Beyond UX Design

Quick update: Beyond UX Design is moving to early access. New episodes go to paid members first, then come out free for everyone a week later. The next public episode lands Thursday, November 12. For $5 a month on Spotify or Patreon, members get audio and video early, plus the full video archive.
Wondering where this week's episode went?
If you're looking for a new episode today, you didn't miss it. Starting now, new episodes of Beyond UX Design go to paid members first. A week later, they come out for everyone, for free, right here in this feed. The next public episode lands Thursday, November 12.
The show is still free. The only thing changing is when you can hear it. If you want to support the show and get something back, $5 a month gets you finished episodes a week early in audio and video, plus the full archive of video episodes. You can join on Spotify or Patreon, and you'll find both links at beyonduxdesign.com/support.
If you're already a patron, thank you. You'll get a members RSS feed for your podcast app, and if you have any trouble setting it up, give me a holler at hello@beyonduxdesign.com. Give this quick update a listen, and I'll see you next Thursday.

What you need to know
The show is still free. Every episode still comes out for everyone, one week after members get it.
The next public episode is Thursday, November 12. After that, public episodes keep coming out on Thursdays.
Early access is $5 a month on Spotify or Patreon. You get audio and video a week early, plus the full video archive.
Patrons get a members RSS feed. Email hello@beyonduxdesign.com if you need help setting it up.

Cursor handed me a good idea and I killed it anyway. In episode five, I take inventory of what’s actually still mine: judgment, taste, time, and the space to ask if it’s good for people. Then I get to the part I didn’t want to say out loud.
If judgment is what’s left of the design job, how much of the work is actually still yours?
Last episode, I landed on a line that sounded pretty good: the identity was never in the pixel pushing, it was in the deciding. But that’s easy to say when you’re standing in the wreckage of everything else. So in this episode, I actually check. I start with a story about a mobile action bar, a clever idea from Cursor, and why I said no when it tried to bring that idea to desktop. It wasn’t a bad idea. It just needed to live somewhere else.
From there, I walk through what’s still on my list and test whether it holds up. That includes judgment, taste (with a less precious definition than the one you usually hear), and the hours I’ve gained now that work can run while I’m in meetings. I also take on Michelle’s question from LinkedIn, because my original answer was a bit of a dodge. If shipping keeps getting cheaper, who’s still willing to slow down and ask whether the thing is good for the people using it?
Then there’s the part that’s harder to say. The inventory holds up better for some designers than others, and it leads to a much colder question that sets up the back half of the season. So if you’ve been wondering what’s still yours, give this one a listen and then go take your own inventory.
Topics:
• 00:00 - The good idea I killed
• 01:00 - Welcome and this episode’s sponsor
• 02:25 - Season recap
• 03:00 - Cursor’s mobile action bar
• 03:35 - Why it didn’t work on desktop
• 04:20 - Moving the idea to the design system
• 05:35 - Taste and social capital
• 08:05 - Work that runs during meetings
• 08:55 - Where the recovered hours go
• 11:05 - Michelle’s question: outputs vs. outcomes
• 12:15 - The pressure to ship faster
• 14:10 - Keeping the space to ask
• 14:25 - The full inventory
• 15:05 - Why losing the tool felt like losing my identity
• 16:00 - The uncomfortable truth about production work
• 17:50 - Will the market keep paying for judgment?
• 18:30 - Wrap-up

—
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This is the story of a senior UX researcher who builds the perfect persona to win over a stubborn steering committee. He’s warm. He’s helpful. He remembers your kid’s name. And a few weeks later, he starts leaving feedback in Slack.
What happens when your persona starts getting more buy-in than you do?
It’s that time of year again. Today, we’re stepping away from our usual interviews to bring you our annual Halloween audio drama.
This is the story of Dana Cole. A senior UX researcher with fifteen years of airtight, beautifully sourced research that nobody reads. So when her VP of Product asks for a persona that will finally make the steering committee feel something, Dana gives them Doug Whitaker.
Doug is a sales ops director from Naperville. He has a golden retriever named Biscuit. He gets your coffee order right without being asked. He’s the nicest guy in the room.
And Dana made up almost every word of him.
👻
Whether you’ve run a hundred research studies or you’ve just inherited a wall of personas from whoever had your job before you, this one should feel a little too familiar. It’s a story about personas, persuasion, and what happens when the most convincing voice in the building was never real to begin with.
So turn the lights down, grab your headphones, and give it a listen... If you dare!

