Mon, 2 November 2015
In this, the most important episode of The Dirt ever, Mark, Steve and I talk about a term we frankly invented for this show:User Offboarding. We discuss how to let go of your users whether it be through an acquisition, sunsetting a service, or users themselves walking away. We go through the different reasons a service might end and how to do so in a responsible manner. We also talk about what to do with someone's data once they leave your service. Once again... the most important episode we've ever done... listen in. |
Tue, 27 October 2015
On The Dirt today, please welcome Jenn Schiffer of Bocoup. We talk about the details of contributing to and maintaining open source projects, including: setting maintenance expectations; guidelines for being a good contributor; and how to ignite Jenn's ire by nitpicking her build files. |
Fri, 11 September 2015
In part 2 of our series on Successful Product Management we have an in-depth conversation with Instapaper CEO, Brian Donohue. Brian takes us through the beginnings of the product and it's transition from Marco Arment's baby to ownership by Betaworks. We talk about the challenges of growing with new and previous users and the importance of onboarding. Wait... where's Tim? |
Fri, 11 September 2015
This week we kick of a new series on Successful Product Management by sitting down with one of the greats, R. Colin Kennedy of Sonos. Colin takes us through the ins and out of how a product comes to life in the Sonos family. We talk about the inherent differences between physical and digital products, and where they meet in the middle! |
Wed, 2 September 2015
For the third chapter of our "Designing Your Career" series, Larry Goldberg takes us through his long career in accessibility, from nearly 30 years at WGBH to his current role as Director of Accessible Media at Yahoo. Listen in for Larry's take on building a fulfilling career as well as conclusive proof that Steve is the most gullible person you know. |
Tue, 4 August 2015
This week on The Dirt, we sat down with the large man of tall tales, Mr. Aaron Draplin himself. Aaron reveals how to transform the passion that feeds your soul into a passion that feeds your... stomach... Brought to you by three designers, one developer, and some magnificent facial hair. In all seriousness, if you hear a crackling noise on the track, that's Aaron's beard. |
Mon, 3 August 2015
Today on The Dirt: how to actually make a plan for your career and then follow through with it. You know, the way you're supposed to with your projects but never even thought about applying to yourself. Listen as Kate Matsudaira gives up all the secrets to making your own plan and making it work. |
Fri, 17 July 2015
This week we sit down with, newly married couple, Josh Clark and Liza Kindred about the future of wearables. We chat about a magic wand Josh made, Liza's WIFI hotspot handbag, and blue sky some idea about what the future looks like without drumpants. |
Tue, 7 July 2015
On this episode we have the great pleasure of sitting down with Google's Product Lead for the Physical Web, Scott Jenson. We discuss the Internet of Things, how Scott much hates it (the term), and where we think this whole thing is headed. |
Fri, 22 May 2015
To close out our series on designing for the future we talk about near-future possibilities and products focused on creating accessible experiences. |
Fri, 22 May 2015
This week we sit down to talk about the pros and cons of working distributed versus in a centralized location. We discuss it from side of the employee as well as the business. |
Thu, 21 May 2015
This week we take a look at the particular challenges of an oft-ignored audience: users with literacy issues. Listen in to find out how you can improve the usability of your site for your entire audience by focusing on the challenges of users that are lower on the literacy spectrum. |
Wed, 13 May 2015
Today, we're We'll be back next week with an all new episode of The Dirt! |
Tue, 5 May 2015
This week Mark and Steve interview Jesse Kriss of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory about designing for space exploration. Seriously. This episode is about designing for space exploration. Yes, that sound was Steve's heart exploding from happiness. |
Mon, 27 April 2015
This week we sit down with Chris Noessel, author of Make It So: Interaction Design Lessons from Science Fiction to talk about fictional UI. Steve actively exposes how much of a dork he is throughout this epic Dirt episode. |
Wed, 22 April 2015
On the heels of a great series, we step back a bit to remind ourselves how awesome our friend Steve Fisher is by pulling this classic episode from the archives. We discuss how creating conflict on a project can lead to a much better experience for the end users. |
Tue, 7 April 2015
Today: a special super-sized episode of The Dirt featuring Colin Bendell, Director in the CTO Office at Akamai. In this wide-ranging discussion, we explore the performance implications of responsive design, the role of CDNs in major world events, and much, much more. Be sure to listen through the closing music for a bonus, extra-long, extra-thrilling after-show conversation. We had so much fun with Colin, we simply wouldn't let him get back to work! Seriously, this is a good one, folks. |
