Reconsidering explores how to navigate your career, relationships, and the values that guide you through the inevitable changes of life. Co-hosts Bob Baxley, Meredith Black, and Aarron Walter talk with deep thinkers who’ve figured a few things out about living a satisfying life filled with meaning and show you how you can too.
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Aarron Walter Podcasts
Design Better co-hosts Eli Woolery and Aarron Walter explore the intersection of design, technology, and the creative process through conversations with guests across many creative fields, helping you hone your craft, unlock your creativity, and learn the art of collaboration. Whether you’re design curious or a design pro, Design Better is guaranteed to inspire and inform. Vanity Fair calls Design Better, “sharp, to the point, and full of incredibly valuable information for anyone looking to ...
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Inspiring conversations with exuberant humans about how to live a creative, fulfilling, and authentic life. Hosted by enthusiasm enthusiast, Brad Frost. We experience a brief moment of truth when we first wake up in the morning. Before the cold shower of reality, our infinite to-do lists, and macro-level woes seize our consciousness. We experience a brief moment of excitement — and this pure moment tells us something important about ourselves. There are people out there who seem to move thro ...
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Conversations, presentations and more, from deep thinkers in designing technology. Brought to you by Conffab, the platform for conference presentations
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Keith Sawyer: Become more creative by learning to see
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This is a preview of a premium episode on Design Better. To listen to the whole episode, head to our Substack: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/keith-sawyer The key to creativity isn’t about having brilliant ideas in isolation, but about cultivating our ability to observe the world around us, and make the intuitive leaps that connect disparate ide…
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Jae Park: Designing a new generation of vehicles at Ford, and why friction matters in the creative process
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Visit our Substack for bonus content and more: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/jae-park As designers and creatives, many of us spent years of our career looking at blank canvases and attempting to find the best place to start solving the problems in front of us. Now that AI can churn out designs and imagery, not to mention writing, video, and eve…
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Astro Teller & Ivo Stivoric: Why moonshots require unlearning everything you know
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This is a preview of a premium episode. To hear the full episode, head to our Substack: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/astro-teller-and-ivo-stivoric-why When a company talks about taking a “moonshot,” it often ends up being something trivial: a new emoji keyboard, or delivering a pizza in less than 30 minutes. But at X, the Moonshot Factory, w…
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Henry Modisett: Perplexity’s VP of Design on embracing ambiguity and leading with curiosity
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Find bonus content and more on our Substack: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/henry-modisett AI isn’t just another layer in our digital toolkit—it’s reshaping the tools themselves, and in the process, transforming how we work, think, and solve problems. Henry Modisett, VP of Design at Perplexity, is in a unique position to challenge many of the no…
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Elizabeth Lin: Rethinking design education in the age of AI
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This is a preview of a premium episode on Design Better. Head to our Substack to get access to the full episode: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/elizabeth-lin Have you played around with Cursor? If not, it’s time. Designers with no coding skills are passing Cursor Figma files and getting working apps out the other side. And if you have no design,…
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Examining the Past to Figure Out the Future with Jeffrey Zeldman
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Brad Frost sits down with the legendary Jeffrey Zeldman, a pioneer in web design and an influential figure in Brad's life. Jeffrey shares his journey, from writing 'Designing with Web Standards' to founding 'A List Apart,' and how these accomplishments impacted the web design community. The conversation delves into a variety of profound topics incl…
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Nick Foster: Could, Should, Might, Don't—a new way to think about designing for the future
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Most designers are comfortable in the world of known problems—we talk to users, gather insights, iterate based on feedback. But what happens when you're designing for a future that doesn't exist yet? When you're creating products for people who haven't been born, or technologies that might not emerge for years? Today's guest has spent decades desig…
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Tim Brown: Allbirds co-founder on mission-driven design and entrepreneurship
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This is a preview of a premium episode. Head to Design Better to hear the whole thing: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/tim-brown Sometimes your career takes an unexpected turn—and that pivot can lead to something bigger than you imagined. Tim Brown, co-founder of Allbirds, has been there. After a stint as a professional soccer player, Tim found h…
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Episode 50: Kindness Is a Strategy, The Beekman 1802 Story
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When Brent Ridge and Josh Kilmer-Purcell left their high-powered New York City careers for a 19th-century farm in upstate New York, they didn’t set out to build a skincare empire. But after losing their jobs during the 2008 recession—and taking in a neighbor’s herd of goats—they discovered that frugality, creativity, and a deep commitment to kindne…
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Matt Raw: Balancing legacy and innovation at The New York Times
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Visit our Substack for bonus content and more: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/matt-raw Matt Raw, Interim VP of Design at The New York Times, and his team have a tough job. Their work is seen by millions every day who come to the Times website and apps for information they can trust, presented clearly, across platforms, striking a stylistic balan…
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Microscopes and telescopes By Aarron Walter A friend and former colleague called me recently to catch up and get my perspective on an important question. He leads a product team at a major tech company and the design team had just been moved under him. He’s an exceptional product thinker with a sharp grasp of engineering systems and shipping proces…
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Rhiannon Bell: Designing the future of search at Google
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This is a preview of one of our premium Design Better episodes. To listen to the whole episode, head over to our Substack and subscribe: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/rhiannon-bell We all rely on search—sometimes dozens of times a day—to make sense of the world around us. But behind that simple white box is a vast, dynamic system that has to un…
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Episode 49: Values and what matters with Valerie Tiberius
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In this episode, we sit down with philosopher Valerie Tiberius to explore the surprisingly complex topic of values—how we develop them, how they change over time, and how to align them with our actions in a chaotic world. Valerie, a professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota, shares insights from her decades of research and writing, off…
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Bonus Episode: Inside Sonos's distributed research & design process for the Arc Ultra
