The How This Works show
Decoding excellence through 100 professional conversations
About the show
Join us for a variety of conversations around expertise and craft. Our second season focuses in on product strategy, design, facilitation, leadership coaching, and adjacent areas, exploring how a variety of practitioners have developed mastery in these fields. Through discussions with over 30 guests so far, we've uncovered thought-provoking narratives and actionable strategies. Subscribe, follow us, and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts — spread the word!
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Episodes
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Drew Burdick
29 January 2025 | Season 2 | 44 mins 50 secs
agile development, ai transformation, business development, business value, client relationships, customer strategy, design community, design consulting, design culture, design leadership, design operations, design systems, design thinking, design tools, digital transformation, efficiency optimization, enterprise software, innovation strategy, networking, photoshop, service design, southeast tech
From bootleg Photoshop to founding StealthX, Drew Burdick shares how he built multiple businesses by prioritizing customer experience and community, while offering a vision of how AI might reshape design teams in 2025.
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Bumhan Yu
23 January 2025 | Season 2 | 1 hr 2 mins
ai, business, business of design, career, career change, coding, communication, culture, design ops, design thinking, desops, growth, korean, korean designer, learning, linguistics, mentorship, operations, problem solving, process, product design, psychology, teamwork, technology, ux design, visual thinking
In this episode, Skipper talks with Bumhan Yu, a designer who codes, whose background in linguistics and psychology uniquely informs his design approach, emphasizing communication and understanding user needs
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Aaron Young
3 January 2025 | Season 2 | 59 mins 36 secs
business intelligence, business strategy, contextual research, customer behavior, customer experience, customer insights, customer journey, customer research, decision making, jobs to be done, market research, product development, product strategy, qualitative research, switch interviews
In this episode, Skipper talks with Aaron Young about "switch interviews," one component part of the jobs to be done framework
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Andy Polaine
14 November 2024 | Season 2 | 1 hr 5 mins
ai and design, assembly line design, coaching in design, crosscultural design, design challenges, design education, design identity, design journey, design leadership, digital coaching, empathy in leadership, imposter phenomenon, imposter syndrome, leadership coach, leadership dip, reading the room, service design, storytelling in design, team dynamics, value of design
In this episode, Skipper chats with Andy Polaine about how he got started in the world of service design and his work as a design leadership coach
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Joanne Weaver
18 October 2024 | Season 2 | 1 hr 15 mins
cabaret, career advice, design, entrepreneurship, human connection, jazz, job search, music, networking, overcoming fear, personal growth, podcast, recruitment, sci-fi, trip-hop, ux
In this episode, Skipper chats with Joanne Weaver about her background about a UX recruiter, her take on the design job market, and what it means to be looking for a job today, along with some general advice
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Carl Cleanthes
8 October 2024 | Season 2 | 1 hr 30 mins
art entrepreneurship, art nfts, barefoot, blockchain, creative agency founder, creative journey, digital content creation, father's legacy, live art streaming, nfts, non-fungible tokens explainer, pandemic business pivot, visual communication expert, web3
In this episode, Skipper chats with Carl Cleanthes about making art, creativity, what NFTs are and how he works with them, and running a creative agency
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Jen Dary
11 December 2023 | Season 2 | 1 hr 2 mins
beplucky, client, french lit, in-person, leadership coach, manager, my own thing, oldest kid, plucky, small companies, so now you're a manager, virtual
In this episode, Skipper talks with Jen Dary about her work as a leadership coach and trainer of managers among other topics
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Karen Faith
3 November 2023 | Season 2 | 1 hr 7 mins
empathy, empathy for assholes, ethnography, karen faith, others unlimited
In this episode, Skipper chats with Karen Faith about her work as a researcher and ethnographer in the practice of empathy
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Zolt Levay
30 May 2023 | Season 2 | 53 mins 18 secs
astronomer, astronomy, cameras, carina nebula, color, data, images, light, nature, objects, photography, photos, pillars of creation, professional telescopes, wave lengths
In this episode, Skipper chats with Zolt Levay about his work as a nature photographer, both out in space and on our terrestrial world here on Earth
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Dr. Peter Chin-Hong
19 May 2022 | Season 2 | 51 mins 32 secs
coronavirus, covid, first booster, second booster, ucsf, vaccine
In this episode, Skipper chats again with Dr. Peter Chin-Hong from University of California, San Francisco about the coronavirus/COVID and more
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Skipper Chong Warson
15 June 2021 | Season 1 | 1 hr 8 mins
5 whys, color, design, five whys, home, listening, making how this works, new york city, podcast, san francisco, storytelling, success, work, writing
In this episode, the script is flipped and Laura puts the questions to Skipper - topics include storytelling, making How This Works, life at home, and a variety of other topics
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Call for questions
7 June 2021 | Season 1 | 45 secs
Skipper asks for listener questions for the last episode of the first season