The Hacking UI Podcast

The Hacking UI Podcast is hosted by Sagi Shrieber and David Tintner, who are both a designer and developer as well as entrepreneurs, bloggers, productivity/time-hacker maniacs, and all around tech geeks.

In the podcast they discuss these topics, often through interviews of well known and highly-experienced thought leaders at companies like Facebook, Intercom, Invision and more.

Love what you do, take massive action, and prosper (w/ Ran Segall, Prospero)

We are super excited to have with us today the inspiring Ran Segall – a full stack designer, a creator, and a vlogger.

Ran started out as a designer, working with startups to create great products & brands.
For the past 5 years, his been freelancing with 3-5 clients at any given time, and also, he’s been sharing his journey on his youtube channel called Flux and has over 40,000 followers.

He believes in constant learning and sharing knowledge, was running the Nu-School – which was an online hub for people to learn freelancing and design, and later on, he built a product company called Prospero – a service for freelancers to create online proposals.

In this episode, Ran shared his amazing insights and knowledge on freelancing, value-based pricing, learning new skills, networking, putting yourself out there, achieving your goals and aiming higher.

Read More »

How well are we connecting with our curiosity? (w/ David Kadavy, Love Your Work)

We are thrilled to have with us today the amazing David Kadavy – Bestselling author of The Heart to Start & Design For Hackers, a creative entrepreneur, and host of Love your Work Podcast.

David started out as a curious web designer, working with startups and freelancing, he wanted to figure out a way to design smarter, for code, so he wrote about it in order to learn, and that eventually got him to write Design for Hackers and teaching others along the way.

In this episode, David shared his inspiring perspectives and insights on self-publishing, connecting with our curiosity, creative resistance, forming habits and setting priorities for our goals. Wheather you’re a creative, entrepreneur, marketer or just starting out – this episode will give you tons of value and knowledge to reach your goals.

Read More »

What is design if not a way to tell a story (w/ Yasmine Evjen, Google)

It is our pleasure to present to you the inspiring Yasmine Evjen (that’s ev-Yan) – Design Advocate at Google, a storyteller and (previously) a Co-host at Material Podcast – a podcast all about Google and Android.

Yasmine started out as a front-end developer and a web designer, doing freelance work, working in agencies that allowed her to work in startups. That led her to turn to interaction design, and eventually evolving into UX design and Product Design.

Little did she know back then, that her passion for Android and Material Design will eventually get her the perfect role for her – A Design Advocate at Google.

In this episode, Yasmine shared her interesting story and inspiring insights, whether you’re starting out or not, this episode will give you tons of value.

Read More »

The value of free education and building communities (w/ Quincy Larson, FreeCodeCamp)

Today we had the pleasure of talking to Quincy Larson – Founder and educator at “freeCodeCamp”, where you can learn to code completely for free.

Also, freeCodeCamp is an open source community, which is empowered by positive energy and empathy, has more than a million users and learners around the globe and also, it runs Medium’s largest technical publication. If you write about development, design, or data science — and are looking for an audience — this is a good place to get published and ‘borrow’ an audience of more than 1 million users.

In this episode, Quincy shared his insights on focusing passionately on one field, building communities and free education to everyone, on a scale that impacts the world massively even 20 years from now.

Read More »

Breaking down design systems to atomic elements (w/ Brad Frost, Atomic Design)

We are honored to have with us today, the inspiring Brad Frost, Founder, and inventor of the “Atomic Design” system.
Brad started as a web designer, came out through the agency world, and eventually found himself consulting for teams, doing workshops, writing a blog and hosting a podcast.
Besides being a web designer, a developer, an Author and a Host, Brad’s background as a musician also connects with his work, that why he believes in the notes and the rules that make all the piece together.
In this episode, Brad shared with us his thoughts and insights about how to build a design system and development collaborative work, and how to implement that thinking in your organization.

Read More »

Don’t be a “tooler”, but a learner (w/ Jason Ogle, UserDefenders.com)

Our guest today is a fellow podcaster, the amazing Jason Ogle, Founder and host of UserDefenders.com podcast, where he creates and shares inspiring interviews with UX superheroes.
Jason started as a designer and a developer in the 90s, and he believes in what’s called “The Beginner’s Mindset”, which means that you’re going to have that student mindset and keep on learning basically forever.
Besides being a product designer and a podcaster, Jason also writes on Medium, where he shares inspiring articles that fight for the users.
In this episode, Jason shared with us his thoughts and insights about how to become an influencer through personal growth and giving back to the community at the same time.

Read More »

Have fun, create value and do it consistently (w/ Noah Kagan, Sumo.com & AppSumo.com)

Today we released a different kind of podcast.. This time with someone who’s not a designer. We were super lucky to have a long talk and also hang out with Noah Kagan, a mega successful entrepreneur who founded two online companies that you might have heard of: Sumo.com and AppSumo.com.
Noah is a super fun guy and you’ll see it from this episode. He has a very open-minded and interesting approach to life and to building one’s career.
In this episode, Noah shared with us his best practices and routines for starting a business. He also shares new perspectives on how to enjoy the process, scaling businesses, and more.

