Patent Agent Michael Levine joins Timothy Keirnan to discuss the process by which inventors obtain patent protection for their ideas in the United States. What is a patent? How do inventors research to learn whether their idea is truly novel? What are the steps and costs associated with researching and filing for a patent? What about patenting a novel idea in other nations? In this 68 minute episode, we'll learn answers to those questions and hear some anecdotes about fascinating patents Michael...
Aug 01, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is our last episode for a while, but is well worth the wait! We have an interview with Viktor Rydal, industrial designer from Nomono, who talks with Tim about the Nomono Sound Capsule. Visit the Nomono website about the SoundCapsule to see and hear their demonstrations. This truly innovative solution records conversations with its custom lapel mics into its Sound Capsule hub, and their cloud application removes bad room acoustics to create astoundingly good audio from rooms that did NOT sou...
Nov 11, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Ep 168•Transcript available on Metacast Dushyant Kunungo joins Timothy Keirnan for a discussion about enterprise UX. * Duhsyant's professional background * The importance of user experience to employees working in an enterprise--both to their morale and their productivity. * Dushyant and Tim share eyebrow-raising anecdotes from enterprise user experience projects they have been on. Employees need effective, efficient, and enjoyable products/tools as much as external customers do. * Dushyant talks about his book, UX Decoded: Think and ...
Jul 02, 2023•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Barry McBride joins Timothy Keirnan to discuss the history and content strategy of The Orange and Brown Report, an independent news and analysis business catering to Cleveland Browns football fans. The Orange and Brown Report offers both free and paid subscription tiers of news and interaction with its beat writers and analysts. Across 80 minutes, Barry talks about: * The origin of his Cleveland Browns fan advocacy and community-building in 1995, when Browns ownership and the NFL betrayed Browns...
May 21, 2023•1 hr 29 min•Ep 166•Transcript available on Metacast Matt Ranta, head of practice at Nimble Gravity , joins Tim for a discussion on how companies can and should improve their digital interactions with customers, whether they are B2B or B2C. Whether it's in email messages or web pages, details matter. 03:47 The importance of proofreading marketing email messages. 08:03 Use new image formats like webp and AVIF to increase speed of a website and its SEO. 17:06 Test a website with browsers besides Chrome, which not everyone will use. 22:00 Competitive...
Apr 17, 2023•52 min•Ep 165•Transcript available on Metacast Eric Penn joins Tim Keirnan and Ken Mayer to discuss the first customer experience phases of his new 2023 Subaru BRZ after a month of ownership. The "Toyobaru Twins" (Toyota GR86 and Subaru BRZ) are the same car with some slight differences. This vehicle is one of the best examples of "user-centered design" we have ever encountered in a product, and Tim owned the first generation for four blissful years. Eric has purchased the long-awaited and much celebrated second generation, and we go into in...
Mar 30, 2023•1 hr 21 min•Transcript available on Metacast John Leavitt, Senior Industrial Designer at Intelligent Product Solutions , joins Timothy Keirnan for a conversation about industrial design, using two firefighting products as a starting point. Besides the two case studies, we talk about general design process and philosophies, methods, education recommendations, and our ambitions for a world in which UX includes respect for users' privacy and security as a selling point. 00:00 Introduction 03:30 Design Process 08:06 Self Contained Breathing Ap...
Mar 02, 2023•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast David and Jo Lau discuss the five phases of customer experience with their 2022 Kia Niro EV (Encounter, Decision, Purchase, Initial use, and Longitudinal use). Vehicle purchases are often a negotiation of two or more people's preferences and needs in domestic situations, and we are delighted to have talked with the Lau family about their customer journey. The human-machine interfaces (HMI) in the cockpit are the simple and effective designs we're used to seeing from Hyundai-Kia vehicles, and Tim...
Jan 28, 2023•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast Larry Rusinsky joins Tim Keirnan for a new kind of episode: critiquing the user experience of food. Because the UX of food is so very subjective based on genetics, culture experiences, individual preferences, and a potential inconsistency of "production" for a particular dish, frozen foods are at least somewhat consistent in their production. Our critique is of Kroger's house brand Private Selection Artisan Stone Fired Pizza in the Cuban-Inspired Ham & Swiss flavor. We also ate a "control pizza"...
Jan 01, 2023•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast Yousef Hegazi joins the show to help Tim Keirnan critique Pine64's PineTab, a low-cost 10-inch tablet that uses Linux as its operating system instead of iOS, Android, or Windows. Pine64 provides "system on a chip" computing devices that run free and open source software (FOSS) as their operating system and applications. The PineTab follows earlier projects such as the PineBook/PineBook Pro (a laptop), the PinePhone and PinePhone Pro (a smartphone), and the PineTime (a smart watch). Projects are ...