Special thanks to our cast of characters:
Voice Actor Extraordinaire, Amie Breedlove: amiebreedlove.com
Actress and UX Designer, Stephanie Terrero: stephanieterrero.com
Co-founder inflight.co, Tommy Geoco: designertom.io
All-around swell guy, Hang Xu: thegistof.me/design
Sound engineer, Derek Seibert: pillowfortpodcast.com

—
Thanks for listening!
We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton.
If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear.
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Somebody tells me the thing we shipped is amazing, and a voice in my head says I didn’t make it. In episode four, I take on Chris’s question: did I lose my identity as a designer? I dig into the craft I lost, the career unease it exposed, and where I’ve landed for now.
If AI builds what you describe and everybody calls it amazing, who actually designed it?
A while back, Chris sent me a DM that kicked off this entire season: did I lose my identity as a designer? I’ve been putting off a real answer for three episodes, and this one is where I finally stop dodging. I start with what I was most proud of, which for me was prototypes. I’m talking Axure-level, way-more-than-the-project-needed prototypes, and later, Figma files pushed so far past their limits that I’d burn days on them. That skill didn’t fade. The place it lived just doesn’t exist anymore. And with it goes the design file itself, the one artifact that held our uncompromised vision, which raises a question I don’t have a clean answer to yet: what does a portfolio even look like now?
The question also hit harder than I expected, and in this episode I get honest about why. Losing Figma pulled the covers off something that was already sore: years of low-grade career unease, two layoffs, a cross-country move, and a household where both incomes ride the same tech cycles. That’s how my buddy Kevin the plumber, a little New Orleans-style beignet window, and Peter Gibbons from Office Space all end up in this conversation.
Then I go back to that hollow compliment and put the bigger question on the table. Is a designer the hand that makes the thing, or the person who directs it? If the robot draws now and I direct, I might be sitting in the art director’s chair that designers spent whole careers complaining about. I’ll tell you where I’ve landed for now, and why it sets up a harder question for the rest of the season. If Chris’s question has been rattling around in your head too, give this one a listen.
Topics:
00:00 - When a compliment on your work feels hollow
03:00 - Why Axure prototypes felt like a superpower
04:15 - The skill didn’t fade, its home disappeared
05:15 - Why the design file felt more like ours
06:25 - What does a portfolio look like now?
07:15 - Layoffs and the mark they leave
08:50 - What Kevin the plumber has that designers don’t
10:05 - The beignet window fantasy
10:40 - Why Peter Gibbons had it figured out
12:55 - Same tool, different outcomes
13:15 - Is a designer the hand or the direction?
13:45 - Designers in the art director’s seat
15:05 - Did I lose my identity? My truest answer
16:10 - The market doesn’t care about identity
—
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We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton.
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If your disagreement feels obvious to you, why does everyone keep walking out of the meeting thinking you’re on board?
A Stanford researcher once had people tap out familiar songs on a desk and predict how often listeners would name the tune. Tappers guessed about half the time. Listeners got three out of 120. That gap has a name: the illusion of transparency. It’s our tendency to overestimate how much other people can see what’s going on inside us, like our nerves, our disagreement, our intentions, and our tone.
Thomas Gilovich, Kenneth Savitsky, and Victoria Husted Medvec put this bias on the map in 1998, building on earlier work by Dale Miller and Cathy McFarland. Across lying, hiding disgust, and reacting to someone breaking the rules, the result was the same. People believed their insides were showing, and they mostly weren’t. We confuse how strongly we feel something with how clearly we’re showing it.
On product teams, this one hides well because it feels like everyone else’s fault. I share a roadmap review where I was sure my crossed arms and pointed questions made my concerns obvious, and my PM walked away thinking I was totally fine with it.
This week, we look at how the same bias shows up in Slack tone, design critiques, performance feedback, stakeholder negotiations, and async work, and why the fix is almost insultingly simple: say the quiet part out loud. So if you’ve ever been blindsided by “but you didn’t say anything,” give this one a listen.
Topics:
• 00:00 - Tap out Happy Birthday on your desk
• 01:00 - What is the illusion of transparency?
• 03:00 - The roadmap review where nobody knew I disagreed
• 04:25 - Why we think our feelings are visible
• 04:55 - The research behind the bias
• 05:55 - Egocentric anchoring: why this happens
• 06:30 - The spotlight effect and the curse of knowledge
• 07:00 - Can knowing about the bias fix it?
• 07:45 - Why your Slack tone gets misread
• 08:10 - The thumbs up emoji problem
• 08:55 - Design critiques and "obvious" rationale
• 09:15 - Why your feedback isn't landing
• 9:40 - Stakeholder negotiations
• 10:00 - Remote and async work turns it up to 11
• 10:45 - The insultingly simple fix
• 11:05 - Assume you're harder to read than you feel
• 11:45 - Say the obvious thing out loud
• 12:15 - Make feedback impossible to misread
• 12:50 - Read their words, not their face
• 13:20 - Build check-backs into async work
—
Thanks for listening!
We hope you dug today’s episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, why don’t you leave a five-star review? Or tell some friends! It will help us out a ton.
If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list. We won’t spam you. Pinky swear.
• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Get a FREE audiobook AND support the show⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Support the show on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
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