Read More »

Find a niche you love, specialize, succeed (w/ Samuel Hulick, UserOnboard.com)

Our guest today is none other than Samuel Hulick, Founder, of UserOnboard.

Samuel started as a developer, and eventually found himself focussing on UX design and customer success. That led him to find that one crucial part of the experience that leads to customers being successful in the product, is the user onboarding experience. From there, he only kept moving up the staircase, became a user onboarding specialist, founded UserOnboard.com, and wrote a book about it.

Samuel wrote his e-book, ‘The Elements of User Onboarding’, entirely on Keynote, which was later developed into a whole package, where he shares teardowns, tactics, strategies and what he learned onboard.

Read More »

Designing as ‘Change Agents’ (w/ Maria Giudice, former VP Experience at Autodesk)

It is our pleasure to present to you Maria Giudice, Former VP, Experience Design at Autodesk.

Maria founded and led a design studio named ‘Hot Studio’ for over 15 years, which was then acquired by Facebook, where she was a Director of product Design. Later on she took another big leap, left facebook to take on the role of VP Creative at Autodesk, where she focused on building a customer-centric company and leading a design team of ‘change agents’. Recently, Maria left Autodesk and is now taking her time to contemplate her next career move.

Maria also co-wrote a book, called ‘Rise of the DEO’, which is about leaders who understand the transformative power of design, they are change agents and these leaders called DEOs—Design Executive Officers—and they are our new heroes.

Read More »

Finding Your Product’s Level of Readiness and Manifesting Design systems (w/ Keenan Cummings, Airbnb)

Our guest today is the inspiring Keenan Cummings, Team Leader at Airbnb and former Co-founder/Creative Director of Days (acquired by Yahoo!) and the Designers Debate Club.

Keenan started his career as a designer in NYC, working in brand agencies and doing print work, where he landed what he thought would be a dream project, redesigning and rebranding the Chicago Cubs. However Keenan felt that there were bigger problems he wanted to dive in to, so he made the transition into digital design. He co-founded Days app, and then found his path into product design eventually joining Airbnb, where he led the development of their design systems and leads an extraordinary team.

Read More »

Influencing an industry and building a personal brand with Khoi Vinh (Principal Designer, Adobe)

Our guest today is none other than Khoi Vinh, Principal Designer at Adobe and former Design Director of The New York Times. Khoi is the founder of the popular blog, subtraction.com, a true family man, and was named one of Fast Company’s “50 Most Influential Designers in America”. He is the author of two books and has a long history of launching successful startups and side projects. In this interview, we discussed how writing has helped Khoi, not only in his career as a designer, but also how writing a book gives him a certain amount of credibility, and why he would not trade his writing experience for anything in the world.

Read More »

How to grow a blog and remain true to your audience – Chris Coyier (CSS-Tricks & CodePen)

It is our pleasure to present to you Chris Coyier. Chris started his journey writing blogs he didn’t enjoy, and eventually realized that his passion was actually in coding the blogs and crafting the CSS behind them. He eventually closed down all of his blogs except one, and CSS-Tricks was born. His blog is now one of the largest front-end development blogs in the world and paved the way for his platform, CodePen, which allows developers to share demos of front-end code while inspecting the code at the same time.

Read More »

The ups and downs of dominating a niche – Harry Roberts (CSS Wizardry)

Today we had the pleasure of talking to Harry Roberts, the founder of the well-known blog, CSS Wizardry. Harry has built an incredible personal brand and we’ve been following CSS Wizardry for years. We discussed with him exactly how he got started, what made him successful, and what he thinks is the best way to blog, build a personal brand and start a side project today.

Read More »

How to start public speaking – with Rizwan Javaid (SPA alum)

Today we are joined by Rizwan Javaid, a member of The Side Project Accelerator. Rizwan is a UX designer who is passionate about transforming ideas into engaging and profitable digital solutions. He is based out of California and works on a variety of projects both for mobile and web. Rizwan is also a blogger and international speaker, who pushes his boundaries to reach new audiences and inspire them to release their creativity. He started speaking about sketching, as he found it helped him in a variety of ways, and now has several talks and a brand focused on the power of sketching.

Read More »

The teacher who never stopped learning – Kelsey Ruger (SPA alum)

With us today is Kelsey Ruger, a UX consultant based out of Houston, Texas. Kelsey is a professor, a designer, a developer, and pretty much a jack of all trades. We met and got to know Kelsey because he’s also a member of The Side Project Accelerator.
Kelsey has worked on web and mobile projects for Fortune 100 startups and agencies and was also named one of Houston’s 40 under 40 in 2012 by the Houston Business Journal. His mission is to help people use their creativity to make better things happen in the world. In this episode, he shares with us his method for coming up with ideas and how to build a dedicated audience using the concept of “1,000” true fans.

