We sat down with Trevor Nielsen, Sr. Product Designer at Giddy and discussed his career trajectory and what to expect as a sole designer at a startup. Trevor breaks down what to look for and what to run from in a company culture and approach to building products. Thanks so much for joining us Trevor!

Find Trevor on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevordesign

Music by: @halfcoolmusic

We sat down with Eric Han, a full-stack developer at Inkblot Therapy to discuss what a successful relationship with your developer will look like and how to build it. Eric is more than just a developer, he is also an accomplished designer in the fashion world and now runs his company Pillar Brand when he's not pushing code. With Eric's background as a designer and as a creative, his perspective as a developer defies the stereotypes and the insights he provides us made for a great interview.

Find Eric's work with Pillar here: https://www.instagram.com/pillarbrand/?hl=en

Eric on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-han6/ Get started as a developer: https://www.codecademy.com/

Music by:  @halfcoolmusic 

In this episode we interview best selling author, Nir Eyal as a continuation of our conversation in episode 004 where we cover the concepts covered in his book, Hooked: How To Build Habit Forming Products. We discuss the Morality of Manipulation, where designers will find themselves on the Manipulation Matrix and what to do when you find yourself in a spot you're less happy with on that spectrum.

Find more of Nir's work at: https://www.nirandfar.com/

Music by: @half.coolmusic

We discuss the relationship between developers and designers and how best to communicate and align on goals early. Meredith also shares how they found community and mentors they could relate to in their identity and queerness. Meredith discusses how important finding and building community is for underrepresented juniors entering the field of tech.

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We had a great talk with our friend Wes, who champions security by creating allies within other teams to advocate with him for the users. We learn what we can do as designers to integrate security into our design process and advocate for it early.

For a better look at the web of security Wes mentions and we show briefly: https://images.app.goo.gl/Jmk1Jnth7wznD5CB7

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In this episode, Meg, Mel and Cam discuss the benefits of hiring junior designers, drawing from Jared Spool's appearance on the Design Hires podcast and his corresponding Medium article. Meg breaks down how to assess a candidates “learnability” and how to sell this from the perspective of a junior and Mel contrasts it with their own experiences with hiring, particularly with take home design challenges. Cam highlights the need to create a workplace where learning on the job is inherent to the job and proposes a pipeline for hiring and training juniors. The hosts explain Spool’s “Achiever Pattern” and how it can be used to assess the viability of junior talent to thrive within this environment. The hosts also explore the top reasons for hiring junior designers, including introducing new design practices, building a diverse team, and the return on investment from juniors supporting production work and the reallocation of senior resources to strategic, larger projects. They hosts also offer advice for other junior designers, particularly the importance of transferrable side hustles/skills. They provide stats that speak to the ROI for supporting hiring UX designers at diverse talent levels within an organization. The episode concludes with takeaways, including the qualities that employers look for in junior designers and how to stand out as a junior designer.**Sources Mentioned:** Jared Spool Design Hires episode: [https://spotify.link/OsttefOjbzb](https://spotify.link/OsttefOjbzb)Jared Spool Medium Article: [Medium, 2020, Jared Spool - UX Strategy Playbook](https://medium.com/creating-a-ux-strategy-playbook/the-ux-strategy-of-hiring-juniors-over-seniors-6cf52220ae72)

In this episode we discuss the highly popular product design book "Hooked: Building Habit Forming Products" by Nir Ayal. We share our thoughts on the author and his work and delve into the ethics and responsibilities of designers crafting products with our users mental health in mind.
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On this episode of The Huddle, we'll be taking you through the history of UX design as we see it and some of the design processes commonly followed by designers performing UX design. Mel demystifies some of the terms we felt were interchangeable not so long ago and the scope of the different roles a designer can have under the umbrella of UX design.

Music provided by @half.cool