Mon, 6 April 2015
This week we sit down with SuperFriendly founder, Dan Mall. To close out our series on performance, we chat with Dan about building and implementing a performance budget. The budgeting design has been an important part of our work in delivering the best experience possible and we're thrilled to have the chance to discuss it with Dan. |
Mon, 23 March 2015
With the great news of our friend Jason Pamental coming on board here at Fresh Tilled Soil, we decided to re-release Jason's episode on Responsive Typography. It originally aired on July 29, 2014 and has since been one of our most popular shows. Enjoy! |
Fri, 20 March 2015
This week on the show, we sit down with Lara Hogan. Lara is the Senior Engineering Manager of Performance at Etsy and author of Designing for Performance. We chat about the importance of performance in experience design, how to get it into our design processes, and how to sell it as part of the culture at a company. |
Mon, 16 March 2015
For the fourth chapter in our series on Designing a Successful Product, we sit down with Mr. Brad Frost to discuss Atomic Design and creating visual systems. Brad takes us through the benefits of designing systems rather than individual pages. We chat about Pattern Lab, creating style guides, and how to sell someone on the approach. We do all of this with the grace and elegance of a gazelle. |
Tue, 10 March 2015
This week, we sit down with Nir Eyal, the author of a book we all love, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. Nir takes us through how to design a successful experience by getting your users to come back. We go into detail about his Hook Model, how people have successfully applied it, and what's coming down the line. Settle in folks, this is a good one! |
Mon, 2 March 2015
This week on the show we are humbled to sit down with, pillar of the design community, Paula Scher, Partner at Pentagram. We continue our series on designing a successful product with a conversation about the importance of branding. Paula has, in some way, affected all our careers and we're thrilled to have the opportunity to sit down with her for this show. |
Tue, 24 February 2015
Boston's record snowfall finally caught up with us! We're taking a short breather to prepare a bunch of great new episodes. Today we're republishing one of our favorites from our archive, which originally aired in July 2014. We'll be back with a brand new Dirt next week. In this classic episode, we talk about how to be a better freelancer by productizing your services. This conversation was recorded on the heels of an article by Robert Williams called Freelance as a Service. We discuss what it means to deliver a service to clients and how to package that up in unique ways. Differentiating yourself with a service-based product can help steer you toward the clients you want and away from the ones you don't. At the end of the show, we mention Corkscrew, our style guide framework that was in private beta at the time. Corkscrew is now publicly available on GitHub, so check it out! |
Mon, 9 February 2015
This week, we kick off a series about successful product design by sitting down with Samuel Hulick for a chat about how to onboard users into your product. Samuel is the man behind useronboard.com and has done teardowns for all of our favorite apps including: Slack, Netflix, and Duolingo. |
Tue, 27 January 2015
For part 3 of our series on Experience Development, we sit down with Lead Front-end Developer at Shopify, Jonathan Snook. On this episode we talk about roles in Front-end Development and the importance in identifying the difference between "design implementation" and "application development" can be critical to having a successful team. |
Fri, 23 January 2015
This week Steve and I get a chance to sit down with Jeremy Keith of Clearleft and talk about a topic that is very near and dear to our hearts: Progressive Enhancement. We clear up the common confusion between PE and a similiar (but very different) concept in software develoment called graceful degradation, and even get into JavaScript frameworks. Tune in this week to learn from the master, in part 2 of our Experience Development series. |
Fri, 16 January 2015
This week we kick off the start of a new series entitled Experience Development where we look at the coding site of UX. This week's topic is: Universal Access. We sit down with the co-authors of Rosenfeld Media's A Web for Everyone, Sarah Horton and Whitney Quesenbery to talk about digital accessibility. |
Mon, 12 January 2015
In part 3 of our series entitled, Creating a Successful Product, we sit down with Erin Glenn, CEO at Alphaworks. Erin takes us through the all-important phase of any successful product: getting funded. We talk about classic funding models, kickstarter (crowdfunding), and the new model Alphaworks has been implementing. This is a great episode to find out exactly what it takes to get your product funded! |
Mon, 5 January 2015
This week on The Dirt, we kick off 2015 with a new series entitled, Creating a Successful Product. We sit down with Mike Kruzeniski, the Design Lead at Twitter to talk about his thoughts on how to design successful product. Mike exposes the design culture at Twitter and how they make sure all products are of the highest quality. |