Read More »

The musician who turned a side project into a multi-million dollar company – David Okuniev (Typeform)

David Okuniev is a former musician turned designer. He is the co-founder and joint CEO of Typeform, one of the hottest young startups out there. David discusses his amazing world-wide journey from being a musician with a record deal to owning a design agency and eventually building a product that was transformed from being a side project into a massively successful startup. Through Typeform David and his team have set the goal of making beautiful tools for human interaction that anyone can use.

Read More »

The freelance designer that stopped selling his time – Peter Nowell (Sketch Master)

Peter Nowell is a super talented designer with an entrepreneurial fire burning in his veins. He is the creator of Sketch Master, a scaling platform of professional courses for Sketch. Peter has worked with clients big and small, ranging from Apple to the Juice Shop, and absolutely revels in the high-level design vision and the execution of every detail. Living by his ideals of simplicity, honesty, and intentionality, Peter has continued to develop his brand and work on the things he really believes in.

Read More »

The mission to give everyone their own home on the Internet – with Matt Mullenweg (Automattic, WordPress)

Matt is driven by the mission to allow anyone in the world to have a home on the internet where they can express their thoughts and base their business. At the young age of 19, bored with his classes at the University of Houston, Matt first discovered his passion for code and writing. His personal blog was reaching more than 20,000 people at the time but the blog software was outdated, so he decided to create a new platform, which is known today as WordPress.

Read More »

The man who sold his last name and is now selling his future – Jason Zook

Jason started out by getting companies to pay him to wear their T-shirts for a living. He then sold his last name, twice, and wrote the world’s first ever fully-sponsored book. Now he is in the middle of what might be his craziest stunt yet. He’s quite literally selling his future, and he’s doing it so he can help creative professionals take action and make money doing what they love.

Read More »

The goat herding, algorithm cracking, autodidact Tal Perry (Citi, Smart Scribe)

Today’s guest is a very special person. Not your regular entrepreneur, and definitely not your standard, run-of-the-mill developer. Tal Perry is a good friend and a serial side project hacker. He’s actually one of the members of the first batch of the side project accelerator. He’s an entrepreneur who currently works at a large company, a developer, and a serious autodidact.

Read More »

Bryn Jackson (Spec.fm) on how he built a gigantic podcast network with over 5 million downloads

This is the first episode of the second season of the Hacking UI podcast, ‘Scaling a Side Project’. In this season we interview designers, developers, and creative entrepreneurs who built and scaled successful side projects that we admire. Today we are excited to have Bryn Jackson on the show. Bryn is the co-founder of Spec.fm, which features the popular podcasts Design Details, Developer Tea, and more.

Read More »

Katie Dill from Airbnb on managing designers as a design experiment

This week on the podcast we had a great discussion with Katie Dill, the director of experience design at Airbnb, one of the few companies in the world that’s truly disrupting an industry. In this conversation we discuss managing designers as a design experiment, how craft and hustle go together, and why the user experience should be important to every employee.

Read More »

Bob Baxley (former Apple, Yahoo, Pinterest) on creating powerful design leadership

In this week’s episode we had the privilege to talk with Bob Baxley, who is a design executive and has been managing designers for years. Bob has worked at some marquee companies including the likes of Yahoo, Pinterest, and Apple. In this interview as Bob shares with us what it takes to create powerful design leadership and how to navigate the different workplaces cultures in today’s top tech companies.

Read More »

The Hacking UI Podcast Ep. 6: How I built and scale my side projects

This is the read-out-loud of my article about how I scaled my side projects. In the following article I will share: My story, practical tips on how I created and scaled my side projects (A.K.A. how to monetize a low traffic blog), and explain my “why’s” for doing it. I hope that this story will inspire you to create you own side projects.

Read More »

Scaling a Design Team, Episode #3: Feat. Melissa Hajj, Design Manager at Facebook

This week we’re coming at you from the Facebook Tel Aviv office, where we were lucky to have two special guests join us, Melissa Hajj and Noam Liss. Melissa is the head of Facebook’s core growth design team, whose stated mission is connecting the next billion people to Facebook (no big deal). Noam is a senior product designer at SimilarWeb and the editor in chief of Pixel Perfect Magazine. Melissa was full of insights and gave us great ideas for improving organizational structure, design leadership, and for creating the ideal work environment. An hour with her was just not enough.

Read More »

Scaling a Design Team, Episode #1: feat. Billy Kiely, VP Product at Invision

In this episode we talked with the amazing Billy Kiely, VP Product of Invision. Billy was the first designer at Invision, and he scaled the company alongside Clark, the CEO, with design thinking as one of it’s core values. We talk about the structure of Invision’s product team, about how Billy made hiring decisions, what it’s like to work at Invision on a daily basis, and more.
This is our first episode, so we would love to hear your feedback! Write us in the comments!

Read More »

We participate in the Amazon Services, LLC Associates program, and affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliate sites.