Design Better
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 better understand how to build a more innovative world.”
Episodes
August 6, 2025 • 46 mins
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 balance between tradition and innovation. Somehow they approach the pressure of their wor...
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July 30, 2025 • 9 mins
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 processes. But managing designers? That was new territory.
“Where should design really...
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July 23, 2025 • 20 mins
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 understand not just language, but intent, context, and trust.
In this episode, we ta...
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July 17, 2025 • 30 mins
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 figured out in this department. To learn more about their approach, we spoke with Matt B...
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July 16, 2025 • 63 mins
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 is helping designers design better.
In this AMA, Noah demo’d some of Figma’s newest ...
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July 9, 2025 • 46 mins
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’ve learned about creativity and design after more than 200 interviews, and how we app...
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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 melody and chord progression provide the foundation, but as each musician brings their u...
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June 25, 2025 • 35 mins
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 collaborator we’re designing with and for. It’s a shift that challenges our assumptions,...
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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 important role in IBM’s current transformation as VP of Experience Design.
Welcome to a li...
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June 11, 2025 • 13 mins
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 nuclear engineering to footwear design, from video games to graphic novels.
In my own...
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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 his career as a music producer with Jermaine Dupri, founder of So So Def records ...
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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 motion graphics and short videos for Design Better, and the experience is a thousand tim...
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May 30, 2025 • 27 mins
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 product design, and experimentation is important in both work and workflow.
To that end...
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May 21, 2025 • 45 mins
Find bonus content and more on our Substack: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/the-roundup-ai-creative-workflow
Rarely do we get the chance to pause and reflect on the conversations we’ve been having—and to spot the red threads that run through them. But that’s exactly what we’re doing today.
We’re trying out a new format—we’re calling it The Roundup. Think of it as a prototype. We’d love your feedback.
In this episode, we’re re...
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This interview was recorded live on May 1st for UserTesting’s ThiS Connect City Tour. Interested in joining us for our next live show? We’re joining an incredible lineup at #THiSConnect in NYC (including former Design Better guest Seth Godin), where we’ll talk about customer experience, innovation, and the real impact of AI.
📍 Catch us in New York on May 29th.
Let’s connect, share ideas, and shape what’s next!
***
Amy Lokey h...
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May 7, 2025 • 34 mins
Hi everyone!
We recently surveyed our audience and learned that many of you would like to see more video. So, we’re kicking off a new run of video episodes, beginning with our interview featuring John Cleese—actor, writer, comedian, and author of Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide.
You can watch the interview on our Substack, or on Youtube. Enjoy!
Original intro
The Ministry of Silly Walks. The Cheese Shop. French Taunti...
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April 29, 2025 • 49 mins
A special sponsored episode of the Design Better Podcast
It’s a tough job market out there right now for designers and other creative technologists. Many of us are wondering if there are other ways we might be able to use our skills, and some of us are considering an entrepreneurial path.
Our guest today has done just that. Marco Suarez has had an impressive career in design, but took an interesting turn into entrepreneurship. Ma...
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April 24, 2025 • 46 mins
Visit our Substack for bonus content and more: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/susan-magsamen-and-ivy-ross
In school, art is often positioned in curricula as an enrichment subject, not a core skill like math or language arts. But those of us who pursue the arts instinctually recognize that there is something in creative expression that is foundational to the human experience.
Susan Magsamen, executive director of the Internatio...
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April 16, 2025 • 55 mins
Visit our Substack for bonus content: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/rewind-ok-go
Aarron and Eli are traveling with their families for Spring Break, so we’re bringing back one of our favorite episodes from 2023 with the band OK Go.
In the time since we recorded the interview, they’ve come out with a new album, and with several new music videos, including for the track Love, shot with no cuts…just “mirrors, robotics, and a whol...
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Visit our Substack for bonus content and more: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/jordan-mechner
As a kid in the 80’s, Eli fell in love with games on computers like the Apple II, Commodore 64, and later the Amiga and Macintosh. One of the very first games he played was called Karateka, which was inspiring for the realistic movements of its digital karate antagonists, even on a black-and-green Apple II monitor.
Our guest today, Jor...
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