In this episode of Dollars to Donuts I catch up with Leanne Waldal, five years after she first appeared on the podcast. She’s now a Principal in User Experience at ADP. A couple of years ago, I realized I know things. We all know things, but so

42. Celeste Ridlen of Robinhood

8 days ago 1h 2m

For this episode of Dollars to Donuts I had a wonderful conversation with Celeste Ridlen, the Head of Research at Robinhood This is a fundamental leadership-y thing where no two people are going to do that same leadership role the same way. You

41. Carol Rossi returns

26 days ago 1h 2m

In this episode of Dollars to Donuts Carol Rossi returns to update us on the last 9 years. She’s now a consultant who focuses on user research leadership. I’m happy making the contributions that I’m making, even though it’s hard to directly mea

40. Gregg Bernstein returns

Mar 18th, 2024 58m 11s

In this episode of Dollars to Donuts I welcome Gregg Bernstein back for a follow-up episode. He’s now Director of User Research at Hearst Magazines. The thing that I always come back to is that there is no one way to do research. And I also thi

39. Mani Pande of Cisco Meraki

Mar 14th, 2024 54m 21s

This episode of Dollars to Donuts features my interview with Mani Pande, Director and Head of Research at Cisco Meraki. We used to do these immersion events where we would bring everybody who worked on, who was our stakeholder, to come and list

38. Vanessa Whatley of Twilio

Feb 28th, 2024 1h 13m

This episode of Dollars to Donuts features my interview with Vanessa Whatley, UX Director – Research & Documentation at Twilio. For many years, I had anxiety and regret around not starting my career in the field that I’m in sooner because I fel

37. Nizar Saqqar of Snowflake

Feb 21st, 2024 1h 7m

This episode of Dollars to Donuts features my interview with Nizar Saqqar, the Head of User Research at Snowflake. For a domain that takes a lot of pride and empathy and how we can represent the end user, there’s a component that sometimes gets

36. Noam Segal returns

Feb 15th, 2024 1h 15m

This episode of Dollars to Donuts features a return visit from Noam Segal, now a Senior Research Manager at Upwork. AI will help us see opportunities for research that we haven’t seen. It will help us settle a bunch of debates that maybe we’ve

New episodes! New book!

Oct 10th, 2023 37m 26s

Today we’ve got a quick program note about new episodes of Dollars to Donuts, an announcement about my new book, and an interview with Steve Portigal. Show Links Interviewing Users (2nd Edition) Steve on The Rosenfeld Review Podcast “How-to wit

35. Danielle Smith of Express Scripts

May 11th, 2020 55m 27s

This episode of Dollars to Donuts features my interview with Danielle Smith, the Senior Director of Experience Research & Accessibility at Express Scripts. Something that I’ve really changed the way I thought about since I’ve been at Express Sc

34. Amber Lindholm of Duo Security

May 5th, 2020 59m 41s

This episode of Dollars to Donuts features my interview with Amber Lindholm, the Head of User Research at Duo Security. That’s the sign of a really good researcher – it can never be just about research for research’s sake, like this is a cool p

33. Julia Nelson of MOO

Apr 28th, 2020 56m 16s

This episode of Dollars to Donuts features my interview with Julia Nelson, the Director Of Research at MOO. All researchers say to some degree that they don’t necessarily have a traditional background when they come into the research field. But

32. Chris Kovel of First Abu Dhabi Bank

Apr 15th, 2020 1h 1m

This episode of Dollars to Donuts features my interview with Chris Kovel, the Head Of Research at First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB). I look at needs as proximate needs and ultimate needs. An ultimate need is why the product exists in the first place.

31. Noam Segal of Wealthfront

Apr 8th, 2020 1h 5m

This episode of Dollars to Donuts features my interview with Noam Segal, the Director of Research at Wealthfront. Everyone from PMs to designers, researchers, obviously, engineers, data scientists, marketing, we’re all trying to to understand o

30. Laith Ulaby of Udemy

Apr 4th, 2020 1h 6m

In this episode of Dollars to Donuts I speak with Laith Ullaby, the Head of Research at Udemy. I’m really into the idea of questioning what we do. That can be the methods and that conversation about getting out of our comfort zone. It can be th

29. Kathryn Campbell of Ticketmaster

Mar 29th, 2020 1h 5m

In this episode of Dollars to Donuts I speak with Kathryn Campbell, the Director of Research & Insights at Ticketmaster. Whenever there is availability of somebody that might normally work on the marketplace side, they might tag team on an acco

28. Laura Faulkner of Rackspace

Mar 27th, 2020 1h 5m

In this episode of Dollars to Donuts I speak with Laura Faulkner, the Head of Research at Rackspace. I’ve never just sat and done just what I was asked to do. I’m always looking for something new, something else. It’s probably just part of how

27. Colin MacArthur of the Canadian Digital Service

Jan 7th, 2020 1h 7m

In this episode of Dollars to Donuts I chat with Colin MacArthur, the Head of Design Research at the Canadian Digital Service. We talk about bureaucracy hacking, spreading the gospel of research throughout government, and embedding researchers

26. Jesse Zolna of ADP

Sep 5th, 2019 1h 2m

In this episode of Dollars to Donuts I talk to Jesse Zolna, who leads the User Experience Research Team at ADP’s Innovation Lab. We talk about driving change as an experiment, exposing the organization to how customers solve problems, and engin

25. Juliette Melton of The New York Times

Aug 22nd, 2019 1h

In this episode of Dollars to Donuts I speak with Juliette Melton, Director of User Insight and Strategy at The New York Times. We talk about updating the old “design research” label, user research in a journalism culture, and the role of coach

24. Ashley Graham of IBM

Jul 25th, 2019 1h 5m

This episode of Dollars to Donuts features my conversation with Ashley Graham, a design research leader at IBM. We discuss synthesis as a collaborative, co-located activity, being mission-driven, and building a process that addresses complexity

23. Michele Marut of CBRE Build

Jul 14th, 2019 54m 13s

In this episode of Dollars to Donuts I speak with Michele Marut who leads user experience research at CBRE Build. We discuss the curation of research repositories, using research to go beyond fixing things, and building processes and tools that

22. Vicki Tollemache of Grubhub

Jun 27th, 2019 57m 57s

In this episode of Dollars to Donuts I speak with Vicki Tollemache, the Director of UX Research at Grubhub. We discuss how to manage incoming research requests, running a weekly research session for testing designs, and why candidates should co

21. Ruth Ellison of Digital Transformation Agency

Jun 15th, 2019 57m 3s

In this episode of Dollars to Donuts I speak with Ruth Ellison, Head of User Research at DTA, the Digital Transformation Agency in Australia. We discuss the challenges of user research – and digital product development – in government, embeddin

20. Leisa Reichelt of Atlassian (Part 2)

May 29th, 2019 44m 21s

This episode of Dollars to Donuts is part 2 of my conversation with Leisa Reichelt of Atlassian. If you haven’t listened to part 1 yet, you can find it here. We talk about corporate versus government work, scaling research, and changing organiz