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For many creative people, music is a central part of life. Count us in that camp. We’ve long admired Sonos products for their quality and easy integration into our homes, and everything they design is beautiful. The integration of design and technology is often a challenge for companies. From the outside, it would seem that Sonos has something figu…
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Unlocking Creativity and Positivity with Jessica Hische
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Brad talks with Jessica Hische who is known for her work ranging from illustrated children's books to designing iconic logos and her new venture, Studio Works, a software and community for creative professionals. We delve into a wide array of topics including the power of positivity, the challenges of ADHD and mental health, balancing personal and …
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Exploring Life's Design with Aarron Walter
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Brad chats with Aarron Walter, co-host of the Design Better and Reconsidering podcasts, and author of several design books. We cover topics like personal growth, the significance of curiosity, the philosophy of 'super activities', the role of money in achieving life goals, and the importance of living an examined life. Aarron shares his journey fro…
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Restoring Cast Iron as a Pathway to Creativity with Denise Jacobs
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Brad talks with author Denise Jacobs. Denise shares her insights on restoring cast iron, building connections between past and present passions, and navigating today's challenging environment. They also delve into the importance of empowerment through creativity and highlight Denise's incredible backyard garden as a sanctuary. Additionally, Denise …
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Noah Levin: AMA with Figma's VP of Design on their latest releases
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Figma is central to most designers' workflow these days (certainly is here at Design Better). So it's important to get familiar with all of the latest features. Who better to give us the back story of the releases announced at Config than Noah Levin, VP of Product Design at Figma. Join us for a conversation with Noah and a closer look at how Figma …
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Hosted by enthusiasm enthusiast, Brad Frost, welcome to Wake Up Excited! I believe that we experience this brief moment of truth in the morning when we first wake up before our calendars, our responsibilities, and the often depressing state of the world takes over and steals our attention away. We have this very brief window of time where we're exc…
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Design Better Live AMA at The New York Times
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We were recently invited to the The New York Times where we spoke with Matt Raw, the interim head of design at the Times. Eli and I are accustomed to interviewing, but this was a different experience for us as this time we were the ones telling our story. Matt and the Times design team were curious about the origin story of Design Better, what we’v…
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Video Rewind: Kamasi Washington: A jazz genius on collaborative lessons learned from Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg, Lauryn Hill, and more
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This is the second installment in our series of video rewind episodes, with an interview featuring jazz legend Kamasi Washington. Watch the full episode on our Substack: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/video-rewind-kamasi-washington-a Jazz is a constantly evolving art form, offering some of the richest lessons in creative collaboration. A melod…
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Episode 48: AI, algorithms and the battle for your mind with Simon McCarthy Jones
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What if the next frontier of human rights isn’t out in the streets but inside your own head? We talk with Dr. Simon McCarthy-Jones, Associate Professor of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin, about the modern fight for freedom of thought. Simon unpacks how everything from social media algorithms to brain-reading technologies are reshaping not just…
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Josh Clark and Veronika Kindred: Sentient Design and the future of interfaces
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This is a premium episode of Design Better. You'll hear a preview of the episode here, but head over to our Substack and become a premium member if you'd like to access the full episode: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/josh-clark-and-veronika-kindred As designers, we’re entering a new era. AI isn’t just a tool we use behind the scenes, but a coll…
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Bonus Episode: Shani Sandy, VP, Experience Design at IBM, live in NYC for UserTesting's THiS Connect Tour
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Maybe you’ve already heard, but we’re in the midst of significant global and technological change. It will be a struggle for many businesses to adapt, but IBM is a company that’s no stranger to change. Time and again, they’ve reimagined, restructured, and refactored their business to stay relevant. Our guest today, Shani Sandy, is playing an import…
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Episode 47: The last human jobs with Allison Pugh
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What happens when the work that makes us most human—caring, listening, connecting—is increasingly outsourced, automated, or pushed to the margins? As AI enters every aspect of our lives, it’s ever more imperative to answer the question, “what does it mean to be human?” Sociologist Allison Pugh has been thinking deeply about that question. In her ne…
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The Brief: Stop specializing—live a multidisciplinary creative life
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by Eli Woolery If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the multitude of people we’ve interviewed for Design Better, it’s that the most innovative creators of our time share an unlikely trait: they refuse to stay in their lane. While conventional wisdom pushes specialization, these polymaths build careers by following curiosity across fields—from nu…
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Christopher Lyons: From producing music to venture capital, and why EQ beats IQ in building the future
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This is a preview of a premium episode. To get access to the full episode, head to our Substack: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/christopher-lyons Some careers have clear through lines: pick a college major, get a job in that industry. Others take serendipitous turns. Christopher Lyons is the latter, but with some surprising twists. Chris started…
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Bonus Episode: Champ Bennett, co-founder of Capsule, on making motion design easy and scalable
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We are living through a Cambrian explosion of new tools, powered by generative AI. It can be tough to wade through the sea of options in front of us, and find platforms that actually help us in our workflow instead of being a distraction. That’s why it was so refreshing to discover the tool Capsule a little over a year ago. We use it to create moti…
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Cassie McDaniel: How Medium eliminated its PM function and started moving faster
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This is a preview of a premium episode. Visit our Substack to get access to the full episode: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/cassie-mcdaniel Cassie McDaniel, Medium’s head of design, is someone with a clear vision for how a design team should work. She believes team members should have a breadth of skills, craft should be the foundation of produ…
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Episode 46: Liz O'Donnell on caring for elderly parents
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We don’t talk enough about caregiving. Especially the kind that unfolds quietly while juggling jobs, parenting, and the slow, disorienting decline of aging parents. But Liz O’Donnell is changing that. In this deeply moving episode, Liz—founder of Working Daughter and author of the book by the same name—shares her story of navigating career ambition…
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