All Episodes
#166 - Summer Throwback: Erika Hall on Why Surveys (Almost Always) Suck
Welcome to Summer Throwbacks, where we revisit some of Awkward Silences' most memorable episodes.This week features a conversation with Erika Hall on the misuses of su...
#165 - High Impact Research on Embedded Teams with Hannah Ghidey of Etsy
Embedded research teams—where UXRs are dedicated to a single product area—are popular. The proximity to design, product, and engineering stakeholders increases subject...
#164 - UX Lessons from a Decade Researching AI with Jess Holbrook of Microsoft
Much of the conversation around AI in UX involves how it will shape and change researchers' work. Today's guest, Jess Holbrook, who leads UX research for Microsoft AI,...
#163 - Creating Mindful Product Experiences with Jay Vidyarthi of Still Ape
In this episode, Erin and Ben chat with Jay Vidyarthi, designer, author, and founder at Still Ape. Jay is a leading thinker around designing mindful product experience...
#162 - Empowering PwDR Using Research Education with Daniel Gottlieb of Microsoft
Many research activities are completed by non-researchers, but whose work is benefited from user insights. Generally, these folks—designers, PMs, developers, among oth...
#161 - Learn More Faster About Customers with Michael Margolis of GV
This episode is all about learning from customers...early and often. Our guest, Michael Margolis, UX Research Partner at GV (formerly Google Ventures), has made a care...
#160 - Where Design Thinking Went Wrong with Brett Krajewski of Accelerant Research
In 2022, the UX community experienced a series of convulsions: layoffs, reorgs, and reduced budgets. A common thread throughout was accountability: user researchers fa...
#159 - Building Cross-Functional Research Impact with Judy Xu of Salesforce
Creating strong stakeholder relationships is important for UX researchers at any company. Doing this at "enterprise" companies—large organizations with many products a...
#158 - Leading Design as a Researcher with Emily Wurgler of McDonald's
Erin and Carol are joined by Emily Wurgler, Global Director of Experience Design at McDonald's, whose journey has had many moments of evolution and iteration. She star...
#157 - The Future of Design Collaboration with Andrew Hogan of Figma
Few companies are most closely associated with UX design right now than Figma, which not only helps designers get their work done, but serves as a bridge for others to...
#156 - Change Management with Graham Gardner of U.S. Bank
Change is an important and inevitable part of developing as a user experience professional. But what does change look like when it happens at the organizational level?...
#155 - Exploratory Design Research with Will Notini of IDEO
The consulting firm IDEO helped pioneer "design thinking" as a way to create products that better solve customer wants and needs, creating fans. Over 30 years later, t...
#154 - Building the UX Team of Tomorrow with Brad Orego of Webflow
The craft of UX research is at an all-time high. How research leaders structure, staff, and scale their teams is more important than ever. Erin and Carol are joined by...
#153 - Security-Minded UX with Caroline Morchio of Dashlane
In our Season 3 finale, Erin and Carol are joined by Caroline Morchio, Head of UX at Dashlane, a credential management platform. Their conversation explores UX researc...
#152 - The Future of Research in Three Trends with Jo Widawski of Maze
Erin and Carol are joined by Jo Widawski, founder and CEO of Maze, to discuss the major findings from their "Future of User Research" report, which unearthed three tre...
#151 - Improving Your UX Research Efficiency with Auzita Irani of AirBnB
Erin is joined by Auzita Irani, a research manager at AirBnB to discuss being a more efficient user experience researcher. In today's work world, resources—time, budge...
#150 - The Future of UX Research with Judd Antin, Dave Hora, and Christiana Lackner
It's our 150th episode! To celebrate, we brought together three thought leaders for a discussion about UX research's future. Erin and Carol are joined by Judd Antin, D...
#149 - Research Tactics for Designers & PMs with Tyler Wanlass of CommandBar
In this episode, Erin and Carol sit down with Tyler Wanlass, lead product designer at CommandBar, to explore practical strategies for conducting user research without ...