Nov 09, 2022•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast John Loss joins David Mettler and Tim Keirnan to talk about his book Not Always Homeless , created from ethnographic interviews with local people who were homeless in his area. Its subtitle is "The personal stories of 13 people who survived and escaped a life on the streets". After we discussed how he published his first book at age 80 based on interviews with homeless people in the Niagara Falls area of New York State, we talked about about the 501c3 charity he and some fellow concerned citizen...
Jul 28, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep 159•Transcript available on Metacast Tec-Ed CEO Stephanie Rosenbaum joins Tim Keirnan for a critique of two different electric kettle designs that heat water quickly and precisely: the KRUPS BW3140 Savoy and the Cuisinart CPK-17 PerfecTemp. Both designs accomplish the goal but in very different ways. The KRUPS kettle has its user interface in its base and excellent balance in its carafe, while the Cuisinart has its user interface in the handle of the carafe with better labeling, but worse ergonomics for the carafe itself. We discus...
Jun 01, 2022•47 min•Ep 158•Transcript available on Metacast Tim recounts a 401K benefits website usability failure to cohost Dave Mitropoulos-Rundus. They then discuss the foundational importance of usability testing and of tracking the all-important time on task metric. Even in 2022, the most professional-looking website can disappoint customers if if UX fails at the most fundamental tasks.
May 01, 2022•15 min•Ep 157•Transcript available on Metacast Five years and 50,000 miles in the making, this critique of the 2016 Scion FR-S (aka Subaru BRZ or Toyota 86) puts the long in longitudinal review! Cohosts Eric and Ryan return to help Tim discuss the complete customer experience with the car from encounter, to decision, to purchase, to initial use, to longitudinal reflection. The "Toyobaru" is in our opinions one of the most successful user-centered car designs we've ever experienced. Toyota and Subaru aimed this car at a narrow customer segmen...
Mar 18, 2022•2 hr 41 min•Ep 156•Transcript available on Metacast Pinar Guvenc, a partner at Sour Studio , joins Tim for a discussion on how this consultancy does their Architecture, Interior Design, Product Design, and Public Spaces work. Sour is a hybrid design studio with the mission of addressing social and urban problems through sustainable and inclusive methodologies. Sour's use of co-creation panels and extended collaboration with all the diverse stakeholders on their projects is discussed, as well as a case study in public space design they did in Taks...
Jan 17, 2022•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast Instructional designer Brian Duck joins Tim for two topics: why are UX practitioners still having to persuade some companies that we need access to end users on our projects in 2021, and why Sony's ultra portable digital audio player is so bad compared with Samsung's player from 15 years ago. 00:00 - 08:00 We commiserate on the need in 2021, in some companies, to explain the fundamental need for early access to the end users of our projects rather than accept what managers dictate as "What the u...
Dec 31, 2021•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast Gordon Olson, CEO of Torii Industries, joins Timothy Keirnan for a discussion about a new design of tank-less water heater. Tank-less water heaters remove the need for a large water tank to be heated 24 hours a day for occasional hot water use. Besides being inefficient use of energy, traditional tank water heaters can fail catastrophically, and provide large amounts of landfill waste after their useful life is over. The Torii solution will replace an old centralized water heater with a tank-les...
Oct 16, 2021•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast Dr. Laura Bix from the Michigan State University School of Packaging returns to the show! Her latest project was researching the packaging of medical supplies used by EMTs in the field as they stabilize patients and transport them to the hospital in the ambulance. Dr. Bix describes how most medical supplies are normally packaged for the highly controlled Operating Room environment and how they might not work as well in the field and in ambulances. From initial investigation ideas, to recording a...
Aug 20, 2021•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Tim Keirnan interviews author David Loehr and designer Greg Swenson about the new memoir That's How Strong My Love Is: From Rock and Roll to James Dean . The memoir is an insider's perspective of rock and roll history, James Dean legacy, fashion, pop culture, and the counterculture of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s from New York to LA. This book is unique in that David, the world's foremost archivist of James Dean's remarkable life and career, saved so many artifacts from his own interesting life exper...
Jul 25, 2021•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is a solo episode in which I critique the design of Abbott's BinaxNow Covid-19 Antigen Self Test. This test is available in retail stores (in the USA a pack of two is, at this time, about $20). It tests for proteins one's body makes when fighting a Covid-19 infection, the symptoms of which not everyone experiences in the same way. The use of rapid antigen self tests could revolutionize public health for COVID and beyond. Imagine getting ready to visit someone you love whose health is compro...
