations to produce systems that communicate clearly, align business and user goals, and scale effectively. Our conversation today focuses on moving beyond the page as a metaphor for how information is delivered toward more flexible con…

Nicole van der Hoeven is a Developer Advocate at Grafana Labs. She is also a communicator, sharing what she learns through her writing, conference presentations, and YouTube videos. The latter are what brought Nicole’s work to my attention: she runs a YouTube channel focused on one of my favorite tools for thought, Obsidian. In this conversation, w…

Hugh Dubberly is the founder of Dubberly Design Office, an interaction design studio based in San Francisco. Hugh has a long trajectory in the design world. Before opening his studio, he did pioneering work at leading tech companies like Apple and Netscape. He is also a thinker and teacher of uncommon depth and breadth. He’s my colleague at the Cal…

Lisanne Norman entered the tech field as a UX researcher in 2015 and quickly advanced to lead researcher at Dell, then Visa. She founded Black UX Austin and was the UX lead researcher at Gusto. And then she left in 2022. Because she had had enough. And because she wanted to make a difference. She is now co-director of DEI at the Hotchkiss School in…

Jill has been listening to customers and clients for over 20 years. She has worked for organizations like Etsy and Blue Apron, and has since started Field Notes Consulting, a research and strategic planning practice serving both public and private sectors. She is method-agnostic, harnesses full-stack research, and interrogates all data to get to th…

Prayag Narula is the founder and CEO of Marvin, a tool for qualitative researchers. Prayag will also be a speaker at the Advancing Research Conference where he’ll share the stage with Rida Qadri, a research scientist at Google. Humans have been doing quantitative research for thousands of years – well, for as long as math has been around. Qualitati…

Carrie Hane is an evangelist at Sanity, a cloud-based content platform provider. Carrie is co-author of Designing Connected Content, which advocates for content modeling as part of the digital design process. This is also the subject of our conversation. A side note: Carrie is one of the keynote speakers at this year’s information architecture conf…

Sheryl is the author of the soon-to-be-released Closing the Loop: Systems Thinking for Designers: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/systems-thinking-for-designers/ With a background in journalism and political science, and having worked at or with Adaptive Path, Substantial, Frog, Ikea, Microsoft, and the Gates Foundation, Sheryl has an interest in …

Michael Becker is the founder and CEO of Identity Praxis, a strategic advisory firm. He’s also a prolific communicator, having produced dozens of YouTube videos explaining how to use advanced knowledge management tools. In this conversation, we discuss Michael’s approach to knowledge work and how tools such as Tinderbox can help you think and work …

Léonie Watson is an accessibility engineer, W3C director, technology writer, and speaker. She’s director at TetraLogical, a consultancy focused on accessibility for emerging and existing technologies. In this conversation, we focus on the role of accessibility in producing experiences that work better for everybody. Show notes Léonie Watson Léonie …

David Rose is an entrepreneur, MIT lecturer, author, and pioneer in ambient computing. Among other institutions, his work has been featured in MoMA, The New York Times, WIRED, The Economist, and The Daily Show. He’s the author of two books: Enchanted Objects and his latest, SuperSight, which is the subject of our conversation. Show notes David Rose…

Authors Maria Giudice & Christopher Ireland join Lou to discuss their new book, Changemakers: How Leaders Can Design Change in an Insanely Complex World, which comes out on January 17.Get a taste of what they cover in the book, from systems thinking to navigating change, and how to look broadly at patterns to understand the context in which you are…

Marcia Bates is Professor Emerita in UCLA’s Department of Information Studies. Over the course of a long career in both consulting and academia, Dr. Bates produced seminal work in user-centered information system design. Her paper on “berrypicking” as a user search strategy has been widely cited and is considered a foundational text in the field. I…

Scott Jenson has done strategic UX design work for some of tech’s most important companies, including Apple and Google. Now he’s semi-retired and focused on improving the experience of using open source software. In this conversation, we talk about what’s different about open source, how design can make it better, and how designers can benefit from…

Amy Jiménez Márquez is Vice President of Experience Design at Zillow. Previously, she led design teams at Amazon and Compass. In this conversation, we focus on the role of information architecture in managing digital experiences at scale, with a particular focus on research and modeling. Transcript https://theinformed.life/2022/12/03/episode-102-am…

Lou has Rich Mironov, CEO of Mironov Consulting, as his guest. Rich runs a blog and has been writing for over 20 years about business and the psychology that goes into product management. Together, they discuss ways that Product Management and UX can work more fluidly together. They dive into how you can bring your team together so everyone is work…

Lou sits down with Catt Small, Director of Product Design at All Turtles, who will be speaking at the Design in Product Conference on December 6, 2022. They discuss how designers and product managers can learn each other’s lingo and build relationships that will make both their jobs easier. Together, they sort through different workplace scenarios …

Lou talks with Whitney Hess as she discusses her vast career in UX design and transition into coaching. She breaks down the different methodologies and philosophies she utilizes with each client and how she embodies her work beyond her coaching. Together, Whitney and Lou discuss the different risks and leaps of faith she has had to take during her …

Bram Wessel and Gary Carlson are the founders of Factor, an information architecture and experience design consultancy. In this conversation, we discuss their practice of helping organizations gain alignment by defining the information layer that underpins their digital systems. Transcript https://theinformed.life/2022/11/20/episode-101-bram-wessel…

This is episode 100 of The Informed Life podcast. To celebrate, I decided to dedicate it to you, the show’s listeners. So today, I don’t have a guest. Instead, I will answer questions sent by listeners of the show. Transcript https://theinformed.life/2022/11/06/episode-100-listener-questions/ Show notes IA: WTF? workshop Vinish Garg’s question on L…