Product design isn’t just about creating beautiful interfaces. It’s also about building a user experience. Behind every intuitive product design are countless hours of strategy, research, and iterative improvements.
As with anything creative, inspiration and collaboration go a long way. One source of inspiration should come from your actual customers—user feedback is invaluable at picking up on what’s working in your design and what needs tweaking.
Behind every intuitive product design are countless hours of strategy, research, and iterative improvements.
Outside of your customers, fellow designers are another great way to inspire new UX ideas. UX podcasts offer a fantastic learning resource for designers because you can tune in whenever—and wherever—you need to get your creative gears moving. We put together a list of our favorite UX podcasts for you to listen to while you’re at work, on your commute, or just in need a little inspiration.
ref Recommended reading: Best 2019 Product Manager Podcasts: Design, Marketing, Analytics, and More
1. User Defenders: Interviews with Top Design Experts
What you’ll learn from the podcast:
The User Defenders podcast, hosted by Jason Ogle, highlights the importance of being the user’s champion. The hosts tackle difficult UX design questions by talking to current UX design “superheroes”. With a table of contents in each podcast stamping the time of each topic, it’s easy to find exactly what you are looking for.
Top episodes we love:
- 054: UX Research on a Budget with Becca Kennedy: Guest speaker Becca Kennedy, Human Factors Psychologist and co-founder of Kennason, breaks down how to collect, analyze, and apply user experience research under a budget.
- 035: Minding the Product Gap with Samuel Hulick: In this episode, Founder of UserOnboard.com Samuel Hulick examines the onboarding user flow of various products. These teardowns are then used to highlight ways to design a user onboarding that results in higher engagement and retention.
2. Navigating the Customer Experience–Essentials Tips for Customer Delight
What you’ll learn from the podcast:
Hosted by Yanique Grant, Navigating the Customer Experience, focuses on ways to make customers love your product or company. Yanique interviews entrepreneurs, authors, and other customer experience experts to collect advice on tools and best practices for driving customer delight.
ref The better you’re able to connect with your users, the more they will connect with your product.
Top episodes we love:
- Episode 074: How To Achieve Fiercely Loyal Customers with Sandy Rogers: Learn how to drive engagement and grow customer trust and loyalty by listening—and responding to—user feedback.
- Episode 031: Humanizing the Online Experience with Dan de Witte: Podcast guest Dan de Witte, a digital strategist and business coach, reminds us to humanize the user when thinking about online experiences. Your content, service, or product is always aimed at a person. The better you’re able to connect with your users, the more they will connect with your product.
3. Creative Pep Talk–Motivational Talks on Design Strategy
What you’ll learn from the podcast:
Created and hosted by Andy J. Miller—aka Andy J. Pizza—a freelance illustrator with a graphic design background, Creative Pep Talk captures Miller’s passion and energy for merging creativity with business. Miller brings his episodes to life with analogies, personal stories, and artist interviews.
ref It’s easy to hit roadblocks that affect the quality and quantity of your output.
Top episodes we love:
- 229: The 6 Step Process to Unlock Powerful Creative Business Momentum: If you’ve put in your 10,000 hours of practice and still don’t feel like you’ve caught the break you need, you might benefit from this episode’s advice on how to channel your creativity for business success.
- 183: How to Relight Your Fire: When it comes to creative work, it’s easy to hit roadblocks that affect the quality and quantity of your output. Listen to this episode for advice on how to get back on track, learn to focus your attention and efforts, and develop strategies for getting through creative lulls.
Related Reading: Why Designers Need to Care about Data
4. High Resolution–Topics on Product and Design
What you’ll learn from the podcast:
Listen to High Resolution to learn from designers at some of today’s top companies, such as Airbnb, eBay, and Uber. The podcast, hosted by Bobby Ghoshal and Jared Erondu, features an interview in each episode. The one-on-one style allows each episode to dive deeper into the design strategies of each UX case story.