Jul 03, 2021•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Eric Penn rejoins Tim Keirnan on the show for a critique of Garmin dash cameras. And on this show you know we bought them with our own money, no review units or other favors from the manufacturer. The guys discuss the following models: * nuviCam LMTHD that combines a GPS with a dash cam * Garmin 35 * Garmin 46 * Garmin Mini In both Eric's and Tim's critiques, Garmin customer support was a big positive to the customer experience. The products were useful and usable, without any outstanding proble...
May 08, 2021•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast Charlotte Purvis joins Timothy Keirnan for a discussion about ensuring good user experience with customer service professionals. When we call an organization for help with a product or service, these people are on the front line of customer interaction. How well they assist us will impact our perceptions of a product and the brand of the company that sold it. Charlotte's new book is The Customer Communication Formula: How to Communicate with your Customers and Boost your Customer Service Brand ....
Feb 28, 2021•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Librem 5 is Purism's re-envisioning what a smartphone could be and should be. It runs on Purism's own Linux distribution PureOS, which is certified by the Free Software Foundation to be free of non-transparent, proprietary code such as many commercial products use. The "Evergreen" batch of Librem 5 phones is the first official production model, and possesses unique qualities not found in most smart phones: * Hardware switches to turn on/off camera, microphone, WiFi, Bluetooth, and cellular c...
Jan 02, 2021•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Susan Weinschenk joins Tim Keirnan to discuss the second edition of her wonderfully useful and usable book 100 Things Every Designer Should Know About People. First published in 2011, 100 Things... has helped many kinds of professionals and students learn to be better designers. https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/100-things-every/9780136746959/ Visit Susan's company at https://theteamw.com/ Susan has been on the show multiple times over our 15 years and you may enjoy hearing these older episod...
Nov 12, 2020•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast We're 15 years old! Tim Keirnan is joined by show co-founder Tom Brinck plus UX legend Stephanie Rosenbaum for a celebration of the show's 15th anniversary. From July 2005 to October 2020, we've kept going when other shows faded away. Where did the time go? But time discussing product and service design is always well spent. Tom and Stephanie continue our discussion series on the buzzwordification of UX--the good and the bad of our terminology becoming popular in the past five years--and memorie...
Oct 07, 2020•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is a short episode on the dark pattern of not allowing a customer to leave a service without unnecessary effort. The Sunday Times website does not allow users to cancel their digital subscription on the site. It took a 15 minus chat online to accomplish what should take one minute and a couple clicks. Hear all about it and think about what decisions like this mean to an organization hell-bent on annoying customers. The Dark Patterns website referred to in this episode is at https://darkpatt...
Aug 08, 2020•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Kelly Goto, owner and principal of gotomedia and gotoresearch, joins Timothy Keirnan for a discussion about universal design and related topics. Dave M-R and Tim discussed Kelly's excellent 2018 article about professional terminology in episode 135 last year . Now she is on the show herself to cover a fun range of topics, including Universal Design, Inclusive Design, Accessibilty, Japanese design, and Designing for an aging population It's 45 minutes of serious discussion that doesn't take itsel...
Jun 10, 2020•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Larry Rusinsky returns to the show to help Tim critique the Bose QuietComfort 25 acoustic noise canceling headphones. The links referred to in the episode include: How Noise Canceling Headphones Work Comparison of the Bose QuietComfort 25 with the 35 Bose: Why Audiophiles Should Stop the Hate Bose Store Locator...
May 01, 2020•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Chief Phillips of the Plymouth Township Fire Department has the mind of a firefighter and the heart of a User Experience designer. Join him and Tim Keirnan for a sequel to our pumper truck design episode, this time to discuss the design of our township's new ladder truck. How does the purpose of a ladder truck differ from a pumper truck? What did the fire department learn from ordering and using the pumper truck that improved their design of the new ladder truck? How is the human machine interfa...
Feb 23, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast Tesla Model 3 owners Ryan Malcolm and Syed Ibrahim join Tim Keirnan for a thorough critique of their cars while Tim moderates this ad-free, in-depth discussion. We follow the show's Critique by Values model to learn how Ryan and Syed experienced each of the phases of product experience: Encounter Decision Purchase Initial Use Longitudinal Use This is not a review of the car as much as it is a conversation about people's transportation needs and how the Model 3 fit into their current lives. Of co...
Dec 20, 2019•1 hr 16 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