Top episodes we love:
- Rochelle King (Spotify): Former VP of Design at Spotify and current VP Creative Production at Netflix, Rochelle King talks about data awareness, positively debating ideas within your team, and listening to both your team and your users to improve your processes and your product.
- Katie Dill (Airbnb): Recent Director of Experience Design at Airbnb and current VP of Design at Lyft, Katie Dill explores the problems with UX being too focused on the look and style in the design rather than how the user interacts with the product. Listen to this podcast to develop a customer-centric mindset when designing your product’s UX.
Related Reading: How to Set Metrics for Design
5. The Hacking UI Podcast–Conversations on Design Thinking
What you’ll learn from the podcast:
Hacking UI podcast hosts Sagi Shrieber and David Tintener help designers and developers tap into their entrepreneurial spirit by discussing how to build products with top-notch UI. Key points and links from the episodes help you review and reinforce the main concepts discussed.
Top episodes we love:
- Influencing an industry and building a personal brand with Khoi Vinh (Principal Designer, Adobe): Previous Design Director at The New York Times and current Principal Designer at Adobe, guest Khoi Vinh explores how storytelling helps you connect with customers and examines ways designers can stay creative as they produce continuous iterations.
- Have fun, create value and do it consistently (w/ Noah Kagan, Sumo.com & AppSumo.com): A gifted entrepreneur working as a marketing specialist and business consultant, Noah Kagan is the founder of Sumo.com, AppSumo.com, and OkDork. Learn tips to help you build an online presence for a business or personal brand, how to build a successful team, and how to set manageable goals that will help your UI design process.
6. UI Breakfast Podcast–Expert Advice on UX/UI
What you’ll learn from the podcast:
Jane Portman, host of the UI Breakfast Podcast, is an independent UI/UX consultant, co-founder of Userlist.io, and author of Your Productized Consulting Guide. Her podcast focuses on how SaaS companies can build focused, profitable products with an accessible UI/UX.
ref You should always be considering how to leverage UX and UI for positive product impact.
Top episodes we love:
- Episode 137: Lean, Agile & Design Thinking with Jeff Gothelf: Author of Lean UX and Sense & Respond, Jeff Gothelf helps you look at everything you create—from content to policies—as a product with an intended outcome. You should always be considering how to leverage UX and UI for positive product impact.
- Episode 121: Managing Customer Feedback with Sofia Quintero: Guest speaker Sofia Quintero, founder and CEO of EnjoyHQ, joins the podcast to talk about her previous experiences and her current initiatives. She conveys the value of listening to your user feedback to improve your product UX and marketing.
Related Reading: Hire More Designers, OK?
7. UX and Growth Podcast–Exploring the Relationship Between Product Growth and User Experience
What you’ll learn from the podcast:
Hosted by Austin Knight, the UX and Growth Podcast features a new guest speaker in each episode. The first-hand perspectives in each episode give listeners actionable and practical ideas to test.
Top episodes we love:
- Balancing Design & Conversion with Dr. David Darmanin (CEO of Hotjar): In this episode, Dr. David Darmanin explains the intersection between design and conversion and breaks down how to quantify the impact of design. With the attitude that it’s designers’ responsibility to fine-tune and perfect the product, you’ll gain tips on how to mesh your design with retention and conversion objectives.
- Personas, Content, and Growth Marketing with Anum Hussain (Senior Growth Marketer at HubSpot): Guest speaker Anum Hussain, co-founder of acciyo and formerly at Snapchat and HubSpot, looks at how content, user personas, and other factors impact your growth. Listen to this episode to find ways to perfect your UX through data analytics and product adjustment.
Your users always come first. A strong user experience is the foundation of sustainable product growth and is directly linked to user retention and engagement. Designing a high-impact UX that users love isn’t easy though. It takes creativity, experimentation, and the ability to understand how to build something that users love. We hope you use this collection of the best ux podcasts, along with the best product manager books, to help you and your team put the user first at every step of product design.
A strong user experience is the foundation of sustainable product growth and is directly linked to retention and engagement.
